Sapphire and Steel: Assignment 6 Part 4
This blog post spoils essential plot elements of this assignment.
Good heavens, after the relatively sedate pace of the past three parts, part 4 doesn't half kick off.
Despite Sapphire and Steel not having been aware of what they were up against for the past three parts, abruptly at the end of part 3 Sapphire realises the other entities in the trap work for 'a higher power' and even more abruptly in part 4 they both acknowledge that this 'higher power' has asked them both to work for it in the past, and they have both refused. On the one hand this is a brilliant way to expound that there are other beings around in Sapphire and Steel's world, however you want to recast what it is happening. You could see it as a job offer, or if you want to you could turn it into a sort of temptation in the desert scenario (it is phrased a bit a both) so that Sapphire and Steel turned something down to devote themselves to their own work of steadying Time.
On the other hand, although I've been a bit quiet about my dissatisfaction that Sapphire and Steel don't know what's going on here, this is also a bit of a plot disaster. They should have known that they were up against transient beings from the past all along, because they knew it was a possibility and even had Silver to explain it, but still wandered into this trap with no apparent preparation or defence. Sapphire actually says it herself - 'We should have known' - later in the episode. Steel acknowledges that 'they' always were better organised than whatever Sapphrie and Steel are. This is my major dissatisfaction with this assignment, that they should have known but have just waltzed into a trap, which makes no sense for the creatures we have seen so far.
I do like the touch right at the beginning where the man and woman, Johnnie Jack and the garage owner all get eyes just like Sapphire. Sapphire and Steel have (effects-wise, at least) met their match.
And yet, despite their realisation of what they are up against, Steel questions the woman and wants to know the truth, as if she can be relied upon to be an ally. I have commented before on the suggestion that this assignment was intended to change the direction of Sapphire and Steel for new adventures that never got made, and it would have been interesting to see them. As it is, this makes an unsatisfying conclusion to the series because it both changes direction but then never follows that direction. I really really want to know what PJ Hammond had in mind for the next series of this show and how he would have resolved the trap that Sapphire and Steel find themselves in.
Perhaps I should relent slightly on my urge to scream 'wake up' at Sapphire and Steel, because when you see the travelling chess set which is turned into the device for the transients to travel, as well as the way the transients can't travel through time themselves, it could be that the point is that Sapphire and Steel are up against a lesser opponent without their powers. In this case their failure to foresee the trap against a lesser enemy is the entire point of this assignment and now I really want to see what was planned next!
If you want to read Sapphire and Steel's atrocious incompetence as being the whole point of this assignment, it is also noteworthy in this part that suddenly Silver starts explaining things to Sapphire and Steel, which is surely a reversal of their specialist and technician roles, and places him in the expert position.
I have a couple of favourite bits effects-wise in this assignment, the one where the woman starts making a conputer noise as she is telling her tale, and the other bit where they reproduce the car and you see two cars briefly. I have never seen it said but has nobody else noticed that the two occasions when the man just walks through doors are so reminiscent of the cybernauts?
If I had to guess how the trap here could have been resolved in a future series, I would guess that what is missing here would be the next obvious step. The other elements have either had no awareness of what is happening here or not intervened for some reason, but presumably when they found Sapphire and Steel were trapped would have attempted to intervene in some way to rescue them. THis oculd quite easily have taken the form of war or retaliation against the transient beings, or more likely would have been far more subtle.
I am very aware that I have spent this series of posts being at least ambivalent if not outright critical of this assignment, so perhaps I had better reiterate that this and the railway are my two favourite Sapphire and Steel assignments. I love the sense of claustrophobia and the way it is completely mysterious. I also used to watch it with my dad, which is a wonderful memory.
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