Review STAR COPS: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAD - Episode 02

[Doctor Omega]

Your thoughts on this episode.....

Nathan's girlfriend is murdered by an unknown attacker who breaks into his home. Grief-stricken he returns to Earth, leaving David to investigate a tragic accident out in space that has crippled a freighter on its way to Mars, dooming its crew to certain death.

On to the next episode....

INTELLIGENT LISTENING FOR BEGINNERS

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/intelligent-listening-for-beginners-episode-3.3519/


Back to the previous episode.....

AN INSTINCT FOR MURDER

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/your-journey-into-star-cops-starts-here.581/

 

[michaellevenson]

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View attachment 4061


Your thoughts on this episode.....

Spring fires two Star Cops, Pal Kenzy and Kirk Hubble, for corruption. A terrorist organisation, the Black Hand Gang, has attacked a chemical plant and the Channel Tunnel using a computer worm. The Star Cops are warned of further attacks by a communications expert engaged in secret research on an outpost on the Moon.

On to the next episode....

TRIVIAL GAMES AND PARANOID PURSUITS

(Coming soon)


Back to the previous episode.....

AN INSTINCT FOR MURDER

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/your-journey-into-star-cops-starts-here.581/

Dear friend your synopsis is for episode three, Intelligent Listening For Beginners, not two, which is the one where a rogue ship is heading into the inky void with a soon to be dead crew on board and we meet Colin Devis for the first time.

 

[michaellevenson]

Reviewing Ep2
The Dedelus supply ship to the Martian colonies is sabotaged by Moonbase Co ordinator, a Frenchman who wants to test his cryogenic equipment, and causes the ship to go rogue. Meanwhile Nathan's fiancee Lee is murdered by a British spy in cahoots with a Sgt. Caulman a lady police officer, really a spy as well, the aim to force Nathan to chase clues to catch the killer/spy who escapes and tries to find sanctuary on a top secret U.S. satellite.
The whole plot including killing Lee just so British Intelligence cam find out what is going on in the secretive satellite the Americans have launched
A great episode introducing Colin Devis the cockney copper investigating Lee's death. I think his disrespect of Nathan is a bit overdone, at one point Nathan looked like he was going to strike him
The Chiswick park scene with the killer was well done, Caulman appearing as the dutiful copper, in reality though she and the killer were orchestrating the whole scenario. The other plot on the Dedelus was good too with the French controller confronted with his crime but until the ship returns to a point where it can be rescued and the crew either discovered to be dead or frozen, the charge against the Co-ordinator will have to wait. It was decided here early on to locate the Star Cops base on the moon with artificial gravity, good for the show, all that floating about we saw in the first episode might have ended up tedious had it gone on for the whole show. Though we did get that funny scene in the beginning with Nathan trying to get his legs out of the sleeping hammock suspended vertically and he was Velcro'd in due to the weightless environment.
A good second episode.

 

[Doctor Omega]

your synopsis is for episode three,

Thanks for pointing that out Michael. Have fixed it now.

 

[Doctor Omega]

Yes, this was a solid enough episode and it continues the setting up of the show nicely. I too liked the scene where Nathan was embarrassed in the velcro hammock thing. Devis is well played and liked the tension of the murder scene of Nathan's friend, with the message on the screen.

Before watching this, I also watched episode one again, but with Chris Boucher's narration on. He is - as he admits himself - carping from the start. The music, the restaurant scene, his tensions with the producer, the actors "leaning on the lines" etc etc, throughout. It is an interesting listen. He says that eventually, after a couple of showdowns with the producer, he turned his back on the show and went to work for Thames.

I did read elsewhere, that the first time he met the producer, he was called to the office and told straight off that "All these scripts need to be rewritten!" Not so much as a hello - and not the ideal way to start a working relationship, I guess.



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Cops-...=1507671202&sr=8-1&keywords=star+cops+boucher


Boucher got the last word in one way, with his novelisation which adapts.....

AN INSTINCT FOR MURDER
CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAD
INTELLIGENT LISTENING FOR BEGINNERS
TRIVIAL GAMES AND PARANOID PURSUITS
LITTLE GREEN MEN AND OTHER MARTIANS

... but done in the way he intended, with a younger Nathan, no Anna Shoun etc. It is Boucher's true vision of Star Cops with the producer of the show metaphorically taken out into a barn and shot. so I guess it must stand as the last word on the show.


