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Max Headroom Series 2 (UK)

Episode 10

The Max Headroom ShowMax goes insane briefly, ranting about stagehands who sit idle while he rakes in millions, before waxing poetic about America, wondering if cowpokes poke cows, and lamenting that “the Indians have never been forgiven for getting there first.” Max then gives British mime artist Les Bubb his first TV exposure. Tracey Ullman visits Max, who proceeds to ask her questions in a Cockney accent, including the rumor that she’s developing a show for American TV. And finally, Max wants somebody to stop that.

written by Paul Owen & David Hansen
with additional material by Jim Pullin, Bob Sinfield and Matt Frewer
directed by David G. Hillier
music by Matt Forrest and Art Of Noise

The Max Headroom ShowCast: Matt Frewer (Max Headroom), Tracey Ullman (herself), Les Bubb (himself)

Videos: “Panic” (The Smiths), “Breakaway” (Tracey Ullman), “Sledgehammer” (Peter Gabriel)

Notes: Tracey Ullman did indeed go on to create her own series on the new Fox network in the States; it was one of the fourth network’s first original series.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Max Headroom Season 1 (US)

Blipverts

Max HeadroomNetwork 23 TV reporter Edison Carter investigates the unusual death of a man in a low-rent apartment. Police aren’t saying much, and they’re not cooperating with Edison’s investigations – in fact, they sedate the victim’s wife while Edison is interviewing her during a live newscast. Edison’s boss gets a call from Network 23’s board of directors, ordering him to pull the story immediately – and the moment Edison’s camera light goes out when his satellite feed is cut, the police turn on him, and he has to make a desperate escape to the relative safety of the Network 23 helicopter. When he returns to the newsroom, Edison promptly decks his controller, Gorrister, and demands to know why Murray allowd the network’s board to pull the story.

In fact, what neither Edison nor Murray knows is that Edison was dangerously close to exposing the hazardous nature of Network 23’s new method of advertising, blipverts. The high-speed, compressed blipverts, while effectively cramming a few minutes’ worth of advertising messages into the viewer’s brain in nanoseconds, can also cause more sedentary viewers to spontaneously combust. Network 23’s corrupt chairman, Ned Grossberg, could care less about the mounting death toll, and resists board member Ben Cheviot’s insistence that the blipverts should be pulled in the interest of public safety.

Murray assigns a new controller, Theora Jones, to work with Edison. Though the jaded reporter is skeptical, he’s struck by her beauty – and her prolific hacking skills when she finds Network 23’s well-hidden research and development department. The network’s R&D isn’t so much a think tank as it is a single mind, brilliant boy inventor Bryce Lynch. Edison breaks into Bryce’s concealed apartment and finds the only evidence in existence of the deadly nature of blipverts. Before he can transmit that evidence back to the newsroom, however, Edison finds his satellite camera jammed and his network’s own security forces hot on his tail. With Theora’s help, Edison gets to a motorcycle and nearly escapes with what he’s learned, but Bryce springs a trap by remote control, sending Edison’s bike airborne. The last thing Edison sees before he slams into it is a clearance sign reading “Max Headroom, 2.3 meters.”

Edison is taken back to Bryce’s apartment. Grossberg wants Edison questioned about what he knows of the blipverts, but doesn’t want to risk awakening the reporter and allowing him to learn more. Bryce comes up with an alternative: scanning Edison’s synapses, transferring his knowledge and memories into the computer, and asking the resulting computer-generated construct what it knows. What Bryce doesn’t anticipate, however, is that the artificial intelligence created from Edison Carter’s mind – a personality which assumes a name from Edison’s last memory, Max Headroom – is every bit as stubborn and smart as Edison himself. And even if Edison is killed and disposed of, Max has worked his way into Network 23’s electronic infrastructure, and Max remembers everything Edison has seen, including the vital evidence that could topple the network and its chairman.

