The Time Warriors and Beyond

Book Excerpt: Zombie Blues 3 How My Parents Died Zombie

By and copyright Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Cover by Conaire McMullan

The zombie rollercoaster continues as the undead continue to give us their view of being a rotting corpse under the control of Mother Nature.
This time round we meet Comic Book zombie and the zombie who thinks the ending of Toy Story 3 is sacrilege. What happens when a zombie’s faith in God is rocked to its very foundation and why is the spirit of Elvis Presley still going strong in the vast
roaming herds?
A zombie tells why the covid pandemic was much preferable to being undead and why having a club foot makes you feel normal as a zombie. Plus more zombie characters than you can shake a stick at.

Available on Amazon now!

I’m not going to tell you anything about me at all; not my name, country or even where I live. This tale affects each and everyone of us at some point having lost our parents/parent figures like our 47 year old orphan friend you met earlier.

We all think bout the cold touch of death at some point especially as the years gather and the shadow of mortality falls over us. Sometimes we see it if we get sick enough to be hospitalised or through the death of a friend or family member. Youth keeps such scary thoughts at bay for most of us. Eventually they slither up behind us coldly tapping our spines making us shiver enough to claim someone has walked over our graves.

For me that moment was when my parents died; there is no one that doesn’t think about how many years they have left before them when that happens. They wonder will they live longer than their late father or will fate take them younger? If I start training in a gym and change my eating habits to a more healthy scope will that help me live longer? What habits did my Dad have that made him die when he did? Or maybe he didn’t do anything and his time was simply up? Are we born with an internal countdown that slowly measures our time here on Earth until our bodies give up? Or is it how we live that determines how we die? I’ve heard of footballers dropping dead on the football pitch only for a later autopsy to reveal a previously unknown heart condition or for no reason that can be found. People all over the world die at different ages daily including kids, babies and teenagers so there is no given gauge on how to live longer but these deaths are shocking nonetheless. To sit and think of the scale of how many people die every hour and every minute would drive you inane and add to your frenzy so it’s best not to dwell on it.

As I said my Dad died. He died of brain cancer which of course terrifies you straight away. All sorts of thoughts run though your head during the wake and after the funeral has died down. I was drawn to the internet to find out what causes cancer and what I could do to prevent it. I wasn’t a smoker but my poor eating habits married to a meagre exercise programme could be radically different. But like conspiracy theories the internet can be a muddling repository of a confused mish mash of information from all kinds of ‘reliable’ sources. Sadly in this culture most people suck this stuff in. The internet has turned their collective tiny brains to mush and spawned a delusional world of self diagnosing headers.

There are so many pills and supplements out there; exercise programmes and promises from picture perfect specimens of the human race to make you foolishly part with your money in order to live longer. People will spend hours at the gym to stay healthy while others simply go for brisk walks to keep the cardio pumping. I began to explore foods that could contribute to cancer and what diets could benefit us as a species. However I am not going vegan for no one. I like my meat way too much for that path. If I died chewing a succulent steak rather than a celery stick, I’d die happy.

But it’s this battle to cheat death a little bit longer that drives us in those times of grief to dumb ideas and part foolishly with our cash.

My Dad suffered until he took his last breath to the point it was a relief for him to pass on. He had lost his dignity to this disease, diminishing him in ways I could never have fathomed. We should all be allowed to die with some degree of dignity.

Such things spark conversations between us about how we would like to die. Most of us want a death full of meaning making some great sacrifice and going out like a hero. Unfortunately unless you’re a super hero or living the life of a super spy there is no chance of that. The other popular way to go is to die in your sleep and not even know. People make the joke that if they suddenly woke up dead they’d be mortified but that statement does hold a grain of truth to it. Add to that you’d ideally want to die in your bed peacefully surrounded by your loved ones. I say loved ones because you don’t have to be blood to be family in my house.

Forgotten Villains: Michael Ironside’s Lem Johnston

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

I was recently made aware of just how many movies and television shows the younger generation have never heard of, never mind seen. So to that end, we look back at some characters you really need to see before you kick the bucket.