And it would have blown my mind to have seen a Blake's 7 episode end with the word "batshit" as this one does. Can't see Cally saying it though!

 

[Gavin]

So after the second episode I'm starting to realise that this is just a standard British police procedural set in space. It's not particularly different to Inspector Morse or Prime Suspect. In fact it wouldn't be much of a stretch to take the script of one of those shows and transfer it to this. That's not in any way a criticism, just me adjusting my expectations.

The second episode follows the pattern of the first with two separate murders occurring in different settings. One is the "murder" of the crew of a ship heading to Mars. I like the realism of the fact that a misfiring rocket would put the ship far enough off course to miss its target and make it impossible to rescue. The cost in terms of fuel and time would make getting another ship to them before they ran out of air pretty much impossible, which is acknowledged by the crew almost immediately "I think we're dead, Mike". Of course it's not necessarily a murder just yet. We just need to wait 8 years to find out if the crew actually survived. The murderer was pretty obvious (at least I thought so) as soon as the solution to save the crew was announced. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It makes me feel smart to work out the murderer and motive before the detectives.

The other murder is Nathan's girlfriend and that was a much more confusing mystery. Nathan's grief was well portrayed and appropriate for the "more than friends" but "not quite a couple" relationship that they appeared to have. I admit to not working this one out and the introduction of an international spies concept is intriguing. It will be interesting to see if there's more to come on the mysterious American space station. Once again the earthbound detectives seem overly reliant on the computer diagnosis and not interested in pursuing anything beyond that.

The series remains fairly realistic in its portrayal of the near future, although the gravity on the moon base is obviously wrong. In fairness, I can't work out a way they could have portrayed lower gravity on an ongoing basis with the technology and budget they had at the time. And they didn't try to handwave it with "artificial gravity" or anything like that so I'm content to pretend that they're working in 1/6th Earth gravity.

Overall another good episode. I'll give it 7 out of 10.

 

[Brimfin]

Well, if last week’s motive for murder was cold, this week’s was an iceberg by comparison. More on that later.

Again, we open the show with two different storylines. One involves a deep-space cargo ship whose engines “accidentally” misfire, leaving them without fuel to change course or reach a habitable planet before running out of oxygen. Like the “dead man walking” on his way to his execution, they are considered dead already.

The second story involves Nathan’s girl friend, Lee Jones, who last week talked to him about the possibility of settling down and starting a family, before he got shanghaied to the Star Cops beat. Just when you’re wondering if they’re going to try to maintain a long-distance relationship, she gets a death threat on her phone console and is murdered moments later. As the two stories unfolded, I began to wonder why they couldn’t have picked one story or the other and devoted more time to it. But in the end, it was apparent that the solution to one problem led to the revelation of the other so they did need to be together. The first story was about the right length after all, but I still feel more time needed to be devoted to the second. Nathan lost a friend and probably lover that he’d known for 10 years. Even though some poignant moments were spent on it, it deserved at least a little more.

I’ll just take the storylines separately. The cargo ship dilemma was handled mostly without Nathan who was understandably back on Earth after Lee’s murder. There was a red herring about the married couple being allowed to work together which could have caused him to be distracted. But when they mentioned that there was some cryogenics equipment on board, I immediately thought could they use it to go into suspended animation until the ship reached home? It doesn’t occur to anyone else until the man who was shipping it, Paton, makes the suggestion. When someone tells Paton he’ll be a pioneer for being the first person to do that to people, the solution seemed obvious – and was. He had engineered the accident while putting his cryo-gear aboard, hoping that someone would see preserving the people cryogenically as the obvious solution. No one did, so he had to offer the suggestion himself. Seems in this timeline, cryogenics had only gone so far. He wanted to advance it to long-term use for space flights, but couldn’t get approval to test his long-term prototype on humans. So this would give him an excuse to test it to save the lives of the two crew members. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t bright enough to register an actual person or place to receive his shipment thus giving his plot away the moment Nathan returns and examines the case.

