From the Archive: Sapphire and Steel: Assignment 4 (1980)

As I noted in my earlier post this morning, Sapphire and Steel (1979-1982) is a textbook example of a TV series that does a lot with very, very little. This resourceful genre series ran for four years on British television over thirty years ago, and there were six, multi-part stories overall.

Usually, an entire multi-part serial is  set at just one location (like a haunted train station, an isolated country house; an abandoned antique shop, or even a futuristic penthouse apartment building). 

Each of the serials also features absolutely minimal special effects, and for the most part only a handful of guest cast. The result, however is a triumph of mood and atmosphere; one of the most suspenseful, creative and compelling (not to mention weirdest...) series of all time. It's also one of my personal favorites. 

Why? It's portentous. It's mysterious. It raises more questions than it answers. It is...unnerving and enigmatic. Sapphire and Steel (created by Peter Hammond) is like a puzzle; one that demands to be solved and understood. As a series, it focuses intensely on the notion of of "The Unseen." Of Evil Forces lurking in the periphery of reality, just out of sight, in the shadows...but present, powerful and malicious.

In particular, Sapphire and Steel recounts the adventures of two distinctly non-human protagonists who combat such forces.

Sapphire (a beautiful and charismatic woman, played by Joanna Lumley) and un-emotional, arrogant Steel (David McCallum) are our enigmatic leads. They are "Operatives" working at the behest of another Unseen Force to repair breaches and incursions into Time Itself (which in one episode is described as "a long tunnel.")

Such "irregularities" in time, according to the opening narration of the series are "handled by the forces controlling each dimension." In the cases we see, "Sapphire and Steel" have been "assigned;" though they are sometimes aided by "Specialists" such as Silver.

What this all amounts to is - in essence - a paranormal police procedural of a most unique and singular quality, with Sapphire and Steel utilizing their special unearthly skills to preserve the integrity of time. 

Sapphire is a touch-telepath capable of psychometry, for instance. She also possess the unusual ability to "take back time" twelve hours."

Meanwhile, the cold-blooded (and calculating...) Steel can reduce his body's core temperature to "absolute zero," is incredibly strong, and possesses the ability to open any lock on any door. 

Sapphire and Steel also communicate telepathically on several occasions throughout the series; as if the very act of talking is beneath them; somehow primitive or human. And that's one aspect of the series I really like: humanity is not at the center of this show's drama or narrative. 

We're not delicate snowflakes; we are not the prized children of the universe (like in Star Trek or Dr. Who). Humanity is involved in the stories; at the center of several time breaches, but mankind is treated more as a nuisance and less as God's gift to creation. That's an inventive, ingenious and unconventional view.

There's always a great joy in watching opposites Mulder and Scully interact on The X-Files and there's a similar thrill in watching the partnership of Sapphire and Steel here. Steel is a tough-minded, a bossy brooder; Sapphire boasts a devilish sense of humor and has a gleam in her eye. Although the actors' deliver their lines deadpan and non-emotionally, a whole universe of subtle emotion flourishes between the lines; in their eye-contact; in their physicality; in their tone, in Sapphire's occasional smile, even in their proximity to one another. These are amazing performances which strongly "hint" alien, but are also filled with a kind of nuanced complexity as well..

Today, I've decided to focus on the fourth adventure in the series, which is sometimes known as "The Man Without A Face." 

Here, Sapphire and Steel are assigned to investigate a new breach in time, one that occurs at an English antique shop (and connected upstairs apartments) in England of 1980. 

In particular, a "time break" involving antique photographs has occurred. A faceless man -- one who won't show his real face -- has broken out of his prison inside an old photograph, and come into the real world with a devilish agenda. 

Sapphire and Steel attempt to deal with this interloper, and early in the episode share a spirited debate about their purpose and mission, wondering whether it is better to arrive after Time's integrity has been breached; or rather to sit around waiting for it to happen. Sapphire notes that "there aren't enough of us" to wait in the locations of Time Breaks, to which Steel scoffs. This enigmatic conversation -- with precious few specifics -- is about as much background as we get on Sapphire an Steel's world per serial, and that's just as it should be. Just hints. Just touches.

This fourth adventure deals explicitly with the idea that a life-form -- an evil one -- dwells inside every photograph across the span of human history. 

It lived inside the first photo ever taken; and it lives inside the photo you just took this morning before you read my blog. 

