Synopsis
Sapphire & Steel is a British television science-fiction fantasy series starring David McCallum as Steel and Joanna Lumley as Sapphire. Produced by ATV, it ran from 1979 to 1982 on the ITV network. The series was created by Peter J. Hammond who conceived the programme under the working title The Time Menders, after a stay in an allegedly haunted castle. Hammond also wrote all the stories except for the fifth, which was co-written by Don Houghton and Anthony Read. None of the stories had onscreen titles, or any official titles assigned by the writers. The Region 1 Complete Series DVD release gives the titles "Escape Through a Crack in Time", "The Railway Station", "The Creature's Revenge", "The Man Without a Face", "Dr. McDee Must Die" and "The Trap", respectively. These titles have often been cited as having been created by science fiction magazine Time Screen.
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Cast
Seasons
Assignment I: Escape Through a Crack in Time
6 eps · 1979-07-10
In an old house filled with old antiques, a nursery rhyme ("Ring a Ring o' Roses") read aloud causes a time fracture that takes away the parents of youngsters Rob and Helen. As Rob (Steven O'Shea), Helen's older brother, tries to call the police, two mysterious strangers calling themselves Sapphire and Steel arrive to fix the problem. Lead also arrives to provide assistance to Steel when the ghosts of the time corridor incapacitate him.
Assignment II: The Railway Station
8 eps · 1979-07-31
In an abandoned railway station, parapsychologist George Tully conducts an investigation, as two operators, Sapphire and Steel arrive for an investigation of their own. A malevolent, growing force identifying itself as the Darkness is feeding on the resentment of the dead, using as a focus Private Sam Pearce, the apparition of a World War I soldier shot and killed eleven minutes after the armistice had been signed at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. The Darkness 'recruits' other resentful shades from the past who also died unfairly as a result of coming or completed wars. Sapphire and Steel must decide if the life of one living human is worth the price of the danger presented by the growing Darkness.
Assignment III: The Creature's Revenge
6 eps · 1981-01-06
Rothwyn and Eldred, a couple living in a modern apartment with a baby, are from the 35th Century, the apartment is their time capsule, which is situated and cloaked on the roof of a present-day tower block; in a test to live as 20th century humans. But trouble starts when the couple discover that they can neither contact their controllers in the future nor two other similar time capsules in the present day. The biomechanical system that runs the capsule has an agenda of its own, one of vengeance. This time, Sapphire and Steel have help in the form of Silver, an inter-dimensional operator.
Sapphire & Steel airing schedule, episode calendar, cast, and synopsis. Sapphire & Steel airs on ITV1.