Season One Regular Cast: Matt Frewer (Edison Carter / Max Headroom), Amanda Pays (Theora Jones), George Coe (Ben Cheviot), Chris Young (Bryce Lynch), Jeffrey Tambor (Murray)

written by Joe Gannon and Steve Roberts
based on the British screenplay by Steve Roberts
directed by Farhad Mann
music by Cory Lerios

Max HeadroomGuest Cast: Jere Burns (Breughel), Rick Ducommon (Mahler), Charles Rocket (Ned Grossberg), Hank Garrett (Ashful), Virginia Kiser (Julia Formby), Lee Wilkof (Pat Zein), Billie Bird (Florence Nightingale), Ken Swofford (Gorrister), Viola Kates Stimpson (?), Urene Olga Lopez (?), Pearl Shear (?), Ricardo Gutierrez (Martinez), Skip O’Brien (?), Matt Roe (?), John Davey (?), Taylor Presnell (?), Heath Jobes (?)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Max Headroom Season 1 (US)

Rakers

Max HeadroomAs Max grows paranoid thinking that a napalm-kerosene-and-testosterone soaked kids’ show called “Missile Mike” is an actual news report about a man who goes around shooting things and blowing them up, things blow up in Theora’s personal life. She receives a rushed phone call from her sister-in-law Winnie, who warns her that her brother Shawn has taken up the dangerous sport of raking. An illegal underground sport with a high body count, raking combines jet-powered skateboarding with no-holds-barred unarmed combat. Theora sets Edison onto the case, but to break into a raking arena – let alone stop a match in which an already-injured Shawn is scheduled to fight – Edison will be risking life and limb. And while Edison thinks raking should be outlawed altogether, Zik Zak is considering both legalizing and sponsoring it.

written by James Crocker and Steve Roberts
story by James Crocker
directed by Thomas J. Wright
music by Cory Lerios

Max HeadroomGuest Cast: Virginia Kiser (Formby), Hank Garrett (?), Lee Wilkof (Pat Zein), J.W. Smith (Rick), Howard Sherman (Simon Peller), Lee DeBroux (?), Joseph Ruskin (Promoter), Wortham Krimmer (Jack Friday), Wynn Irwin (?), Arsenio “Sonny” Trinidad (?), Ricardo Gutierrez (Martinez), B.L. Collins (?), Ron D. Ross (?), Kimberly Delfin (Winnie), Peter Cohl (Shawn Jones), Tain Bodkin (?), Brian Libby (?), Doug Hale (?), Bobby Brett (?), Kawena Charlot (Rick’s bodyguard), Kedren Zadikov (?), Jeffrey Weisman (?), Tabi Cooper (?), David Preston (?), Lorilyn Huckster (?), Heath Jones (?)

Notes: This is the first episode in which it’s hinted that televisions can no longer be turned off. The “Missile Mike” gag is a slight swipe at one of Max Headroom’s real-life TV contemporaries, The A-Team.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Max Headroom Season 1 (US)

Body Banks

Max HeadroomTwo people are stalked and captured by a pair of thugs. They beat the man into unconsciousness, and take the woman who was with him to a body bank, where she’s moved to the top of the line for an organ transplant surgery – whether she’s a willing donor or not. The man goes to Edison with the story of the attack and the kidnapping, and Edison takes on the story. But he has to go to the streets to find the “blanks,” or unregistered citizens, and he has to recruit the help of Blank Reg, a rough-and-tumble but good-hearted blank who runs a pirate TV station called Big Time TV. Reg leads Edison to the two thugs, who in turn put him within arm’s reach of the doctor to whom they’ve been taking their victims – all of them female. But before Edison can ask too many questions, the doctor is killed. Edison is fresh out of clues, and Max may be able to help him, but Cheviot and Network 23’s corporate sponsors at Zik Zak want Max’s attentions on sponsorship announcements, whether or not it means a woman’s life.

