Star Cops: So Much Promise For One Season Only

By the mid- 1980s the BBC were very averse to science-fiction. Doctor Who, its eternal stalwart series was to be “axed”, only for it to return to the screen in a much reduced format until its final series in 1989. Also, Tripods wasn’t the success the BBC wanted it to be. So when the BBC announced that they were producing something called Star Cops, science fiction fans found it intriguing. The BBC wasn’t calling it science fiction. To them Star Cops was a “futuristic crime thriller”, at least in their internal memos.

The series was devised by Chris Boucher who was working as script editor on Bergerac. However, Boucher had had a sterling career in television science fiction. He had written three Doctor Who stories in the mid 1970s and had ended up as script editor on Terry Nation’s Blake’s 7, a space opera concerning Blake and his freedom fighters who battled the evil Federation that ruled the Galaxy.

Boucher had initially conceived Star Cops as a radio project, but Jonathan Powell, the then head of series at the BBC, commissioned a script for television. Boucher wrote a two-part opening but Powell wanted the two episodes amended into one. By April 1986, the project had received the go ahead. Ten episodes were commissioned and there were strong rumours that there would be more than one series, possibly three. The series got Evgeny Gridneff as producer and Joanna Willett as script editor. Most importantly, the very talented Graeme Harper came on board as one of the two directors, the other being Christopher Baker. Chris Boucher would write the first four episodes and the last, to his annoyance, because he wanted to write all the episodes of his own show, but the producer wouldn’t allow it. Phillip Martin wrote one and John Collee wrote three.

In the effects area, designer Mike Kelt used the innovatory ‘motion control’ technique to give the special effects a classy look. The production even got a good budget allocation. Everything behind the cameras was seemingly complete. The stars in front of the camera were also well cast.

David Calder was cast as the main protagonist. He played Nathan Spring, the strong minded head of the International Space Police Force, Star Cops being their derogatory nickname. It was excellent casting. Calder had been in Wynne and Penkovsky but was more well known from Widows. He projected the right amount of world weariness and scepticism.

His subordinates were also well cast. Erick Ray Evans played David Theroux, second in command and an American Spring could trust. Later on came Colin Devis (played by the underrated Trevor Cooper) and the Australian Pal Kenzy(Linda Newton). Finally, Sayo Inaba (The Killing Fields) played Anna Shoun, a Japanese woman who joined the Star Cops near the end of the “first season”, while Jonathan Adams played the quite empathetic Russian Alexander Krivenko, the coordinator of the European Space Liaison Moonbase.

An Instinct For Murder by creator Chris Boucher introduced the Earth of 2027, where humans are living and working not only in space, but also on the Moon and Mars. The theme song immediately jars. It’s rubbish. For a futuristic police show the theme tune is closer to a soapy song. Star Cops needed a more gutsy and tough opening tune.

Spring is first seen investigating a drowning on Earth. He comes across as an old fashion police detective, who trusts his instincts rather than the conclusion of a computers- “Damn the machines, Brian. What do you say?” A maverick of the future. Spring insists on continuing the investigation, in contradiction to the computer’s verdict of accidental death. Spring, ironically, also has a compact pocket size computer called Box, that assists him with information.

Meanwhile, on the space station Charles De Gaulle, David Theroux, of the International Space Police Force, is concerned about another suit malfunction that has led to another death.

Spring’s Commander (Moray Watson) doesn’t want Spring around as he never obeys too many of his orders. He pushes Spring to apply for the vacant Commander’s position of the Space Police: “assuming of course you want to continue in your present career”.

Unfortunately for Spring, who wants to stay on Earth and is in a serious relationship with Lee Jones (Gennie Nevinson), he gets an interview for the Star Cops job. Spring can’t withdraw his name or else his Commander will sack him. Spring’s second in command, Brian Lincoln (Andrew Secombe) takes over the running of the terrestrial case, with instructions not to listen to the computer but to truly “investigate”. Spring, to his chagrin, has a good interview and is forced to go through astronautical training: “Some days, try as you will, nothing goes wrong.” He has a weak stomach for space and is constantly nauseous during the rest of the episode.