1988 saw the release of Watchers, a monster sci-fi movie that dealt with the themes of animal experimentation. Starring the late Corey Haim as teenager Travis with hair that looks like he stuck his finger in the nearest electrical socket and V’s likeable rogue Michael Ironside as Agent Lem Johnston, it saw Travis find an intelligent golden retriever who is being hunted by a genetically engineered killing machine called an Oxcom (Outside Experimental Combat Mammal). Both are part of a government experiment turning animals into living weapons gone wrong. The dogs are designed to enter an enemy camp and be accepted as people love dogs. The Oxcom would then go in and kill everyone in the camp. The Oxcom and dog were meant to be a symbiotic relationship but all the Oxcom wants to do is kill the dogs. Anyone it finds in the places the dog has been are ripped apart also. Now the Oxcom is killing everyone in its path as it hones in on its prey: Furface the dog. So despite what Facebook tells you, be careful of picking up stray dogs.

Michael Ironside plays a NSO agent called Lem Johnston whose job it is, along with partner Cliff, to kill or capture both subjects and keep the secret. When the bodies start piling up he uses the cover story of a psychopath on the loose to quell police questions. Ironside is the perfect choice for the role of the ruthless NSO agent intent on doing his job no matter what the collateral damage. He has a quiet menace bubbling under the surface as if he is enjoying the chaos. Coupled with a cheeky ‘I listen to nobody’ attitude he comes across as someone who will do the job without question but sees others like the local sheriff sees children in a playground. The only world is Lem’s and ordinary people are an inconvenience in it. Ironside brought the same quality to one of his most famous roles in V: Ham Tyler.

Ham loved to torment Mike Donovan as they fought the reptilian Visitors. Ham had a real sense of getting the job done and the costs of success were acceptable no matter what they were. But he had a caring side that showed through his sarcasm and poking at Donovan. As a former CIA operative who became a mercenary, Ham was the perfect soldier in the Visitor war. Lem lacks Ham’s humanity but both are soldiers focused on their mission. Ham wants to save humanity at any cost and Lem wants to protect the darkest government secrets at all costs.

Where they differ is that Lem has no humanity at all. He is acting as the concerned agent in order to gain people’s trust before he knifes them fatally in the back. He keeps Travis’ girlfriend Tracey drugged as she witnessed the monster kill her father, barely escaping with her life and pretends to take Sheriff Gaines (Duncan Fraser) into his confidence when he realises the mad killer story is a fake. He can barely contain his frustration at the local law’s insistence on sticking their nose into the murders. The later revelation of Lem’s true nature makes his cold determination make sense elevating him to more than just a man on a job. It all lies in Ironside’s delivery and barely concealed fury in his eyes. At times his mouth curls back like he is going to take a bite out of anyone questioning his authority or presence at a crime scene.

It is here that we learn just how bereft of humanity Lem is when he tells Gaines the whole story of what is committing the murders. In every sense Lem is showing a fellow law officer mutual respect only to brutally murder him on the spot and take his eyes out. The audience immediately connects this action with the Oxcom as it removes the eyes of its kills. He reveals that he is the corporation’s third experiment, a genetically engineered assassin with no conscience and callously kills his partner by shooting him in the head. Lem is taken down by first being stabbed in the neck by Travis then shot in the chest by Travis’ mother while trying to murder her, Travis and Stacey. With no conscience, Lem has no qualms about wiping out an entire family to keep the government’s secrets. With soldiers like him and the Oxcom, war will be a much cleaner effective exercise. The enemy will be identified and neutralised without any second thoughts.

Watchers is an enjoyable little movie, not a classic by any means but it did spawn two further sequels (best seen as part of a drinking game). Lem Johnston stands out in Watchers because of the flippant intensity of Ironside’s portrayal. On the outside, he is just a government servant intent on getting the job done but inside he is colder than the Terminator.

Book excerpt: Zombie Blues 3: Photographic Zombie

By and copyright of Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

cover by Conaire McMullan

Available on Amazon now!

Photographic Zombie

I was alone on top of that hill lost in a wave of musings about a history I had not witnessed but could only imagine. I could see the priest at the altar while the faithful gathered round hanging on to every profound word thankful but so afraid for the opportunity to be close to God.

This place was like a photograph; a way to the past we never touched but seemingly lost forever.

As I basked in a time I had not lived, there was a rustle from the long sinewy grass to my left. Being the countryside I had no idea what was there. I had a fear of rats so prayed it wasn’t a nest of them. I also had a freaky run in with a rabbit whose face was figured with myxomatosis on another country walk. It was one of the most creepy disturbing and disgusting things I’d ever seen in my life. The image of that decaying slimy face has stayed with me to this day. Maybe it was a zombie rabbit, one of Mother Nature’s test runs.