written by Steve Roberts
directed by Francis De Lia
music by Cory Lerios

Guest Cast: William Morgan Sheppard (Blank Reg), Concetta Tomei (Dominique), Jere Burns (Breughel), Rick Ducommon (Mahler), Virginia Kiser (Formby), Hank Garrett (Ashful), Lee Wilkof (Pat Zein), J.W. Smith (Rick), Scott Kraft (Mel), Claude Earl Jones (Dr. Mason), Robert Dowdell (Plantegenet’s doctor), James “Gypsy” Haake (Nurse), John Winston (Plantagenet), Jenny Gago (Nurse), Arsenio “Sonny” Trinidad (?), Peri Kaczmarek (Rayna), Fred Holliday (News anchor), Michael Paul Max HeadroomChan (Japanese doctor), Grace Simmons (Poncho), B.J. Collins (?), Jay Arlen Jones (?), Rick Deats (?), Juliette Cummins (?), and Fang

Notes: Blank Reg establishes here that books have become a rarity – and are valued only by a select few, including him (though we later learn, in Lost Tapes, that Reg can’t read). Reg is played by William Morgan Sheppard who, sometimes credited as W.M. Sheppard or W. Morgan Sheppard, has appeared in everything from Babylon 5 (Soul Hunter) to Star Trek: Voyager (Bliss), to Doctor Who (The Impossible Astronaut) with many other genre guest starring appearances along the way.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Max Headroom Season 1 (US)

Security Systems

Max HeadroomSecurity Systems Inc. is the world’s leading provider of personal and corporate security and surveillance, with access to more priveleged information than any single government in the world. And now a hostile takeover of SS is in the works, and while the company’s CEO says she’s terrified of the prospects, she outwardly seems calm – and Edison smells a rat. But when he persists in questioning her, he suddenly discovers that his credit and his ID won’t work anywhere. He can’t go home, can’t go to Network 23, and the Metro Cops are hot on his tail. Edison winds up getting help from Blank Reg and Dominique, but he’s going to need more help from Max and Bryce – and he can’t even hope to approach the Network 23 building without being arrested. Bryce is the only one with the hacking skills necessary to make Edison a citizen again and uncover the secret of who’s buying out SS…but even he may be outmatched by the SS central computer.

written by Michael Cassutt
directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
music by Cory Lerios

Guest Cast: William Morgan Sheppard (Blank Max HeadroomReg), Carol Mayo Jenkins (Valerie Towne), J.W. Smith (Rick), Concetta Tomei (Dominique), Ricardo Gutierrez (Martinez), David Allyn (SSI Tech #1), Peter Mins (SSI Tech #2), Julia Calderon (Mrs. Rebus), Santos Morales (Mr. Rebus), Sally Stevens (voice of A7), Mark Voland (SSI Guard)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Max Headroom Season 1 (US)

War

Max HeadroomA news package broker contacts Network 23 and offers exclusive access to a terrorist group – for a premium, of course. Cheviot refuses to buy, and when the White Brigade blows up an entire city block, only rival network Breakthru TV has coverage of the event. Network 23’s board fumes over Breakthru’s sudden ratings surge – in the middle of a global rating sweep – but they jump at the chance of having Edison Carter expose the sinister link between Breakthru TV and the terrorists themselves. Edison eventually tracks the terrorists to their headquarters, and finds that their entire war is being fought on television, a war of publicity with as few casualties as possible to avoid negative reaction from the viewers. But when the bombers feel that their deal with Breakthru TV is no longer serving their cause, they change their policy regarding casualties…in a drastic way.

written by Martin Pasko, Rebecca Parr, Michael Cassutt, and Steve Roberts
directed by Thomas J. Wright
music by Cory Lerios

Guest Cast: Gary Swanson (Frank Braddock), Virginia Kiser (Formby), Hank Garrett (?), Lee Wilkof (Pat Zein), Richard Lineback (Hewett), Robert Max HeadroomO’Reilly (Croyd Hauser), Lisa Niemi (Janie Crane), J. Michael Flynn (Lucien), Arsenio “Sonny” Trinidad (?), Ricardo Gutierrez (Martinez), Tom Miller (Breakthru TV Reporter), Michael Colin Ward (Officer Wendt), Randall Caldwell (Phil), Yana Nirvana (Police Chief), Spencer Allan (Breakthru TV Anchor)

Notes: Guest star Robert O’Reilly may be best known to genre fans as Gowron, the leader of the Klingon Empire in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. This episode is also the source of the series-defining exchange: “Since when has news been entertainment?” “Since it was invented.”