While visiting Charles De Gaulle, Spring is present when another suit malfunction causes another death. Spring is forced to prove himself by solving the case, which, for him, is a double edged sword: solve the case and gain a job he doesn’t want, fail and chances are he won’t have a job when he returns to Earth.

Spring puts himself at risk by going for a space walk to lure the culprits out. With the help of Theroux the culprits are discovered: they’re a company trying to win the lucrative back pack maintenance contract away from the Russians by making out that the Russian’s are incompetent. Spring returns to Earth but his position has been filled by Brian who has been promoted because he solved the terrestrial case in typical Spring manner- through instinct and human detection. The first episode is a good story, though slow at times. It needed a stronger subplot to push it along. The weightlessness scenes aren’t very successful, they look quite tacky. However, the model work is excellent and it only gets better with the Moon scenes. But it does its job: it introduced Nathan Spring and the Star Cops.

In the second episode, Conversations With The Dead, again by Chris Boucher, Spring decides to move the Star Cops base to the Moon, as he cannot get used to the weightlessness of the space station. Back on Earth Lee is murdered. A grieving Spring arrives on Earth to be met by the abrupt and rough Colin Devis, the police detective on the case. Spring sees him as “a cretin’s cretin”. He is being assisted by Corman (Sian Webber), who seems to be too intelligent for the job.

In space, a computer failure leads to a space freighter’s engines firing at the wrong time, sending the two person crew off course and towards certain death, as they will run out of oxygen. Added to that, the US have a new unmanned “civilian” orbital station and have warned that any attempt to inspect the station would be seen as an “act of war”.

Spring is almost killed by the same man who killed Lee. He is saved by Corman. On Moonbase, the Coordinator, Paton (Alan Downer), advises Theroux that the freighter is carrying his cryogenics experiment. The crew could use his equipment to try and survive until help arrives in around eight years time. Though there isn’t any proof, Spring and Theroux strongly suspect that it was Paton himself who reprogrammed the computer to see how well his experimental equipment would work: the benefits would be enormous for the first person who succeeded in space cryogenics.

Though the Paton mystery is solved, Corman arrives on the Moon. She has bad news for Spring: Lee’s assassin has also arrived on the Moon to murder him. Spring goes after him and ends up chasing him through space in a shuttle. The murderer is headed for the secret US station. Then the truth is discovered: the killer and Corman are from the British agents and have set up this charade (and Lee’s murder) so they can investigate the secret space station. But Spring has already deduced this and has alerted the Americans who shoot down the killer’s shuttle as it nears the station.

Devis has been humiliated but decides to take Corman and her spy superiors to court. This will cost him his job so he wants to join the Star Cops. This is a pretty interesting
episode which headed the series in the right direction: away from the space station and their ineffectual weightlessness special effects and towards the Moon and gravity. The script is also stronger and more dense than the first.

Intelligent Listening For Beginners was the third Chris Boucher script and was full of good ideas and crisp writing. On Earth a series of computer malfunctions has lead to a large amount of human deaths and material damage. Two pieces of enigmatic poetry appear on the computer screens before and after the computers malfunction. The first piece states “Oh Rose Thou Art Sick”. The second line reads: “The Invisible Worm That Flies In The Night”. Both are lines of poetry from William Blake. There’s only one conclusion- sabotage.

Spring and Theroux visit Dr. Chandri (David John Pope) at the remote Outpost 9. He has some information for the Star Cops. Chandri’s area of work is trying to develop intelligent listening systems. Spring is impressed: “We’ve always been able to hear more than we could listen to. Are you developing intelligent listening systems?... Machines that listen to everything and decide for themselves what’s worth passing on?”

Chandri is enigmatic but warns Spring that the anarchist Black Hand Gang are planning to hijack a moon shuttle.

