However, I did send
in an idea. I don’t know if it was rejected or not. I never heard anything
back, so maybe it got lost in the internet, as things did in those days. It
turns out that some of the ideas in it ended up – quite unconsciously – in my Doctor Who audio adventure The Ghost in the Machine. Nothing is
ever wasted!
Anyway, here it is. My great lost Sapphire & Steel story!
Sapphire & Steel
The Record Shop proposal by Jonathan Morris
Episode One
We
begin with a crackly recording of a man reciting ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’. More
voices are added to the mix, followed by music, moving through the forms of the
20th century. The sound builds to a discordant climax.
After titles:
Sapphire
& Steel arrive at a deserted second-hand record shop. Everywhere is dust. The
shop is in darkness. There is no electricity. The only light comes from Steel’s
oil lamp.
Sapphire confirms that the shop has been
placed outside time. It should be daylight outside, but inside the shop there
is no time. Steel suspects this is the work of their employers – the equivalent
of the building being placed under quarantine. It is also possible that this
shop is a ‘lifeboat’, and that something terrible has happened to the world
outside, and they are the only ones left.
Sapphire
finds more boxes of old records – some 78’s, even wax cylinders. She hears band
music coming from the main shop, but returns to find there is still no power
for the record player. There is more music again. Then a girl’s voice plays as
though on a record. She is in pain. ‘Help me. Please. Somebody help me.’ She
screams.
Sapphire
takes time back, but second time around there are no words – just crackle. Steel
checks the record in the record player – it is just a 78 of old band music.
Sapphire
and Steel investigate upstairs. There is a flat, presumably belonging to the
shop owner. It is unkempt and deserted. One door is locked and will not open.
Steel
forces open the door and discovers a rudimentary recording studio. He is about
to leave when a supernatural wind starts up, together with a chaos of music and
the girl’s rising screams.
Episode Two
Episode Two
Steel
seals the door shut. Sapphire and Steel go downstairs to discover they have
been joined by a man called Thomas. Sapphire takes time back to find out how
Thomas got in, and describes to Steel her visualisation of Thomas entering
through the front door in daylight.
Thomas
doesn’t know why he is here. He seems to have no memory. He is only interested
in the record in the player.
Sapphire
examines the record – it is blank. Why record silence onto a record? There are
dozens more blank records stored in the back room.
Sapphire
plays the record again. There is a voice on it, very faint. By increasing the
volume, the girl’s voice can be made out. ‘Help me. Please. Somebody help me.’
Suddenly
the chaotic music starts up again and a supernatural wind fills the shop.
Sapphire
and Steel go upstairs and discover the door to the recording studio is open and
the recording equipment has been activated. There is also a girl inside. Victoria. Sapphire and
Steel talk to Victoria,
but she cannot hear them. She is some sort of ghost. Thomas steps into the room,
Victoria screams, and the door slams shut.
When
Sapphire and Steel open it, the room is empty. They hear a man reciting ‘Mary
Had A Little Lamb’. Sapphire and Steel run downstairs where the blank record is
playing...
On
the record, Victoria
screams, then the record scratches back a few seconds, so she screams again.
And again. Sapphire is concerned. Listening carefully, each repeated scream is
slightly different. Victoria’s
ghost is somehow trapped on the record - and being tortured to death.
Sapphire
and Steel deduce that the original occupant of the flat caused time to break
through. Something was imprisoned on one of the old acetate records. Something
evil.
Then
there is a sudden silence, followed by the crackle of a record. We hear
Sapphire’s voice. She is somewhere very dark. She cannot smell or feel
anything. Steel is with her. They are trapped - on a record.
Episode Three
Episode Three
Sapphire
senses the age of the medium they are trapped inside. It dates back to 1877 –
the day that the first recording was made. Thomas Edison recorded his own voice
reciting ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’.
Sapphire
and Steel believe that something broke in during the first recording and has
taken on Thomas’s form.
Together they recite ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’
backwards. Time reverses and they find themselves back in the studio.
Sapphire
and Steel locate the record that would originally have contained the ‘something’.
Sapphire examines it...
We
go back to the 19th century. Sapphire describes what she sees to
Steel. She is in a room with Thomas and Victoria.
Victoria is a prostitute - and Thomas’s prisoner.
Although
we hear the voice of Thomas, it is clear he is another man. His spiritualist
friends have taken photographs of people at the moment of death, in the hope of
photographing the soul leaving the body. He intends to record the sound of
Victoria’s ghost. And hence, he will develop a telephone to communicate with
the dead.
Thomas
conducts his experiment, and Victoria
dies, her ghost becoming trapped on the record, forever reliving the moment of
her death. ‘Help me. Please. Somebody help me.’
Sapphire
and Steel realise that the ‘something’ is drawing its power from Victoria. If it escapes,
it will move into every recording ever made...
Downstairs,
we hear Thomas – as the ‘something’ - play several records of ghosts trapped on
the recording at the moment of death. He promises them retribution.
The
séance suddenly goes wrong and Sapphire becomes the subject of the
spiritualist’s experiment. She is murdered.
We
hear the crackle of a record. It skips back, repeating Sapphire’s moment of
death again. And again. And again.
Sapphire
is one more ghost in the ‘something’s collection.
Episode Four
Episode Four
Steel
attempts to wake Sapphire from her trance, but is unable to help her. However, Victoria appears and
leads him to the record on which Sapphire’s death is recorded. If they can
reproduce the means by which the shop owner freed the ‘something’, they can do
the same for Sapphire...
Steel
sets about re-recording Sapphire’s death screams, onto tape, amplifying them,
and mixing them with music...
There
is a supernatural wind and the record is transported into the ‘something’s
hands. It destroys the record. Fortunately, Steel manages to free Sapphire in
time, and she finds herself back in the studio with him.
Sapphire
and Steel know what they must do. They must persuade Victoria’s ghost to give up its desire for revenge
as that is giving the creature from time its power.
The
record shop suddenly returns to normal time. The quarantine has ended. The
‘something’ prepares to escape...
But
it is momentarily unable to act. Deprived of Victoria’s despair and resentment feelings,
it is powerless.
However,
it can still use the power of recorded sound. Every type of noise plays at once
in deafening confusion. The recording studio bursts into flame.
Sapphire
and Steel make their way downstairs to the shop, and record the ‘something’s
inhuman screams onto a digital recorder. The digital recorder then burns a CD.
With
Victoria’s
help, they have trapped the ‘something’ onto a recording medium once more. Victoria gives her
farewells and fades away. All that is left now is for Sapphire and Steel to
dispose of the CD. If the CD ever gets played again, the ‘something’ will be
released...
End Titles
There
is silence for a few minutes. And then, very quietly, we hear Thomas. ‘Please.
Help me. Somebody please.’
The
CD appears to skip, because he says it again. And again. And again...
Cast:
Cast:
Sapphire
Steel
Thomas (male, 50s – plays a spiritualist torturer,
the ‘something’ from time and Thomas Edison)
Victoria (female, 20s, prostitute from the 19th
century)
Style:
The
idea is to use the audio medium to its fullest, and to pull out all the stops
in terms of scaring people shitless.