At least Paton’s plot didn’t involve killing anyone – as long as his cryo unit really works. But for the couple to lose 8 years could be cruel. Their relatives will be 8 years older, maybe even dead. Technology could have advanced way too fast while they were gone leaving them jobless. The indication is that Paton can’t be punished, except by a civil suit from the defrosted couple. But there are other things to consider. Does his unit really work? He won’t know for sure for 8 more years. In the meantime, someone else could get approval – in say, two years, and have time to test it on people for a couple of years. Even if his machine works, the other company could have patented their own device and have sold it to contractors while he’s still waiting to see if his device even works. Reminds me of a TWILIGHT ZONE episode where an astronaut goes on a years-long journey to another planet. We are told at the end that some other ship had developed an ultra speed device and gotten there years before he did. (And that wasn’t even the meanest twist in that episode’s punchline. It’s called “The Long Morrow” if you want to check it out.)

Speaking of mean, we get to the other story. Nathan is devastated by the loss of Lee but then has to put up with a callous investigator who’s not sure he didn’t do it somehow. The investigator has a bright female sergeant assisting him and she seems more decent, caring and smarter. Doubtless, she will end up solving the case and distinguishing herself over her superior. Or so I thought, anyway. There’s a melancholy scene where Nathan goes back to the restaurant he and Lee used to frequent (only to find out last week she hated it.) At first it seems out of synch. She’s there talking to him (last week’s dialogue) and he’s talking back – except he isn’t. Then her voice turns into that of the lady sergeant and suddenly she’s there. But it actually all made sense afterward. He’d gone back to the restaurant alone and was lost in thought replaying their last conversation. The lady sergeant arrived and started speaking to him, bringing him out of his thoughts. Again, she seems to be caring about the case, but he ends up yelling at her and leaving.

Lee’s death just seems to be the work of a psycho killer. He seems to be coming after Nathan next and arranges a secret rendezvous. A man in hazmat-like gear on a skateboard arrives and attacks him, only to end up killed by the psycho. The lady sergeant, Corman, then chases the psycho off with her gun – having been following Nathan.

Nathan returns to work and after solving the first case, realizes that searching out the motive is the key. He then realizes the truth of Lee’s murder. It involved a seemingly unimportant background story about the US building a space station and refusing to allow it to be inspected – leading to speculation it was a weapon. Corman and the psycho, John Smith, were British secret agents. Lee was murdered just to give Nathan a reason to pursue Smith who was fleeing to the US station. The Star Cops are neutral and would have to have been allowed on board, letting them retrieve Smith and whatever intel he had gathered in his short time there. But Nathan figured it out and tipped the US off, who blasted Smith’s stolen spacecraft before it got there. (One wonders if the space station really was a weapon if they wouldn’t have blasted or disabled his craft even without a warning.) So the woman I thought would prove herself a good cop in the end turns out to be a cold-hearted bitch who’d had Nathan’s dear friend murdered as a pawn in a plot to do spying on another country’s space station. I’ll have to admit; I never saw that coming. It was quite the shocker. You actually end up feeling sympathy for her boss in the tag scene of the story as he promises to try and expose her even at the cost of his own job.

At the beginning of the show, I remember being annoyed that the US was being cast as the villain in the space station story, but in a way it makes sense for the plot line. If it were a terrorist nation with the secret space station, one might have had slightly more sympathy for the British agents trying to get on board. But here for all we know the US might just have some secret tech that they didn’t want to be exposed. Whatever the motive, murdering Lee as a simple calculating move was truly beyond the pale.

Some flaws in the reasoning here as well. How much intel could Smith possible have gotten between the time he got to the space station and when he was captured? Granted there are probably all kinds of little spy gadgets that could pick up something, but wouldn’t the US just have sealed the entrances and not let him board in the first place? It seems like a needlessly cruel subterfuge that could only achieve very limited results at best and at worst, nothing – which is exactly what they ended up with.