This isn’t all on Spring’s plate. Pal Kenzy wants her boss to buy the new laser gun from a consortium she has an interest in. Spring immediately fires her for being corrupt- she was set up by Devis to determine her honesty. Devis has joined the Star Cops and has put Corman, the British spy, behind bars.

Spring revisits Chandri when he discovers that it was Chandri that invented the gun. Chandri invented it to please his father, a computer genius. In each computer there is a control panel that has been invented by his father. Chandri informs Spring that the panel, has been perverted by the military as an anti-computer weapon. When a message is sent to the control panel from the outside, ie. a piece of poetry by William Blake, the panel is activated and acts like a parasite, destroying the computer. That’s what happened on Earth. But it wasn’t the anarchists who activated the virus. It was Chandri himself. His Intelligent Listening Project has been a failure. The information about the shuttle hijack was supplied by the military to Chandri to test his project. Chandri passed on the information to the Star Cops to help him. He cannot accept his failure and activates the virus on Outpost 9. Spring escapes in the “nick of time” as the outpost explodes. However, he has to re-enstate Kenzy
when she and Devis stop the shuttle hijack.

Slowly but surely, the core Star Cops group begins to grow. Now there ar four. Added to that, the series is evolving and becoming an engrossing piece of television. The next episode, also by Boucher, has an excellent script with great ideas and wonderful, sharp dialogue. The classic episode of the show.

Trivial Games And Paranoid Pursuits showed us the hawkish US for the first time. Spring visits the Ronald Reagan space station to try and get the Americans to fund a couple of Star Cops on their station. The US State Department are anti-Spring ever since he sacked the currupt American Hubble from the Star Cops. The Americans don’t believe in international policing. Or as Spring puts it: “They were at the beginning, until they looked up the word international and found that it didn’t mean Americans abroad.”

The American Griffin (Daniel Benzali) has his own problems. Dilly Goodman (Marlena Machey) is constantly ringing up trying to talk to her brother Dr. Harvey Goodman, a microbiologist. However, the Americans insist that there has never been a Goodman in space. They are even more insistent that there has never been a OMZ 13 module at the space station, supposedly where Dr. Goodman worked. Meanwhile, in another area of space, a scavenger duo pick a module with the insignia OMZ 13.

The new Moonbase Coordinator, Russian Alexander Krivenko arrives to take command, which doesn’t help Spring with the Americans. It gets nasty for the Americans when Dilly Goodman reports her missing brother to the Star Cops. The computer information has been got at. Finally, the truth comes out: Goodman was working on a killer bacterium that was deadly both in space and in an atmosphere. Goodman was killed by the bacteria he was working on and the Americans dropped his module towards the Sun. To add a good twist, Dilly Goodman is not his sister, but a reporter looking into the scandal, who coincidently has the same surname.

This was definitely the best episode of the series. Graeme Harper’s direction is sharp and exiting. The dialogue is strong and it’s carried off well by the actors, especially by Calder who is the main asset of the show. He has such a commanding presence. Spring’s verbal jousting with Griffin is very sharp. Especially when they’re discussing Hubble:

Griffin: He may have been a son of a bitch, but he was our son of a bitch.
Spring: My country, right or wrong, eh?
Griffin: There are worse philosophies.
Spring: Yes. Most of them begin with that.
Griffin: You and Theroux should be getting on real well.
Spring: Well, why do you say that?
Griffin: Your second in command is a little short on patriotism.
Spring: I knew there was something about that fellow that I liked.
Griffin: Did you know that he was a student radical?
Spring: Weren’t we all?
Griffin: No.
Spring: Oh. Well, if you’re not a radical as a kid, where’s there to go in your reactionary old age?
Griffin: Not on our space programme, that’s for damn sure.
Spring: Your loss, maybe.
Griffin: I don’t think so.
Spring: He’s turning out to be rather a good copper.
Griffin: Oh, yeah? I preferred Hubble.
Spring: Hubble wasn’t even a good crook.
Griffin: What do you mean he wasn’t a good crook?
Spring: Well, the stupid bastard got caught. I mean, if you’re going to pay somebody off, it’s best to make sure he’s bright enough to make it worth your while.