But as I watched with slight trepidation, the shape of a grey and black speckled slender necked grouse strutted proudly out from the grass. It never even acknowledged my presence. I was after all the intruder in its habitat and it was almost as if it knew I posed no threat. To my amazement seven chicks waddled out in a line right behind their mother and like their mother never showed any fear of the human close to them. Barely daring to breathe, I deftly picked up my camera, focused the lens and began quickly snapping away at this perfect family as they passed by in this perfect photo. Within minutes the little family disappeared into a dense splay of long grass further down the hill.

Remember that scene in Stand By Me where Wil Wheaton’s character had that solo encounter in the woods with the deer? Well that was exactly what it felt like.

One moment in time captured in my memory for the rest of my life. My moment; an encounter so magical it would mean nothing to anyone else. I sat there looking at the countryside around me in silence. I saw birds wheel around in the blue sky above me hearing their cries. I watched the sentinel blades of grass tremble in unison in the sudden light breeze. I felt something lightly brushed against my hand in the grass. As I squinted in the bright sunlight I saw the familiar black and red mottling of a ladybird walking amid the hairs on the back of my hand. With a flit of its wings it took off into the air. I could hear sheep bleating somewhere nearby and there were horses peeking over a fence in my direction. A sudden caw caught my attention and I looked up at the old stone cross. A magpie had landed on it, its black head jerking round its beady eyes searching for something shiny to steal probably. Finding nothing it cawed in protest and stole away back into the sky. The emerald greenery was dotted with daisies, their pimpled yellow faces framed in white fans, ideal for kids to make daisy chains. In contrast their neighbour crocuses seemed to float between lilac and blue in a carpet woven from bitch Mother Nature herself. How ironic I think now. This was life; a million brief moments caught in the memory of whomever was lucky to observe them.

Forgotten Villains: Scud – Blade 2

photos copyright Warner Bros

As his new Walking Dead mini series Daryl Dixon hits our screens , let’s look back to when Norman Reedus fought mutant vampires alongside the greatest vampire slayer of them all, Blade.

In Blade 2 which to many is the best of the three movies, Blade is plunged into a very reluctant alliance with vampires at the behest of vampire lord, Eli Damaskinos. A new and lethal breed of bloodsuckers called the Reapers is destroying the vampire numbers led by a mysterious figure called Jared Nomak, played by Luke Goss. These Reapers inject their victims with a tongue like protrusion as their face opens up to attack their victims, however their victims return as Reapers and their numbers are growing exponentially. Now Blade, Whistler and new boy Scud must join an elite vampire commando team to eradicate this threat before they consume the world.

Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) had been thought killed at the end of the first Blade movie but Blade has spent the last couple of years tracking down his friend and father figure. It turns out that Whistler has been tortured by vampires and kept just on the edge of death because of his connection with Blade. In that time, Blade has found a new ally with similar skill sets to Whistler. This is Scud.

Played by future Walking Dead legend Norman Reedus, Scud is a cocky, cigarette smoking, tech genius who has taken over Whistler’s workshop. He and Whistler clash initially as the latter takes exception that this kid has wrecked his workshop and interfered with his weapon building. But with the threat of the Reapers, two weapons experts is a distinct advantage. When they are led to a Reaper trap, Scud is trapped in the RV when they attack. He discovers the Reapers can be killed instantly with UV lights which saves the others. Grudgingly impressed by him, Whistler takes time to get to know Scud and how he met Blade.

Scud’s initial encounter with Blade came when he took two girls back to his tent for a threesome. However they turned out to be a pair of vampires who began ripping him apart. His stomach is scarred where they attacked him. Blade intervened, saved him and nursed him back to health. Deciding being closer to Blade with vamps on the loose was preferable to being alone, Scud took over from where Whistler left off designing weapons to give Blade the advantage in the big fight. He and Whistler create UV grenades to take out the Reapers as they take the battle to the sewers where the Reaper are gathering. Like Scud, the grenades go to the extreme and go off like a mini nuclear detonation reducing the Reapers and any regular vamps in the vicinity to ash. Scud also creates small bombs that can be attached to the back of the head and remotely detonated. It is this device that reveals that Scud has been a double agent for the vampires.

