Star Cops

Star Cops
Created by	Chris Boucher
Starring	David Calder, Erick Ray Evans, Trevor Cooper, Linda Newton, Jonathan Adams, Sayo Inaba
Theme music composer	"It Won't be Easy" written and performed by Justin Hayward
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	9
Production
Producer(s)	Evgeny Gridneff
Camera setup	Multicamera
Running time	c. 50 min. per episode
Release
Original network	BBC 2
Picture format	PAL (576i), 4:3
Audio format	stereophonic sound
Original release	6 July – 31 August 1987
External links
Website

Star Cops is a British science fiction television series first broadcast on BBC2 in 1987. It was devised by Chris Boucher, a writer who had previously worked on the science fiction television series Doctor Who and Blake's 7 as well as crime dramas such as Juliet Bravo and Bergerac. Set in the year 2027, a time where Interplanetary travel has become commonplace, it starred David Calder as Nathan Spring, commander of the International Space Police Force—nicknamed the “Star Cops"—who provide law enforcement for the newly developing colonies of the Solar System. The series follows Nathan Spring and the rest of his multinational team as they work to establish the Star Cops and solve whatever crimes come their way. Operating in a relatively accurately realised hard SF, near-future, space environment, many of the cases that the Star Cops investigate arise from opportunities for new crimes presented by the technologically advanced future society the series depicts and from the hostile frontier nature of the environment that the Star Cops live in.

In total nine episodes of Star Cops were made. A tenth episode, titled "Death on the Moon", was planned but industrial relations difficulties during production led to it being abandoned shortly before recording was to commence. A combination of factors, including conflict between Boucher and producer Evgeny Gridneff and poor scheduling, meant that the series never found a satisfactory audience and the series was cancelled after one season. In recent years, Star Cops has undergone something of a critical re-appraisal and is generally hailed for being "a pretty good attempt at a moderately realistic "High Frontier" SF series".

Spacemen are ten-a-penny. What they need out there is a good copper.

Star Cops is set in the year 2027—some 40 years into the future at time of broadcast—a time in which space travel has become common and mankind is in the process of exploiting and colonising the Solar System. There are five permanently manned space stations orbiting the Earth and there are bases on the Moon and Mars. Approximately 3,000 people are living and working in space. This near future setting was influenced by the potential for greater access to space promised by the burgeoning Space Shuttle programme and by the militarisation of space through the US Government's Strategic Defense Initiative programme (also known as "Star Wars") both of which were underway in the early 1980s. Accordingly, space travel and life in space is portrayed in a realistic manner with depictions of weightlessness and low gravity environments and lengthy space journeys (months or years in cases of interplanetary travel) as well as hazards such as spacesuit failures,radiation exposure and explosive decompression. This air of realism has led to Star Cops being frequently compared with the 1973 BBC drama series Moonbase 3. Similarly, the pioneering spirit evoked by the process of colonising the Solar System seen in the series has led to comparisons with the Western genre among many commentators.

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