ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

"All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements will not be used where there is life. Medium Atomic Weights are available. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned."
— Opening sequence in the series

Note: Do not confuse anything in here with my Continuum material. While there are similarities (you can see where I get my ideas), the actual mechanics and organization are completely different.

Sapphire and Steel describes the adventures of two members of an organization dedicated to keeping time on a single track. This organization does not appear to be composed of humans or even of entities from within our own timestream. Members of the Continuum are in a constant battle with time itself, which perpetually seeks to break through into the present to destroy our reality. As such, the Continuum must be composed of beings which transcend mere humans to an unimaginable degree. In almost all cases, time uses humans to break through into the present. They are often completely unaware of their actions and can unwittingly endanger the current reality. Time is constantly aware of the Continuum and always tries to get rid of Continuum agents if they become involved - sometimes it is successful.

Continuum Agents: There are 127 Continuum agents in existence, all very different from each other. There are two main divisions of Continuum agents, referred to by codenames - they are elementals and field ops. The two divisions have very different abilities and rarely work together. Elementals are often called out by field ops who cannot handle a problem on their own.

Elementals: There are 52 elementals in existence, each representing an element in the Periodic Table ranging from atomic number 20 to 104. Not all elements are represented by the Continuum. Known elementals include Radium, Copper, Silver, Lead and Gold. Elementals are specialists and as such are usually held in reserve until called up by field operatives. Elemental abilities are usually much more powerful than those of the field ops, who by necessity must be more adaptable and less specialized.

Transuranics: 12 of the 52 elementals are Transuranics, representing elements from 93 to 104 inclusive. Transuranic elementals are highly unstable and as such are not used where there is life. While they are invariably mentally disturbed (all are utterly insane), their powers may also be deadly to lifeforms. For example, if Plutonium "takes back time", he may do so by drastically aging all lifeforms nearby. Transuranics often do not care that they are unstable. As such they are mavericks within the Continuum, tolerated only because of their usefulness in certain situations. None are actually seen in the series.

Field Ops: There are 75 field ops in existence. All are referred to by codenames representing minerals or alloys. For example, known field ops include Jet, Sapphire, Steel and Diamond.

NB. While there is no elemental called Carbon, Diamond is still classed as a field op codename since it is not carbon in its pure elemental form.

Field ops are the workhorses of the Continuum. They are the detectives and repairers of the damaged timestream. Their job is to locate areas of weakened reality, known as Pressure Points (where time has found an area which it can penetrate) and reinforce them to prevent time from breaking through.

Mineral field ops (such as Sapphire, Jet and Diamond) appear to be the ones who find a problem, while the alloys (such as Steel) appear to be the ones who actually solve it. As such, minerals tend to have detection powers (Mind, Prime and Time), while alloys have more physical abilities (Matter, Forces, Life).

Character Notes

Sapphire (played by Joanna Lumley)

Sapphire appears to be the one who calms down everyone caught in a region of weakened reality. She seems to be able, through force of personality and appearance, to comfort those humans caught in the rift.

Her powers are primarily detection - especially telepathy (probably Mind 3) though she is capable of "taking back time". This is an effect not really quantifiable in Mage. It would probably be a Correspondence 5, Time 5 effect. This seems to involve rewinding time so that Sapphire and Steel can escape a nasty situation. However, it's not quite as obvious as that. Thinking about it, she can only do this in areas that are outside the main timestream (places where the Agents have been diverted by whatever force they are dealing with to get them out of the way). Sound familiar? I think this is actually their way of getting out of a Paradox realm!

Steel (played by David MacCallum)

Steel's powers are rarely mentioned. I think he's more of a Matter person than anything else, though he does have a telepathic link with Sapphire. He is very cold and intimidating and takes his work very seriously. He has no time to mollycoddle the humans trapped in the Pressure Point. He has been known to freeze himself by adapting the components of a freezer (very Sons of Ether) to absolute zero in Adventure 1 to free Sapphire from a trap set up by their enemies. This did put him out of action for a while afterwards but he survived nonetheless.