He is a familiar with a barcode tattooed inside his lower lip. He has been working with Damaskinos all along. He tells Blade that the vampires are going to win and when that happens he would rather be a pet than cattle. Maybe Scud was traumatised by the attack in the tent or maybe he witnessed something on his adventures with Blade that made him sway to the vampire side but whatever made him change allegiance, Blade has been aware of it all along. By playing along with Scud’s whispered doubts about Whistler’s loyalty having been in the vampire’s clutches for so long, it made Scud sloppy in a way that Blade figured out. The bond between Whistler and Blade can never be broken and Scud simply didn’t understand that. He boasts that one of the skull bombs was a dud designed to give Blade the illusion that he had power over vampire bloodpack leader and hater of Blade, Dieter Reinhardt (Ron Perlman), but such is Blade’s confidence he never needed the bomb to take down Reinhardt. He tells Scud the bomb was no dud before detonating it. Scud is blown to pieces there and then, his last moments spent realising his scheming was for nothing and just how powerful Blade really is. When Scud dies, Whistler mutters he was just beginning to like the kid. Bonding over their tech, the two found a respect that in the end was one sided only.

One little piece of trivia is that Scud wears a t-shirt saying B.P.R.D. This stands for Paranormal Research and Defence which is featured in Hellboy. Two years later Perlman would play Hellboy, cast by Blade 2 director Guillermo Del Toro. Small world.

If only Scud had put his faith in Blade, he together with Whistler and the vampire killer would have been a formidable team. It was only Scud’s turning off their defence systems that let the vampires in initially. They couldn’t bypass it otherwise, indicating how good Scud was at this job. With Whistler’s guidance, he could have been a hero. Instead Scud fell to the lure of false promises of the vampires which, as always, leads to death for familiars.

It’s My Birthday Magic Moment: Silver Bullet’s Murderous Priest

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Photos and video copyright Paramount Pictures

It’s funny how over rimw your perspective chnages with what you like and don’t like. If you are familiar with the Time Warriors and Beyond website then you know I LOVE Silver Bullet. From the very first time I saw it I fell in love with it. It wasn’t until years later I read the novella it is based on and the movie is far tighter and superior. Hero of the story is Marty who cannot walk and relies on a wheelchair. Everything in his life is designed around his disability which pisses his sister off as their parents think she is Marty’s keeper. The most telling sequence of how Marty feels about his condition is when he watches a baseball game of kids his age. There is no dialogue but ti is clear that Marty hurtss at the fact he cannot join in.

It’s my birthday and it is my first as an amputee. I had a below the knee amputation just over a month ago and have been confined to one room since being discharged poorly by the hospital even though I told them my home was not disabled friendly. I fully intend to get a new limb once everyhting is healed so I’m not in the same position as Marty. But I see the disabled ramp outside his home, how his chair has to fit into the car and how he transfers from one chair to another. But the difference is the wheelchair given to me is the wrong one so it has not used at all. Plus mine is not a super speed motorbike like Marty. Marty has the Silver Bullet thanks to his wild Uncle Red played by Gary Busey. It gives Marty a freedom most do not have at all and unknowingly, Uncle Red saves his life.

Now Silver Bullet is all about a werewolf killing people in a small town and Marty almost joins that list but for the fact he spears the wolf in the eye with a rocket firework and is able to escape in his motorbike wheelchair. Now if it was me I’d be eaten in a second but at least I’d go down beating the wolf with a crutch.

But I will walk again, I’m determined so patience is a great but strained virtue. But what gets me every time is when Marty discovers that Reverend Lowe is the werewolf. He sends him notes telling him to kill himself which only angers the priest. So as the man grows closer to the full moon, the wolfier he gets. Lowe is near to the full moon so his dark side decides to kill Marty to keep his secret. What entails is a superbly exciting sequence where Marty is chased by Lowe in his car.

Lowe smashes the wheelchair into the bridge so Marty will fall and drown in the river. But Uncle Red has done a great job on the Silver Bullet and made it strong enough to keep his nephew safe. Marty manages to escape but is running out of fuel. He ends up trapped on a deserted derelict bridge. Lowe gets out of his car and walks towards Marty saying he is going to have an accident and that he cannot help it as his secret must not get out. Even the wolf serves the will of God. Again my crutch would be swinging but Marty trembles in terror as Reverend Lowe walks closer and closer…..

It’s my Birthday Magic Moment, Salem’s Lot, Look at Me!

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Photos copyright CBS

Yes, it’s my birthday so I’m going to share with you guys a couple of my favourite moments from the small and big screen.

