sapphire and steel assignment 3 episode 1

SAPPHIRE AND STEEL Available on DVD

SERIES OVERVIEW

When the final, definitive work on science-fiction television is written, the only series that will stand any chance of matching THE PRISONER for sheer bloody-minded impenetrability will be SAPPHIRE AND STEEL . Time elementals (except neither steel nor sapphire are elements of course) who go to the scenes of time breaches and put them right, fighting alien forces not fully understood for an agency that is never seen for reasons that are never given. Hell, the stories and episodes don't even have titles, that's how enigmatic this all is.

SAPPHIRE AND STEEL started off as a children's drama, something that is clearly visible in the first adventure, but it quickly transcended that. All of the future shows were written for decidedly adult audiences. The episodes were transmitted (in the UK) on weekday evenings, usually twice a week, and rarely left the viewer any closer to understanding what was going on than at the start. They were, and still are due to their enigmatic nature, compulsive viewing.

All of this disdain for audience understanding could have been seriously distancing for the show, but it is blessed with two leads who are quite perfectly cast and fill out the roles with such skill that you quickly connect with them, even if you don't know them any better by each passing show. Steel is played by David McCallum of MAN FROM UNCLE and THE INVISIBLE MAN fame and is the nominal leader of the pair (or team when other elementals Lead and Silver-not elements either-show up to help). Like his name, he is cold and hard, doing what has to be done without thinking of the emotional or human cost. Complementing him is Sapphire, played by Joanna Lumley, later to become even more famous in Absolutely Fabulous . Sapphire is the humanist of the team, full of fun and able to show warmth and kindness to the humans caught up in the situations. She is also a mistress of time, able to pause it, or even to take it back, though only in limited terms.

Around these two central characters, the rest of the, usually small, casts revolve in claustrophobic tales of mystery that never become clear. Victory is never quite assured, often not total and rarely without a price. These are the things that really lift SAPPHIRE AND STEEL above some other genre shows.

Being of its time, budgets are low and special effects are variable, but are rarely used. That said, all this works for the show, trapping us in a few rooms with something we'd rather not be with. Our only hope is two people who are not what they seem and may not even care what happens to us as long as they succeed in their task. We shall not see their like again, though we never saw their like before either. SAPPHIRE AND STEEL is uniquely itself and to be cherished for that.

EPISODE 1 - Robert Jardine is doing his homework in the remote house where he lives with his family. Mum and Dad are reading nursery rhymes to Helen in the top bedroom and all is normal with the world. Until, that is, the clocks stop. Going upstairs, he finds that his parents have vanished and only Helen remains. He calls the police, but instead two strangers appear, a man called Steel and a woman called Sapphire. They explain that they are here to get the parents back and take the children up into the bedroom and get them to recreate the events that just transpired. As 'ring-a-ring-o-roses' is read out by Sapphire, strange images appear, people from another time, and the room seems to stretch away to infinity, a plague carrying man coming towards them. The strangers explain, after a fashion, that something is wrong with time and they are there to help. The key to it all was the nursery rhyme, the same rhyme that Helen has just started to recite unnoticed in the bedroom.

EPISODE 2 - Sapphire and Steel manage to save Helen when she recites the rhyme and reopens the tear in time. The policeman that Rob called from the mainland arrives, but Sapphire catches him in a time loop until Rob agrees to let them handle things. They board up the door at the top of stairs which leads to Helen's room and which has been taken over by whatever has broken through. That something calls out to Rob in his mother's voice and convinces him to recite a new rhyme, Goosey-goosey gander. As he does so, ghostly roundhead soldiers appear and advance upon him.

EPISODE 3 - Rob summons Steel to the door at the top of the stairs, but everything seems to be back to normal. Something, though, has escaped, a patch of light.Whilst Sapphire and Steel investigate, the light secretes itself in a painting and then pulls Sapphire into the same painting. It is here that the roundhead soldiers belong and they carried out an atrocity in that room, one which they wish to repeat on Sapphire. Steel has to cool himself to absolute zero and then freeze the painting. The light is caught, but the soldiers are now back, and looking real this time.

