khaosworks | News from Big Finish (Reply)

Over the last weekend was the big LA Doctor Who convention, Gallifrey One, and for those like me who are into the Big Finish audios - both of us - and maybe those who might be interested in what's coming up with the new Sapphire & Steel series, here's a con report (of sorts) from Buck Godot, who originally posted this on the Outpost Gallifrey forums... I'll just post the highlights. Buck wants me to remind people that these were written through a sleep deprived haze, so take them for what you will... the S&S news is pretty exciting, though.

In the Doctor Who Line, I already mentioned the releases that have been scheduled, so I won't repeat them here. And, sadly, one of the things that subcumed to Sleep Depravation Syndrome was some of the One Line Descriptions of the various stories that Gary gave. Sorry about that. But I do remember the following:

The Council of Nicea will be a pure historical.
Catch-1782 will be very Mel-centric.
Three's a Crowd will take place in a space station (I think... ack brian freezing) and be a more of a "traditional corridor romp"
Dreamtime will center around a lot of the Australian Aboriginal myths and legends. And the Galyari voice has a new treatment so it wont be as hard for people to understand them (though personally I never had a problem with them)
I cant remember any thing about Unregenerate, sorry about that (must start bringing recorder with me).
Don't expect The Game to be a huge two and a half hour release.

Sapphire and Steel:

Firstly, I know next to nothing about S&S. I've never seen it, so I went into it with a blank slate. I think its going to be absolutely fabulous. Nigel brought a bunch of clips of some of the plays (including the first 4 minutes or so of The Lighthouse), and they definitely seemed spooky and atmospheric. He also had a fantastic trailer for The Passenger which if we beg enough will hopefully soon go up on the website. And maybe if were extra special nice to Nigel, he'll put up the other stuff he made.

The whole 1CD/2CD is strictly being based on suitability of the play. If it seems like it will take time to express itself, it will be a 2CDer, if it would benefit more as a shorter play it will be a 1CD release.

Nigel was initially disappointed that they couldn't get David McCallum for Steel (who was interested in the role, but was way too busy) and Joanna Lumley for Sapphire (she didn't seem as interested for what ever reason. It might have been money, it might have been that she wanted to move on. It might even have been that since they couldn't get David, she decided it wasn't worth it. My (personal) read of the situation is a combination of all three). However, he maintains that once the recording was done, he didn't want the old team back. The new team of David Warner and Susanhah Harker were that good in his mind.

David Collings will be returning as Silver in one of the plays (can't remember which one... Care to remind me Nigel?? Pretty Please?) [Now that I think about it, it might have been The Lighthouse but I'm VERY not sure]

As we already know, Mark Gatis will be appearing as Gold. A couple of interesting stories here. The first one involves that when Mark heard about the new S&S stories being made, he apparently rang up Jason Haigh-Ellery and said something like, "I hear you're making new Sapphire and Steel. (pause) I'm playing Gold." This was, of course news to both Jason and Nigel who, as I understand it, hadn't even written in Gold yet. But who says no to Mark Gatiss?

The other story involves the relationship of Gold and Sapphire and Steel. In the old series (apparently) Steel was always getting upset about how Silver was playing around with Sapphire and not being serious enough for Steel. Well, instead of doing the obvious thing and having Gold be buddy-buddy with Steel (thus upsetting Sapphire), they decided to make it so nethier Sapphire or Steel could stand Gold. Sort of a "Oh no, here's that git again" type of situation.

Following on the tradition of the old series, they are not explaining why S&S look/sound different, nor are they explaining how they got out of the cliffhanger in the original series. They have decided that explanations are for sissies pretty much. The only reference they make, in fact, that any thing is different between the old show and the new one is that Silver makes a comment on liking Steel's "new hair style"

The crowd absolutely went bonkers at Andrew Ortons logo for S&S. Everybody loved it. Take a bow for it Andy.

Another cute story is, that going on with the "Explanations.... We don't need no stinkin' explantions" theme, they were looking into not putting ANY titles on the releases. That is you would have been able to put them in any order, and called them whatever you liked. The problem was that they found that shops were pretty unwilling to stock items without some sort of system to them (be it number, title, or anything else). So no, Sapphire & Steel "The Blue Album" for us.

I believe that, sales willing, to are looking to release these every other month. Or five a year. Its one of the two, I honestly can't recall with ATM.

The reason that Nigel is writing two plays (he was originally only going to write one) is that John Ainsworth simply didn't have the time to write the story he came up with. And since it was too good to pass up on, Nigel decided to write it himself based on John's story.

Final bit of note: When it was announced that they were doing S&S, they got more requests of writers who wanted to write for it than for any other series except for DW.