Now I’m th ripe young age of 39….sort of, plus a couple of years, young at heart though ok over fifty, I’m sort of glad I was around to watch the TV series Salem’s Lot, the first time round in the early eighties. Based on the Stephen King book which to this day is my favourite book because it scared the life out of me, it detailed how a single vampire, Barlow and his servant, Straker consume the town of Salem’s Lot leaving only two survivors to stop it from happening elsewhere.

What I’ve discovered is that audiences have been desensitised over the years with the likes of Freddy and Jason. Good old jump scare movies just stopped cutting it as effects, gore and technology got better and audiences demanded more than creepy scares. The Conjuring and the Nun have brought that back somewhat today but seeing Salem’s Lot as a kid left a deep, deep impression and love for the genre that will be with me til the day I die.

There are some real terrifying moments in the series and everyone including me remembers newly turned vampire Ralphie Glick who is just a kid, floating out of the fog and scraping at his brother, Danny’s hospital window whispering to be let in. Hypnotised, Danny does so and Ralphie floats in and bites him in the neck. To this day, if I hear something at a window, I’m immediately transported back to that moment. Salem’s Lot is so dripping with nervous trepidation and tension; you just don’t know what is coming next. Good storytelling whether it be horror or sci fi shows evil getting to us through normal everyday things. Doctor Who did it brilliantly and still does for the most part whether it be a plastic chair devouring a man or a stone angel sneaking up on us when we are not looking. Sapphire and Steel did it when time tried to use children and nursery rhymes to break into our world and this is perfectly demonstrated in my clip.

Everyone’s instinct is to welcome people to their home. This is especially prevalent in small towns across the world where everyone knows everyone. What King does so well in Salem’s Lot is use that to wipe the population out for vampire Barlow’s cause. Hence local grave digger and handyman Mike Ryerson and school teacher Jason Burke.

Jason (Lew Ayres) has taught in the local school all his life and genuinely cares about his pupils even after they grow into adulthood. Mike Ryerson (Geoffrey Lewis) is liked by everyone and when he takes unwell, Jason brings him home to his house to recover. However, Jason hears voices one night and Mike is found dead the following morning with a single drop of blood on his collar. Mike is just one of a long line of sudden deaths in the town, all with the seeming same cause.

The following night Jason is alone at home when he hears the crape of a chair on the floor boards above him. He lives alone so cautiously goes upstairs and opens the door to find vampire Mike sitting silently rocking back and forth in a rocking chair. His skin is is blue, his head bowed. He is rocking back and forth, back and forth. Suddenly he stops and snaps his head up to look at Jason. His eyes are white points of light and I immediately recoiled in fear. Jason’s kind act has been used against him to allow this monster to invade his home intent on feeding on him. Never has a rocking chair been so terrifying……

Book Excerpt: Zombie Blues 3: Club Foot Zombie

By and copyright of Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Cover by Conaire McMullan

Available on Amazon now!

Club Foot Zombie

Ok, I should say that I let happened to me. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and this was all my fault. I battled through each bout and came out the other end until the next relapse. All it took was pressure or the wrong way of walking and suddenly there was another ulcer. They would come no matter what I did and at one point I had them on both feet. I learned more words like air cast boot and ended up wearing two of them for a time. I remember an elderly lady sitting in the waiting room looking so frail wearing her boot. Those things are heavy bastards. They lock you leg in place with no muscle movement and I had one for literally a full year. At the end of it I saw one leg was thinner than the other because the muscle has wasted with none use. I was bloody fuming that podiatry had not made me aware of this and that they had allowed me to wear the boot for far longer than was recommended medically. Then again as I found out later certain podiatrists are shit at their jobs and cowardly hide behind the phrase ‘patient care’ for everything. If you’re somehow reading this story you Bonnie and Clyde of the medical industry, I hope you’re being slowly chewed on by a zombie horde you embarrassments.

Anyway a strange mound suddenly began to appear on the top of my foot like a large red boil. I went to podiatry as usual which at this point was almost my second home. The podiatrist took one look and went to get a consultant. I literally had surgery the following day as there was an infection building up a swell of pus around the bones eroding them. The bone was removed and I healed but sleeked silent diabetes was still ticking away. The problem sadly is even when you do wise up and control the disease rather than it controlling you; the damage is done and cannot be reversed. Little did I know the infection had gotten into the bone. Now it’s not all bad news because bone infection can be treated by good blood sugar control along with a course of intravenous antibiotics. However, sometimes the infection sadly can’t be halted. That means drastic measures have to be taken and for the patient that means amputation or partial amputation of limbs.