Excellent stuff.

The same could not be said of the next episode, This Case To Be Opened In A Million Years, by Philip Martin. It dealt with the smuggling of drugs, under the auspices of radiation waste, from the Moon to Earth by a group of Italians that were part of the Mafia. It was quite stereotypical and the main interest, the framing of Spring as corrupt and a drug pusher, was not explored enough. If the episode had developed the nuclear waste and radiation dangers involved in the future, instead of using it as an offhand sub-plot, the episode might have been better.

In Warm Blood, by John Collee, concerned the discovery of a shuttle containing eight corpses. This leads to the suicide of esteemed Nobel Prize winner Christina Janssen (Dawn Keeler). The two incidents have two things in common: they were both working for Hanimed, a large Japanese medical multicultural company and the fact that both incidents happened in compartments that were over 41º C. Anna Shoun, a GP working for Hanimed, is sent by the company to investigate. She is totally loyal to Hanimed, but she realises that the company has lied to her and has manipulated her for its own interests.

It seems the space iron supplement Ferromol, which Hanimed had been secretly giving the crew of eight, clots the blood when the temperature reaches 41º. Spring gets the truth out of the company president, when he traps him in a sauna and pretends to spike his drink with Ferromol. Shoun has been sacked by Hanimed and joins the Star Cops in the next episode.

The seventh episode, A Double Life, again by Collee, dealt with human embryos and cloning. There were stereotypes again, this time Arabs as unflinching revenge murderers. Spring and his gang have to convince Chamsya Assadi, the widow of an arms dealer, that James Bannerman (Brian Gwaspari), the famous concert pianist, is not responsible for the theft and destruction of her embryos, but his clone brother, Albi Teil, whose father was killed by Assadi. Anna stops Albi destroying the last embryo and gains the respect of Devis who doesn’t believe she belongs in the Star Cops.

The third script by John Collee, Other People’s Secrets, deals with the personal secrets that people hold. In a somewhat unsatisfying episode, Dr. Angela Parr (Maggie Ollerenshaw), a
psychiatrist, arrives on Moonbase to interview people on how they are coping in the cramped surroundings. At the same time, Ernest Wolffhart (Geoffrey Bayldon), the Safety
Controller, arrives unexpectedly just as they are suffering a number of technical accidents. The psychiatrist is being very pushy with her questioning and
Kenzy refuses to talk to her. In a funny twist, Devis makes Parr edgy as they were once married .

The mechanical accidents become more serious as it’s Wolffhart himself who is causing all the malfunctions. He enjoys chaos. He drops his screwdriver, which short circuits a group of cables which, in turn, leads to the explosion of an outside door and the decompression of Exit 14, the area where the police offices are located.

Spring and Kenzy are holed up in a little emergency room with little oxygen remaining and Spring spills the one main secret of his life. His father, the most successful and trustworthy computer salesman at his company, was the man responsible for stealing the new project plans and sabotaging the company till it was destroyed. It was Spring himself, as a young and naive detective, who was assigned to the case. As a new detective he didn’t like to pressure people and it was a year later that he solved the case. But it was too late, the company had gone bust. This scene which gives Spring some background, is probably the best part of the episode. It’s another close moment between Spring and Kenzy who have developed a warm working relationship that, no doubt, would have been further developed in the next season.

The final episode of the series was amusingly titled Little Green Men And Other Martians. Chris Boucher returned to pen this one, and it was a good one. Daniel Larwood (Roy Holder), a drunk investigative hack, arrives on Moonbase. He knows Kenzy. She used to be a radical student when he knew her, while he used to have principles, according to her. There must be something big going on if Larwood has travelled to the base. That “big something” is the strong rumour that a Martian has been discovered. That’s why Dr. Philpot (Nigel Hughes) is also on the Moon. He is a curator from the richest museum in the world based, of course, in California. Added to that, Krivenko is keeping quiet about something concerning the Martian.