EPISODE 4 - Having frozen away the soldiers, Steel is incapacitated by the cold. Sapphire supervises the imprisoning of the now frozen shard of light and they all wait for Steel to recover. In the meantime there is a new arrival. Lead, another of the 127 elementals (if you count the unstable transuranics) has arrived to help and not before time. Steel determines that all of the books and pictures in the house must be burned and then he and Lead will attempt to freeze the problem out of Helen's bedroom. One of the books has a different idea, however, and uses another rhyme to set loose a hurricane in the house's kitchen.

EPISODE 5 - Sapphire manages to capture and burn the page that was causing so much trouble, but the enemy now holds the upper landing and the light has escaped from its prison. Things are looking bad, but they get a whole lot worse when Rob's father appears and tells him that both of the parents have been in hiding from the real threat, Sapphire and Steel.

EPISODE 6 - Rob is trapped in the cellar, but in a time before it was built. The shards of light are also there and so are the civil war soldiers. Sapphire and Steel need to act quickly. They know now where the enemy is hiding and Lead is on hand to provide insulation.

REVIEW - The first episode of SAPPHIRE AND STEEL contains everything that is so great about the show and everything that is not so great. The production values are low, the whole story being restricted to a few rooms and special effects kept to a minimum, but that lends a whole aura of claustrophobia and fear to proceedings. The lead actors are brilliant, turning out fully-formed characters that are compelling and alien from the very start. Without them at the centre, the uncertain acting of the children and overacting of Lead just wouldn't carry the show through. Very little is explained, even by the end, which helps to hide the fact that not a whole lot of it makes any sense. Atmosphere is everything to a show like this and SAPPHIRE AND STEEL has atmosphere in spades. The unseen threat is palpable, even more so when it isn't represented as circles of light. Though far from perfect, this first outing for the time detectives is compelling stuff.

ASSIGNMENT 2

EPISODE 1 - George Tully is a psychic investigator. The abandoned railway station is giving him a lot to investigate. Flowers are appearing out of nowhere, there is the sound of whistling and of a man moving about carrying heavy things. When Sapphire and Steel arrive, he takes them for fellow ghosthunters and is suspicious of their motives. Sapphire picks up on a change of season and is caught out on the platform when summers suddenly comes and a marching band is heard approaching.

EPISODE 2 - The presence that Tully has been chasing solidifies into a World War Two soldier. Sapphire senses that he is not the threat, but there is a darkness that is using him. Steel checks Tully's tapes and finds sounds from a sunken submarine in World War 2. There are more figures appearing on the platform with the soldier. One of them is an airman and Steel is suddenly forced into reliving that man's death.

EPISODE 3 - Sapphire turns back time to save Steel, who is now angry and decides to take the ghosts head on. He rigs up the lights and gets Tully to start singing the soldier's favourite tune in the hope of stinging a reaction out of the soldier. What he gets is machine guns, grenades and both Sapphire and Tully choking to death in a corridor.

EPISODE 4 - Tully and Sapphire are reliving the death of the submariners heard on Tully's tape, but Steel manages to rescue them. He then decides to take up Tully's suggestion of a seance with Sapphire as the medium. She is contacted by the spirits of the submariners and then possessed by a schoolteacher when Steel forces her to go back into the soldier's past.

EPISODE 5 - The schoolteacher was the soldier's lover and tells many of his secrets before the soldier retaliates, setting the darkness upon them. The circle of the seance is broken, leaving Sapphire in a catatonic state.

EPISODE 6 - The soldier parades what appears to be Sapphire's spirit as one of his recruits on the platform whilst her body remains dormant in the waiting room. Steel gains access to the figure and learns from her that the ghosts represent no threat and neither does the darkness that is behind them. The darkness moves in and Tully is given the chance to leave, abandoning the still recumbent Sapphire. Steel rejects the false Sapphire and is also allowed to leave, but runs into a barrier of barbed wire.

EPISODE 7 - It's dawn and the spirits are all gone. Sapphire is returned to health and Steels barbed wire turns to spiderwebs. The threat seems to have passed, but they have moved 12 days into the future. Steel is not willing to lose and forces Sapphire to summon the darkness back offering it a deal.

