Lord of the Flies musical choir under an established leader. With the exception of Sam and Eric and the choirboys, they appear never to have encountered each other before. The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves on a paradisiacal island, far from modern civilization, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state. Golding wrote his book as a counterpoint to R.M. Ballantyne's youth novel "The Coral Island" (1858), and included specific references to it, such as the rescuing naval officer's description of the children's initial attempts at civilised cooperation as "a jolly good show, like the Coral Island". Golding's three central
Lord of the Flies (The X-Files) co-star Robert Patrick had a difficult time with the episode; he later explained, "I couldn't deal with some of the material. As an actor, I found some of it to be a little silly." Accordingly, Manners helped Patrick traverse the script, helping him achieve the desired delivery for his lines. The aggressiveness of flies in the episode was inspired by the actual habits of Australian blow flies. A few of the flies on the dead body of "Cap'n Dare" were real, but the rest were created via CGI, according to special effects supervisors John Wash. Conversely, when filming the scene