The Star Cops discover the “little green men” rumour is a fraud set up by Dr. Philpot himself. This episode was a great and tense finale to the “first” season of Star Cops. The blend of writer Chris Boucher and director Graeme Harper once again produced a great episode. The group of characters assembled came from all walks of life, had different life philosophies and created a lot of tension between them, which is great for television drama.

It seemed like a promising programme that could extend into a number of seasons. The Star Cops dealt with the British Secret Service, uranium smuggling and even germ warfare in the first series. It even dared to show the US in a bad light as a group of very hawkish people. So, what went wrong?

For a start it was switched from the main BBC station to the small rating BBC2. To add fire to the bad scheduling, it was shown during summer. That would have knocked out the stuffing for a second series. As director Graeme Harper put it:

“Eight thirty on a Monday night in the middle of summer is not exactly going to attract a big audience. It was a winter night show, and it should have been on Friday, Saturday or Sunday when it would have been wonderful.”
DWB, No. 93, September 1991

For an expensive series getting ratings of only 3 million was not good enough. But that begged the question: why didn’t the BBC schedule it on BBC1 in a good time slot? Once it was cancelled Boucher didn’t see it being revived:

“One of the dangers of getting pulled after one series is that it’s in nobody’s real interest to repeat. Because if it’s repeated in a different slot and it gets better figures, then it’s a black mark against the schedular, and everybody feels bad about the thing being pulled, but if it doesn’t get any figures at all again, what’s the point of bloody showing it.”
DWB, No. 109, January 1993.

Problems continued behind the scenes when Philip Martin's second script was cancelled when a strike hit the BBC. The Drama Department at the time were unhappy making the series. They probably didn’t like making science fiction, and so they didn’t seriously consider a second season.

Whatever the reasons, the sole series of Star Cops was, at times, a great example of what the BBC was capable of . It always had at its disposal good writers, directors and actors who believed in the project. The sad thing about Star Cops was that it undoubtedly would have had a great second season. The potential was definitely there, the problems were ironed out by the end and if great creative people like Graeme Harper believed in the show, there must have been something going for it. The BBC used to be famous for taking risks and nursing programmes until they matured into gems. By the mid-1980s that culture had severely diminished and so there are only nine episodes of Star Cops to enjoy.



STAR COPS

SERIES DEVISED BY CHRIS BOUCHER

PRODUCER- Evgeny Gridneff
SCRIPT EDITOR- Joanna Willett
BBC2 - 1987

DAVID CALDER- Nathan Spring
ERICK RAY EVANS- David Theroux
LINDA NEWTON- Pal Kenzy
TREVOR COOPER- Colin Devis
JONATHAN ADAMS- Dr. Alexander Krivenko
SAYO INABA- Dr. Anna Shoun


1. AN INSTINCT FOR MURDER - 6/7/87
WR- CHRIS BOUCHER DIR- CHRISTOPHER BAKER

2. CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAD - 13/7/87
WR- CHRIS BOUCHER DIR- CHRISTOPHER BAKER

3. INTELLIGENT LISTENING FOR BEGINNERS- 20/7/87
WR- CHRIS BOUCHER DIR- CHRISTOPHER BAKER

4. TRIVIAL GAMES AND PARANOID PURSUITS- 27/7/87
WR- CHRIS BOUCHER DIR- GRAEME HARPER

5. THIS CASE TO BE OPENED IN A MILLION YEARS- 3/8/87
WR- PHILIP MARTIN DIR- GRAEME HARPER

6. IN WARM BLOOD- 10/8/87
WR- JOHN COLLEE DIR- GRAEME HARPER

7. A DOUBLE LIFE - 17/8/87
WR- JOHN COLLEE DIR- CHRISTOPHER BAKER

8. OTHER PEOPLE’S SECRETS - 24/8/87
WR- JOHN COLLEE DIR- CHRISTOPHER BAKER

9. LITTLE GREEN MEN AND OTHER MARTIANS- 31/8/87
WR- CHRIS BOUCHER DIR- GRAEME HARPER