EPISODE 8 - The darkness listens to Steels proposal and agrees to return them back in time by the missing 12 days. Steel gets Sapphire to jump them out after 11 to give him freedom to act. He shows the soldier what the future will really be like and how it can be avoided and then strikes his bargain, a deal that will require betrayal and sacrifice in equal measure.

REVIEW - Bloody hell! SAPPHIRE & STEEL 's first outing was great, but it did nothing to prepare us for the second. Gone is any vestige of the children's show that it seemed the first time out and in comes full-blooded adult fantasy. No quarter is given to the audience to explain what is going on. The set up is revealed slowly towards a climax that is positively shattering in its bravery. Along the way there is some very serious and disturbing imagery including Steel strung up on barbed wire, the death of an airman and the submariners choking to death, all of them acheived with great lighting and sound and nothing more. The threat to all of the participants is very real and nobody comes off unscathed. There is a very real sense that the heroes are not in control of events and that they could very easily lose. There is a fine central performance from Gerald James as Tully that makes the events of the last ten minutes of episode 8 all the harder to bear. Joanna Lumley continues to be excellent as the gifted Sapphire, but is overtaken by David McCallum as the implacable Steel, a being driven to succeed and willing to do anything at all in order to win. Neither of these are conventional heroes, but they are brilliantly written and superbly played. The direction is magnificent, making the most of the limited sets and money, creating again the sense of claustrophobia and threat that permeated the first adventure. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the greatest pieces of television fantasy ever transmitted.

ASSIGNMENT 3

EPISODE 1 - A family wakes up in an urban flat, but this is no ordinary family. For one thing, there is a recording/communication device in the wall. They have come from the future to carry out a historical experiment, living like the present-day folk, but sealed away from them. Communications are down and strange things are happening. Meanwhile, Sapphire and Steel have arrived and discovered an invisible pod on the top of a building. Whilst exploring the edges of the pod, dangling over the edge of the roof, Steel is attacked.

EPISODE 3 - Whilst Steel tries to track down the disappeared Sapphire, a new agent appears. His name is Silver and he is an expert in machines. His job is to get them into the pod. He tells Steel that there are two other pods, but that they are no longer a worry. Sapphire reappears in one of the other pods and discovers why this is. Eldred and Rothwyn, the pod's inhabitants, discover their baby, now in the body of a man and with the power to turn things to sand.

EPISODE 4 - Silver gets them all together into the one pod, but the adults and child have vanished and in their place is the child/man. Silver immediately decides that it is a machine and attempts to disassemble it, but is touched and vanishes.

EPISODE 5 - the child/man rebels against the power controlling it and Steel finds a way to return it to its proper state, bringing back Silver and the pod's occupants at the same time.

EPISODE 5 - The grisly truth about the time source is revealed and its reasons for attacking the humans. When it breaks its bonds and enters the pod proper, enough energy is released for Silver to send the pod back to its proper time, along with the threat it contains.

ASSIGNMENT 4

EPISODE 1 - Children appear near to an old building, children who are seen only indistinctly. Sapphire and Steel appear to investigate. The building's ground floor is a lost and found shop, jammed with potential triggers. The landlord is missing as is one of the tenants and the new landlord is a man with no face who can place people inside photographs and take them back out again.

EPISODE 2 - It's to do with photography, that much is now getting clearer. The girl living on the top floor is questioned. Sapphire attempts to bring the faceless man back through her mastery of time, but he resists and sets the shadowy children on Sapphire.

EPISODE 3 - After speaking to the faceless man, who now has two faces, one for Sapphire and one for Steel, they discover that he has trapped the missing landlord and girl in an old photograph. Sapphire tries to contact them, but the faceless man gets hold of the photograph and sets light to one corner.

EPISODE 4 - Following the deaths of the two trapped humans, Steel decides to fight back. His efforts, though, only manage to get himself and Sapphire trapped in another photograph whilst the Shape is coming for them.