David Calder does some solid emotional work about the loss of Lee, albeit more briefly than I would have preferred. And the final scene is genuinely touching; the gentle Moody Blues theme fitting right in. He mentions Smith as the third person he has killed since arriving there, referencing the other two men killed last week. One wonders if the murder of Lee will linger on into future episodes – including the unbearable thought that they only murdered her to take advantage of his position as a Star Cop. If he hadn’t gotten the job, she’d still be alive.

Reviewing the story has shown me some of its flaws more clearly. Nonetheless, it was both powerful and intriguing to watch so I’ll give it 8 harness blankets, which look like a very uncomfortable way to sleep.

 

[michaellevenson]

Near faultless story, this is what the show is all about, interesting crime stories set in a very cleverly thought out near future setting.
Nathan struggling to extricate himself from sleeping harness was funny. I like the idea of a vertical hammock like bed that you Velcro yourself in. Though of course " vertical" has no meaning in a weightless scenario. It is sensible to move the Star Cops base to the moon, also having scene after scene weightless would have got tedious. Each episode to come does contain weightless scenes, so that will not be dropped altogether.
The Caulman spy revelation was a total surprise when I first saw it in '87, and to be honest I didn't much like the Lee Jones character so , but as has been said Nathan will miss her and mourn her for some time. The U.S. satellite I think was stated in the news broadcast as being unmanned, so presumably the Americans have a station in orbit ( okay they have) and remotely fired the lasers to destroy Smith.
Moonbase looked very different from the bases of U.F.O. or Space 1999, more civilian than military. It's refreshing that the military is not the driving force of Moon activities.
Devis admitting he was put on the case because he's thick was an endearing touch, but who did assign him? Nathan's old boss perhaps? Maybe pressure from above him to appoint Devis, I cant believe that the commander we saw last week was deliberately complicit in a cover up of Lee's death. Nathan did say that Devis was from his department, " a cretin's cretin"
Those familiar with Blakes7, and those who may become so as we watch that, can see a similarity in the way Chris Boucher slowly built up the team of "heroes" in both shows, here we have Nathan and David Theroux so far , and more I expect to come.
Boucher was script editor on B7, the scripts of which needed a fair bit of rewriting.
10/10

 

[Cloister56]

So back to that theme tune. I don't think it helps that when he sings "To the Shore" he is really out of tune. Gets better after that though.
Some nice images of generally space things, sets the mood I guess.

The shows so far appears to have a space plot and an earth plot for each episode. I don't know if that will continue but it's worked so far. We get to see glimpses of how Earth has changed (or hasn't) as well as the near future space stations. As well as probably reducing the budget and the number of "floating" sequences it helps to ground the show (ho ho) with some familiar things and break up what could be visually dull if it was just space or space station (interior).

I found the concept of the ship blasted off course and therefore irretrievable very interesting. There is an episode of Doctor Who called The Moonbase. In it a gravity weapon is used by the Cybermen to deflect a ship bring help off towards the sun.
One of the base operators say's once they enter the gravity of the Sun they can't escape, it may take a week but they will end up there.
It's this idea of a certain but delayed death that also faces the crew and also those not on board that is quite haunting.

It generates some interesting responses with many wanting to talk to the crew to figure out how it happened and how to prevent it happening again, others feel this is almost disrespectful "Leave them in peace".
One of the reactions I found most realistic was Paton the base coordinator's "There should be some way to save them". This is a common cry in a disaster, often made by the person contributing least. I know it's uttered in frustration but it contributes nothing and states the bleeding obvious, it never fails to make me slight irritated at the person who says it.
However in this case it wasn't just a hopeless phrase.
Paton's plan to test his cryo sleep seems clever at first but realistically falls apart when it is examined by the police. It isn't the plan of a criminal mastermind but a scientist too focused on testing his theory than the effect it would have on those involved, or to cover his tracks properly.

We get some more Zero G acting which is a bit comical but is pretty well done. Nathan's struggling to do simple things like get out of bed and sit in a chair show the adaptations that would have to be made. It's not all Supermanning down a corridor and spinning while you chomp on potato chips.