I lost all the toes on my left foot. I suppose the easiest way to explain it to you is if you make a fist as if to punch someone then that is what the top of my foot looks like now. At some point they may take the rest of the elg because you cannot ever guarantee that the surgery has caught all the bone infection with shows up under an MRI scan.

The way they described it to me was that all the tendons and other bits and pieces were crammed back into the foot and in these early days of healing one wrong move would make the fragile scar open like slamming your fist down on a strawberry jam sandwich.

So I had a partial foot which meant insole blocks with solid ends to replace the lost toes. It fitted into my shoe or trainer and it looked to me very much like a granny’s slipper. I got on with it and the wife always noticed I had a slight limp. Strangely no one else did until it was pointed out to them. I could no longer run and had to be careful how I walked. I was forever checking my feet at night before I got into bed for any signs of anew ulcers. It was a relief when I found none so I went to sleep knowing that I had another day like a normal person.

However, losing all your toes is damaging as it changes the entire pressure structure of your foot. Parts of your sole suddenly find themselves dealing with pressure they had never felt before. Before long you get a neither kick in the balls as new ulcers form and you start you weekly process all over again. I was so conscious of my stump in the showers at the gym and especially in the steam rooms where other gym users could stare and ask questions. I stopped feeling conscious about the stump because I took it as a positive chance to educate others on the dangers of diabetes. It was great because other men opened up about their scars and wounds which made m realise I wasn’t alone in facing stuff like this. I could not run on the treadmill but walk at a faster pace; enough to work up a sweat to help with rehab. I no longer went into the gym sheepishly thinking everyone could see the limp I had. Now I went in with a confidence that the other guys were fighting health issues too and we had all ended up here to keep ourselves alive for a while longer. Of course the fear was always there that when I went to get a shower I would find an ulcer. That discovery would stop my health routine in its tracks just as I had been really enjoying being normal again. I had gotten over all the oppressive surgeries and now was grabbing life again with both hands. I had a slight limp but nothing that was discernable except to those that knew my story.

That what it was for me; I was not the guy with the stump who walked as he did always fearful that when he took his socks off he would find that awful telltale ring of blood which signalled more hospital visits or maybe worse.

I was normal visiting the gym and having the craic in the steam room.

I knew it wouldn’t last and it came for me on one New Year’s Day. I woke up and went to the toilet. Looking down I noticed a splatter of blood. Maybe I caught a nail on my other foot I hoped but upon further inspection, there was that perfect ring of skin peeling off. I knew what to do straight away

Forgotten Heroes: Sapphire and Steel

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Photos copyright ATV Central

Time- oh, time. As Picard says, it’s the companion that walks alongside us through life; to the Doctor and his friends, it’s the ocean in which they swim daily. To Sam Beckett it’s where he can put right where things once went wrong; to the Star trek crews it’s the one place they find themselves in that cannot be altered in case there’s a war with the Klingons except of course if your name’s JJ Abrams, then nothing is sacred, especially if you’re a Vulcan. Talk about kicking a culture when it’s down.

But what if time was your enemy? A living breathing entity that could enter our reality and literally do what it pleased with the innocent and unsuspecting? What if it were the ultimate silent killer; no maniacal laugh, no grand schemes, no boasting of its plans to the hero. What if it were the ultimate enemy where the war literally would never end? No matter how many times you stopped it, another dark scheme would pop up somewhere else.

And who could possibly stand against such an enemy?

Well, that’s where you call in Sapphire and Steel.

This show slipped onto our screens almost without a fanfare in 1979 and ran until 1982 on ITV. Produced by ATV and written almost entirely by P J Hammond. The only exception was story five which was co-written by Anthony Read and Don Houghton, names familiar to Doctor Who fans. Hammond himself incidentally has gone on to contribute two scripts to Torchwood- Small Worlds and From Out of the Rain.

Starring David McCallum and Joanna Lumley (Man from Uncle and The New Avengers respectively), Sapphire and Steel are elementals in human form who are assigned each time to stop whatever is happening. They have mental abilities far beyond anything we know but they can be killed or at least displaced.

At the start of each episode a fiery web would appear with a voice over that would tell you irregularities have been found and that Sapphire and Steel have been assigned (see below).