REVIEW - It is accepted wisdom in the STAR TREK film franchise that the best films are the even numbered ones. This seems to be the case for SAPPHIRE AND STEEL as well. Going back to the creepy claustrophobia used to such good effect in the second assignment, this tale is full of dread and atmosphere. The setting is shabby and pathetic, a little like Liz, the girl from the third floor, a prostitute used to running away from things and places. She is played really well by Alyson Spiro, with a deep sense of sadness below the brittle, jolly exterior. The faceless man is great and a really effective threat, although he is far less effective when he is given a face. The climax of part three where he burns the picture containing the two trapped humans is horrifying. At the end of the story, Steel urges Liz to find every photograph of her ever taken and destroy them and you will feel like doing the same too.

ASSIGNMENT 5

EPISODE 1 - Lord Mulrine is having a party to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Mulrine International and has ensured that everything in the house is exactly as it was fifty years ago, with the exception of the security door into his office. The other guests were under orders to wear clothes that fit the period. Sapphire and Steel have invited themselves along as James and Virginia Cavendish to join the party. It's a game, but something is taking the game very seriously, making it real.

EPISODE 2 - George McDee, Lord Mulrine's dead partner attends the party to the shock of everyone, but decides instead to lock himself away in his laboratory. Everyone's memories are becoming unreliable. Past and present are merging. Then one of the guests is discovered during a game of Sardines with a knife in her back.

EPISODE 3 - It becomes clear that George McDee caused a major disaster in his laboratory, or would have if he had not died in a fire the very night of the forming of the company. A shooting in the Dining Room makes it clear that the guests are being killed off in order of age, youngest first.

EPISODE 4 - The murders are continuing, but Sapphire and Steel realise that they are simply a diversion, irrelevant. The true nature of events has yet to be revealed. Sapphire is taken over by the force and attempts to kill first herself and then Steel.

EPISODE 5 - There is only one guest left who was not there on the fateful night that George McDee died. Steel comes up with a plan to keep him occupied whilst they fashion an entry into Mulrine's office in the present to find out the truth about what happened in the past.

EPISODE 5 - The force has succeeded in taking time back to 21st June 1930 and the events of that night play out in front of Sapphire and Steel. As they watch the intrigue unfold, they must pick the moment when George McDee is killed and ensure that it happens again, or the whole human race will be destroyed.

REVIEW - Assignment 5 is Cluedo for time detectives with a dash of Ten Little Indians . Was it Lord Mulrine in the dining room with the poisoned port? In episode 4, Steel declares that the motivations for the killings, the killings themselves, are irrelevant, but they remain the centre of attention until the plot switches in the last episode to something out of a racy Upstairs Downstairs . It doesn't much matter because the waters are muddied enough to keep things from becoming too clear too soon and the playing continues to be exemplary from the two leads. Sapphire and Steel remain fascinating characters, even when masquerading as someone else. There is much less of a sense of dread or threat here than in the other stories, though the stakes are infinitely higher. This is the first time that the whole human race has been threatened after all. That's probably because writers Don Houghton and Anthony Read don't have the same mastery of the material as creator PJ Hammond. It's still eminently watchable and the only time where the victory of the central duo is complete.

ASSIGNMENT 6

EPISODE 1 - Sapphire and Steel arrive at an empty service station to find Silver is already waiting for them. The only other occupants are a man and a woman from 1948. How they got there, they don't know. Time is stuck and there are images of old men in the back rooms. Then the world shakes and time moves forward by 20 minutes.

EPISODE 2 - The trio continue to investigate the service station, questioning the man and the woman more. They manage to contact the old man in the rear of the station, but learn little. Time jumps forwards again and a new shadow appears.

EPISODE 3 - A sinister tambourine player from the 1950s appears, but has no more idea how he got there than the man and the woman. Sapphire begins to suspect that something more sinister than a simple time break is at work. The ohter three men are revealed to be working together against them and Sapphire believes that they serve a higher authority.

EPISODE 4 - Now that they know they are under attack, the time detectives fight back, but the plot against them is revealed, the trap sprung and a long imprisonment begins.

REVIEW - The final adventure to date for Sapphire and Steel , but they go out on a high. At only four episodes, the story doesn't have a lot of depth, but the sense of claustrophobia and dread is back in full force. The character of Johnny Jack, with his tambourine, is beautifully threatening and the final moments are real shockers. Not a lot makes sense, but then very little ever did in this show. It's all brilliantly acted by the central trio and it is such a shame that this was the last outing that they ever had. There has never been a show like it and probably never will be again.

