One fat geek's SUCCESSFUL attempt to regenerate into a not-so-fat geek by watching the entirety of Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill

Sapphire and Steel Have Been Assigned

Sep 13 2019
Sapphire and Steel Have Been Assigned

I had a late workout today because of childcare issues. I got it done, but it was over lunch instead of in the morning before work. The workout itself was good, the fastest pace all week, so that was nice. The numbers are what they are, kind of a mixed bag. If you look just at the five day moving average, it ticked up very slightly. But if you look at the one week change from the moving average last week, I finally show a loss of nearly a full pound, instead of a net gain week-over-week. So, you know, I try to focus on the good and not let the bad bother me too much. That chart over there on the side of the page is frustrating to say the least, and I won't feel really positive until I see an actual visible trend line in the right direction.  As for my daily viewing, I am taking a three week side trip from the Whoniverse to delve into a weird little show from the late 70's and early 80's recommended to my by my friend Rik Hoskin. Check it out.

Sapphire & Steel: Escape Through a Crack in Time, Episodes 1 & 2

I am coming into this show with literally no background, much the same way I did with Blake's 7. The show stars Joanna Lumley (best known as Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous) as Sapphire and David McCallum (best know as Illya Kuryakin from The Man from U.N.C.L.E) as two... time agents? Maybe? I am not entirely sure, and I don't think I am meant to be sure. Perhaps it will become clearer as the series goes on, but I am kind of doubtful about even that. Similar to Doctor Who of the same era, the stories are presented as 25 minute episodes that tell a narrative over 6-8 episodes.

In this case, the story involves a family living in a very old house on a remote island. The mother and father mysteriously disappear, leaving a grade-school aged boy and his younger sister alone. The parents literally vanished while reading a bedtime story to the little girl, and at the moment they disappear all of the clocks in the house freeze. The boy calls the police for help, but it will take until the following morning before an officer can take a boat across to reach them. Then the titular Sapphire and Steel arrive, and start investigating while being all mysterious and such.

They talk about time as being a "corridor", and talk of some kind of entity that travels the corridor looking for weak spots in order to steal people and things. Apparently the older something is, the weaker the time barrier is? Something like that. It is the combination of the very old house, filled with very old things, and the mother reading a very old nursery rhyme that opens some kind of portal and allows the parents to be snatched away.

At one point Sapphire does a thing where she rapidly changes into different dresses, and talks about how it is all just a projection. At another point she creates some kind of small time loop in order to prevent the boy from talking to a police officer who finally arrives. There is another point where she and Steel are handling different objects and are able to sense exactly how old they are. With all of that it seems clear that neither of them are human, but I am in no way positive on that front.

The thing I am enjoying most is the deliberate pace of the show. It is properly atmospheric and creepy, and the mystery is given the space to breathe and accrue tension, as opposed to modern television storytelling where everything is go-go-go with a fixation on action sequences. I miss this kind of storytelling, and the kind of trust placed in the audience to pay attention and be patient. 

Don't get me wrong, there are properly tense moments. The first episode ends with the little girl almost being sucked into the Whatever Vortex, and similarly the second episode ends with the boy about to be snatched away as ghosts from the past start rampaging through the house. But those tense moments are all the more tense because they are explosions of conflict after a long, slow buildup of tension. 

So far I am really liking it. There are only 34 episodes overall, so it should take me less than three weeks to get through the entire show. Hopefully the next 32 episodes will live up to the promise of the first two.

STATS:

Episode(s): Sapphire & Steel: Escape Through a Crack in Time, Episodes 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 7,277 today, 5,038,281 total
Distance Walked: 3.29 miles today, 2,598.78 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 12,458 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 7,865 total
Weight: 276.16 lbs (five day moving average), net change -31.14 lbs


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