Interlude: It Won‘t Be Easy
“Couch Potato” feature, SFX Magazine issue #74, February 2001
This month the Couch Potato team are bound for The High Frontier[1]
, with a selection of episodes from the US cops-in-space series that ran for three seasons between 1989 and 1991. Editor Dave is joined on the couch by Jayne, Paul, and office intern Ben to see if this sci-fi twist on the ‘80s police show stands up as Miami Vice
redux, or a Bergerac
repeat.
Ben: So would I have seen this before?
Paul: Unlikely. No-one really watched it at the time.
Dave: It was first shown in the UK on ITV in the early-90s, basically filling time in various overnight slots. UK Gold put it on Sunday mornings around ‘98.
Ben: Oh God, it’s not another planet-of-the-quarry-pits show, is it?
Paul: Nah, this one had an American budget. So more planet-of-the-plaster-cast-caves.
Dave puts on the DVD, and starts things rolling with the pilot episode, “An Instinct for Murder”. There’s no pre-credits scene, so we’re straight into the opening titles.
Paul: It sounds like the theme from
Bonanza done on a theremin.
Jayne: Trust me, it’s still a hundred times better than the theme from the original British show.
Paul: Wait, this was a remake?
Jayne: Yeah,
Star Cops. It ran on BBC2 for ten episodes in 1987, before the Beeb pulled the plug[2]. Part of their general purge of sci-fi back then.
Dave: It was created by Chris Bucher, who’d worked on
Blake’s Seven and
Doctor Who. After it was cancelled, he sold the idea to Fox in the US. They were looking to cash in on the hype around the new moon missions. I think they were hoping for something to rival
The Next Phase.
With the theremins silenced, we’re introduced to Nathaniel Spring, Chief of Police at the San Francisco Police Department, played by Eric Pierpoint. A body has just been pulled from the bay, and the police computer says it was an accident, but Spring doesn’t trust the machine. While his officers investigate, Spring gets a call from the State Department asking him to take a job as head of the new International Space Police Force. The ISPF, nick-named “Star Cops”, are tasked with solving crime in space, outside of national jurisdictions. Spring reluctantly agrees to take the job, and starts training to be a spaceman.
Ben: Did they film this bit at NASA?
Dave: Yeah. They made an effort to keep the science pretty realistic, at least in the first season. I think they had an astronaut advising them for the space scenes.
With his training montage complete, Spring heads to orbit in a sleek-looking spaceplane, which carries him onwards to the Moon.
Ben: What year is this set in?
Dave: They were never very precise. I think it was supposed to be sometime in the 2020s.
Jayne: The original show was based on a space station for the first few episodes, but the zero-gravity wire work was never convincing, so they moved it to the moon.
Ben: The models still look pretty good.
Dave: They scavenged a lot from around Hollywood. Most of the exterior of Armstrong City is built from leftovers of Lunagrad from the movie
Red Moon.
Spring is met on landing by the Armstrong City Coordinator, a Brit called James Marsh, who introduces Spring to his new team.
Jayne: That’s David Caulder playing Marsh. He was Spring in Star Cops. He was by far the best actor in the original cast, so Boucher persuaded the new producers to give him a recurring role in
The High Frontier.
Spring’s team is a veritable United Nations of space bobbies. Alongside fellow Yank David Sykes (played by Gary Graham), there’s a burly Russian officer, Yuri Krivenko (Elya Baskin), a young Japanese police-woman, Anna Shoun (Tamlyn Tomita), and a feisty Cuban copper, Camila Martinez (Lycia Naff).
Paul: Blimey, they went full-on PC for this one, didn’t they?
Jayne: The original also had an international team, but they used a lot of lazy stereotypes. The Americans were bombastic cowboys, the Italians were all in the mafia, the Japanese were corporate worker-drones, that sort of thing.
The High Frontier wasn’t quite as bad.
Ben: None of the main cast are black, though.
Paul: Still better than New York in
Friends.
As Spring settles in, it soon turns out that people are dying pretty regularly around Armstrong City, but, just like in his San Francisco case, the computers are putting it down to natural causes, in this case random space suit malfunctions.
Paul: Does no-one else think to double-check when the computers tell them it’s natural causes? “Bloke with a bullet hole in the head? Bleep! Probably a heart attack.”
Spring and the team go to work on the case, but not without some serious friction. Sykes in particular resents Spring having be brought in from the outside, and Spring confronts Martinez over some shady underworld deals she’s been involved in.
Ben: Oh yes, no racial stereotyping going on here…
Eventually, the star cops overcome their differences and discover the deaths are part of some elaborate scheme to make it look like space suits are failing so that the contract to provide them to Armstrong City can be cancelled and given to a rival. Or something.