"Each and every photo is mine," it says with coiled menace. 

Apparently, this thing was trapped within the world of the photograph (an infinite world, Steel suggests), but the amateur conjuring of a photographer living in this very building -- the combining of a very old image with a new image inside a kaleidoscope -- has released it into our reality. 

This monster possesses fearsome powers too. For instance, he can trap living beings inside photographs. In one of the most horrific (not gory, but horrific...) scenes I've ever seen on television, Sapphire and Steel stand by helpless while the Man with No Face burns up a photograph with a living woman trapped inside it. We see the photograph burn to ash, and we hear her dying screams as she is seared alive.

Before she is killed, this innocent woman communicates to Sapphire her first sight of the released Man with No Face. She does so not in straight eyewitness testimony, but in the creepy sing-song of a poem she half-remembers. 

She recites the poetry as if in a daze, a trance. "As I was going up a stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today; [although] I wish he'd stay away..." The delivery of this monologue/poem is just great; a kind of vacant, half-remembered terror, like a nursery rhyme from childhood.

I love this artistic way of generating chills, and in general, greatly admire the manner in which Sapphire and Steel utilizes clever, memorable and intelligent language to foster authentic and deep scares. It has no monster costumes and no special effects to rely on, so it reaches for (and frequently grasps) a more literary, more cerebral style of horror. 

For instance, this serial also involves the unnerving repetition of another old Nursery rhyme, "This is the way to London Town..." 

A clutch of sepia-tone "ghost" children (replete with deathly pallor) whisper this rhyme again and again in the adventure and it gets under the skin real quick. Combined with eerie sound effects (particularly in a scene in which Sapphire attempts to turn back time to see the "real face" of the Photograph Man), these vocal touches are very effective.

But I reserve my greatest admiration for the precise, meticulous camera-work of Sapphire and Steel. The photography is so beautifully-vetted, so utterly painstaking that it actually creates scares too. All by itself. 

I note, for instance, the preponderance of shots in this fourth adventure featuring our protagonists (Sapphire and Steel) perched behind bars (of a half-lit staircase; of an iron gate, and so on), indicating a sense of entrapment and doom. I note also the shadows on the walls, simultaneously frozen and yet foreboding -- suggesting the presence of the Unseen. 

Every episode of Sapphire and Steel is like this: rigorously, scrupulously-mounted. I know of few series (besides The X-Files and Millennium) where the staging is so picture-perfect; so chilling. It's fascinating, but in eschewing transitory special effects and focusing instead on extremely careful camerawork, Sapphire and Steel today looks not dated...but rather...timeless.

Even the climax of this fourth episode is something of an audacious masterwork; a master's thesis on economy of storytelling. Sapphire and Steel themselves become frozen inside an old photograph, and must telepathically communicate with a human woman to free them. 

All the while, the Man with No Face nears...ready to burn our heroes to cinders. The scene thus involves a long sequence in which the audience is gazing at nothing but a photograph of Sapphire and Steel. Over this un-moving image, we hear their dazed conversation. They are frozen, slow, unable to concentrate, and the visual lingering on a "still" serves as the perfect reflection of their paralysis. As evil approaches, the paralysis becomes practically tangible.

Some of the greatest horror in history involves the idea that commonplace things (or locations) are dangerous. For instance, the shower in Psycho. Or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which suggests that sleep is the venue through which mankind will lose his soul. Well, we all have to sleep, don't we? 

This adventure of Sapphire and Steel taps the same kind of horror, suggesting that you can actually see this "Monster" in every photograph you keep in those old family albums. That...maybe he's that figure in the background; the one with his back to the camera; or half-turned away from you. 

Or maybe he lurks in the distance, in one of the upper windows of that building far back in the frame. 

This idea is chilling, and this kind of horror requires very little by way of special effects. The episode's valedictory frisson arises from the universal nature of this beast (once more trapped, but not killed). Sapphire and steel warn the young lady (a dancer) who rescued them: "never to have another photograph taken." 

Why? Because that thing will always be there with her, lurking. 

"In years to come," it tells her with a hiss, "I'll find a photograph...nothing lasts but me."

Impressive in narrative and awe-inspiring in visualization, Sapphire and Steel's fourth serial is a perfect little horror gem. One setting. A few characters. A terrible menace. The Unseen lurks in the shadows, in photographs...even in mirrors, and you get the unsettling feeling that Sapphire and Steel barely scrape by unscathed.

