The Age Of Revolution

Another deleted scenes blog, this time with a script written way back in May 2011, Jago & Litefoot: The Age of Revolution. The brief for this story was to write the introductory episode of a new series of Jago & Litefoot placing them in the swinging late 1960s, in a format akin to Adam Adamant Lives, with Jago acting as the compère of a TV show along the lines of The Good Old Days. The brief also included the opening ‘pull-back-to-reveal’ gag.

(By the way, the story is still available here. Obviously, don’t read any further if you haven’t heard it.)

The finished story has a few obvious inspirations. The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society serving as a kind of anti-swinging London manifesto. There’s the vogue for Victoriana, the idea of treating it as a ‘golden age’, art galleries like the Indica and the Go-Jos from Top of the Pops, while the Timothy Vee character was a cross between David Frost and Simon Dee (brilliantly played by Horrible Histories’ Ben Willbond). The Victorian Values Preservation Society was also inspired by Mary Whitehouse’s National Viewers and Listeners’ Association and – more overtly – the short-lived Nationwide Festival of Light movement. The plot was deliberately a fairly typical Avengers-type affair – a puritanical cult intending to force Victorian values onto the Swinging Sixties – in order to provide a neat thematic counterpoint to our heroes’ out-of-time predicament - while the climax of the story was inspired by an edition of the David Frost show that was invaded by hippies:

And the title was taken from a Duckworth Lewis Method song.

Anyway, deleted scenes. My first bash at the story came to 13,000 words, way over, so here’s stuff I cut out before it became the ‘first draft’ (obviously there were lots of little cuts, this is the substantial stuff).

To begin with, from Scene 2, in the art gallery:

SACKER: (NARRATION)

I noted that many leading figures in the so-called counter-cultural scene were present - including several well-known pop singers, writers, artists and fashion designers... Including Timothy Vee, host of the television chat show, The TV Show.

...

TIMOTHY:

Please, call me Timothy, everyone does.

SACKER:

I’d rather keep things formal, if it’s all the same to you. You wouldn’t happen to know who those two gentlemen are?

TIMOTHY:

Which two gentlemen?

SACKER: (NARRATION)

I indicated towards the two men standing in the corner of the gallery, trying not to attract attention. Unlike the rest of the guests, who were in their twenties and thirties, these two gentlemen were in their fifties and were dressed in a curiously old fashioned manner, with top hats and capes.

TIMOTHY:

Ah. No idea. Never seen them before.

SACKER:

I thought you knew everyone who was everyone.

TIMOTHY:

I do. So if I don’t know them... they can’t have been on the guest list...

Then scene 3 ends in a car chase...

(FX: SACKER’S CAB PULLS UP.)

SACKER:

How much?

TAXI DRIVER:

For that? You can have that gratis, mate, never had so much fun in me life!

In scene 5, Jago is interviewed on the Timothy Vee show:

JAGO:

Ah, no. It’s a traditional vaudeville, authentic in every detail, just as it would have been performed in the days of good Queen Vic.

TIMOTHY:

So it’s a nostalgia thing? Because let me tell you, the whole Victorian nostalgia thing is very ‘now’.

JAGO:

I suppose so, though I’d say it was just good old fashioned entertainment and entertainment never goes out of fashion!

Followed by Sacker meeting Jago backstage – all this was cut:

(FX: LINK MUSIC BECOMES END THEME, AUDIENCE APPLAUDING, MUFFLED AS WE MOVE THROUGH DOORS.)

AUBREY:

I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go through there, guests only.

SACKER:

I am a guest. By personal invitation of Timothy Vee.

AUBREY:

Yes, I’m sure you are –

SACKER:

Detective Sergeant Sacker of Scotland Yard.

AUBREY:

Why didn’t you say? In you go. The dressing rooms are down the corridor on the right.

(FX: KNOCK ON DOOR)

Also losing this (fairly pointless) bit. Well, all deleted scenes are fairly pointless, that’s why I deleted them.

