The Medium is Not Enough TV blog: Microfeed for "Review: Sapphire and Steel - Remember Me" http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/2008/07/review_sapphire_and_steel_remember_me.php Comments for the entry "Review: Sapphire and Steel - Remember Me" en-us Movable Type v4.32-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:49:22 +00:00 Comment from Anthony Barker Generally a fair review, and the Snakes on Ladders thing is bang on - but I'm a little bemused by the notion of Sapphire and Steel's villains inevitably being independant.

For my money, I think it's only two stories out of the six that have villains like that - stories one and four. The others are very much related to the action and the human's (albeit, in one case, there are no humans actually in the story).

]]> 4211@http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/#c24422 Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:49:22 +00:00 Comment from MediumRob In Adventure Two, the baddies are the spirits of humans killed in wars when they should have lived. Tully didn't fight in the war and didn't instigate them, and there's nothing he did to bring the 'ghosts' out - they're just there. The fix doesn't involve him doing anything - Sapphire and Steel just sacrifice him as part of a deal (although he has suspicions that he's going to get killed so there is the interpretation that he might be sacrificing himself).

Same again with three, where the people being picked on didn't actually do the vivisection, although they did benefit from it thanks to their time machine. They don't cause the animal hybrid to break out, either. I forget how it all gets fixed, although I don't recall the humans having to do anything.

In six, there's only one human and she's on the side of the baddies, who take her there, if I recall correctly. So she doesn't cause them to turn up. And there is no fix.

As for five, my recall is a little hazy so I can't remember exactly what happened, but I think you're right in that the humans did bring it out. I can't remember how they fixed the situation either. You can probably tell I don't like five, the only one not written by PJ Hammond.

So in general, the summing of the baddie in the TV stories has nothing really to do with the humans' actions (except in the sense that they find a trigger) and their dispelling doesn't require some sort of 'atonement' or fix related to their previous actions.

]]> 4211@http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/#c24423 Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:12:13 +00:00 Comment from Anthony Barker Well, couple of points there - firstly, the baddy in the second story is surely not the soldiers. It's the Darkness. The soldiers are the victims, trapped by virtue of their bitterness - they're the humans who generate the problem (Tully is incidental, effectively no more part of the plot or what it wants than Silver or Lead.). Now, for my money, that's no different to the villain in Remember Me (who is feeding on the humans, generated by their emotion and is defeated by a sacrifce that doesn't require human atonement, a la Tully). The ghosts cause the Darkness to turn up.

Six - I disagree with the assessment that the woman is human. I don't think she is (I could be misremembering). But again, she's definitely one of the bad guys.

The situation in five is fixed by the old woman being forced to deliberately shoot the man she accidentally shot before.

Three you may have a point with, though the bad guy is still directly relevant to the human's actions in a 'sins of the father' way.

]]> 4211@http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/#c24435 Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:21:47 +00:00 Comment from MediumRob Two: I take your point re: the Darkness. To my mind, though. the ghosts aren't the human protagonists of the piece and S&S don't really interact with them much. And to fix the Darkness, S&S don't cure the ghosts' bitterness, ask them to make a sacrifice or sacrifice them. They take, effectively, a bystander and sacrifice him. Whereas in Remember Me, it's the comedian's nostalgia that 'summons' the Nostalgia, it's by wiping his memory that they get rid of it and it's by teaching the humans that living in the past is a bad thing that they reduce its power. They teach the ghosts in two nothing.

Six: My reading of it was she was human. Certainly, when Edward de Souza and co suit up and go on a S&S hunt in episode four, she's notably absent from the hunt and doesn't change costume, despite the fact it's a forced change (at least, that's how I read it).

]]> 4211@http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/#c24436 Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:10:28 +00:00 Comment from Anonymous Interesting. I see what you mean about the comedian thing, though I'd argue that he only loses because he doesn't move on. Though having said that, I think they do basically tell the soldiers to let go.

As for the woman in six, my assumption is that she doesn't change because she's the trap. Just as much a Transient as the others, she hides. She's smartened up in the last scene, isn't she?

]]> 4211@http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/#c24438 Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:45:14 +00:00 Comment from MediumRob "She's smartened up in the last scene, isn't she?"

And I think Edward de Souza has "de-suited" into something more like his original costume, so it's not necessarily a Transient outfit. All the same, I think I'll have to watch the last story again and see if you're right!

]]> 4211@http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/#c24439 Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:06:46 +00:00