SNS: Daisy Chain

The second Big Finish Sapphire and Steel audio: Daisy Chain by Joseph Lidster.

SAPPHIRE: Steel, do you love me?
STEEL: <splutter> Of course I love you. You're pretty.

I'm not spoiling anything when I reveal that the author dies in this play, and it doesn't happen soon enough to please me. The liner notes (which also vindicate a certain much-maligned prop) reveal that Joseph Lidster (for it is him) doesn't really know how to write Sapphire and Steel, and it shows in the audio. (So why exactly was he hired then?)

The story is, in a word, domestic. It's standard supernatural fare, and the only thing that makes it slightly SnS is the occasional mention of Time. I managed to work out who the "villian" was in the first episode, so spent a lot of time waiting for the revelation to come, which obviously didn't surprise me at all (although there were a few points I didn't guess).

Although I didn't have to wait a long time. The episodes are actually rather short, and I think these double disc set could have easily been editted down onto a single disc, with a far tighter and better story resulting.

Harker and Warner sound to be fully settled into their roles, although Warner's enunciation at times could be better. Kim Hartman is fine and believable as the mother Gabrielle, but I'm not sure what age Lena Rae is supposed to be playing as Jennifer. I think it's around 13, but she sounds 20. Stuart Piper as James also sounds older than around 18. This might be a rare case of miscasting by Big Finish (although some people think that's already happened in The Passenger). Saul Jaffe and Emma Kilbey also provide "Voices" and Joeph Lidster himself also gets a role...

The production is usual Big Finish's high quality, but they have taken the opportunity of the audio to do something different with the opening teaser segments and the closing theme. It's all right as a one off deal, so hopefully they won't be inspired to practice this inventiveness often.

One extra feature (possibly to justify the double disc) is a "behind the scenes" feature (the first of appearantly many), this one focussing on the incidental music. Nigel Fairs and Steve Foxon take us through the creation of the music, about the themes they've created, and other details whwich I'm sure are interesting to someone. We also get to hear Nigel's attempt at a new opening theme. We are all glad that wasn't needed.

The end result of all this is a story that comes across as both brief and over padded. While not at all derivative of other SnS stories, this story doesn't really fit that well into SnS either. I haven't mentioned the ending, but that comes across as ill-fitting as the rest of the story (it was obviously the ending Joseph had in mind, but trying to justify it doesn't really work).

Two audios down, and nothing overly spectacular yet. We can only hope for improvement (but from the snips I've now heard from the other stories...).