‘AN INSTINCT FOR MURDER’
Please feel free to comment on my review.
It may surprise you to know that I’m a huge Nyssa, Sarah Sutton and ‘Doctor Who’ fan!
You may wonder why I started this review with that sentence. Well, you see, I make it an endeavour to see and hear certain projects that my favourite ‘Doctor Who’ companion and best friend, Sarah Sutton, has done in her acting career. So far, I’ve heard most of the TV and audio productions that she’s done.
I’ve seen ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ and ‘The Moon Stallion’ on DVD as well as ‘Wirrn: Race Memory’, ‘The Jarillion Mercy’ and the ‘Dark Shadows’ audio play ‘The Devil Cat’ on CD. Some projects that Sarah has done in acting are still unavailable, like her early work before doing ‘Doctor Who’.
So when I hear news that Sarah has done a new acting project whether on TV, DVD or audio, I look forward to purchasing it whenever I can to see or hear it. I was lucky to be told by Sarah at the ‘Folkestone Film, TV and Comic Con’ in May 2018 that she had done an audio episode of ‘Star Cops’.
I was thrilled to bits to hear the news that Sarah was going to be in one of the Big Finish audio episodes of ‘Star Cops’. But in order to hear the Big Finish audios of ‘Star Cops’, I would have to watch the short-lived TV series on DVD first. Thus that’s why we’re here with these certain reviews.
As I said, ‘Star Cops’ (Hey, don’t look like that! That’s what it’s called!) was a short-lived TV series broadcast on BBC2 in 1987. It only lasted for one season with nine episodes in total and the series was devised by Chris Boucher, who had written a few ‘Doctor Who’ TV stories for the Tom Baker era.
Chris Boucher was also the script editor of ‘Blake’s 7’, the sister show of ‘Doctor Who’ at the time. His writing and script editing experience enabled him to devise this sci-fi TV show that has become somewhat of a cult series over the years as demonstrated by Big Finish producing its audio episodes.
I didn’t know much about ‘Star Cops’ beforehand, other than that Trevor Cooper was in it. Trevor Cooper was in the ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘Revelation of the Daleks’ and he has done some Big Finish audios including ‘The Haunting of Thomas Brewster’. I came to know the series in that audio story’s CD interviews.
The reason why the ‘Star Cops’ TV series didn’t last beyond one season could be a number of things. The viewing figures weren’t that great but it was also due to the fact that the BBC bosses like Jonathan Powell didn’t care much for science-fiction. Hence why ‘Doctor Who’ became on trial then!
I was lucky to purchase the complete series of ‘Star Cops’ on DVD via Amazon.co.uk. The complete series is on a 3-disc set, with the first three episodes on Disc 1; the second three episodes on Disc 2; and the last three episodes on Disc 3. There are also special features on each of the 3 DVD discs to enjoy.
‘Star Cops’ the series is set sometime in the future in the year 2027. It focuses on the character of Nathan Spring who with the International Space Police Force (better known as the ‘Star Cops’) sets out to confront crimes such as mass murder; political corruption and art fraud that occur within our future.
Out of curiosity and wanting to get to the ‘Star Cops’ audio episode by Big Finish that features Sarah Sutton as a guest star in it, I decided to dive right into this short-lived sci-fi TV series on DVD to find out what the story and the characters were like. So let’s get into ‘Star Cops’ and see if I like this stuff.
The series begins with the first episode ‘An Instinct For Murder’ by Chris Boucher. The episode was directed by Christopher Baker. Chris Baker also directed four episodes of the original ‘All Creatures Great and Small’.
The first thing to stand out for me in the series so far is the theme song. It’s a rather catchy theme song written and performed by Justin Hayward called ‘It Won’t Be Easy’. There’s an optimism to the song.
I don’t think there are a lot of sci-fi shows where someone is singing the theme song in the opening and closing credits. The only other one I can think of is ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ and that was in the 2000s.
I don’t know if it was Chris Boucher’s policy to have the theme music be as catchy and happy like the ‘Blake’s 7’ theme music is, but it suits the ‘Star Cops’ TV series well with it being a gritty, edgy cop drama.
Anyway, the first episode has David Calder as main character Nathan Spring who gets coaxed into applying for the position of commanding the International Space Police Force. It’s something he clearly doesn’t want.
At the beginning of the episode, two murders get committed. One is on Earth and one is in outer space. Someone swimming in a lake is killed by two people and an astronaut gets killed by two more.
Surprisingly, the murders aren’t the focus of the episode. The focus of the episode is more on Nathan Spring’s character going through training to get a promotion to be in charge of the Star Cops.
As I understand it, originally this episode was going to be a two-parter. That would make sense as it would give more time to focus on the two murders committed as well as Nathan Spring’s character.
But the Head of Drama at the time, Jonathan Powell, prevented this from happening. Jonathan Powell was clearly against sci-fi shows proving their potential – both ‘Star Cops’ and ‘Doctor Who’.
Anyway, on his first trip into outer space, Nathan Spring meets Erick Ray Evans as David Theroux. David is an American black man and he would go on to become a regular alongside Nathan Spring’s character.