Time & Reality

Time cannot be thought of as an individual entity. The true face of time is about as alien as you can get. Time may be thought of as a chaotic force, perpetually trying to rupture the fabric of our universe. The Continuum must prevent this from occurring. Occasionally time does not even have to try to cause problems. Humans have been known to unwittingly create areas of weakened reality on their own, through which time can break through.

Weakened areas of reality are sometimes created by human experiments but most often are caused by Memories. A Memory is something which preserves an aspect of a previous time. This can be anything from an old photograph (or painting) to a historical recreation of past events or even a simple memory possessed by a human. Historical recreations are quite effective in creating areas of weakened reality. Time can break through to pull the entire area back to the period being recreated!

Time manifests itself in our universe as Ghosts, or images from the past. Note that there have also been references in the series to creatures from "outside the Corridor of Time". It appears that these forces are also things that the Continuum has to deal with on occasion.

The Series

It should be noted that the Series is entirely unconventional. Certainly it was way ahead of its time when it was first shown in the early 1980s, which was probably why not many people understood it. However, underneath the obscure appearance lies a highly original concept which is open to considerable expansion.

Apparently, it did prove quite popular but unfortunately a TV technicians' strike half way through Adventure 2 meant that it couldn't be shown on TV for about 2 months. By the time it had resumed, most people had lost interest in the series. Nevertheless, it continued for a total of 6 adventures (each consisting of between 4 and 8 half-hour episodes), reaching a definite conclusion in the final adventure.

It seems that the series was set entirely in the present. While Sapphire could take back time for short periods, actual time travel was out of the question. Indeed, the Transient Beings (the antagonists in Adventure 6) seemed to have once been imprisoned in the past, implying that the past was something that could never be reached.

Very little background was hinted at during the course of the series. All we knew was that Sapphire and Steel were not human, certainly not from this world (past or future), and that they were field operatives for a larger (unnamed) organization. Their origins, the source of their powers and the reasons for their existence were never revealed - which was good in a sense because this kept a sense of mystery throughout the series. Indeed, the full extent of Steel's powers were not made clear in the slightest, although it seems that he had considerable ability to alter the properties of his body (In one scene, he froze himself to Absolute Zero and still managed to walk and talk! In another, he stopped Sapphire stabbing herself with a carving knife by blocking the knife with his hand, which was unblemished afterwards.).

We also see a couple of elementals during the course of the series, Lead and Silver. This leads me on to an interesting side point - which came first, the character or the codename? Sapphire, for example, is usually dressed in blue (like a sapphire) and her eyes glow blue when she uses her powers. Steel always dresses in grey suits and is as cold as steel in character. Lead is a huge imposing figure of massive strength. His ability is to prevent rifts in time from spreading. Finally, Silver is a lithe, grey-haired man who can alter the structure of metals with his hands. Also, Jet is mentioned and referred to as a female - presumably a tall thin black woman, raising the possibility that all field ops with gemstone codenames (Sapphire, Jet, Diamond) are women.

Plot Summaries

In Adventure 1 of the series, Sapphire and Steel must prevent creatures from the Corridor of Time from breaking through into the present using old nursery rhymes. Also features Lead.

In Adventure 2, the weakened area is an abandoned railway station and the force that Sapphire and Steel must stop has already arrived. A force which feeds off the hatred and resentment of the dead. The force is assembling an army of the dead who have died needlessly. I think this one is the best of the lot.

In Adventure 3, the presence of a family from the future are creating a dangerous imbalance in time which must be remedied by Sapphire and Steel.

In Adventure 4, an experimental technique which combines old and new photos unleashes a force which can trap people in photographs.

In Adventure 5, an amazingly accurate historical reconstruction of a company's founding at a party in 1980 creates a rift in time which sends the entire party back to 1930, when the company was founded. Guests born after 1930 begin to die, so that time can replay events at the original party and prevent a scientist's death, thus dooming the entire planet!

In Adventure 6, Sapphire and Steel face some very dangerous foes from the past, the Transient Beings, in a service station/cafe that appears to contain people from many times. In addition, the whole area seems to be caught in a time loop. In the ensuing battle, Sapphire and Steel find themselves lured into a trap and are hurled outside time.