Paul: So, what? It was all an insurance scam?
Dave: Something like that. It was never very clear to me.
Jayne: It’s pretty much a direct translation of the first episode of
Star Cops. Basic 1980s techno-fear plot, with a seasoning of Corporations Are Evil.
As the theremins serenade us out, Dave reaches for the next DVD, and we jump ahead to Season 2, and the episode “Secrets in the Sand”. The opening titles have been revamped, with a number of changes to the main cast, and a more jaunty take on the theme tune. But still with theremins.
Paul: Damn, no Martinez in this season? She was hot!
Jayne: No Sykes, either. Nor Chris Boucher. He fell out with the producers and left the show. They did a major re-vamp for season 2, moving the base of the show to Mars and going for much more action-oriented stories.
Dave: Yeah, the science gets a lot more shaky from this point forward.
Along with the departures, there’s a new addition to the regular line-up: the hulking “Neo-Martian” character Dak, played by ex-wrestler Kevin Nash. His elaborate patchwork skin tone make-up is causing some confusion.
Ben: So, is this guy an alien?
Jayne: No, he’s a genetically engineered human, created to be able to survive on the surface of Mars for hours at a time.
Dave: But he’s basically the stock outsider character, exploring what it means to be human. Sort of like Spock, but without the brains.
Jayne: That, and comic relief.
The star cops are called in to a mining site where a worker has died under mysterious circumstances. The foreman accuses the gang of Neo-Martian workers of killing their Terran supervisor, but when questioned the Neo’s let slip that the mining machines have been acting strangely. The Site Director tries to deflect, claiming the death was an accident after all, but Shoun and Dak decide to investigate further.
Paul: Ah, here we are in the caves again! It’s amazing how many planets are riddled with caves, isn’t it?
As Shoun and Dak walk deeper into the network of identical plaster-cast tunnels, they are suddenly attacked by a rogue mining machine. The spinning drills and blades damage Shoun’s spacesuit, before Dak breaks the machine open with his super-strength, and stops the robot machine.
Ben: Again, that’s pretty good model work. Is that the Mole from
Thunderbirds?
Dave: Definitely inspired by it, I’d say.
Quickly patching Shoun’s torn suit, the pair decide to press on deeper into the mine. Turning a final corner, they are confronted by the Site Director and a pair of Neos, standing in front of a mysterious machine. It has a metallic sheen, but a strange organic shape, and very clearly alien.
Paul: Looks like Optimus Prime took a dump.
Ben: Hold on, how did they get ahead of Shoun and Dak?
Paul: Probably just knocked a hole in the plaster to make a short-cut.
The Director is now monologuing about how his company will exploit the secrets of alien technology to make a fortune.
Paul: They’re never nice corporations, are they? Or neutral corporations?
Dave: I’m pretty sure these guys are a subsidiary of Weyland-Yutani.
Evil Corporate Guy orders the Neo workers to kill Shoun and Dak, and an extended - and pretty unconvincing - fight breaks out.
Paul: Pow! Zap! Blam!
Then a stray rock, thrown by one of the Neos, hits the alien machine, and it starts to hum and glow. The mining machinery in the cave suddenly comes to life and starts menacing the humans. Everyone runs for the tunnels, as bits of polystyrene start falling from the ceiling. Evil Corporate Guy is crushed, of course, but the rest escape, just in time to see an alien spaceship break out from the top of the mountain and fly away.
Paul: Damn, I was hoping for a tripod!
As we finish the episode, the supply of beers is starting to run low, so there’s a pause while Dave makes a quick supply run to the off-license. Not long after his return, we discover how vital it was to keep the alcohol flowing, as we jump into the final episode of season 3, and indeed the whole series, “Ad Astra”.
Ben: Hang on, this is only episode 10.
Dave: Yeah, the show got cancelled halfway through the season. The network were forcing more and more changes on the format, and the whole thing was just running out of steam.
The intro sequence has been re-vamped again, with a completely new theme tune, and lots of explosions and spaceship chases.
Paul: What happened to the theremins?!
Jayne: Not hip enough for the early-90s yoof, apparently.
Ben: We’ve lost some more of the cast, I see.
Jayne: Yes, by this point Tamlyn Tomita was the only one left from the season 1 cast.
Dave: Everyone else had seen the writing on the wall by this point.
As the episode opens, Tomita’s Shoun, now the head of the ISPF on Mars, is having a fiery confrontation with Colonel Travis (Ron Canada) of the Solar Defence Command, a new military force that has been established to defend humanity against the alien threat revealed in season 2. Apparently, the Star Cops have captured an alien in human form in the last episode, and Travis is insisting that he be handed over to the military for interrogation.