Cult TV Blog

Sapphire and Steel: Assignment 3 Episode 1

Next for Television (to destress) for a Time of Strife of course we have to have some complete unreality in the shape of Sapphire and Steel. I am shocked, nay disgusterated at myself to find that it has been a full eight years since these two so much as made an appearance here, and I went through Assignment 2 in 2014, and Assignment 5 in 2013. I'm actually shocked that I haven't touched it. I'm also shocked that I've managed to choose (and am otherwise very pleased with) a template for the blog which doesn't show the dates of posts. What kind of blog doesn't put dates on the posts? So I have been forced to change templates again because there was no way of putting dates on the posts.

This is a Sapphire and Steel which I have been thinking of writing about before but wasn't really sure of how to go about it. I feel that individual posts for each episode of a Sapphire and Steel tends to result in a too slight a blog entry but a single post for the whole show doesn't do each episode justice. This is a six-parter so I may do three or four posts covering all the episodes, but at any rate will start off writing and see what happens. Just like every other post on this blog.

There is less commentary than I would have expected online about this one, which I would think might reflect this assignment's level of popularity. I also suspect that most of the blog posts are by hard core fans, because if you just google the title of the assignment you don't find them, but if you add a further detail like 'location' they appear - I'm surmising that this one isn't what we might call an 'entry level' adventure. 

Looking at the other posts I have written about Sapphire and Steel I have noticed a tendency to say that each assignment is an odd one out, however I think the reason this one is also an odd one is what makes it slightly difficult for the blogosphere. The whole point of Sapphire and Steel is that it is about time and yet I think in our minds this can tend to boil down to the show being about ghosts, even though the whole point is actually that what we think are ghosts, are temporal anomalies in the world of whatever Sapphire and Steel are. 

I also think this assignment is confusing, very confusing indeed, and this does come across in what there is online. I think I have sussed the key to this one which is blindingly obvious when I come to say it and I am kicking myself that I couldn't have thought of it before. The key is that at every event in the show (up to the resolution in the last episode) and every point where you feel it is confusing: the event is always explainable by something being wrong with the progression of time. By this I mean that even things are in the wrong time: the swan represents the feathers in the pillows, the baby becomes an adult, the research capsule is not in the right time for Sapphire and Steel to find it. Steel comments that the research subjects' names are wrong for the time, and indeed Eldred (or Aeldred) is Old English, as is Rothwyn, so were intended to give the clue that everything is wrong about the experiment, which has upset Time. We just don't think about this very obvious key to understanding this assignment because we fall into the trap of thinking that Sapphire and Steel is about ghosts, and we all know it isn't really. 'We' here, of course, means me and I'm a bit red in the face.

I have one original thing to say about this assignment which I haven't seen anywhere else, which is that I think I have identified one possible inspiration for the plot. This assignment was made in 1980. In 1978 there was a very influential TV show called Living in the Past about an experiment where volunteers spent time living in the conditions of the Iron Age (although like the research capsule, they started off with a mixture of period and modern tools to acclimitize). They ate the foods available in Britain at the time, and enacted the rituals of the people of the time. If you've seen it the experiment is strikingly like the research being carried out in this assignment, and the date does suggest it could have been an inspiration. There are extracts from the original shows and follow up shows online. 

There are episode summaries of all the episodes on IMDB so as usual I'm just going to talk about what takes my interest.

Episode 1: In which Sapphire and Steel do mime and a pillow fights back

I would honestly give the first episode of this assignment as one of the shows I would want to have on a desert island, mainly because of the way it builds up the feeling of mystery. The other really noticeable thing about this whole assignment is the sheer amount of acting ability by Joanna Lumley and David McCallum goes in with relatively little in the way of set and props, to give this real feeling of dread. As an exercise in acting school you really couldn't beat just putting you on a flat roof with nothing and expecting you to produce something!

