Actor David McCallum, who participated in two iconic TV genre roles – the Russian secret agent Ilya Kuryakin in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and as Ducky Mallard in the procedural NCIS, passed away earlier this week.
McCallum had a long and distinguished career in entertainment – in addition to his roles in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and NCIS, he also had a short run in a re-imagining of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, which used a ton of “green screen” special effects to create the titular character.
But I don’t want to talk about those programs.
I want to talk about this rare British sci-fi series from the late 1970’s.
A show called Sapphire and Steel, where McCallum played opposite Joanna Lumley as two mysterious agents who repair fissures and cracks in time itself. The show ran for six series of nearly 30 episodes, and carried a ton of storyline on a shoestring budget.
Take a look at the first episode.
The show featured McCallum and Lumley appearing in timestreams were strange anomalies exist, and then trying to repair the timeline and fix the anomalies. If you’re thinking it’s similar to the recent Marvel TV series Loki with the Time Variance Authority … you’re not far off.
Many of the episodes of Sapphire and Steel operated in a mix of gothic horror and science fiction, and the writing and acting carried the episodes while special effects were improved on the show’s miniscule budget. And while Doctor Who was the primary British TV science fiction show of its era, shows like Sapphire and Steel (as well as Blake’s 7, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf) all were quality entries in the field.
The entire six-series run of Sapphire and Steel is available on DVD, and I think the full show can be found on the Britbox streaming service. Definitely worth a look.
Oh, and for those fans of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. – although David McCallum was the last main cast member from that show to pass away; Stefanie Powers, who starred as April Dancer on the spinoff show The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., is now the last surviving cast member of the entire U.N.C.L.E. universe.
Close Channel D, indeed.
Chuck The Writer 
David McCallum had also starred in a 2 series entry in England, Colditz, which the BBC co-produced with Universal, and I believe was imported to the US at one point. NCIS made him an icon all over again. RIP.
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