What is the scariest face? Is it Balok from The Corbomite Maneuver? Or maybe you think Scary Cat has the scariest face? Or is it one of the scary faces from the first two Assignments of Sapphire & Steel? In this Assignment the baddy has the power to have any scary face he wants, but he is scariest of all when he has no face!
Assignment Four is only four parts long, which you may think would make it only half as good as Assignment Two. But this story gets a move on compared with the previous Assignments and manages to fit two cliffhangers into one episode - the first at the end of part one before the advert break and the second comes in the usual place at the end.
The setting for the story is an old shop, atmospheric like the sets of the first two stories, and Sapphire and Steel investigate it and are at first as much in the dark about what is going on as us cats watching, so in that respect it is also like the first two stories.
Assignment Four has a very scary moment at the end of the superb third part. Earlier in the episode there is a dramatic confrontation between Sapphire and Steel and The Shape - the baddy - in which he has two different faces, one scary and one not so scary. Then at the end he wears his scary face and burns the mannys he has trapped in a photograph! The expression on his face, aided by the lighting on the stairs set, is coolly malevolent and Starcat was very scared by it.
The Shape is defeated in the last part and the final shot of the episode, and story, is of him being trapped inside a special effect - a great shot to end a great story on.
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