The Cult Of Star Cops
BBC4 November 2006

The Cult Of... was a series of six thirty minute episodes, each covering a different classic BBC sci-fi show. The Cult of Star Cops was the third to be shown. A good range of cast and crew were interviewed. All were very positive about the series. The program itself was well done, a suitable compromise between introducing it to a new audience and informing the nostalgic. I sometimes got the feeling some of the research had come off a certain web site!

                    

The Blurb for the Show

There are devoted fans who believe Star Cops could have been the BBC's best-ever science fiction series. The notion of combining two popular TV genres - police drama and science fiction - and thereby appealing to fans of both, seems a good one.

Certainly, a series about a fledgling International Space Police Force, created by a man who had worked on Blake's 7 and Bergerac, had the right sort of pedigree. Combining that know-how with an ambitious approach aiming for a robustness and realism that's unusual in science fiction, it seems surprising that the show didn't survive beyond its first series. So why didn't Star Cops fulfil its considerable promise?

                    

Interviews with the cast and crew allow The Cult Of... to give us an insight into how hard the actors, and even the hairdressers, worked to create authentic-looking weightless scenes; detail how NASA's Pete Conrad - a man who'd set foot on the moon - complimented the authenticity of the show when he visited the set; outline the way the actors became writers when one of the show's stars was laid low by chickenpox just before the last episode was filmed; and expose how disagreements about the title and the theme tune were indicative of the ongoing and unresolved tensions between the show's creator and the producer.