Monday, November 21, 2016

The Lights of Skaro by: Jams Goss directed by: Scott Handcock: Is It Some Thal Weapon?

The Lights of Skaro stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, Lisa Bowerman as Professor Bernice Summerfield, and Sophie Aldred as Ace.  It was written by James Goss, directed by Scott Handcock, and released in June 2015 by Big Finish Productions in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield: Volume One Box Set.

 

I find it weird that The Lights of Skaro is counted as a different story.  It follows on directly from Guy Adams’s Random Ghosts, but is written by James Goss instead of Adams.  Goss apparently had the audio written first and Random Ghosts was written to flow nicely into The Lights of Skaro.  The story is again only an hour for a finale and for what it wants to do it has enough time as the plot is actually really simple.  So it turns out Ace had this little planet that she was allowed to watch over.  She did a good job looking over it, but then she went to her mother’s funeral and while she was away the planet was invaded by the Daleks.  In a fit of emotional rage, she goes back in between Genesis of the Daleks and The Daleks, puts Skaro into a time loop, and has caused the problems in the entire box set.  It’s up to Benny to put everything to rights which is really where the general plot ends and some of the deeper meanings begin.  As a plot it really is a back seat to these deeper meanings which I found a bit annoying as really it is generic and the twists you can really see coming a mile away.

 

The deep meaning of the story is about the Doctor, who is actually barely in this story, who due to his involvement in The Daleks is the main cause of the Daleks having to conquer.  He is responsible for all the deaths the Daleks caused which makes Good Night, Sweet Ladies an interesting example of Chekov’s gun for Benny.  She goes off on the Doctor for all its worth and it’s something that comes across very well on the audio as Lisa Bowerman is a great performer.  Her portrayal of Bernice Summerfield in this story is probably one of her best.  Benny has her emotional journey of the box set have to come full circle as she deals with her love affair with Klinus, who turns out to be a Kaled who became a Dalek.  She has to deal with the Daleks who are at the beginning and actually has a chance to save her mother, but she cannot bring herself to do it.  It’s catharsis for the character and is interesting to see her come fully to terms with her mother’s death, but it seems like an almost retread of Good Night, Sweet Ladies.

 

Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor actually stays in the background of the story for its majority.  Benny describes him as the worst Yoda ever.  It is a performance that does well at keeping the focus on Benny and when he does interfere it is for the confrontation, which of course is really all that he should do.  The same can be said for Ace as played by Sophie Aldred who actually disappears halfway through the story and comes back in near the end.  The script plays to Aldred’s strengths as an actress and she pulls herself through the story.  This doesn’t interfere and she could have been pulled out of the story after her explanation quite easily and without any real consequences for the quality of the story.  Goss’s writing is very strong, but he just isn’t interested in writing Ace into the story.

 


Goss is much more interested in writing the conflicts of the side characters as he uses Varna, a Kaled ghost who discovers the Daleks, and is horrified.  She thinks everything going on is all part of the Thal plan to destroy the world, and is tricked by Foster into repowering the Daleks.  The suggestion is that The Power of the Daleks is what is going to be coming next in the series and it’s a good idea as the scenes involving the Daleks are all very tense as it is possible that they don’t have to be awoken for the story to continue.

 

To summarize, The Lights of Skaro concludes the first set of The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield in a great way.  The story is definitely not as good as Random Ghosts, but still manages to keep up the quality of the set with an engaging story that retreads a bit of material that doesn’t have a lot to flesh out.  The acting is great if Ace is still sidelined for most of the story and really didn’t have to be there to keep the story moving.  Benny is still great in the story and the box is well worth your time.  90/100

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