The Comic Strip, part 36 - Long journeys wear me out, Oh God we won't live without it

"Space Virgins from Planet Sex" - April 29, 1993

First a bit of history. One of the dominant images in the history of British Science Fiction television is the introduction to the second Quatermass serial. It begins with a couple of army guys looking at a radar screen showing strange objects coming from outer space.

This quickly became a part of the science fiction iconography as the situation was so easy to reference. It was used multiple times in Doctor Who, for example.

So, when they do it here, even though it is a cliche, I would like to think that in the back of their minds the folks making this episode know the cultural weight of this throwaway scene.

I enjoy crappy dumb science fiction films. A lot of people do. Round about the seventies, studios decided to start making crappy dumb science fiction films on purpose because they thought that it would be more fun. But for the most part, those films tend to not be very good. This is because it's one thing to try to make something well and fail because you are inept, but if you try to make something that looks inept and fail at that.... well then you're just stupid. So now, after many years of poor attempts to look inept, we have quality, well thought out, high budgeted productions that still embrace the tones that the old inept science fiction films were trying for, but try to justify it with a load of post-modernism.

Which might be what's going on here. There seems to be some attempt to unpack the films that this episode was based on, but it's hard to do that, because once you start getting more complicated you then start to jettison the tone that you're trying to capture in the first place. And the mainstream source material is already starting to take a look at things in the same way. At the time this was broadcast, the last few actual James Bond films were trying to address (half-heartedly, but still...) how the concept of James Bond no longer fits in with the sexual mores of contemporary society. Why do you need "James Blonde" doing the same thing?

It is fun to see Peter Richardson doing a pretty good Sean Connery impression though.

In the end, I think this episode succeeds in getting the look right, and putting together an entertaining episode. It does seem at times like many of the people involved aren't really agreeing on what sort of thing they're doing (Dawn French and Miranda Richardson put in good performances as always, but they both seem to be on auto-pilot).

And as a side note, if anyone needs to mimic John Kerry, get Robbie Coltrane to use his "Emperor Zarran" voice. It is quite perfect for that.