SNS: The Lighthouse

Season 1, audio 4: The Lighthouse, by Nigel Fairs

STEEL: Children. Why's it always children?
SAPPHIRE: They aren't aware of Time, aren't afraid of it. Don't try to fight it.

This story definitely takes more than a single listen to to get, which Nigel Fairs points out himself in the liner notes. This does make one wonder when the needs of artistic license in storytelling should overwhelm the basic needs of having an audience understand the story? However, this isn't the first time Big Finish have done...interesting narrative techniques, and a seond listening is sufficient.

Which means the story is simple? In some ways I would say it has been over-complicated. One problem with different time zones is that it doesn't become entirely easy to tell which zone one is in, especially when I could have done with more differentiation between the voices. But the basic idea is of a man wanting to change his past, change what he has become, a self that was formed in his childhood (which is an aspect Nigel wanted to explore). As such, the story could have been streamlined more, and that basic point could have been brought out more (in many ways, the play could have been done with the old man, the young boy and his father, and still get the theme going).

But Nigel has obviously decided to opt for the more complicated idea, and, incidentally, not do a Sapphire and Steel audio. One of the core S&S components is the interaction S&S have with the characters, and in this audio that is circumvented so that Nigel has tell his across-time plot. The closest we get to this aspect is in the last half of the second episode when S&S and incorporated into events. Still, what Nigel then does with Sapphire is a neat idea, and we get to see Steel being a bastard, which is always fun.

With stories like this, you really do have to wonder what the cast thought of the roles. David Warner and Susannah Harker might have been used to the surreality by this time, but how did Neil Salvage feel about being an artist/mass murderer? At least Ian Hallard, Joseph Young and Lucy Beresford got to partake in a fairly straight forward drama about two old school chums and the wife, with lots of juicy secrets to reveal (a storyline that could be used anywhere, and could also have come from anywhere...making this either an S&S story of broad general appeal, or not an S&S story at all). Michael Adams sounds like he enjoyed his part, but if I might suggest, he could use a little more work on the death scene. And how exactly did Stuart Piper play the young boy?

Still, if there is one good thing to be said for this story, it's that it's not based on a bleeding nursery rhyme! When Nigel mentions that they've been accused of "overstepping the mark", perhaps that was because of the lack of a nursery rhyme in Daisy Chain (although it was probably the ending of that audio that they are referring to). It's interesting to consider what are staple S&S components. Atmosphere is obviously one, weird people to interact with is another, and nursery rhymes seem to be a third (which is really more a perceptual issue, as only half the original stories referred to rhymes).

With The Lighthouse, Nigel manages to break away from those stereotypes by having none of them involved. But it looks like they are returning to form in Dead Man Walking.