History Series / SapphireAndSteel

* EmotionEater: The Darkness feeds on resentment.

* WhenPropsAttack: Steel being "attacked" by a pillow.

* MonochromePast: The photographs The Shape manipulates are all in sepia-tone. The children, after he brings them into the real world, are still in sepia-tone.

* SoundOnlyDeath: [[spoiler:Ruth is burned alive while trapped inside a photograph. Liza and the operatives hear her screams but we never see her]].

* SoundOnlyDeath: [[spoiler:Ruth is burned alive while trapped inside a photograph. We hear her screams but never see her]].

* PhantomZonePicture: The plot is mostly about people who belong in photographs being taken out of them and people who don't belong in photographs being taken into them.

* NeverendingTerror: At the end of the story, the Shape is converted into a SealedEvilInACan, but Sapphire and Steel warn Liz that it will probably escape and come seeking revenge eventually, which it will be able to ''even if she's dead by then'' if there are any surviving photographs of her. So she's going to have to track down and destroy any photos that exist of her, and spend the rest of her life being paranoid about being captured on film.

* TheBlank: The Shape.

* UndercoverAsLovers: Sapphire and Steel pose as a married couple named Miles and Virginia Cavendish. There's even an almost-FakeOutMakeOut when they sense someone's about to walk in on their planning session. Sapphire also notes that their aliases mean Time has to react to them on two levels, as temporal operatives and as guests at the dinner party.

* UndercoverAsLovers: Sapphire and Steel pose as a married couple named Miles and Virginia Cavendish. There's even an almost-FakeOutMakeOut when they sense someone's about to walk in on their planning session. Sapphire also notes that their aliases mean Time has to react to them on two levels.

* UndercoverAsLovers: Sapphire and Steel pose as a married couple. There's even an almost-FakeOutMakeOut when they sense someone's about to walk in on their planning session. Sapphire also notes that their aliases mean Time has to react to them on two levels.

* UndercoverAsLovers: Sapphire and Steel pose as a married couple. There's even an almost-FakeOutMakeOut when they sense someone's about to walk in on their planning session. They also note that their aliases mean Time has to react to them on two levels.

* CodeName: A human assisting Sapphire and Steel assumes that "Sapphire" and "Steel" are code names, and asks if he can have a code name too. (He gets dubbed "[[https://thesaurus.plus/related/brass/effrontery Brass]]" for the duration.)

* UndercoverAsLovers: Sapphire and Steel pose as a married couple. There's even an almost-FakeOutMakeOut when they sense someone's about to walk in on their planning session.

* EvilGloating: The couple show up inside the diner trap at the end of the episode to rub Sapphire and Steel's faces in it before disappearing.

* SharpedDressedMan: When they drop their human disguises, the three men appear in uniform gray business suits (the woman becomes a WomanInBlack in a black skirt and veil).

* MonsterClown: Johnny Jack.

* WoundedGazelleGambit: Steel is caught in the trap because he's trying to get the seemingly collapsed woman to safety. It turns out she was also a Transient Being like the three men, and the mind control machinery on her was a multi-layered ruse to make the operatives think she was the only innocent in the diner.

* HumansAreMorons: A view held in varying degrees by all the Elements because of how often it is humanity through whose meddling and inventiveness that creates ways for Time to start escaping and wreaking havoc. Steel sees humans as stupid, but will fight to his last breath to save them, though if what they do threatens the stability of the rest of the universe, he would not hesitate to sacrifice them as an acceptible loss; Sapphire more thinks humanity has more a [[HumansAreFlawed charming, if troublesome, flaw]] of being very imaginative and ambitious and thinks the universe would be a much poorer place without them; Gold thinks humans are straight up morons who should be wiped from the universe to save the Elements and the rest of the universe the trouble they cause; and Silver sees humans as morons for getting into and creating things of which they do not fully count the consequences, but he admires their ingenuity and inventiveness and does not particularly begrudge them the amount of work they cause him.

* ShootTheDog: Steel makes a deal with Time [[spoiler:by giving it a perfectly innocent man (who he does not bother to consult first on the matter) in exchange for releasing its hold on an abandoned railway station]].

* EldritchAbomination: The series' main antagonist(s). Maybe.

* HumanoidAbomination: Possibly, Sapphire, Steel, and their colleagues.

Other "elements" (there were allegedly 127, but the 12 transuranics were "unstable" and could not be used) occasionally assisted them: Lead and Silver both guest starred, and others, such as Jet and Copper, were mentioned. Gold and Ruby appeared in the Big Finish audio continuation.

From 2005 to 2008, Creator/BigFinish released a series of ''Sapphire & Steel'' [[AudioAdaptation audio dramas]]; unusually for Big Finish's audio ranges, the original cast did ''not'' return--bar David Collings as Silver--so Susannah Harker and Creator/DavidWarner were cast in the title roles in a case of TheNthDoctor, which was appropriate anyway. ([=McCallum=], a series regular on ''Series/{{NCIS}}'', was living in the [=US=]; Lumley simply declined. That said, both are on record as still fond of the series and proud of their work on it.) The range is currently unavailable due to licensing issues.

Other "elements" (there were allegedly 127, but the 12 transuranics were "unstable" and could not be used) occasionally assisted them: Lead and Silver both guest-starred, and others, such as Jet, are mentioned.

* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: The serials have no official titles beyond "Adventure/Assignment 1", "Adventure/Assignment 2", etc. An article in the Radio Times gave them unofficial titles which are also used on the American DVD box set: [[spoiler:"Escape Through a Crack in Time", "The Railway Station", "The Creature's Revenge", "The Man Without a Face", "Dr. [=McDee=] Must Die" and "The Trap"]].

* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: The serials have no official titles beyond "Adventure 1", "Adventure 2", etc. An article in the Radio Times gave them unofficial titles which are also used on the American DVD box set: [[spoiler:"Escape Through a Crack in Time", "The Railway Station", "The Creature's Revenge", "The Man Without a Face", "Dr. [=McDee=] Must Die" and "The Trap"]].

* LateArrivalSpoiler: The unofficial but widely-used episode titles, having been created by fans more concerned with having unambiguous referents to episodes they'd all seen already. For example, if you've seen it, you know exactly which Assignment matches the title "[[spoiler:Doctor [=McDee=] Must Die]]", but if you haven't, the title gives away something major that's not revealed until over halfway through the story.

From 2005 to 2008, Creator/BigFinish released a series of ''Sapphire & Steel'' [[AudioAdaptation audio dramas]]; unusually for Big Finish's audio ranges, the original cast did ''not'' return--bar David Collings as Silver--so Susannah Harker and Creator/DavidWarner were cast in the title roles. ([=McCallum=], a series regular on ''Series/{{NCIS}}'', was living in the [=US=]; Lumley simply declined. That said, both are on record as still fond of the series and proud of their work on it.) The range is currently unavailable due to licensing issues.

* TheNthDoctor: Sapphire, Steel.

* TheBadGuyWins[=/=]DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The whole situation was a trap all along and everyone in the diner except Silver was in on it. The last scene of the show has Sapphire and Steel trapped in the café, destined to drift out in space for eternity]].

Sapphire and Steel combat these breaks in time primarily [[MySignificanceSenseIsTingling by glowering at them.]] The show used minimal staging and special effects, with cinematography reminiscent of Creator/IngmarBergman. For example, Steel emptying a refrigerator is the closest thing to an action sequence in the third episode. This lent to the surreal and detached air about the characters, and also kept production costs in the single digits, but often gave the show the pacing of ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' [[ThisIsYourPremiseOnDrugs on thorazine]].