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Max Headroom Season 1 (US)

Blanks

Max HeadroomJust as Simon Peller wins another term through the public telelection system, satellite signals go haywire, interrupting broadcasts on all the networks. And TV isn’t the only thing affected – even bank service has been disrupted. Then an ultimatum is issued: if Peller doesn’t reverse his policy of imprisoning all blanks – unregistered citizens with enough computer know-how to remove their identities from the central computer – the central computer will be crashed. Bryce and Theora hatch a plan to find the hackers by getting their attention with the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world – Max himself. But when the hackers take the bait and keep him, not allowing Max to return to Bryce’s computer, Edison has to resort to more extreme measures to keep a systems crash from laying the city to waste at sundown…and someone he considers a friend may be on the wrong side of the fight.

written by Steve Roberts
directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
music by Cory Lerios

Guest Cast: William Morgan Sheppard (Blank Reg), Peter Crook (Blank Bruno), Virginia Kiser (Formby), Hank Garrett (?), Max HeadroomLee Wilkof (Pat Zein), Howard Sherman (Simon Peller), Concetta Tomei (Dominique), Lisa Niemi (Janie Crane), Elizabeth Gorcey (Woman), Tom Everett (Tracher), Rob Narita (Ronald), Kenneth White (Police Officer), John Durbin (Police Officer), Lycia Naff (?), Cynthia Stevenson (?), Brian Brophy (?), Sandra Sexton (?), John Fleck (?), and Fang

Notes: This is the first episode where Bryce’s alma mater, the Academy of Computer Sciences, is mentioned; Blank Bruno was Bryce’s instructor before going underground.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Star Cops TV Series

An Instinct For Murder

Star CopsDetective Nathan Spring is frustrated when a suspicious drowning is declared to be free of foul play by the police department’s computers. In the highly automated future, computer investigation helps to separate cases which need direct police intervention from those that don’t, but despite the computer’s analysis that there was no sign of foul play, Spring pursues the investigation anyway, devoting the manpower of his underbudgeted, understaffed department to it. When he’s called on the carpet by his superior, Spring is advised to take the opportunity to apply for the vacant job of the chief of the Internaitonal Space Police – or the Star Cops, as they’re sometimes less than affectionately known. Spring, who has never even been into space, dismisses the idea instantly…until his supervisor informs him that taking the position is Spring’s only hope for career advancement.

Spring interviews for the position and finds himself en route to a European-staffed space station whose crew has experienced a number of recent fatal accidents with faulty spacesuits. Again, the initial investigation is handled by a computer, which fails to detect any kind of pattern or motivation for foul play. Spring follows his instincts instead, befriending Star Cop David Theroux, who has already joined the crew and investigated the incidents himself, to no avail. But even then, Spring hasn’t ruled Theroux out as a suspect. Even though he has only rookie-level astronaut training, Spring decides to put his own life on the line in an attempt to draw the suspects out into the open – something which goes against every standard Star Cop procedure – only to discover that he’s up against an organized criminal operation targeting someone much bigger than the Star Cops.

written by Chris Boucher
directed by Christopher Baker
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Moray Watson (Commander), Keith Varnier (Controller), Gennie Nevinson (Lee Jones), Linda Newton (Pal Kenzy), Andrew Secombe (Brian Lincoln), Frederik de Groot (Hans Diter), Luke Hanson (Lars Hendvorrsen), Katja Kersten (Marie Mueller)