The Earth murder is the most personal this week. Although we only met Lee Jones last week it was quite a loss when she was killed. I enjoyed her relationship with Nathan and it was terrible to see him go through losing his only friend. The fact it was merely a ways to a means was just a extra kick.
Calder plays Nathan brilliantly in this episode, quick to rage, haunted by what might have been with Lee. His conversation with Box is particularly painful as Nathan can't bring himself to delete her so Box can't update how this will affect dinner reservations.
The killer was very creepy, sneaking up and then reciting the message to her almost as though it was vitally important she was aware of it before she died.

The american unmanned station was nicely seeded throughout the episode with other information such as mars colony running out of food being padded around it so it doesn't stand out. It's importance only becoming clear at the very end.

So the woman I thought would prove herself a good cop in the end turns out to be a cold-hearted bitch who’d had Nathan’s dear friend murdered as a pawn in a plot to do spying on another country’s space station. I’ll have to admit; I never saw that coming. It was quite the shocker.

Yeah I didn't see that coming either. I did think at first with Lee being killed that Corman was going to be the new female face on the show. I think she would have fit in well, but manipulating your boss isn't a great interview.
From the Spy's point of view it's quite a clean plan, they would get aboard an allies station without suspicion and all it took was the death of one random woman and an unlucky skater.

A few final thoughts:

Devis shows himself to be quite decent at the end. Not sure if it's the best interview technique to admit "I'm Thick".

Nathan plans to move the base for Star Cops to the moon. This is a clever idea, for the show it means they can cut down on future weightlessness if they want, it makes sense for Nathan and it opens up the Moon for some future plots.

I thought Nathan's "beated up" makeup was pretty good. The bloodshot eye was very effective.

Overall it's a very good second episode. The show is showing more depth than I expected.
8 poor interview answers out of 10

 

[Gavin]

At least Paton’s plot didn’t involve killing anyone – as long as his cryo unit really works.

Yeah but you'd have to wonder how likely it is that it would work. The first human trial, 8 years, with no supervision or ability to intervene if something doesn't quite go right? If it had been a planned test it would have started with a short term test under controlled conditions and careful monitoring before building up to an 8 year unmonitored test. In all likelihood, some minor aberration in power or conditions is likely to cause their deaths well before the expected retreival date.

There is an episode of Doctor Who called The Moonbase. In it a gravity weapon is used by the Cybermen to deflect a ship bring help off towards the sun.
One of the base operators say's once they enter the gravity of the Sun they can't escape, it may take a week but they will end up there.
It's this idea of a certain but delayed death that also faces the crew and also those not on board that is quite haunting.

I remember that story and while there's a sense of realism in it, it's not as likely as it sounds. First, they've already entered the gravity of the Sun. Everything in the solar system is "in" the gravity of the Sun. Unless they're on a direct course for the Sun with absolutely no power or way to alter course, they should be able to nudge themselves into some sort of orbit , even if it is highly eliptical. And the idea of a ship pushed by some form of gravity weapon travelling from the Moon to the Sun in a week is fairly implausable. That would require a speed of just under 900,000km per hour and the likelihood of a man made device able to affect gravity enough to push a ship to that speed is unlikely. Any gravity deflection of that magnitude would mean a device able to do serious damage to the Earth.

 

[Gavin]

let's pretend for a moment moon gravity is the same as the one on earth, which is not and TV shows never do that right anyway

I would imagine low gravity is harder to simulate than zero gravity. Especially at the time this was made and on the budget. But even today it's hard to see how you would do it and make it look realistic. Zero gravity can be done with harnesses but low gravity?

 

[michaellevenson]

I'm late for the party... The story was clever, but I just wish the pace would pick up some momentum, because it is hard as it is. OK, I didn't expect the death of Nathan's girlfriend to be part of a political/espionage plot, and I thought it the murderer was just a deranged psychopath who had developed a fixation on Nathan because of his Star Cops position. But what I did see from the get-go is that the scientist who had conveniently placed the suspended animation pods in the doomed ship was the one who caused the entire incident. That was clear to me. But I did expect him to be punished in the end, which didn't happen.

However what I really didn't like was the fact we didn't even get to see the victims on the ship. All they showed was a model flying in space and soem disembodied voices. And no dramatic moment when they realized they were going to die; instead they seemed very composed all the time. But then I remembered: they are English, so I guess that's OK. No, seriously, how hard would it have been to have a couple actors perform a few scenes to add the necessary human touch and to give us less of the boring stuff?

