Characters appearing or mentioned in this episode
The Man Without a Face (Shape)
Steel
Sapphire
Liz Duprey
Ruth Phillips (Liz's roommate, in photo and voice only, dies
in this episode)
H. Williamson (in photo only, dies in this episode)
Mercury (mentioned only)
Silver (mentioned only)
parasol girl
Didja Notice?
The screams of Liz's roommate, Ruth Phillips, burning alive
inside a photograph, carry over into the opening few seconds
of the main title theme in this episode.
When Steel walks into Liz's kitchen at 2:14 on the DVD,
notice that the framed photo hanging on the wall is swaying
back-and-forth slightly, an indication that the Man With No
Face has just entered it.
Notice that there is a humming sound that accompanies the
movement of Sapphire's hand as she "scans" each photograph
in Williamson's collection. This has appeared in previous
episodes as well and I'd just sort of taken it as an
"inaudible" sound present only for the audience's benefit, to
indicate she was doing something preternatural. But when
Steel walks into the next room as she's doing this and we
follow him in there, the sound is present but diminished,
seeming to indicate it is an actual sound that occurs when
Sapphire performs this act.
| At 7:01 on the DVD, a tiny pair of crosshairs suddenly
appears in the lower-right quadrant of the screen! It lasts
for only two frames. I assume it was not part of the
original episode presentation and is some kind of artifact
of the video processing to digital for the DVD production.
Have any of my readers seen such a thing on a professional
DVD before? (It also appears on the episode stream at the
Shout Factory website (about 6:59 there). The DVD set
was produced by Shout Factory, so they are obviously using
the same digital version. |
 |
|
Twin
Peaks note: At 7:09 on the DVD, Liz sees the blank
face of the Man Without a Face superimposed over her own in
the mirror. This seems to foreshadow the face of BOB
appearing in the mirror for Leland and Cooper and even the
accidental face of BOB actor Frank Silva caught in a
background mirror in a scene with Sarah Palmer in
Episode 0B: "Northwest
Passage". The moment here also
resembles a moment in
Episode 1: "Traces
to Nowhere", where Sarah sees her daughter
Laura's face over that of Laura's best friend, Donna. |
 |
 |
| Faceless in mirror |
Laura for Donna |
At 7:25 on the DVD, the book Color
Photography in Practice by D.A. Spencer is seen on the
shelf in Williamson's apartment. This is a real book
published in 1938 and having appeared in several editions
over the decades.
Seconds later, Sapphire pulls the book off the
shelf, revealing a
Rollei
manual behind it.
The camera Steel picks up at 10:49 on the DVD appears to be
a Canon.
After the Man Without a Face traps Sapphire and Steel in a
photograph, the children ask him who is it this time and he
tells them, "Two more people. People we've been looking for
for a very long time." This implies he (and others?) have
been trying to stop Sapphire and Steel for longer than just
the duration of this storyline.
At 14:32 on the DVD, a 1970s-1980s circa copy of the
Radio
Times magazine is seen on Liz's kitchen table.
Hoping that they can make a mirror from the glass of the
picture frame they are trapped behind, Steel tells Sapphire
to think of Mecury and Silver, "'Think of what they can do,
borrow from their minds." Apparently, Mercury is another
element agent they have worked with before. We never meet
Mercury in any of Sapphire and Steel's known missions. The
final televised storyline (Assignment
6: The Trap)
substituted "Mercury" for "Lead" in the preamble, and
Mercury is mentioned in the audio adventure "Zero" Part 1.
At 25:43 on the DVD, something that sounds like the cough of
a production crewmember offstage is heard! Listen:
cough.mp3
Sapphire and Steel trap the Man Without a Face in a
kaleidoscope and then plan to put it inside a ship that is
due to sink within minutes and trapped in ice for the next
75 years. After 75 years, they will be waiting for it again.
The closing credits of this episode acknowledge a number of
photographic archives for the historical photos used in this
storyline.
Memorable Dialog
at least he bothered to impress them.mp3
the dangers of mixing the old and the new.mp3
immersed in a pyramid of ice.mp3
find every photograph of you.mp3
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