AGAINST THE ELEMENTS

by Nigel Andrews
with thanks to Andrew Pixley, Anthony McKay, Pamela Lonsdale and Dave Altree

"All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available. Gold, Lead †, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned."

† Lead was replaced by "Mercury" in the opening voice-over to the final story.

Sapphire (Joanna Lumley) and Steel (David McCallum) pose for a photo call

SAPPHIRE & STEEL was a somewhat unique blend of science-fiction and thriller to emerge from the studios of ATV at Elstree between 1979 and 1981, although it would have been even more notable had it turned out as originally intended by its creator, Peter J. Hammond, as a children's series.

Peter J. Hammond was a well established writer by the mid-70s, mainly known for his works in the field of police thrillers such as the long running Z CARS for the BBC, plus HUNTER'S WALK for ATV from 1973-6, NEW SCOTLAND YARD for LWT 1973/4, SPECIAL BRANCH and THE SWEENEY for Euston in 1974 and 1976 plus BBC's clone of the Euston's series TARGET in 1978 plus forays into the worlds of private detection with HAZELL (Thames, 1979), espionage with SPY TRAP (BBC 1973/5) and all-out action with THE PROFESSIONALS (Avengers Film & TV 1978). However, this versatile scribe had also dabbled in children's telefantasy, notably with his contributions to Thames Television's ACE OF WANDS where he wrote the serials Joker, The Meddlers, Peacock Pie and The Beautiful People. All these were superb examples of how adventure drama should be done for children, utilising bizarre circumstances and occurrences against everyday background.

Amongst her various other works, the original producer of ACE OF WANDS, Pamela Lonsdale, moved on to produce two seasons of the children's supernatural anthology series SHADOWS which saw some superior and noteworthy productions. One of the later 1978 episodes, And for My Next Trick was written by Hammond and featured Clive Swift as Devine, a failed children's magician who suddenly realises that he has real and awesome powers within him.

Having sat watching his children enjoy a television screening of George Pal's 1960 masterpiece THE TIME MACHINE based on H.G. Wells' story, the idea of a series for children emerged involving time - but as a dark and evil force as opposed to a medium which police boxes could travel through. The series would concern 'time detectives' created by the fabric of the universe to rectify time disturbances, and their bizarre effects. These agents would turn up in a seemingly nightmarish and chaotic situation and put things to rights, often protecting children who would be the 'normal' people dragged into the adventures that the audience could identify with. The agents would be mysterious anti-heroes, and in the first serial, young Rob is very suspicious of the people who have arrived from nowhere, particularly when they seem to gain the confidence of his younger sister.

P.J. Hammond was also intrigued by unsolved mysteries, such as the Marie Celeste and the Bermuda Triangle, and wondered if such time disturbances or 'assignments' could be explained by the adventures of his trouble-shooting elementals. In the first serial this is emphasised where over several conversations it becomes clear that one of the previous jobs for Sapphire, Steel and Lead was on board the Marie Celeste where the time trigger was an old ship's log. The elements had to sink the ship - the real ship - because as Rob points out, the Marie Celeste was found floating deserted. Hammond was far keener on atmosphere and mystery for his new type of series, and wanted to avoid dinosaurs, androids and the usual SF trappings in favour of a story set in ordinary locations where the innocent could suddenly find themselves in a terrifying ordeal with the unknown.

The first person that Hammond contacted with his exciting new format was Pamela Lonsdale at Thames Television where she was one of the most prominent children's producers. The proposal consisted of an untitled synopsis for the first six episode serial, with the characters of the two 'elements' not yet fully defined. As somebody always looking for something extra for children, Pamela thought this was a "smashing idea" and wanted to produce it, but such a serial would require Thames to schedule it in the 5.20pm slot for older children - and after a scheduling reshuffle this time was no longer available. Thames, much to Pamela's disappointment, dropped the idea.

The format next wound up in the hands of David Reid, the head of drama at ATV who read through the first scripts in bed late at night and found the ideas suitably intriguing and disturbing that he was unable to sleep. Hammond's proposal had found a home and it was decided that ATV would produce the show as a family serial, aimed mainly at elder children so they could be thrilling, but not terrifying or graphic in execution. There would be no violence, although Hammond knew children liked to be frightened - and his first two serials could give them ghosts that turned out to be real ghosts, something honest for a change as he put it. The ideas also loaned themselves to small, confined and claustrophobic situations where people become trapped by time's force, such as an old house or disused station, which loaned itself to videotaping at ATV's Elstree studios with no location work and all effects and graphics edited in from the taping gallery.

