Fiona wrote:
It's also interesting that Chris Boucher seems to be at his best when writing in an established formula. Writing for Doctor Who and B7, the premises of the medium are already simple, and so he can take these and write a story which is rather on the complex end for each of these series. Freed from these constraints, he writes a show--Star Cops--which is liked by intelligent cognoscienti, but alienates the ordinary viewer (don't blame the
naff
effects, either. B7 had worse, and got four series). Nation, by contrast,
specialises
in taking simple premises that sell--Robin Hood in space, post-apocalyptic survivalism, Nazi stories-- and writing them into something simple that sells, but which has a much deeper message underneath, if only the viewer can be bothered to analyse it.
'Cops in Space' is a fairly simple premise, I think <g> (and shorter than 'Robin Hood in Space'!). The reason 'Star Cops' failed was that it was bunged out in a death slot on BBC2, and that by 1987 we weren't watching TV drama series in the same way anymore. 'Star Cops' would have sat quite happily at 8:10pm on BBC1 on a Tuesday night in 1978. It has all the ingredients of those dramas: simple premise, and a small set of characters whom you stick in various situations week by week.
I agree that Boucher is at his best when he's writing within an established format, and that Nation was above all a consummate professional who knew how to get programmes commissioned.
Una