Well, at least we had some action in the scene in which Nathan had to meet that mysterious figure in the dark. And then all of a sudden realized that with all the realism the show has, Nathan uses a sort of customized futuristic gun which even sounds different.

The scene in which Lee gets the message started to feel weird when she had to give password after password, pin number, personal coded sequence... What is the good of having such careful and redundant security features if the person will be fooled and type all the 30 necessary passwords to "download an app with a virus" anyway? RIP, Lee Jones. We hardly knew you.

There's something I'm not sure if I understood. Theroux observes that the Box is just a machine and couldn't have done everything Nathan claimed it did, and it must be a real person doing that. Or something? What was Theroux's conclusion exactly and was he right?

The project is ambitious, but the writers wrote themselves into a problem with these micro-gravity scenes. The awkwardness and silly acrobatics the actors had to make to give a semblance of believabilty to the effect is something that would eventually become distracting and would get old pretty soon. My prediction is that they will start having more and more scene on the moon (and let's pretend for a moment moon gravity is the same as the one on earth, which is not and TV shows never do that right anyway) or on earth just to avoid the entire space contortionist spectacle.

The final moral dilemma added more weight to the story, and one cannot blame Nathan to be shaken for being one of the people responsible to the spy's death. But what else could he have done? And it's not like he shot them; he just warned the Americans, who did it.

Conversations gets 5 happy, lighthearted background tunes used as incidental music for a scene in which characters talk about how astronauts are going to have a tragic death.

Welcome to this week's episode, I thought you may have had trouble finding it.
Can you not include a youtube link in your OP ,like Dr Omega has with Blakes7?
Lee's message was sent with extra security from.the killer to firstly make sure she stood at the screen to get this message,apparently from Nathan, after going through this process she was less likely to not bother with it, meaning the killer knew where she was even in the dark, as was made clear. They was no mention of a App virus?!
Theroux was not questioning Nathan's claim for Box, but merely in his own way showing amazement at its cleverness.
This episode is relatively quick paced taking the series overall into consideration so you may have problems ahead.
I can't see what would be added having to see Mike and Laura on the Dedalus facing death, just hearing them was effective enough, the rest can be drawn by the viewers imagination.

 

[ant-mac]

Another enjoyable episode of STAR COPS. The pacing is perfect - far better than the modern rush found in most TV shows.

Nathan is gradually becoming a little more likeable. I also like his miniaturized version of Orac.

4/5.

 

[Simian Jack]

Been in New York a week now, getting settled in, net access figured out this past weekend and trying to catch up! Seen the first three eps, very much enjoying it.

Another long review though I tried to stick to the talking points.




Conversations With the Dead

The introductory ep of Star Cops had a cast of characters who treated death in a rather chilly fashion. In this second ep, loss of life is more keenly felt, especially by Nathan Spring. Lee Jones, Nathan's girlfriend, is murdered. Meanwhile, his officer David Theroux is looking into an accident that has set a spacebound couple on a trajectory which will see them run out of oxygen with no recovery possible. The crew at the moonbase react in their individual ways, but all are devastated by the inevitable deaths of their colleagues. The episode is all about grief, a welcome and stark contrast to the insouciance of 'An Instinct for Murder'. As a newcomer to the show, it's a relief to see that 'Star Cops' does have a heart after all.

I think my initial guess was right, though, that the coldness of the first episode was a deliberate part of this fictional landscape. Nathan, being a cop, damn well wants to find Lee's murderer himself but is bluntly told to butt out by the cop (Devis) who's actually assigned to the case. Devis is one of those TV police who is pigheaded, incurious, unimaginative, uncaring, rude, and wouldn't bat an eye if the case was closed without a solution - less work for him to bother with. That's all Lee's death is to him, work. He's not much like Nathan except in that one crucial regard: a life lost is not felt personally, it's just an academic puzzle to solve. Karmically speaking, Nathan has has met himself and it's a slap in the face. Butt out? Someone he loves has just been brutally murdered and he's supposed to just whistle his way back to the moon? It isn't just indifference, either, Devis tips his hand with a snide remark about leaving the job to "real policemen", revealing his contempt for the 'star cops'. Later Devis will show a more sympathetic side but admit that he finds Spring "a bit sentimental for my taste".