In the episode, David Theroux is suspicious about a spate of spacesuit failures aboard the space station. Mind you, I didn’t register that when I first saw this episode since it does feature a lot of talking in it.
Yeah. I did struggle with this first episode. Not with it just setting up the characters and the story setting, but also because there was a lack of action. It’s what I expected to find in this cop drama series.
There’s also a lot of floating about in space with there being a vacuum aboard the space station that our heroes are situated in, especially as Nathan and David meet. As I gather, this was toned down later on.
And there’s an amount of mild swearing and blasphemy in the series which I wasn’t expecting. The DVD rating says that it’s PG, but this should really have a 12 rating considering the amount of swearing.
The episode features special guest star Moray Watson as the Commander. I was delighted to see Moray Watson in this. He portrayed Sir Robert Muir in my favourite ‘Doctor Who’ story, ‘Black Orchid’.
Moray Watson’s character is the one who insists and sees to it that Nathan Spring gets promoted to be the commander of the Star Cops against his will. He’s satisfied once Nathan Spring’s got the job.
The episode also features Gennie Nevinson as Lee Jones, Nathan’s girlfriend. The two have a meal at a restaurant which she doesn’t like. They discuss their future as Nathan’s going for the Star Cops job.
As well as Nathan and David, the episode also features the debut appearance of Linda Newton as Pal Kenzy. We don’t get to see much of her in this mind, since it’s only a cameo. She’ll be reintroduced later on.
There’s also Box, voiced by David Calder himself. Box is like Nathan Spring’s personal computer assistant which gives him advice on what he should do for the day. Nathan can find Box a little annoying.
‘An Instinct For Murder’ is a slow beginning to introduce the ‘Star Cops’ series and its characters. This episode would have benefited being a two-parter in order to appreciate the tale’s complexities.
The DVD special features for this episode are as follows. On Disc 1 of the 3-disc DVD set of ‘Star Cops’, there’s an audio commentary on ‘An Instinct For Murder’ by series deviser and writer Chris Boucher.
‘An Instinct For Murder’ rating – 5/10
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Bradley's Basement 
I remember just a little of Star Cops when I first saw it on TV. It was sometime after classic Dr. Who ended. I was also getting into Blake’s 7 and Red Dwarf at the time. The BBC might have had some understandable sci-fi fatigue after a quarter of a century of Dr. Who. But I was glad that Star Cops earned a good enough following to find its retribution alongside Class and The Omega Factor via Big Finish. Thank you, Tim, for your review.
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Hi scifimike,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on ‘Star Cops’ and glad you enjoyed my review on the first episode ‘An Instinct for Murder’.
It’s been a while since I last saw ‘Star Cops’ in 2021, I believe, and I’m overdue to reviewing more ‘Star Cops’ audios by Big Finish, including the ‘Blood Moon’ episodes. I hope to get back to doing more ‘Star Cops’ reviews as soon as I’ve updated my ‘Doctor Who’ reviews based on the latest Blu-ray box sets as well as hopefully do a review on the latest ‘Dark Season’ box set of audios by Big Finish. I always look forward to revisiting the ‘Star Cops’ TV series and revisiting Sarah Sutton’s appearance in the ‘Mother Earth’ episode ‘Hostage’ before checking out brand-new ‘Star Cops’ stories. Hopefully, I’ll be getting onto that sooner rather than later.
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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We all like to get to new things in our own time, or finally old things for that matter which won my best regards for several other British sci-fi classics like Sapphire & Steel and The Tomorrow People. In a way it can make the reviews and comments for them on WordPress feel all the more interesting. It’s good to know that fan-based reviewers can have that freedom.
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Thanks scifimike,
Well, it’s nice to know they’re waiting to be checked out when we get around to checking them out. I’m looking forward to checking out the latest ‘Doctor Who’ stories featuring Nyssa for my upcoming ‘Nyssa Challenge’ mini-review season. Hopefully, I’ll make a start on checking them out in August rather than start checking them out in September. I’m looking forward to hearing ‘Genesis of the Cybermen’ and ‘Hooklight’ as ‘Doctor Who’ stories.
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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Star Cops is such a fascinating series because its premise was fundamentally: ‘What if we took the extraordinary and made it mundane?’
Not a little mundane, either. The series feels like it was almost set-up as a sci-fi pastiche of cop shows to pass some really vicious commentary about things going on in the 1980s. But then… That was Chris Boucher all over. He rounded out Shoestring with an episode where a child’s toy explodes in his face before Christmas (the whole episode is about greed over safety).
One of my favourite anecdotes from production was, apparently, when Graeme Harper was directing, they made an effort to clutter up the regular sets. Small trinkets and suchlike to make it feel more lived in. When another director came in, I forget which, they dumped all the unnecessary ‘detritus’ and cleaned the sets. Failing to take into account, of course, they had created a continuity error between episodes. They had to go fishing through the dumpsters to get it all back.