And that last bit? About escaping unscathed? It's not always the case on this remarkable science-fiction/horror series...

Outré Intro: Sapphire and Steel (1979 - 1981)

For my money, Sapphire and Steel (1979 - 1981) remains one of the greatest and most underrated cult-tv series in history. 

The weird, enigmatic program involves two "elements -- Sapphire (Joanna Lumley) and Steel (David McCallum) -- contending with "irregularities" in space-time, and, through investigations of the problem, repairing them.  

The main characters on Sapphire and Steel are non-human and highly enigmatic, the stories are ambiguous, and the meticulous, precise camera work -- in conjunction with the glacier-like pace -- forges an atmosphere of incredible mystery and terror. 

Imagine Doctor Who without the colorful alien races, the human companions, and without the Time Lord having any particular affection or affinity for the human race.  Imagine, instead, that an outside force visits Earth occasionally, but only to (sometimes ruthlessly) maintain a sense of galactic order in a structural sense, making certain that the time continuum isn't corrupted, and that paradoxes are not allowed to take root and grow.

Low budget in nature, the series is a perfect example of an art work that does a lot with very little resources.  Many episodes have no visual effects at all, but nonetheless create an atmosphere of creeping, suffocating horror.

In keeping with the general aura of the entire program, the opening or introductory montage for Sapphire and Steel is one of the weirdest -- and non-human -- you could imagine.  

The montage commences with a view of outer space -- the cosmos -- and on the soundtrack, we hear a kind of frenetic or urgent "twinkling," as if an alarm of some type has activated.

Then, we go "behind reality," as we know it, viewing the universe as a kind of space message or control panel.  We see a long road, perhaps the time continuum, stretching out before us (as it is monitored), and then we see the universe as a grid.

Net, we hear the official-sounding voice of some authoritarian figure -- God, perhaps -- explaining the concept of the series.

"All irregularities," this voice tells us, "will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension."  

From this announcement, we understand that the universe, and reality itself, consists of multiple realms or alternate universes.  

So, in a way, this 1970s series is discussing the multi-verse, and the "police force" that protects each universe, presumably from the aforementioned structural perspective.

We similarly learn in the montage that "Transuranic, heavy elements may not be used where life exists," meaning that some of reality's "elemental" police may not function in certain realms; their actions restricted to certain levels of reality. In other words, the presence of some "police" in our universe would likely, by their very nature, annihilate us.

Instead, the Voice of God reports, some medium elements/police are available in our universe, including gold, led, copper, radium, sapphire, and steel, to name a few.  

In the next several images, these elements -- in their natural state? -- are introduced, presumably flying off to handle crises in the multi-verse.

Finally, our two protagonists are seen by side -- as complementary partners -- accompanied by the pronouncement that "Sapphire and Steel have been assigned..."

Here is the strange, but imaginative intro in all its glory:

Theme Song of the Week # 14: Sapphire & Steel (1979-1982)

Sapphire and Steel

This strange (and kinda obscure...) TV series (DVD box set from A&E shown left) is my current obsession. Sapphire and Steel is a British-made series that ran on UK TV from 1979-1982, and starred Joanna Lumley and David McCallum as a pair of very unusual paranormal investigators. They are - as their names suggest - elements rather than people, assigned to troublesome cases by some unknown superior force (God, perhaps?) Their missions are strange too, almost always concerning sudden rips in time and space, and other weird phenomena. Although the cases seen during the six serials (34 half-hour shows) occur in London, their purview is wide - from time travel to pocket universes, to strange poltergeists and other manifestations.

Sapphire and Steel - like Mulder and Scully on The X-Files - bring their own skill sets to each unique assignment. Sapphire (Lumley) can simply touch an object and know everything about its composition and history, and even who has handled it before her. She is a formidable telepath who also has the capacity to turn back time twelve hours. You'd be surprised how handy a tool that can be while battling spirits from outside time who are trying to burst into our reality!

Steel is less powerful, it seems, but is possessed of more will and discipline. He is incredibly strong physically, and can reduce his core body temperature to absolute zero. But mostly he is valuable for his razor-sharp mind. Steel is a calculating, emotionless and difficult being, and he will do anything to accomplish his mission -- including sacrifice human beings. This cold-bloodedness often puts him at odds with Sapphire, who is a nurturer and seems to care about the humans who are involved in their cases.