Lee's murder is a small masterpiece of budget-conscious staging. She returns home to find that a message from Nathan awaits her, laden with security encoding that takes forever to get through. That it's from Nathan makes us more urgent than it does her, we know it must be important. We get more anxious the further the scene progresses, the more we want to hear that message. When it comes, it's a dire warning that Lee's life is in danger...and it just sits there with Lee in another room not seeing it. The lights go out. A stranger has broken in. Hitchcock would be proud of the manipulation of both Lee and us. The message was a ruse to keep Lee in place so that her killer could be sure of her location.

I felt this death too. Time was devoted to establishing the bond between Nathan and Lee in the first episode, which served as character development for Nathan. I thought it might lead somewhere, but not here. Had Lee been introduced in this episode, we wouldn't have shared that loss with Nathan. Another innovative scene transpires with a grieving Spring at the restaurant at which we saw them before, reliving their last conversation together. At first it looks like a flashback until we see that Nathan's lips aren't mouthing the words we hear from him. It's disorienting. Anyone who has lost someone dearly loved will have had similar moments of dislocation. On a personal note, I've just been through that recently, so I know. It's a poignant scene expertly intuited by director Christopher Baker.

On the moon, personnel are dealing with the unavoidable but still pending deaths of a couple (Mike and Laura) who were shepherding a supply shuttle to Mars. The shuttle's engine has fired early, forcing them into a trajectory that has sent them on a death course. They are as good as dead but still alive to know it. The base personnel are crushed and try to deal with their grief in their own ways, including arguing about how to take the news and what to do next. What will Mike and Laura do? Blow out the airlocks and die quickly? Play out their time? Theroux wants to discover whether the engine failure was intentional but finds that his questions are an intrusion on the attempt to cope with devastating loss.

We never see Mike and Laura, we only hear their transmissions. At first this bothered me a little. But I think it helps us to identify with the moonbase personnel. We know the couple are going to die but are too removed from them to do anything about it. Think of it as Voight-Kampff empathy test. We knew Lee already, but we feel even more for Spring...Mike and Lura we don't know at all but we can feel for them, and for the ones they left behind. Loss is loss. I wanted to know who the executed Russian girl was in Instinct for Murder but no one gave a damn.

Productionwise, Star Cops is still finding it's feet, just like Nathan in zero-G. One effective weightless scene involving a sleeping harness is followed by another unconvincing one of Nathan trying to seat himself at a console. In his acrobatics to appear weightless you can see that he is actually struggling against gravity. He gets all the moves just right but the illusion is broken by the effort itself. Ironically, it made me better appreciate the work that went into it from the actor (David Calder) to whoever choreographed the scene. Incidental music was more on target this time, two pieces of scoring suited Lee's murder and a sequence luring Spring to a park for info on the killer. That theme song has become a lot more on-message now. I like the look of the moonbase and the moonbuggy that gets people there. Looks very proto-UFO.

There's another nice touch in Spring's meeting in the park at night. He is approached by a shady but possibly innocent character who happens to be on roller skates. You don't often see physical assaults that involve skates. It's just unusual enough to provide a bit of off-kilter flavor.

Like the previous ep, there are two cases that are unrelated. One is transparent, the culprit obvious the moment we are introduced. The other story is far more clever. I didn't catch it, because like Nathan I kept tuning out the newscasts as so much unwanted distraction. Both cases bring us back to that same coldbloodedness, a blind eye to the value of other's lives in the face of our own goals. The people responsible for Lee's death do indeed understand grief and the human psychology that drives it - they understand but don't care except that it is a tool to their own ends. In neither case will justice be served. It's a cold world after all that warm-blooded nobodies like Laura, Mike, and Spring live and die. The eps finale took me by surprise for Nathan's solution and his unresolved desire for revenge clashing with his self-loathing at having been personally responsible for three deaths now.

9 pairs of rollerskates in the dark.

My favorite line came when Spring, trying to wrestle down his anger, barks "DEVIS!! ...d'ya wanna drink??"