Tuesday 7 December 2010

Star Cops (1987)

An astronaut surveys the Martian landscape of 2027. This is from the final instalment of the BBC’s Star Cops. An episode entitled; Little Green Men and Other Martians, which aired on 31st of August 1987

There wasn’t a lot of love around for sci-fi in the late eighties, at least not from the top brass at the BBC. If they made any at all it was for a shoestring budget and then it would most likely be placed somewhere obscure in the schedules so as not to embarrass anyone. Or they would put it up against ITV’s mighty Coronation Street just so they could prove that no one wanted to watch this kind of  stuff anyway.

Star Cops was never going to get a second series regardless of how good the writing of the show may have been. In fact you have to wonder if it only got made in the first place because its initial pitch would have made it seem more like a novelty cop show than anything too fantastical. You weren’t going to see any silver jump-suits on this show. Lynda Woodfield; the costume designer, was told to keep all the clothes looking convincing and to avoid anything that might be considered stock science-fiction. So what we’ve got here is something based on everything that has gone by in the real world, a sort of made by NASA look that does the job but not a whole lot more. In fact, if not for the orangey goodness of the Martian backdrop, I’m not sure we would have even stopped to look.

Steve

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