Uniquely each story has no title and is known only as story one to five and each was basically a stage play with the third story the only one having any location filming. The greatest tool any show has to scare its audiences is to make normal, everyday things turn against us and in story one it was the use of nursery rhymes.

In a house in the country, a mother and father are singing a nursery rhyme to their daughter when some force invades leaving the child alone. All the clocks stop and the parents have vanished. Calling the police only brings Sapphire and Steel.

The series boasted limited special effects and no background music – again making it a stage play of sorts. This only added to the atmosphere and in a lot of respects when the nursery rhymes like Ring around the Rosie and Goosey Goosey Gander are being used by the entity it is very Amityville Horror/ Poltergeist in nature. This utterly terrified the viewer, as winds would strike up out of nowhere as it tried to kill our heroes. it gives it a claustrophobic feel as the monster is literally hiding in the closet.

Steel was gruff, with poor people skills, while Sapphire was more caring. Joanna Lumley was stunning as Sapphire and their underplayed partnership conveyed a deep trust and caring between the two. Long before Steven Moffat made the phrase ‘Tick tock goes the clock’ frightening in Doctor Who, Sapphire and Steel were doing this in abundance. Hammond infused them with lines that could chill to the bone: ‘A-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down’ took on a whole new meaning as the force tried to lure the children – and our heroes – into its trap and much more effectively than Who has ever done. The faceless people in the Doctor Who story the Idiot’s Lantern were done even more chillingly by Sapphire and Steel in a creepy story about old photographs.

They were occasionally helped by other elementals like the effervescent Silver; a Doctor Who that never happened who Steel thought was too casual in his approach. We also met the joyous giant Lead played by Val Pringle. Add the claustrophobic constraints of a house and a simple abandoned train station platform and the show worked perfectly, and to this day remains a fan favourite. There is a real sense that they will not succeed in saving the day as time attacks again and again, manipulating the simple phrases of a nursery rhyme to open dimensions and trap Sapphire inside a painting. If she moves one muscle she will be trapped forever and this is where we see the magic of this show. Steel is helpless to save her and desperately races to free her. Here he is forced to rely on the children and using his emotion to save her but there are no hugs or smiles when he does. The look between the pair conveys a thousand words which highlights their alien qualities and deep respect at the same time. While Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers were special effect filled extravaganzas, Sapphire and Steel works best on minimalism.

Language is the key to this series and knowing what can scare people. Like Danny Glick scraping at the window whispering to be let in in Salem’s Lot scared the life out of people, so Sapphire and Steel achieve this effect in equal measure. As I have already said ‘We all Fall Down’ resonates to this day as it takes on a whole new meaning in this story when twisted by the evil. The world’s survival depends literally on a child not saying these words, something that is the norm for all children. Looping a policeman in time so he is eternally knocking a front door is another example of the beauty of this show. The house is a battleground where children are being used to subvert reality. There is no conscience, no morality, just a cold determination by evil to imprint itself on our world. The resolution lies in the past itself but unlike other shows there is no heart-felt goodbyes at the climax. The problem is solved and Sapphire and Steel simply vanish like ghosts.

The second story was set in a haunted train station and took the series into the horror realm as Sapphire sees a war torn ghost whose warped face is literally on screen for a split second but it is enough to make the audience recoil. It terrifies Sapphire showing that the agents have feelings of sorts. Here they team up with ghost hunter George Tully against an entity called the Darkness feeding on the resentment of soldiers killed in the war. Among them are a submarine crew killed by substandard machinery and a soldier killed 11 minutes after the armistice was signed. Again it this the stage like setting that gives this story its creepiness. You are never quite sure if Sapphire and Steel will actually survive given the forces that rise against them. Whether it is being trapped in a photo, ghost children ready to murder at the command of a faceless entity that lives in every photo ever taken, almost falling from a tall building when being attacked by birds in story three where a tiny baby is accelerated into adulthood by the combined forces of animals that were operated upon in an apartment from the future which no one can see. In an Agatha Christie type story, something in 1933 is killing guests at a mansion party and stealing their bodies in order to rewrite history. in the fifth and final story, our fears come true as our heroes investigate an abandoned service station and café where time has stopped. I’ll never forget the final scene when we learn the inhabitants are rival elemental agents and the station is a space time trap for Sapphire and Steel. We last see them trapped for eternity in a star field staring out the curtained window of the café. There never was a resolution to this and as a kid I was pissed. Every hero can escape from any trap laid for them but this time Sapphire and Steel were gone seemingly forever. They would return in the Big Finish audio plays but not with David McCallum and Joanna Lumley.