Notes: A very short-lived late ’80s attempt at a more adult science fiction series than Doctor Who (which, at the time, had just entered Sylvester McCoy’s tenure), Star Cops was created by former Doctor Who writer and Blake’s 7 script editor Chris Boucher. The series was only watched by a small number of people, thanks to a late-night BBC2 timeslot, very thin promotional efforts, and constant battles being fought behind the scenes between Boucher and producer Evgeny Gridneff. This episode was originally written as a two-parter, and was quickly condensed into a single hour as Gridneff’s insistence; it also made use of stock footage of underwater astronaut buoyancy training provided by McDonnell-Douglas, voiced over by the show’s cast. Though never credited for it on screen, David Calder also provides the voice of Box, Spring’s portable (and, it must be said in light of Boucher’s Blake’s 7 background, Orac-like) computer, throughout the series.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
1980s Season 2 Twilight Zone

Time And Teresa Golowitz / Voices In The Earth

The Twilight ZoneTime And Teresa Golowitz: Uninspired Broadway songwriter Bluestone has a visitor who identifies himself only as Prince…and Prince points out that Bluestone is actually lying on the floor dead, rather than his spirit, which is still sitting at the piano. Offered one visit to any event or place in time or space before judgement is passed on him, Bluestone opts to go back to 1948, a party in his senior year of high school, where he hopes to convince his high school crush to sleep with him. Unimpressed, Prince grants the request, but when he arrives in 1948, Bluestone is fixated on another classmate: a shy, awkward girl whose fate he doesn’t remember. When Prince reminds him that this night, this party, convinced Teresa Golowitz to end her own life, Bluestone decides to change his plans for the evening, along with history…whether that pleases any higher powers or not.

teleplay by Alan Brennert
based on the short story by Parke Godwin
directed by Shelley Levinson
music by William Goldstein

Twilight ZoneCast: Gene Barry (Prince), Grant Heslov (Blaustein), Kristi Lynes (Teresa Golowitz), Paul Sand (Bluestone), Gina Gershon (Laura), Beau Dremann (Bob), Heather Haase (Mary Ellen Cosgrove), Wally Ward (Nelson Baxley), J.D. Roth (Boy at Party), Laurel Green (Girl at Party)

Voices In The Earth: An aging academic heads up the last scientific expedition to the ecologically ruined, abandoned planet Earth before the planet is scheduled to be strip-mined to its core. Unsure of precisely what it is he seeks, he explores abandoned structures on foot and keeps encountering glowing people who appear to be from the past, people who implore him to join them. They claim to be the spirits of the last Earth-born humans, the ones who were left on the planet while those who had the means to do so fled into space…and they need a host body to avoid being destroyed with what’s left of Earth.

Twilight Zonewritten by Alan Brennert
directed by Curtis Harrington
music by William Goldstein

Cast: Martin Balsam (Professor Donald Knowles), Jenny Agutter (Jacinda Carlyle), Wortham Krimmer (Leader), Tim Russ (Archer), Dennis Haskins (Bledsoe), Ted Lehmann (Old Man), Eve Brenner (Old Woman), Sandra Ganzer (Girl), C’Esca Lawrence (Young Woman), Christopher Lofton (Middle-Aged Man)

Notes: The short story on which Time And Teresa Golowitz was based, “Influencing The Hell Out Of Time And Teresa Golowitz”, appeared in January 1982’s Twilight Zone Magazine; that segment features early career appearances for Gina Gershon and Grant Heslov (Hulu’s Catch-22). The second segment is packed with genre fan favorites, including Martin Balsam (The Six Million Dollar Man), Jenny Agutter (Logan’s Run, Red Dwarf), Tim Russ (Star Trek: Voyager), and Wortham Krimmer (Babylon 5), along with future Saved By The Bell star Dennis Haskins.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Werewolf

Werewolf (Pilot)

