Search Results for: Chris Boucher

Spring 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

A 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