Searcher & Stallion

Searcher & Stallion is one of the oldest running "modern" audio drama science fiction series. The original series began back in the pre-Internet days of the early 1990's. The series is created and headlined by Scott Howard who admits that he came up with the idea in his teens while driving his car around and listening to Tangerine Dream. Some years later at a radio station in Salt Lake City he began narrating the story of "Searcher & Stallion"- a lonely traveler through space with his mechanical steed. The series was a hit locally and only ceased production as it became too difficult to continue without any income supporting the project. S&S is a science fiction series with a small cast, a little blood and violence but basically rated AD-PG-13 (based on the new Audio Drama Ratings System).

Website
The Searcher & Stallion website fits the theme and the mood of the series. S&S does a great job of having the listener the kind of loneliness it must feel like in the vacuum of space. The website is a little dark therefore in color with all of space as the background, and of course that fits just about perfectly.
Functionally I like the format. The two column look provides easy access to updates about news and links including donations and a widget for listening to the series "Dreams and Wings". I like the paragraph at the very top "What is Searcher & Stallion?" It very quickly identifies the universe the story plays in and explains the central conceit surrounding Searcher. Information on the Original Series, Contacts, Links, and Fan Forum are all standard fare, but I want to point out that the About Us  is a section that gets good detail here and not nearly as much shrift in other websites as I've said before. Getting the history of this project makes you feel like you're part of a long voyage of the creative process and not just a listener. But there's no information about the actors outside of Scott Howard who make the voices in S&S. Am I missing a link?
Similarly, the S&S Insider which links you to a blog that provides more information about the process of audio drama creation has two entries and the last post made four years ago.
If I have one criticism is that audio drama producers do not tend to update their websites and blogs nearly enough. Even once a month would be a nice change.
Rating: 4/5

Audio Drama Type- Audio Book
I'm going to go out on the limb and say that while Searcher & Stallion claims to be an audio drama, really it is at best a hybrid of an audio book. The story is told mostly from an unseeing omniscient narrator (Scott Howard) and the use of a narrator places us into a "story time" environment instead of the "real time" mode of audio drama. Pure audio drama for the most part tends to shave off narration to keep the story in the moment. This doesn't diminish the story of S&S, but it does try to clarify exactly what kind of audio work it is.

Acting Types- Amateur
 The actors who play the characters on the show are great. Since I can not find the spelling of their names on the website, I'm going to avoid butchering them and simply name them as the blog does- Suit, Searcher, Stallion, etc...
I have little to say but that the casting is excellent. The direction is spot on. For the first couple episodes Searcher's dialog may consist mostly of grunts, groans, and gasps of pain, but they are realistic. You feel everything being described. The actor playing Searcher gives a spot on performance of frustration, loneliness, and confusion. His voice is middle-ranged enough to come across as an effective Everyman and it is clearly different enough from the narrator that people realize they are two different folks.
The woman who plays the voice of the suit is controlled and focused. She comes across clearly as an artificially intelligent entity without the Robby the Robot clankiness. If I were stuck in space. Her voice would certainly be a comfort to me. Stallion's voice is different yet again, and this too is excellent decisions on casting, and style.
Scott Howard's rich voice of the narrator is smooth enough to relax by. The only danger is, Searcher & Stallion episodes one and two of "Dreams and Wings" might settle you out too much. Be careful if operating heavy machinery or driving.
Rating: 5/5

Production: Detailed
The blog at the website expresses the concern that episode one of "Dreams and Wings" took five months to complete, and that their hope is to complete each episode in a month. This is a pretty slow schedule by most production means. The issue I believe is that the team of S&S are trying to make professional productions on their own time. That usually means a significant time investment, and when it's your hobby, those time investments can run over a long scale.
S&S delivers on the production end. The episodes are immaculately miked as Kendall Jackman's Insider will tell you. Jackman produces the music for Searcher & Stallion which has a dreamy quality to it that reminds me of Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack. The music is powerful next to Scott Howard's dulcet tones and the sound effects are just enough to tell the tale.
But once again, my biggest problem is this- conservation.
If a production is ostensibly an audio book, then do away with sound effects and actor reactions since they are already indicated in the narrative. If the story is an audio drama, then remove any narration that would tell the story instead of telling it through the sound effects and dialog. Using both is over kill.
"..the bone reset..." (cue sound effect of a bone resetting).
The author just told us twice what was happening. Once is only necessary.
Rating: 4.5/5

Writing
Scott Howard wrote the series of S&S and you can tell there's a lot of love about the characters and the setting. The writing itself is compelling enough but only after about episode 3. I'm not sure if it's exciting or frustrating yet to realize that each episode is a "page" of the story and not a "chapter". After listening to the long, sometimes painfully so, descriptions of Searcher's awakening in the world and slow realization to the elements of the suit I began to panic that I might very well listen to 20 or so more "pages" of episodes before anything really happened.
But take heart. Around episode three is when actual audio drama interactions of dialog with Stallion begin and there's a cool battle scene that occurs.
There is always a tug and pull between description and dialog with writers. How much is too much description? How little is too little?
One of the great truisms is this. Dialog generally slows down the story in fiction and description speeds it up.
What most people do not realize is the exact opposite is true in Audio Drama. Description slows down a story to a crawl in a radio play and dialog keeps the story interesting and the characters engaged (assuming that all things being equal, dialog and description are equally good).
Howard knows Science Fiction and he understands the conventions of the universe that S&S live in. His details are not without merit. But greater merit would include more trimming.
Rating: 4/5 

Additional Notes
I did not go about to listen to the original Searcher & Stallion episodes. The scope of this blog is to focus on things first time listeners would hear. In the future, I may indeed listen to the originals, as I am curious as to how far they have come in their production. My guess is that the production values of the original shows still outstrips some of the current producers of audio drama today. Howard and his team strike me as folks who take very seriously Searcher & Stallion, and that's a very good thing.

Over All
If you are one of those folks who does not mind listening to an audio book presentation of audio drama, then Searcher & Stallion is something you'll appreciate.
While I loved all the elements, the production, the actors, the music, and even at times the writing, and even though it comes together in a very unique way, in my heart of hearts I feel that the show would do much better pushing the narration into the rear view mirror, or simply cutting out all pretenses of audio drama conventions and making the story an audio book with multi-cast recording.
While it took me three episodes of the four to really get hooked into "Dreams & Wings", it was worth it to me, and I hope they will make many more to come in this new age of Audio Drama revival.
Rating 4/5