Sapphire and Steel: Favourite Moments Assignment 3

[sarlania]

Continuing my little picspam this week with Assignment 3, commonly regarded as the "worst" S&S story. I agree with popular opinion, and so it really wasn't difficult at all to find my favourite moment for this story

Comments

[sarlania]

It's incoherent, for one thing, and it seems out of character for Steel that he should bother to lecture humans, let alone get all impassioned about it

Hmmmmm I disagree. We know that despite his seemingly cold exterior, he certainly has a soft spot - and I think even he would be repulsed by what the humans of the future have done. After all, we know that Steel just loves to find fault with the human race.

Or maybe he just likes animals. =)

But as you say, his actions at the end is questionable at best, but since it isn't the first time he's made such a rash judgement, it certainly is within character. What surprises me is that both Sapphire and Silver agreed to it without question

I don't think there's any indication anywhere in the series that being time agents means they can travel in time themselves.

Well, maybe not travel in time in its most fundamental sense - we see that in Assignment 6; they had to use the chess set to travel to the past and back. But we know that they can go into other time periods - the Mary Celeste case, for example. So they are probably "sent" into time periods but whoever gives them the assignments. Which takes me back to my original question - these authorities who have the power to send their agents into certain time periods, any time period that is experience temporal anomaly, and that would include past, present and future. So why on earth does S&S not know anything about the time of those families in the capsule?

[curuchamion]

these authorities who have the power to send their agents into certain time periods, any time period that is experience temporal anomaly, and that would include past, present and future.

I'm not so sure. I haven't seen any indication on the series that the elementals exist outside of time when they're not on assignment. All references to "past", "present", and "future" that I've seen so far (still need to watch Assignments 1 and 5) seem to be absolute rather than relative.

We're used to thinking of Time in a Doctor Who sort of way - a sea, or a ball of timey wimey stuff, where all past, present and future events already exist and one can bounce around and visit them without usually damaging anything.

I think Sapphire & Steel takes a different view of Time: that the past is a fixed and certain thing, almost unchangeable; that the future is mutable, always in motion; and that one changes to the other at a moving point called "the present", which neither the elementals nor anyone else can safely ignore. Sapphire can pull that point backwards, but only locally and not very far - it's always trying to spring forward again.

On this view, the time-travellers in this episode came from a possible future, not a definite one; by travelling back to the present before it reached them, they interfered with the natural course of time and made their own existence - along with all the nastiness of their particular continuum - unavoidable. No wonder Steel was so upset!

[sarlania]

That definitely makes sense, and fits with Sapphire's description of TIME in Assignment One as a corridor and not how the Doctor describes it as a "ball" or a clump.

I think Sapphire & Steel takes a different view of Time: that the past is a fixed and certain thing, almost unchangeable; that the future is mutable, always in motion; and that one changes to the other at a moving point called "the present", which neither the elementals nor anyone else can safely ignore.
Like a piece of elastic! And Schrodinger's Cat. =)