TIMOTHY:

Me neither. I mean, it was a marvellous evening, with some super people, but –

(FX: KNOCK AT DOOR, IT OPENS)

MARION:

Phone call for you, Timothy. Says it’s urgent.

TIMOTHY:

If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure –

(FX: DOOR CLOSES)

I cut most of this discussion about Litefoot’s bookshop:

LITEFOOT:

- going pretty well. I’m rather enjoying the life of a shopkeeper and it’s turned out to be quite a profitable concern!

ELLIE:

Just you don’t go forgetting who’s shop it is, Professor.

LITEFOOT:

No, not at all my dear. I owe you a great debt. I must say, though, it’s a trifle disconcerting to be selling books as antiques when as far as I’m concerned many of them have only just been written!

ELLIE:

That’s what makes you such an expert. Who better to run a Victorian bookshop than a genuine Victorian gentleman?

And this superfluous over-explanation:

LITEFOOT:

I’m sorry for the subterfuge but you see, we had to be sure you were who you said you were and not...

SACKER:

And not what?

LITEFOOT:

Over the years we have faced and fought many terrors, and along the way we have made enemies. Enemies who would not hesitate to kill us, given the opportunity.

SACKER:

And you thought that’s who I was? Someone sent to kill you?

...

LITEFOOT:

Detective. Surely if we were going to lie to you, we would make the effort to concoct something more plausible?

SACKER:

So the fact that your story is completely unbelievable means you must be telling the truth?

I cut Litefoot’s brief description of his psychedelic ‘trip’ at the gallery:

LITEFOOT:

Indeed we did. A most curious sensation. As though the world had become more vivid, lively and colourful.

In the end, I thought Ellie’s first line here was a better line to end the scene on, so I cut the rest:

ELLIE:

And besides, in case you’d forgotten, I’ve been around for almost a hundred years. I think I know how to look after myself!

SACKER:

Very well, the more the merrier I suppose. Just you don’t go getting yourself into trouble, that’s all.

ELLIE:

Detective Sergeant Sacker. I’ve lived through two world wars, and seen stuff you couldn’t even begin to imagine, so if any of us is going to need rescuing, it isn’t going to be me!

I cut all this stuff from their visit to the Hit Parade studio, probably because it was too say-what-you see:

SACKER:

An hallucination... Yes... just like at the gallery opening. That statue!

LITEFOOT:

Indeed.

ELLIE:

It’s third eye was glowing... but now it’s gone out.

LITEFOOT:

Curious thing... It’s not unlike a religious icon, but is resembles no deity that I’ve ever come across.

JAGO:

Ugly blighter if you ask me, with more arms than it knows what to do with –

Later, our heroes investigate a meeting of the Victorian Values Preservation Society:

LITEFOOT:

So you’re pouring away the champagne into the nearest plant pot?

JAGO:

Well, no, it would be a shame to waste it. I say, this is quite a well-to-do little get-together, isn’t it? All top hats and pearl earrings!

I cut the last bit of Colonel Mandrake’s speech here. Bit OTT!

MANDRAKE:

Back then, a woman’s place was in the home, with their family, instead of taking men’s jobs like today’s so-called women’s liberationists!

Not sure why I cut the next bit. Wordcount, I suppose. Seems quite essential though!

SACKER:

And so now you work for him?

TIMOTHY:

Oh yes. I’m now a fully paid-up member of the society.

(FX: GUN CLICKS)

TIMOTHY:

And you’ve just walked into a trap.

Now this is odd. These speeches are, basically, what the story is all about, and yet I cut them. Maybe I was in ‘kill you darlings’ mode or something. Or maybe the point had already been made elsewhere.

MANDRAKE:

I will show them the truth about this age... and I will show them how much better things were in the past.

LITEFOOT:

But your idea of the Victorian age is a myth, just as much as this time being all about pop music and mini-skirts! You think it was some sort of golden age of morality and prosperity, when to most of the people living back then, it was anything but!

JAGO:

Indeed! Your vision of Victorian values bears as much relation to reality as... a biscuit tin lid! You think this age has a monopoly on moral degeneracy? Let me tell you, speaking as one who knows, there’s absolutely nothing you didn’t get up to in this age that we didn’t get up to in the Victorian age. In fact, you name it, we invented it!