Assigned as producer of the show was Shaun O'Riordan, an ex-actor who had studied at the Old Vic and been an actor in TV series as far back as THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD for Sapphire Films in the 1950s and as Eddie Rogers in ATV's THE LARKINS. By the early 1960s, he had moved to the other side of the cameras as a director and worked on various ATV shows like EMERGENCY: WARD TEN. By the seventies his notable series included Brian Clemens' long-running anthology THRILLER and Nicholas Palmer's Crimes of Passion for ATV's SCORPION TALES in 1978, then producing an eerie ghost serial for children called COME BACK LUCY. He was one of the old-school of ATV director/producers and SAPPHIRE & STEEL turned out to be one of the company's last products before its franchise was lost to Central in 1982.

The two regular characters were named Sapphire and Steel. Sapphire would be a beautiful woman, clad primarily in blue, and of a soft and gentle, yet teasing nature. Kind to children, patient and understanding, she would be the more vulnerable and yet more powerful of the duo with the ability to turn back time, analyse the age of objects, break down time barriers and perform other fantastic feats. However, the strength and organisation of the two investigators lay in Steel, a cold and abrupt man in a grey business-like suit, who had little time for anything other than the mission, talked in a gritty and determined voice continually, and would prove the guiding force for Sapphire's skills to be directed in. They would function as a team, each needing the other.

Cast as the main leads were two very big star names which lifted the show firmly out of a children's slot and guaranteed it a primetime networking on ITV. Glasgow born David McCallum who had been heart-throb Ilya Kuryakin for four seasons on MGM/Arena's THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. throughout the world returned - again - to Britain where he had worked on other series in the Seventies, notably BBC's COLDITZ and Scottish TV's KIDNAPPED between the failure of THE INVISIBLE MAN in America after only one half-season.

Joanna Lumley had shot to stardom when she followed in the steps of Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg to partner Patrick Macnee's Steed as the high-kicking ex-ballerina agent Purdey in THE NEW AVENGERS", although she had a long list of various TV and film credits including STEPTOE AND SON and CORONATION STREET for the former genre, and ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and Hammer's THE SATANTIC RITES OF DRACULA for the latter. The Indian-born daughter of an army officer, Joanna was a working mother of age thirty-three when she got the rôle of Sapphire in the new show, and with THE PROFESSIONALS now a top-rating production for The Avengers Mark I Film & TV Enterprises it seemed unlikely that, however willing the cast were, THE NEW AVENGERS would be relaunched again. Joanna was very enthusiastic about the show at its inception and gave many interviews prior to the launch where she talked about the totally new sort of series it was, and of her favourite effect where her eyes would turn blue, courtesy of Chromakey (except for the location shooting on the third serial where she wore contact lenses), when she concentrated on performing one of her amazing powers. Joanna herself in a 1980 interview expressed her deep interest in the show and also the view that the two lead characters were ghosts, which explained their time-bending powers.

Having written the first story, Hammond and his wife Jill looked for a quiet country house to move to so he could write the next serial and the novelisation. They viewed a large farmhouse in Oxfordshire and were amazed to find a wood-panelled home identical to that visualised by Peter in the serial he had just completed...

The first season it was decided originally, would consist of two stories spanning thirteen episodes, although when it was decided to go for a twice-weekly slot an extra episode was allocated for the second serial. On the whole, a tense and trapping atmosphere would be established by a small cast and a very limited number of sets, plus some superb incidental music from Cyril Ornadel. Ornadel composed distinctive scores for certain actions and characters, most notable in his final story where the figures of the Old Man and Johnny Jack have deep brassy and erratic banjo tunes respectively, and an echoing plucked string emphasises the precise movements back and forth of the second hand on a clock where time is standing still.

The theme music was also very notable, combining the insistant and awesome kettledrum beat with horns and synths indicating strength and then chaos in the tune. The sounds were well received, but less so the opening visuals. Each episode began with a title sequence a few seconds in length which had the series' name Chromakeyed somewhat shakily over a starscape, and this led into what was often a very lengthy reprise of the end of the previous episode. The main titles then showed animated corridors depicting time, and then a grid of the universal structure breaking down and burning as an infection spreads out from one point. Behind this, the speech quoted above booms out from a dark, half-obscured helmeted shape and glittering balls of the 'elements' zoom up to the camera, shooting off one by one. Finally our two 'heroes' return to shimmer before us, and the episode begins. (The fact that Sapphire and others quoted are not elements was overlooked)

The first story was very powerful and hooked the viewer's attention as the mysterious duo, whose origins were never properly explained, arrived as if by magic at the door of an old and remote farmhouse where two parents have vanished from the attic bedroom at the same instant as all the clocks in the building stop. Rob Jardine is left to care for his sister Helen when the strangers, who seem totally in control arrive, and promptly make certain that the normal form of authority - the local bobby Rob has summoned - is kept away.