WerewolfGrad student Eric Cord arrives at his apartment to find his roommate, Ted, in an agitated state – complete with a gun and silver bullets left on a table for Eric. Ted reveals that, while he was working on a fishing boat captained by one Janos Skorzeny, he discovered that Skorzeny was a werewolf and was attacked and bitten by him. Ted now turns into a werewolf, and knows he has been responsible for some recent gruesome attacks on innocent bystanders…and he wants Eric to shoot him with the silver bullets, ending his suffering. A disbelieving Eric doesn’t do it, however, and when Ted transforms, Eric himself is bitten. Only then does he grab the gun and shoot Ted, but the result is that Eric is arrested and charged with murder. Before dying, Ted mentioned that the one way for a werewolf to free himself from the curse is to kill the originator of his werewolf bloodline. Eric skips bail and goes looking for Janos Skorzeny, while a bounty hunter named Alamo Joe Rogan is hired to find Eric himself. Skorzeny escapes, and Eric is now a wanted man – one who is, perhaps, even more dangerous than the authorities pursuing him could possibly imagine.

Werewolfwritten by Frank Lupo
directed by David Hemmings
music by Sylvester LeVay

Cast: John J. York (Eric Cord), Lance LeGault (Alamo Joe), Chuck Connors (Janos Skorzeny), Raphael Sbarge (Ted Nichols), Michelle Johnson (Kelly Nichols), Ethan Phillips (Eddie Armondo), Robert Krantz (Rudy), Stanley Grover (Rudi Armandi), John Quade (Storage Shed Owner), Gail O’Grady (Volkswagen Victim), Linden Ashby (Volkswagen Victim), Toni Attell (Eddie’s Secretary), Andrew Magarian (Mr. Nichols), Lynn Danielson (Funeral Attendee), Harold Ayer (Mr. Manickindam), Geraldine O’Brien (Mrs. Manickindam), Robert Sutton (Motel Guest)

WerewolfNotes: This was the first genre series to be produced for the brand new Fox network. The series pilot episode is written by Werewolf creator Frank Lupo (also creator of The A-Team, Hunter, and Riptide); the werewolf characters were designed by Rick Baker. Though Werewolf was heavily promoted as featuring Chuck Connors as its main villain, Connors demanded more money for future appearances, and as a result only appeared in four further episodes before being written out. His character, Janos Skorzeny, was named after the vampire in the 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker, which was the launching pad for a sequel, The Night Strangler (1973) and the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

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Star Cops TV Series

Conversations With The Dead

Star CopsAn accident aboard the Earth-to-Mars supply freighter Daedalus fires the ship’s engines long before they should, blasting the ship off-course. Its crew of two is doomed: while they’re in no danger of hitting anything, they’ll run out of air eventually. Even though the crew is still in contact, they’ve all but been declared dead already. The Star Cops begin an investigation, but Nathan has a distraction of his own: his girlfriend on Earth has been brutally murdered. When he arrives to personally assist in the investigation, he finds they he’s being treated as a suspect in the crime. This leaves David to spearhead the Daedalus investigation, during the course of which he makes a discovery that could save the crew’s lives: experimental cryogenic equipment is stored about the Daedalus that could be used to put the crew into hibernation, while there’s just enough fuel to put the Daedalus on a long course back home…if the airlocks are opened selectively. The problem is that it’ll take eight years for Daedalus to reach home, and until then nobody will know if the crew survived or not. And on Earth, Nathan receives a message stating that his girlfriend was but the first victim – and that he will be the next to die.

written by Chris Boucher
directed by Christopher Baker
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Gennie Nevinson (Lee Jones), Sian Webber (Corman), Alan Downer (Paton), Sean Scanlan (Fox), Carmen Gomez (Gina), Benny Young (John Smith), Deborah Manship (Traffic Controller), Richard Ireson (Mike), Rosie Kerslake (Lara)

Notes: The last-ditch maneuver to save the Daedalus is based on a real scientific principle called a “free return trajectory”, a save-our-skins option that involves using the available fuel and possibly gravity assists from celestial bodies to put a spacecraft on track to return home with a minimum expenditure of resources. A free return trajectory often assumes that available fuel is at a minimum, due to whatever has forced mission planners to consider a free return trajectory in the first place. Apollo 13’s crew was successfully returned to Earth in 1970 by use of a free return trajectory that involved swinging around the moon.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Star Cops TV Series