MANDRAKE:

How ironic, that two antiquarians should have such antipathy to the past. But let me show you the truth about this time.

Another get-out-of-the-scene earlier – I cut everything after Litefoot’s line:

LITEFOOT:

Yes. They believe us to be dead, which should give us the element of surprise! Come on!

DOORMAN:

Hey, you can’t go in there – you need to show a pass -

SACKER:

Detective Sergeant Sacker. Of Scotland yard. I need to get into that television studio on urgent police business...

DOORMAN:

But it’s in the middle of broadcast!

SACKER:

That’s why it’s urgent. Now, are you going to get out of my way, or do I have to arrest you?

After that, going into the second draft, more stuff was cut. From scene 2 in the gallery:

TIMOTHY:

However we are honoured to have with us the policeman charged with finding her - Sergeant Sacker!

SACKER:

Detective Sergeant, actually.

TIMOTHY:

Detective Sergeant, sorry! Well, there’s nothing left for me to say, except thank you for coming and enjoy the art!

(FX: GUESTS APPLAUD)

SACKER: (NARRATION)

I spent a few minutes examining the so-called ‘art’, a number of avant-garde sculptures of, well, I’m not sure if they were supposed to be of anything exactly.

All of this was replaced by Sacker feeling as though he might collapse and leaving the gallery:

SACKER:

(COLLAPSING) I – I –

(FX: CONCERNED MUTTERS AND GASPS)

TIMOTHY:

Detective Sacker, are you alright?

SACKER:

Detective Sergeant. Just had the strangest feeling...

TIMOTHY:

You fainted?

SACKER:

Did I? Must be the heat... get some fresh air.

SACKER: (NARRATION)

But as I made my way outside, I couldn’t help but glance back at the statue. Its third eye was now just an ordinary crystal. But then I noticed something else. The two gentlemen with the old fashioned clothes had slipped away. But why had they been at the exhibition in the first place? Could they have some connection to the mysterious disappearance of Delilah Samson?

(FX: DURING THIS, WE MOVE INTO NEXT SCENE)

The beginning of the Jago chatshow scene was cut:

(FX: BEFORE A RECORDING, AUDIENCE HUBBUB)

SACKER:

Sorry, not too late am I?

AUBREY:

No, you’re just in time, we’re just about to start. Quiet please, and – cue music!

Later, when he meets Jago backstage, Sacker asks him what he was doing at the gallery:

SACKER:

Can I ask what you were doing there?

JAGO:

Ah, oh, well, I was just popping in and out at the suggestion of the producer of Those Were The Days, he said I should make myself known to young Timothy here.

TIMOTHY:

And when I met him, I invited him to appear in my little show.

Another bit I cut, going straight to Aubrey reading from the diaries:

FX: ATTIC HATCH CREAKS OPEN)

SACKER: (NARRATION)

I returned home, my head spinning with and disbelief, and dug out my grandfather’s old diaries, about the years he spent at St Thomas’s hospital...

A huge chunk cut out, coming immediately after Jago and Litefoot’s account of how they ended up in the 1960s.

10. INT. HIGGIES.

LITEFOOT:

...and so we found ourselves with no recourse but to make new lives for ourselves in this time!

SACKER:

You must think I was born yesterday.

JAGO:

My dear fellow, I don’t believe it, and I was there! The point is we’re here now, seventy years out of date!

SACKER:

And what about you, Miss Higson? How do you fit into this?

ELLIE:

Me? Well, when they arrived, I was fast asleep, when I was awoken by this dreadful commotion from downstairs...

(FX: INTO FLASHBACK)

11. INT. RED TAVERN. (FLASHBACK)

(FX: CRASHING SOUND, SOMEONE KNOCKING OVER A CHAIR)

LITEFOOT:

For goodness’ sake, Henry, what are you trying to do?

JAGO:

What does it look like? Trying to break out!