Sapphire and Steel soon explain that Time is a corridor which sometimes breaks its fabric and rushes into the universe, taking things - in this case the Jardines. Creatures dwell in this corridor too, continually trying to find a way out, and it is Sapphire and Steel's job to correct its doings. On this mission, the trigger is a nursery rhyme book where 'Ring-O-Ring-O-Roses' summons up plague images and when 'Goosey, Goosey Gander' is read, Cromwellian soldiers thunder up the stairs. Systematically the book is destroyed, and when Steel realises that Helen has learnt several trigger rhymes the viewer fears momentarily that he may coldly have her removed too.

Sapphire has the ability to manipulate time, winding it back and forth on Steel's command, and also in a more casual way by using it to change her appearance to clothes she once wore. Steel has fewer talents - and in the fourth story, Liz points out he is powerless, but takes his body down to sub-zero temperatures to freeze a picture in which Sapphire is being held captive. In a later episode, another agent called Lead arrives - a huge black operative of great strength who is instrumental in crushing out the time force at the foundations of the house.

The first story ends happily with the parents returned. The next serial, somewhat over-long at eight episodes, is a darker and gloomier affair. Set at a disused railway station, a sympathetic psychic investigator called George Tully tries to establish contact with the ghosts of dead servicemen, one of whom whistles lonely and eerily on the derelict platform on which he had once stood waiting for the train to take him to his death - a scene which he shows to Sapphire. The Blackness is feeding on the grief and resentment of the luckless men who should not have died. Pearce died when shot 11 minutes after peace was declared. Three civilian engineers asphyxiated in a faulty navy submarine. A pilot who died on a dangerous mission he took just to qualify for his leave. Sapphire and Steel are shown these events and yet it is Tully who is truly sympathetic towards the spirits. And in the end, the only way that Steel can satisfy the Darkness is to offer it Tully's life, years before his natural death, and so give it all the resentment it wants. The situation is resolved, but only at the cost of the man's life.

This serial was hampered further by the fact that as well as its length, after a week or so of transmission a technical dispute flared on the ITV network, and one by one the regions went off the air. As transmissions began again in the last week of October 1979, the first three episodes were reshown and the remaining five were transmitted in the following weeks.

The series was reasonably successful, and it was decided that a second and final season would be recorded from Spring 1980, consisting of three stories and a total of sixteen episodes. However, erratic scheduling was to play havoc with similar plans for transmission.

The first story of the new batch was six episodes long, and like its predecessor would have benefitted from pruning by two episodes. It also featured some rare location filming atop a tower block as Sapphire and Steel try to gain access to an invisible time capsule which they know is there. The plot concerned a couple from the future, one of a set of research groups set up in such time capsules. However, they have got certain details wrong, such as their names - Rothwyn and Eldred - and soon when their supplies stop coming it is revealed that the other groups and control teams are all dead. They are from a future where animals are totally extinct due to man's actions, and in sympathy with this a time source constructed from animal remains in the capsule starts to break free and allow animal products their revenge. A fur coat moves hilariously along the floor. A feather pillow becomes a swan puppet attacking Steel atop the roof. And to emphasize our mistreatment of animals, some graphic film stock of a slaughterhouse is thrown in for good measure.

The most interesting aspect of the story is the introduction of Silver, a technician element who arrives on the scene played by David Collings, one of the best character actors of the day (Steel refers to there being 115 such agents, since the 12 transuranics are unstable). Clad in light grey suit and later a spangled waistcoat, he is somewhat brash and makes various advances on Sapphire much to her partner's anger. Later, he states that he is a mere 'specialist' whereas our heroes are 'operators'. The rest of the story revolved around the escaped time source and its rapid aging effect on the couple's baby, who is given the power to accelerate and regress time with his hands. The final effect though is garbled and over-long.

Shorter, sharper and to the point was the following four-parter, again a highly atmospheric and original piece which concerns a force that appears as the man in every photograph whose head is either turned away from the camera or hidden behind a window, or just beyond a hill; a faceless being. Sapphire and Steel find that Time has broken out of old Victorian photographs with the unwitting help of the landlord of a small boarding house, Mr Williamson, who is now missing. Children have already been released from old prints, and play old fashioned games looking all sepia and cream and faded. When a human hand touches a child, it crumbles to photographic dust. The faceless landlord traps one of the tenants, Ruth Phillips, inside a photograph and sets it alight - her dying screams are heard as she burns. At the climax, our heroes find themselves similarly trapped, waiting motionless for death, but they succeed in trapping the shape in a kaleidoscope which is placed on board a sinking ship that will be encased in a glacier for 75 years after which another secure place will be found to hide it. Steel's final words to Elizabeth Owen, the tennant who has helped them, are chilling as he tells her to destroy all photos of herself and never have another taken if she desires to escape the shape's revenge.