Intelligent Listening For Beginners

Star CopsSpring and Theroux are summoned to Moonbase 9, a high-security-clearance facility whose chief scientist, Michael Chandri, claims to have invented a means of nearly foolproof intelligence-gathering. His invention could come in particularly handy in the investigation of recent incidents of computer failures that have had tragic results: the computer controlling the automatic functions at a chemical plant fails, causing a massive explosion, and the traffic computer governing the subway tunnel under the English Channel allows a tragic collision. In the meantime, Spring finds himself having to clean house as he begins a purge of Star Cops with questionable associations leaving them open to corruption. Some of them are happy to make their exit, but headstrong Pal Kenzy fights Spring every step of the way and even promises retribution. Theroux gets a promotion – and his new stripe comes with the responsibility of personally handling the rest of the dismissals – while Colin Devis, the detective Spring recruited from Earth, is assigned the task of procuring new weapons for the Star Cops, a job which seems to lead to Kenzy once again. Fearing that he’s losing his touch, Spring is vexed by the computer failures, and by the apparent inability of Chandri to find the cause of the problem with the vast intelligence-gathering apparatus at his disposal.

written by Chris Boucher
directed by Christopher Baker
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Linda Newton (Pal Kenzy), David John Pope (Michael Chandri), Trevor Butler (Leo), Thomas Coulthard (Ben), Tara Ward (Shuttle Hostess), Peter Quince (Shift Foreman), Peter Glancy (Process Operator)

Notes: This episode anticipates computer viruses and worms by several years, though the concept was already in circulation in 1987, even if it wasn’t necessarily the real day-to-day issue that it is now. Writer Chris Boucher also incorporated the element of widespread computer control causing catastrophes into his 1979 Blake’s 7 season finale, Star One.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Star Cops TV Series

Trivial Games And Paranoid Pursuits

Star CopsSpring goes to pay a visit to Space Station Ronald Reagan, operated by the United States, to introduce himself and recruit a new American Star Cop to replace the disgraced Hubble; instead, he finds himself on the defensive as the station’s commander complains bitterly about the dismissal of Hubble from the Star Cops – and the fact that Theroux is still in uniform. Pal Kenzy, fresh from writing her own ticket to reinstatement as a Star Cop following the lunar shuttle hijacking rescue, is frustrated to find that her duties amount to little more than a dispatcher. She manages to annoy an American woman calling to report that her brother has gone missing from Space Station Ronald Reagan, whose crew insists that he was never even aboard. Kenzy goes to pay an unannounced visit to Station Reagan, which puts Spring on the spot. Having already been refused a new recruit by the U.S. State Department, Spring now finds himself in the uncomfortable position of exposing an international cover-up, without backup, at an isolated outpost that’s growing more hostile to his presence with each passing second.

written by Chris Boucher
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Linda Newton (Pal Kenzy), Jonathan Adams (Alexander Krivenko), Daniel Benzali (Commander Griffin), Marlena Mackey (Dilly Goodman), Robert Jezek (Pete Lennox), Russell Wootton (Marty), Angela Crow (Lauter), Morgan Deare (Harvey Goodman), Shope Shodeinde (Receptionist)

Notes: Trivial Games may be unique in that it features the only cast crossover between Star Cops and Star Trek: The Next Generation – Brazilian-born actor Daniel Benzali would go on to play a small role as a gruff surgeon who looked for things to make Picard’s artificial heart go in 1989’s Samaritan Snare; he has also appeared in the ’90s revival of The Outer Limits, Beauty & The Beast, The X-Files and Jericho, among other shows filmed on both sides of the Atlantic. Director Graeme Harper, who had already made a mark on Doctor Who behind the cameras of Peter Davison’s farewell story Caves Of Androzani, directs his first Star Cops episode here; as with his Doctor Who stint, he introduced a change in style by lowering the lighting (in some cases to pitch blackness as Spring snoops around the American space station). Harper would go on to a well-respected directing career that would see him returning to the revived Doctor Who series in 2006.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Star Cops TV Series

