Starcat and Scary Cat Have Been Assigned (Part Two)

Starcat and Scary Cat review Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Two

Assignment Two is the longest of Sapphire & Steel's six stories at eight parts, and since we are long cats that means we like it already.

Rob and Helen are not in this story. In their place we have George Tully, who is a psychic researcher and may or may not be a FBI agent as well. Starcat thinks he is, Scary Cat isn't sure. He meets Sapphire and Steel in an old train station. Because we know Sapphire and Steel from Assignment One, Tully is the outsider to both them and us, so the situation between Rob and Helen and Sapphire and Steel is reversed.

The story is slowly paced to spread the plot over all its installments, but doesn't tend to force in dramatic beats or cliffhangers at the end of every episode - like some TV series do - instead ending at seemingly random or inopportune moments, simply because the 25 minutes are up.

The train station location - really a TV studio set - is even more impressive than the house was in Assignment One. Most of the atmosphere and sense of threat is created by the look and feel of the set rather than from the SFX, it really convinces on an emotional level.

Where there are SFX they are used minimally but very well, such as the moment at the end of part 2 when Steel experiences a plane crash - a bright light shines on David McCallum, who is now dressed in a pilot costume and sitting in a room on a chair, acting as though he is suddenly in a plane. Then the camera tilts, shakes and spins to create the illusion of a crash.

The extra length combines with the minimal cast to allow the relationship between Tully and Sapphire and Steel to develop. They are both investigating the ghosts but have different methods. Early on Tully is subtly shown to be really quite clever, and there is foreshadowing of his eventual fate.

The main ghost character is Sam Pearce, who gives a face and voice to the antagonist for most of the story (parts 2 to 6) and is scary at first because he is unknown, and later because his death was scary and horrible in a manny's war.

"Great wars, civil wars, holy wars... You know, sometimes I wonder why they bother to send us here."

Even Tully is scared, and this puts him in conflict with Steel as to how they should treat with Pearce. Steel regains his trust when he rescues Tully (and Sapphire) from the submarine in a well-staged, tightly-edited sequence in part 4.

The second half of the story is very, very scary and wonderful all the way through. Tully helps Sapphire and Steel hold a scary seance. Cleverly there are parallel scenes of Sapphire, possessed by Sam Pearce's friend Elanor's ghost and talking with an accent to show it, and Pearce reliving the summer before he went off to get killed in the war, even reverting to being out of uniform - a wonderful way of showing the effect it is having on him - these scenes are a particular highlight of part 5. As is the bit where the tangible darkness flows through the set until it surrounds Sapphire and Steel and Tully, the scariest moment of the series so far - though a scarier moment is still to come!

Sapphire spends most of part 6 having sleeps, Tully gets scared and Steel is caught in Pearce's trap.

That is a dramatic high point that the next part cannot top, so it doesn't try. Instead there is a dramatic break as Sapphire and Steel and Tully are sent forward 12 days into the future. Then the tension is allowed to build again as Steel formulates his plan for the final episode, and we are made subtly aware of just how out of their depth Steel, Sapphire and poor, doomed Tully really are.

"I want to make a deal with the darkness..."

Scary face!

This is the ultimate scary moment of the story, as the Darkness takes over Sapphire. Steel is forced to lie to her and to sacrifice Tully to defeat it, but when the ghosts turn against it and Tully goes knowingly - and very bravely - the Darkness is tricked and left with nothing.

The most important character in this story does not even appear, and that is Tully's cat Nelson. Steel tells the Darkness that Tully's early death will affect Time and cause resentment ("resentment" is Darkness noms) but he had previously established that Nelson is Tully's only friend or family member, and Tully's neighbour would look after Nelson when Tully was not there. Yay, cats are not noms; not even Darkness noms.