Modern horror trying to emulate a good ghost story should stop for a moment and look back at this story. It is a quintessential masterclass in not only how to write a scary story but how to execute it as well with the simplest of tools. And that’s why this show remains one of the most loved in sci-fi history.

Forgotten Villains: The Ovions Battlestar Galactica

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

opyright ABC

Like the Daleks in Doctor Who, the Cylons are synonymous with Battlestar Galactica but what many have forgotten is that there was another deadly enemy facing the Galacticans in the original series back in the seventies. It’s a real pity nothing more was done with them because they really are creatures straight out of a nightmare.

The Ovions were an insectoid race who had been conquered and absorbed into the Cylon Empire. While humans were to be exterminated completely, the Ovions became willing servants of the Empire. They settled on Carillon where they mined tylium for the Empire. They built a resort of casinos and hotel to lure humans to Carillon for the purpose of consuming them.

When the Galactica led by Adama (Lorne Green), arrives at Carillon in the aftermath of the Cylon destruction of the 12 colonies, they find respite as they try to recover. However, the resort carries a deadly secret. It is a trap. In the catacombs below there are Ovion hives in which their young are hatching. Human guests are vanishing without a trace under the noses of the others. When Cassiopeia (Laurette Sprang) disappears, Starbuck (Dirk Benedict, Face from the A-Team) and Apollo (Richard hatch) follow to the lower levels and make a terrifying discovery.

All the vanished guests are placed inside honeycomb feeding chambers where they are absorbed by the young. They are alive as their bodies slowly dissolve to feed the new generation of Ovion babies. As they are placed in the chambers on their backs, they are aware of it all as their bodies and brains slowly dissolve. Such a horrible death is graphic for Galactica. Rescuing Cassiopeia from one of these chambers, they find the Cylons have been there all along and they must flee and not everyone makes it back to the ragtag fleet on a quest to find the lost tribe of Earth. The planet is destroyed in a massive explosion allowing the humans to escape and gain some ground from their Cylon pursuers.

But alas this was the last time we would meet the Ovions. Humans are instinctively afraid of insects so to see a man-size one trying to kill you would trigger a primeval fight or flight. This was the concept behind the Mentara in the Time Warriors books as arachnids can have a paralysing effect on an individual. Losing the Ovions was a shame as another alien race sworn to the destruction of humanity would have had a different edge. To see the insectoids working alongside the robotic Cylons would have been great; allowing expansion of the Ovion culture. Who’s to say all the Ovions were happy under Cylon control? What if some rebel faction saw the humans as a chance to overthrow the Cylons and free the Ovions once more. After all, why else were the Cylons so set on the genocide of the human race? What was it about them that scared the Imperious Leader so much? To the Ovions that could have been a side they had seen of the Cylons; fear.

Even when the series was rebooted the Ovions did not even feature as the Cylons took another direction with the introduction of the human Cylons firmly established as sleepers in the Galactica fleet. This in itself wasn’t a new idea as human Cylons were introduced in Galactica 1980 in the two part episode Night of the Cylons. Personally I thought it was a lazy approach as it squandered the opportunity to explore Cylon culture. What other alien members of their Empire could they use in their attempt to eradicate humanity? I was never a fan of the reboot, despite watching it, as I felt there was so much more that could be done with the story than simply Cylons versus humans.

James & Brendan Dwyer’s Cult Fiction out now!

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

“People don’t come to this city to escape reality; people come to this city because it’s funking awesome.” – Rowdy Roddy Randy

Municipal City: the only place on earth where you can be anyone. Anyone from your favourite movies, books, tv shows, comics, video games or any cult media you can imagine. This is not virtual reality.
This is real.

Tina Lockhart arrives at the City to do exactly that, and is willing to pay any price to get in, willing to take the Elixir drug she needs just to breathe the air, and willing to kill, and risk being killed, just to survive.

Municipal City: the only place on earth where you can do anything. Anything can be replicated, given the right technology, and anything can be done as long as you follow the rules of the game.

But someone isn’t playing by the rules. Someone is murdering players in the safe zones, something that should be impossible. As dangerous as this is for Tina Lockhart, things get worse as she becomes the one accused of these killings, and Tina desperately needs to find the truth in her world of cult fiction.

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