These first two stories were shown from January 1981, but the next story, considered to be the final one at the time, was held back until the Summer. This was the only serial not written by Hammond himself, but came from the pens of Anthony Read and Don Houghton. Read was an established TV scripter and producer with experience on THE TROUBLESHOOTERS, SHERLOCK HOLMES, DOCTOR WHO and at the time had just concluded his chores on HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR. Frenchman Don Houghton had laboured like Hammond in the crime genre, but also written for Hammer Films as well as DOCTOR WHO and a couple of ACE OF WANDS serials.

This six-parter kept the suspense building very well as it parodied an Agatha Christie type whodunnit. Guests at a party are killed on by one - youngest first - but disposed of by Time which is regressing a party and its occupants back fifty years to similar event in the past. The strong cast here included Davy Kaye and Jeremy Child, and Jeffry Wickham put in a splendid performance as the eager to help Felix, whom Sapphire allows to become 'agent Bronze'. In this case, an old lady has made a pact with Time to go back fifty years and allow the man that she loved, Doctor George McDee, to escape from the laboratory fire that killed him and instead shoot his wife. The late McDee turns up at the party and goes along the path that led him to death, revealing that the fire also destroyed his vacillus which would have otherwise wiped out humanity in 1930. Sapphire and a moustached Steel turn up in 1930s gear to join the party, and succeed in showing McDee that he must die so others may live. McDee painfully persuades his lover to shoot him and return Time to its destined path.

Before this was transmitted, in early 1981 ATV decided to record yet another serial as a conclusion and Hammond delivered a very atmospheric and bizarre four-part story. However, this was not transmitted at once and finally saw the light of day in Summer 1982 by which time ATV had lost their franchise to Central and most people assumed the show was so old it was a re-run.

Sapphire and Steel arrive to join Silver at a service station in the present day where the only travellers seem to be an eloping couple, a strong man and a brow-beaten and plain woman, who have no names and claim they are from 1948. Time is at a standstill. 'Phones ring and only the speaking clock repeats itself when Sapphire answers. In the yard at the rear, an old man's ghost appears, claiming the year is 1925. Time jumps and a storm hits the outpost as a shadow arrives on the scene to reveal itself as Johnny Jack, a sinister travelling player from 1957.

Sapphire and Steel, already suspicious by Silver's advance arrival, feel that the situation is too arranged and set up. Indeed, this is a trap set by a higher authority using three Transient Beings as the men. The heroes have become too successful, but this time they lose as although Silver manages to defeat the Old Man and Jack, the 1948 man turns a time box on Sapphire and Steel. Next the agents are seen entering a café in similar vein to the couple at the start of the story, Steel seeming confused for the first time. The woman reveals that she too is working with the beings, and she and the man vanish to leave Sapphire and Steel trapped for eternity in the café room, the window of which opens onto the nowhere of space. And in the Summer of 1982, that was how the highly imaginative show ended.

Steel (David McCallum) and Sapphire (Joanna Lumley)  dressed to kill in a publicity shot from the fifth story

Few items of merchandise were issued during the show's run. Peter J. Hammond novelised his initial six episode story, 'SAPPHIRE AND STEEL', for Star Books and this was published in July 1979 to coincide with the series' premiere. At the same time, both 'Look-In' Issue 29 (14th July 1979) and 'TVTimes' (5th July 1979) carried articles on the new series of varying degrees - the latter continuing in a subsequent piece with the usual items on telepathy and aliens in a manner unconnected to the show. 'Look-In' continued to have pin-ups and features to accompany the series throughout its run, and from Issue 33 (11th August 1979) came up with a generally well drawn and atmospheric two page comic strip that ran for a couple of years. There was also a 'SAPPHIRE & STEEL Annual 1981' published by World International Publishing in 1980 which had 64 pages of dull features and stories with heavily cribbed artwork for £1.95.

Save for the obligatory repeats of early episodes of the second story caused by the strike, SAPPHIRE & STEEL has never been re-run in this country and has sold only sporadically worldwide via ATV's distribution company of ITC. This still remains a much loved and highly mysterious series that left many questions unanswered and which one senses only a fraction of its potential was glimpsed in the six stories.

to SAPPHIRE & STEEL EPISODE GUIDE