The Trap - Sapphire & Steel's Final Adventure?
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While Ben was somewhat partially trapped in a time loop, Simon joined us for this discussion of the final televised episode of Sapphire & Steel.You can download the podcast episode in iTunes, or at the podcast page. It's a long one as not only are there three of us, but as the series finale, we take a look back over the series as a whole and pronounce final judgment.After editing the episode, I had a few further thoughts and a few concepts we either cut out, or didn't occur to us at the time. I'll start those out in this thread, but I suggest you listen to the podcast first.And while I cannot guarantee that this video will remain available online, you can (at the moment) watch Sapphire & Steel's final adventure on youtube.
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So here are some additional ideas I didn't express during the podcast.
- That Silver was actually sent by Sapphire & Steel's superiors in an effort to help them. Clearly if there are multiple sources of "power" and that, in some way, they are at odds with one another, we simply don't know what their "ground rules" are. Sapphire & Steel just "knew" that they were supposed to be at the service station rather than their usual "briefing." Silver indicated the same thing and ever arrived before them. My initial thought was that the baddies sent for him, too, even though he seemed to be the unplanned for wildcard in the story. Perhaps the higher authorities cannot directly interfere in another's operations and so when the baddies setup the idea of luring Sapphire & Steel in, their own bosses used the same technique to put Silver on the spot.
- The other thing that I totally missed was the concept of "transient" as in the Transient Beings The word has connotations of "homeless bums" in this part of the world and also has a notion of being either impermanent or ephemeral. Of course, transient also means "to travel" and so, if beings like Sapphire & Steel were given the ability to move in time, they might be designated as transient as simply travelers.
I know Ben and Simon had some other ideas to discuss, but time just ran out. Ben, Simon, care to comment? -
Interesting observation in regards to why Silver was there. While I was listening to the podcast Sunday I had a similar thought. I was thinking that while some elemnets of the 'Higher Authority' may have been working to get rid of Sapphire and Stell other's may have been trying to covertly help them. This may explain why Silver had no real recolection of being told to show up, he just had a 'feeling' that he needed to be there. I believe it's plausible that some forces were working to aid Sapphire and Steel, but also needed to protect themselves from discovery.
As I was thinking throuhg this scenerio I was reminded of some of the earlier Doctor Who episodes that involved similar elements of intirgue among the Time Lords and other forces (i.e. The White Guardian and The Black Gaurdian). There were plenty more of course.
This also made me consider if Sapphire and Steel had continued as a T.V series would we have eventually seen similar reveleations of that other world we only heard in dialog between the two main characters. I'd like to think we would have. -
If I remember correctly, the guardians were introduced to Doctor Who by Graham Williams to add a kind of "moral dimension" to what he considered to be the Doctor's rather feckless space tourism (which he generally pursued before, and indeed since, on either his own whim or that of the TARDIS).The mysterious authorities in Sapphire and Steel definitely bear a similarity to the dynamic that introduced, but they seem to be more subtle and complex than the black and white, good vs evil, order vs chaos of Doctor Who. In particular, Steel's attitude towards the bosses in, I think, adventure 4 suggested a much more managerial role. In this story the transients seemed to be motivated as much by animosity and/or personal gain as any "higher" motivation (I say higher rather than better, they clearly were the baddies from the point of view of us, the viewers). But it makes a great deal of sense to me that Silver might have been sent to help Sapphire and Steel by their "boss" and that the (unknown to us) politics at some higher level may have led to compromises or confusion that left our heroes on the ground exposed to and/or uninformed of the reason for this, the true danger they were facing.
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I like the idea of Silver being summoned there by the "Superior" in an effort to help both Sapphire and Steel. It was a nagging question with me as to why he should be there when the Transient Beings (I need to re-read my notes, but I seem to think that the people in the diner were more agents for the Transient Beings rather than the Beings themselves) stated that they had no real interest in Silver at allThis still begs something of a bigger question to me. It's a forgone conclusion that Sapphire and Steel's "boss(es)" will be aware of something wrong given the nature of the trap they are in. Will this cause them to take more direct action against those "bosses" of the agents that worked against Sapphire and Steel? We just can't ignore the implications that this might bring about something of a battle, or at the very least, a power struggle to maintain supremacy when it comes to monitoring any and all irregularities of each dimension.
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