I find it interesting that in the time experiment Eldred and Rothwyn are in, they are strangely completely insulated from the reality of the time they are supposed to be experiencing. They live in a hermetically sealed pod thingy, get food sent from the future, and so on. The only engagement they actually have with the twentieth century is when Rothwyn looks through the window and wonders how people would survive out there. This raises the obvious question of why you would have to travel to a different time to do that, when you could just set up your experience in your own time. I think the whole purpose of these living experiments is that they tend to break out of the control of the experimenters and you get to learn other things about the period as a result. However when you listen to Rothwyn's commentary, you realize that it is effectively nothing more than the guided tour in a living history museum, where you know everyone will change into synthetic fibres and go home at the end of the day. This may, of course, have been deliberate as part of the point that there was all sorts of wrong about the experiment.

Cleverly, the episode picks up on a common fear in the sequence where things start moving on their own. It's the idea that if you walk around the house in the dark all the furniture will position itself to stub your toe. Or an extension lead left lying tidily will tie itself up in knots. What we're seeing here is what we suspect is happening (but usually won't admit it because we're supposed to be adults) with any of the items in our houses: that they all move around when we're not looking. So now we know they do, and it's been picked up on television.

This idea is then blown up beyond where anyone could reasonably take it into the homicidal pillow. I can't lie, I love that scene so much. A sentient pillow moving itself (which we know is done with the simplest technology in the shape of a string or two) is both the most ridiculous and also the most scary thing ever. What if the things in our houses are actually moving round on their own? And any of those items which have turned up in the wrong place are actually there because they moved and not because you put them there without thinking?

THIS MEANS MY TEAPOT GOT INTO THE FRIDGE ON ITS OWN!!!!!!!!

Expertly, this episode makes absolutely terrifying viewing. And the 'something' in the invisible flat is magnificently hinted at but we don't actually see it.

Why on earth is this assignment often seen as the weak one in Sapphire and Steel? Nail everything down, quick.

Yet another appeal about TV  

I have read that there was a cartoon strip of Sapphire and Steel in Look-in magazine and that these strips have been on the internet in the past but now can't find them. Does anyone know where to find them please?

If you want to support me and this blog you can buy me a coffee (or a box set)  here.

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Sapphire And Steel

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Sapphire & Steel - Assignment I

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Streaming, rent, or buy Sapphire & Steel – Season 1:

Currently you are able to watch "Sapphire & Steel - Season 1" streaming on Crackle, fuboTV or for free with ads on Tubi TV. It is also possible to buy "Sapphire & Steel - Season 1" as download on Amazon Video.

Escape Through A Crack in Time None of the stories had on-screen 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

14 Episodes

S1 e1 - assignment i: escape through a crack in time (1), s1 e2 - assignment i: escape through a crack in time (2), s1 e3 - assignment i: escape through a crack in time (3), s1 e4 - assignment i: escape through a crack in time (4), s1 e5 - assignment i: escape through a crack in time (5), s1 e6 - assignment i: escape through a crack in time (6), s1 e7 - assignment ii: the railway station (part 1), s1 e8 - assignment ii: the railway station (part 2), s1 e9 - assignment ii: the railway station (part 3), s1 e10 - assignment ii: the railway station (part 4), s1 e11 - assignment ii: the railway station (part 5), s1 e12 - assignment ii: the railway station (part 6), s1 e13 - assignment ii: the railway station (part 7), s1 e14 - assignment ii: the railway station (part 8), where does sapphire & steel rank today the justwatch daily streaming charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. this includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. this includes data from ~1.3 million movie & tv show fans per day..

Streaming charts last updated: 9:18:13 AM, 06/05/2024

Sapphire & Steel is 5776 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The TV show has moved up the charts by 1284 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than Animal Fight Night but less popular than The Browns.

Streaming Charts The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

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Sapphire and Steel

Assignment Five: Part 1

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Sapphire and Steel

Assignment i.

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Take Plex everywhere

Ep 1. Assignment Five: Part 1

• August 11, 1981
• 7.7   (68)

Sapphire and Steel: The Complete Series is a British television show that aired from 1979 to 1982. It follows the titular characters, Sapphire and Steel, who are interdimensional agents assigned to protect the integrity of time and space. In each episode, they are tasked with investigating anomalies and supernatural events that pose a threat to the universe.

