a few more of them-thar pesky details on the effects in the images above:

-  "Cast Shadows" turned off for the "beam" props, 

-  and I'd have to check, (these are very-very old) but I believe the beam props' Diffuse color is set to 0 black (so they would not be affected by the scene's lights) and the Ambient color set to the actual color I wanted to see.