This Case To Be Opened In A Million Years

Star CopsLiterally moments after the Star Cops’ lunar base is put on maximum alert due to the failed launch (and near-spill) of nuclear radiation at the nearby launch pad, Spring is summoned by the personnel division on Earth, with orders to report to Earth for scheduled leave time…regardless of the emergency. Theroux heads up the investigation into the accident while Spring heads home, but since the death of his girlfriend, Spring has found little comfort on Earth. He finds even less when he has to fend off an attacker – but not before the man drugs him – and is then charged with the man’s murder. It turns out that Spring’s assailant is an Italian with mob ties, recently deported back to Earth from the moonbase courtesy of the Star Cops. Spring is swiftly relieved of duty as Kenzy and Devis investigate a commercial moon mining operation that may have its own ties to the Mafia…and to a black market trade in nucelar-weapons-grade uranium. As for Theroux and moonbase administrator Alexander Krivenko, they seem all too ready to sit by as Spring is railroaded.

written by Philip Martin
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Linda Newton (Pal Kenzy), Jonathan Adams (Alexander Krivenko), Michael Chesden (Carlo Santanini), Susan Curnow (Marla Condarini), Stewart Guidotti (Inspector Canova), Vikki Chambers (Lina Margello), Flip Webster (Personnel Officer), Andre Winterton (Angelo Fordenone), Carl Forgione (Tour Guide)

Notes: Writer Philip Martin had already gained fame – or, depending upon whom you ask, notoriety – for his gritty, stylized BBC crime drama Gangsters, as well as his well-received Doctor Who story Vengeance On Varos, which introduced Sil, a promising new enemy for the Doctor; rather less well-received were Martin’s scripts for parts 5-8 of The Trial Of A Time Lord, which revisited Sil but confused viewers, actors and the production crew alike. This was his only Star Cops script to be filmed; a second script, Death On The Moon, was cast, costumed and rehearsed, but a crew strike at the BBC prevented filming from taking place.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Star Cops TV Series

In Warm Blood

Star CopsA ship called the Pluto 5 drifts toward the moon and draws the attention of the Star Cops. Theroux visits the ship up close and personal and discovers that its crew died quite some time ago. At the same time, Spring has to deal with the arrival of a new Japanese medic assigned to the Star Cops, but Krivenko abruptly pulls Spring off of the Pluto 5 investigation and asks him to check on a small orbiting station inhabited by one of Krivenko’s friends, who has cut off all contact abruptly. Spring is annoyed with being assigned this mundane task until he arrives at the station, discovering that Krivenko’s friend is dead. With the very green Dr. Shoun in tow, Kenzy and Theroux return to the Pluto 5 and discover that one member of the crew is unaccounted for. Spring discovers that Krivenko’s dead scientist friend and the crew of the Pluto 5 have a common denominator – research for the giant medical corporation Hanimed. Dr. Shoun also happens to be employed by Hanimed, making Spring immediately suspicious that she’s not there to lend her expertise to the Star Cops…but to hinder their investigation and cover up a fatal bio-engineering design error in a medication being used by millions of people.

written by John Collee
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Justin Hayward & Tony Visconti

Cast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Linda Newton (Pal Kenzy), Jonathan Adams (Alexander Krivenko), Sayo Inaba (Dr. Anna Shoun), Richard Rees (Richard Ho), Dawn Keeler (Christina Janssen), Susan Tan (Receptionist)

Original title: Trial By Murder

Notes: Star Cops creator Chris Boucher has said that the character of Dr. Shoun was not his own invention, but was instead inserted into the series’ final few episodes at the insistence of producer Evgeny Gridneff.

LogBook entry by Earl Green