Justin Heyward’s name stuck in my head. I had to look it up. He’s known for this opening and for a few songs on Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. ‘Forever Autumn’ and ‘The Eve of War’, specifically. Heyward is the one singing: ‘The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one — but still they come.‘
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There is indeed something to be said of how the extraordinary may somehow not seem so extraordinary in certain areas of our science-fiction. Even Star Trek can be no exception to some degree. For Star Cops as a show that may chiefly focus on the human drama for the space age, I think that it still encourages such dramas, most recently The Ark, even if it can address enough science-fictional or futuristic issues. Of course it’s been commented that futuristic stories, certainly dystopian-future stories, can be more about the present with a futuristic portrait simply enhancing something important about our contemporary world. Maybe the crime-dramas-in-space or cop-dramas-in-space benefit most from that. So it enriches my regard for how British sci-fi TV could be set apart from most sci-fi endeavors from Hollywood in toning things down within reason.
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Hi Wolfie, Hi scifimike,
Many thanks for sharing your thoughts on ‘Star Cops’. It has been a fascinating short-lived sci-fi TV series to check out on DVD and I’m glad it’s had its continuation in the Big Finish audios lately. I’m looking forward to when I get a chance to revisit the TV series before checking out the latest audio stories. I think Justin Heyward’s theme song should have been kept for the Big Finish audios of ‘Star Cops’ as it’s such a catchy theme song and very easy to remember than the theme music provided by Big Finish in their audio episodes.
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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The more short-lived sci-fi shows or the more underrated sci-fi movies have consequently become all the more admirable these days. Maybe the fact that they don’t have as overwhelmingly much to accumulate is one blessing. Especially if that can consequently spare them any risks with retconning discontinuity which Trekkers and Whovians have often been quite upset with. Sometimes less is more. If I were a creator of a good sci-fi show like Star Cops, I could find comfort in that and indeed thanks to a most thoughtful fan-base.
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Star Cops feels purpose-built for cult television, really.
The characters are deliberately written to be challenging, the plots require an active viewer, and each episode is, deceptively, both stand-alone and serialised. It has as much action as the Granada Sherlock Holmes series (possibly less, actually), but unlike Granada, Star Cops can’t rely on historical trimmings to buoy up the pacing.
Except… This is precisely what Star Cops is. A historical drama in space.
There are elements of it that feel deliberately dry for documentary purposes. The zero-g spacewalks. The disembodied comms chatter (borrowed from Blake’s 7). Other elements are left deliberately unexplained as an ordinary facet of the setting. Box, for instance, isn’t alien to us any more — you can talk to Cortana through your wristwatch (that’s pure Dick Tracy) — but it certainly was in 1987.
If anything, Star Cops kind of captures our actual reaction to the ‘futuristic’ technology of today. Do we blink when a new serving robot is added to a restaurant? A new touchscreen at a government facility? Drones flying mail packages overhead? We tend to take the miraculous with a grumble as adults, rather than the dazzled wonder of children.
Star Cops is the antithesis of the Roddenberry vision, in many ways. For Star Trek, our species grew up in a fireball and travelled out into Space as better people. For Star Cops, we reached the high frontier and brought all our problems with us. We never grew up. Just out.
For the viewer, the only real challenge to liking the series is that pacing. I had the same problem with Space: 1999. The first ten minutes of nearly every episode in Series 1 you could cut to get to the inciting incident. Star Cops carries it off by borrowing from Edge of Darkness. The characters are in the thick of it whether you, the audience, recognise it or not.
Star Cops is kind of perfect for audio dramas. It lives or dies on its dialogue. Nothing else.
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The antitheses of Star Trek can be quite thought-provoking. Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts on Star Cops.
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Thanks scifimike, Thanks Wolfie,
I suppose because of sci-fi TV shows like ‘Star Cops’, ‘Timeslip’ and ‘Dark Season’, we can be thankful that those shows don’t have the expanded continuity as other sci-fi franchises like ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars’ have for us to get into the complicated aspects of storytelling where certain continuities in various mediums don’t match with each other. As far as I’m aware, ‘Star Cops’, ‘Timeslip’ and ‘Dark Season’ have mainly existed in TV. Unless you count comic stories and fan films to be part of the main continuity too (I’m thinking of ‘Timeslip’ in particular), but I’ve not heard many arguments about that. The Big Finish audios provide that sense of ‘the story continues’ without any pre-existing stories in other mediums to fall back on, which is certainly the case for ‘Star Cops’.
It’s always fascinating how the future is depicted in various sci-fi franchises, movies and TV shows, with the ‘Star Trek’ future often appearing as idyllic (especially in 1990s ‘Star Trek’ spin-off shows) whereas other sci-fi futures are depicted as grim and dystopian. Not that I’m saying ‘Star Cops’ is like that, but it’s clear how outer space in the future is depicted with having problems, particularly when crime rates occur for humans to solve. And this series is taking place in 2027 (two years from now). I wonder how 2027 in ‘Star Cops’ will compare to 2027 in real life. It’s a very 1987 version of 2027 in ‘Star Cops’ as much as ‘Back to the Future, Part II’ depicts a very 1989 version of 2015.
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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