In season 3, episode 1 titled "Assignment Five: Part 1," Sapphire and Steel find themselves facing one of their most dangerous and enigmatic assignments yet. The episode begins with Sapphire and Steel receiving a distress call from an old, dilapidated farmhouse located in a remote village.

Upon arrival, Sapphire and Steel discover that the farmhouse seemingly exists outside of normal time and space. They are greeted by a young couple, Tom and Laura, who are desperate for help. The couple explains that they have been trapped in the farmhouse for what feels like an eternity, unable to escape its mysterious grasp.

As Sapphire and Steel delve deeper into the farmhouse, they uncover a series of unsettling phenomena. Rooms within the house shift and change, with doorways leading to entirely different dimensions. Time becomes distorted, causing minutes to stretch into hours and hours to compress into seconds. Reality itself seems to be breaking down within the farmhouse's walls.

The agents soon realize that the farmhouse is a nexus point, a convergence of multiple timelines and dimensions. It has become a magnet for beings from different realities, drawn to its instability and chaos. Sapphire and Steel must determine the cause of this disturbance and restore order before the farmhouse becomes a gateway for something far more sinister.

While investigating, Sapphire and Steel encounter various unnerving entities lurking within the farmhouse. They face off against malevolent spirits, shape-shifting creatures, and time loops that trap them in cycles of their own past failures. The agents' own abilities are put to the test as they fight to maintain their grip on reality.

As the episode progresses, Sapphire and Steel uncover a disturbing secret about the farmhouse's history. They learn about the tragic events that occurred within its walls, events that left an indelible mark on the fabric of space-time. It becomes apparent that the souls of the past inhabitants are still trapped within, seeking redemption and release.

With each passing moment, the situation grows increasingly dire. Sapphire and Steel must race against time to unravel the mysteries of the farmhouse and confront the forces that seek to exploit its power. The fate of not only Tom and Laura but also the entire fabric of the universe hang in the balance.

"Assignment Five: Part 1" serves as an enthralling introduction to the third season of Sapphire and Steel. It presents our heroes with their most challenging assignment yet, filled with mind-bending twists and heart-pounding suspense. As the episode concludes, viewers are left eagerly anticipating the resolution of this gripping tale in "Assignment Five: Part 2."

• Genres Action & Adventure Drama Science Fiction
• Cast David McCallum Joanna Lumley Patience Collier Valentine Dyall Patience Collier
• Channel ITV
• First Aired August 11, 1981
• Content Rating TV-PG
• Runtime 25 min
• Language English
• IMDB Rating 7.7   (68)

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Assignment One: Part 3

• Episode aired Jul 17, 1979

Sapphire and Steel investigate the upstairs hallway after Rob sees a pair of ghostly soldiers on the landing. Unbeknownst to them, a living pool of light has escaped from Helen's room and no... Read all Sapphire and Steel investigate the upstairs hallway after Rob sees a pair of ghostly soldiers on the landing. Unbeknownst to them, a living pool of light has escaped from Helen's room and now lies in wait in a portrait at the top of the stairs. Sapphire walks right into the trap ... Read all Sapphire and Steel investigate the upstairs hallway after Rob sees a pair of ghostly soldiers on the landing. Unbeknownst to them, a living pool of light has escaped from Helen's room and now lies in wait in a portrait at the top of the stairs. Sapphire walks right into the trap and disappears from the house. Only faintly able to communicate with Steel and Rob, Sapphi... Read all

• Shaun O'Riordan
• Peter Hammond
• David McCallum
• Joanna Lumley
• Steven O'Shea
• 2 User reviews
• 3 Critic reviews

• Robert Jardine

• Helen Jardine
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

Robert Jardine : But you *must* have heard of Cromwell! Don't you know your history?

Steel : I know *mine*.

• Soundtracks Goosey Goosey Gander Traditional Performed by Steven O'Shea

User reviews 2

• Sleepin_Dragon
• Sep 18, 2022
• July 17, 1979 (United Kingdom)
• United Kingdom
• Associated Television (ATV)
• Colour Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 25 minutes

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