Sapphire and Steel occasionally receive help from other agents/elements, including the tech-head Silver ( David Collings), and even Lead - a hulk of a fella - but for the most part seem to be entirely on their own. They appear at the site of a disturbance already fully briefed (though we as viewers are never privy to these briefings...) and then, acting in tandem, go about solving mysteries and repairing time.

The six episodes in Sapphire and Steel are:

"Escape Through a Crack in Time:" - The reading aloud of an ancient lullaby in an ancient country house causes a rip in the fabric of time, and eerie historical manifestations steal a mother and father away from their children. Sapphire and Steel investigate their disappearance, and realize that to rescue the parents, they must first solve the mystery of the house's construction hundreds of years earlier. This story is like Poltergeist before Poltergeist. Only even creepier...

"The Railway Station" - An army of angry ghosts from all of England's pre-1980 wars gather on an abandoned train platform, ready to serve the will of an encroaching evil, an amorphous black mass that is devouring everything in its path. Sapphire and Steel are assigned to the case, and team up with a ghost hunter named Tully, who may know more than he's letting on. Sapphire is possessed by the darkness and Steel must find a way to negotiate with pure evil to get her back.

"The Creature's Revenge" - A scientific team from the distant future has returned to the year 1980 in a cloaked time-capsule to observe life in a primitive city, London. Unfortunately, their time device is powered by an increasingly self-aware creature who is the end result of generations of humanity's cruelty to animals. Sapphire and Steel investigate, and receive technical assistance from Silver. This serial about animal-rights, and mankind's long crimes against the wild kingdom, also involves a baby suddenly full-grown and som other disturbing images.

"The Man Without a Face" - Sapphire and Steel find themselves in an old antique shop, where a strange being without any facial features is pulling people out of old photographs and bringing them to creepy, sepia-tone life. The entity is thoroughly malevolent, and traps a lodger in the building inside an old photograph and then burns it - killing the unlucky human being. Sapphire and Steel battle their most defined adversary yet in this assignment, and must work hard to avoid being trapped in old photographs themselves.

"Dr. McDee Must Die." - A London-based business celebrates its 50th anniversary with a costume party harking back to the 1930s. Unfortunately, murder is on the mind of one of the guests. Soon time itself reverts to the 1930s, and Sapphire and Steel - disguised as party goers - must either prevent or accommodate a terrible crime. Depending on which they do, the human race may or may not survive the night.

"The Trap" - Sapphire and Steel join Silver in a strange pocket universe , a roadside gas station and diner. Nothing is as it seems there, and neither are any of the customers. In fact, some may be assassins with a plan to kill Sapphire and Steel. This is the last serial and it has one humdinger of a climax...

Why am I obsessed with Sapphire and Steel? For one thing, the stories are brilliantly written and filmed, and they work totally without benefit of anything resembling modern special effects. On the contrary, the intensely frightening and suspenseful mood is all generated by characterization, sudden sound-effects, low-key music, and most of all, exquisite camerawork. It's been a long time since I've seen any production that uses its camera angles and movements to so boldly and efficiently. Some people have complained the show is boring because each serial is set in one locale, but I find the opposite to be true. The series is riveting. You hang on every word of dialogue as you try to sort out the mystery.

Plus, the characterizations are classic. Lumley and McCallum are charismatic, enigmatic and charming in these unique and unusual roles, and one of the joys in the series is seeing how Sapphire and Steel relate to one another as partners. Are they lovers? They certainly flirt from time to time. And then there's the matter of the kiss in one story. These are great investigators to follow, and Sapphire and Steel, according to AE (quite truthfully) feels like the genuine "spiritual precursor" to The X-Files.

One of the most appealing aspects of Sapphire and Steel is that the creator (P.J. Hammond) endowed the show with an almost fairy-tale like, gothic horror feel. The first program, "Escape Through a Crack in Time," feels like a dark version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe or some such fantasy. It is so good it does bear comparison with literature, and it will capture your attention quickly. The last story is a nail-biting adventure with oodles of suspense. It features the heart-wrenching final assignment of these paranormal detectives, but leaves viewers wanting more.

You can purchase the Sapphire & Steel DVD box set at Amazon or A&E Store for not much more than fifty dollars. For those of us who miss The X-Files, discovering this program is like pure bliss. Again - be prepared for the fact that there are no special effects to speak of, but then simply immerse yourself in these bizarre stories and wonderful characters. You'll be glad you did.