Paul: So the aliens can look just like us? That’s convenient for the make-up department.
Jayne: It was actually a pretty smart idea from a story point of view, too. It let them do a bunch of conspiracy-type stories, where you couldn’t be sure who was an alien.
Dave: Yeah, it could have become a
Dark Skies type show, five years earlier, if it hadn’t been canned. Or if the writing had been any good.
While Shoun and Travis have a fascinating discussion on interplanetary jurisprudence, Dak and new character Dr. Sarah Torqueman (Carolyn Seymour) are down in the cells with the prisoner, a played by the rather handsome David Duchovny. Torqueman is trying to make telepathic contact with the prisoner, but is not having much luck reading his alien thoughts.
Ben: Wait a minute, there are telepaths now?
Dave: Don’t ask.
Meanwhile, Shoun and Travis have apparently reached a compromise. The prisoner will remain under the responsibility of the ISPF, but they will transfer with the prisoner to a secure military facility on Phobos, a moon of Mars. Shoun, Dak and Torqueman all go with Travis and the prisoner to Phobos, where it is revealed the SDC has been building a starship using alien technology recovered from Mars.
Ben: How long is this supposed to be since they discovered the aliens?
Dave: About a year.
Paul: Is there another beer? I definitely think I’m going to need another beer.
Once the suspected alien spy has been taken aboard the top-secret warship, he suddenly - to the surprise of everyone - overpowers his guards, locks himself in the bridge, and blasts off from Phobos with our heroes aboard, heading for deep space.
Paul: I just… No words…
As Shoun and Travis try to sabotage the hyperdrive before the ship can jump away from the solar system, and Dak tries to break into the bridge, Torqueman finally manages to make mental contact with the alien. She immediately knocks out Dak with her telepathic powers, then heads to engineering. After similarly disabling Travis, Torqueman is caught in a choke hold by Shoun, who demands that the alien releases Torqueman from his influence. But Torqueman reveals she is not being controlled by the alien, who now joins them in engineering and starts to explain himself. He is from the last free city of his people, who have been enslaved or killed by another species. He was sent to the solar system (which apparently is where they were from originally) to get help to liberate his people. Swayed by this powerful argument, Shoun and a revived Travis agree to go voluntarily with the alien to fight for their freedom. And the episode ends.
Paul: And it was cancelled after this, you say? Philistines!
Jayne: It‘s a real shame how the studios interfered. Season 1 was actually pretty solid, but as time went on they just kept adding more fantastical elements until the whole thing collapsed in a mess.
Dave: The biggest problem they were never able to address is whether it was a cop show that happened to be in space, or a space show that happened to have cops. Fans of police dramas were put off by the sci-fi trappings, while the sort of people who were watching
Star Trek: The Next Phase found the cops-and-robbers stuff dull.
So that ends our re-watch of The High Frontier. Next month, the Couch Potato team tackle Paul Verhoevan’s controversial movie adaptation of Asimov’s classic I, Robot.
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[1] Not to be confused with
The Far Frontier, which is a completely different show.
The High Frontier was a name originally considered for
Star Cops, alluding to the title and libertarian ideals of Gerard O’Neill’s book on space colonisation. No-one involved in the production much liked either title, but it was
Star Cops that stuck.
[2] IOTL
Star Cops only got 9 episodes, as one was cancelled due to an electrician’s strike.
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General note: Much like Part 1’s
Yes, Comrade, this post was done just for fun, and can be happily accepted as part of the canon or ignored, depending on taste. My loose justification for it is that the Zvezda missions and upcoming Freedom lunar landings generated a wider interest in lunar exploration in TTL’s late ‘80s/early ‘90s, so US studios were looking around for suitable concepts they could get on the screen quickly, and the BBC’s
Star Cops got caught in the net. But honestly, that’s just a flimsy excuse for me to indulge my love of the show!
For those interested, all 9 episodes of OTL’s
Star Cops can currently be found on YouTube. It’s flawed… very flawed… but has some strong performances, excellent model work, and an intriguing concept. In case you want to find out more without committing to nine hours of 1980s TV, the 30 minute noughties documentary
The Cult of Star Cops can also be found on YouTube.
Although the version I’ve shown in this post goes awry pretty quickly, IOTL I think this would be a show worth rebooting, in that it’s good enough in concept to be worthwhile, but poor enough in execution to benefit from a modern re-imagining. This has in fact happened to a degree, as
Big Finish have produced a number of audio dramas extending the show, including some of the original cast.
Finally, as an exercise for the reader, let me know if you can spot all the OTL shows I stole elements from to build this alt-Star Cops (especially the more ridiculous aspects)!