Sapphire & Steel

This is a BBC science fiction series starring David McCallum and Joanna Lumley that dates back to the mid-seventies. The descriptions in Netflix made me curious as heck. It reminds me of Doctor Who during the same time period, and not in a good way. It's slow-paced and has bad special effects, relying largely on the actors to carry the day, which they do, for the most part.

One problem with it is that the main characters aren't human. They don't have human motivations, and don't solve their problems with human solutions. They have powers that are never really explained, so you have only a vague idea of what their capabilities are. What they're trying to accomplish is often abstract, and resolved in highly non-visual ways, which doesn't make for good television. There are good reasons why you've probably never heard of this series.

On the other hand, there are some really good ideas in the stories themselves. I really like the idea of ghost stories that turn out to have scientific solutions. Yes, Doctor Who has gone there, too, but Sapphire and Steel do a better job in some respects. The slow pace lends itself to the creation of great atmosphere, often a lost art these days.

I'd really like to see a modern remake that gives a shade more information about the main characters and ups the pace just slightly to a more modern sensibility. I still can't recommend the original unless you really like one of the main actors and can cope with David Lynch-style pacing.

Four Person Splunge - Tightening Things Up

This afternoon we had only the core of Jason, Sal, Nick, and myself. The keyboard player I'd located turned non-responsive on us, so we weren't able to bring him in.

The general energy level seemed a little low, but we're definitely sounding more cohesive, even when we're not our best. Jason did more recording via Garageband and we listened to some of it afterward.


While everybody else took a break, we did a brief recording of me playing one of my own songs solo, to give everybody else a recorded version to use to work up their own parts. It's funny that I was as nervous as I was, as it wasn't the first time I've played original material in front of other people, but it was the first time I've done it solo, and for people I know.


It's going to be another month before we can get together again, due to the holidays as much as Nick's schedule. I'm finding that frustrating, but that's just the way it is.

Halloween Haunt

A friend of mine did a "yard haunt" for charity for Halloween, and I was among the volunteers for it. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but as I understand it, she's moving before next year and won't be doing it again locally.

I was wearing a full head mask like the Rohrschach character in the Watchmen movie and a monk's robe, for a nice, creepy effect. I added black gloves to make my hands less apparent in the darkness. I was posted at the end of a hallway full of fake spider webs and a floating head suspended on a track from the ceiling, which was motion/sound activated and would move toward victims as they entered the hallway. The only light in the hallway was a strobe just over my head at the exit end. My job was to lurk under the strobe, where I was supposed to be virtually invisible, and jump out at people as they went by. In practice, it didn't work quite as well as that because a little bit of light was able to get through the exit, so victims were often able to see me after they got about three steps in.

That made it more interesting, since I had to modify my approach and experiment to see what would work. I usually stood as still as I could at my end of the hallway and watched the eyes of my victims as they entered, then decided what to do based on their reactions. I found that I could terrify the little ones just by standing there motionless, and actually had to move forward and to the right (leaving them an escape route to my left) to get them to run past me and out of the chamber.

Groups of teenage girls were the easiest pickings, but required a different approach. I'd wait until the first one in took that third step and could just barely perceive me, then charge the group, yelling as loud as I could. That usually caused the leader to scream and back into the others, causing them to scream because they could just barely see what was coming at them.

Adults were the toughest scares, but the most rewarding when I could get them. My best scare of the second night was a man with a little boy who walked right up to me while I remained motionless, assuring his son that I was just a dummy like the ones they'd seen earlier in the haunt. Then he asked out loud which way the exit was, more to himself than to his son. All I did was point toward the exit, and he jumped back about three steps and grabbed his own chest, laughing and saying "Good one, you really got me, buddy" before leaving.

I love Halloween!

Local Cabal Campaign - Fifth Session

Our voodoo priestess character missed a second session and seems to be truly out of the campaign. Jonah (the vampire cop) missed a second session as well for other reasons.

Scott P. carried the narrative momentum as Sir Kay again, including moving his own storyline forward, splitting time with the ghost's mystery. Most of the time spent on the ghost's mystery this time was eliminating red herrings, providing more color than real information.

We may not have a lot more mileage in the ghost's story, so there won't be many more sessions of this campaign unless we start developing Sir Kay's story further. We might also save that as a way to continue into a later run of a sequel campaign.

Crazy Busy Lately

Took a down day today after being far too busy the last couple of weeks. It's likely I'll have a few more entries than usual for a while to catch up on some points of interest.