LITEFOOT:

Wouldn’t it be simpler for us to sit tight until morning?

JAGO:

Spend the night locked in a pub, you mean? Well, I suppose, needs must...

...then, after they meet Ellie...

JAGO:

By a mysterious fellow, name of the Doctor. It’s a long story.

LITEFOOT:

You see, when we met him, the Doctor claimed to be in possession of a time machine. Naturally we –

12. INT. HIGGIES.

SACKER:

Alright, no need to go through all that again!

ELLIE:

If it’s any consolation, I found their story very hard to believe too, but I’ve found that with the Professor and Mister Jago, it’s best just to let them get on with it. And besides, I had my own incredible story to tell...

(FX: INTO FLASHBACK)

This explanation was cut down to a couple of sentences:

LITEFOOT:

Ah. As we had found ourselves marooned in this time without a penny to our name, we had no choice but to call upon the assistance of young Ellie here to find us employment.

SACKER:

So you found the Professor a job running an antiquarian bookshop. But what about Henry?

ELLIE:

I must admit it took me a while to find something for Mister Jago. There’s not a great deal of call for his particular... talents in this day and age. At least, that’s what I thought, until I heard some producers chatting in my restaurant about this new show they were doing set in a music hall, and how they were looking for somebody to act as compere.

Next, the point where they leave was trimmed down further, losing Jago’s line:

JAGO:

Now, my dear, there is no need to get agitated, you can hardly blame us for being a little out of touch with modern fashions!

ELLIE:

And besides, in case you’d forgotten, I’ve been around for almost a hundred years. I think I know how to look after myself!

Then when they get to the Hit Parade studio and are hypnotised by the dancing girls... oh, it was a shame to lose this:

JAGO:

The female form in all its fulsome finery... a bevy of bounteous beauties! A line of libidinous and lissom lovelies!

LITEFOOT:

Reminds me of that time I was in Cairo...

ELLIE:

But they’re not real! Listen to me! They’re not real!

SACKER:

But I can see them... gyrating.

All of this, from Mandrake’s manifesto, was cut, largely because it was OTT or repeating/spelling out points made elsewhere:

MANDRAKE:

Well now it is time for us to do something about it! Now it is time for us to return to a golden age when the sun never set on the British Empire!

(FX: GUESTS CHEER)

MANDRAKE:

Back then, people knew their place. And they were happier for it! Back then, people were prepared to buckle down and do a decent day’s work, not like today thanks to the trades unions! Back then, a woman’s place was in the home, with their family!

I also cut our heroes’ reaction to the speech:

LITEFOOT:

I don’t think I’ve ever heard such complete rot.

JAGO:

He does seem to have a rather rose-tinted view of the past.

LITEFOOT:

Rose-tinted? The chap is positively blind!

Later, in the climax, I cut the last two lines of this bit:

AUBREY:

What? This control room is out-of bounds! No public allowed!

ELLIE:

You’ve got to pull the plug! Stop transmission!

AUBREY:

Somebody call security, no room for any more lunatics in here!

And this...

JAGO:

Fight it, old chap. This crystal thing should protect us.

SACKER:

No. Go, Henry. Go... before I... can’t resist...

And this...

TIMOTHY:

But how... the statue. It should have killed you.

MANDRAKE:

No. He has... a crystal in his waistcoat that protects him.

JAGO:

Oh, so you know about that now, do you?

...and that’s about it!

Ghosts

Another trip into the dusty archives. Way back in 2004, Big Finish released a series of audio adventures based on the TV series Sapphire & Steel. Now, I remember that I had one idea for this series, an idea which became the Doctor Who audio story Protect & Survive (see here). But it turns out I never sent in that idea. Nor did I send in my idea for a comedy Sapphire & Steel story set in a Post Office with a time-looped queue and a sinister voice saying “Window number five, please”.

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 20^th 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

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

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 19^th 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

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:

Sapphire

Steel

Thomas (male, 50s – plays a spiritualist torturer, the ‘something’ from time and Thomas Edison)

Victoria (female, 20s, prostitute from the 19^th 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.