Everything 90's

We were rather starved of sci-fi stuff in the 90's until Star Cops came along on BBC2. It was a bold idea to have various people from different countries living together in space and on the moon. I don't think it was given enough time.
From IDMB:
"Set in the year 2027 this follows the exploits of the fledgling International Space Police Force, nicknamed the "Star Cops". Under the reluctant command of British career cop Nathan Spring and based in a Lunar settlement, Spring gradually forms a capable if flawed team comprising of US engineer David Theroux, tough talking Australian Pal Kenzy, bulky Brit detective Colin Devis, and slender Japanese scientist Anna Shoun. Helped - and hindered - by Russian Alexander Krivenko, the base co-ordinator, Nathan & crew tackle murder, terrorism, drug running and sabotage in their battle to make the "High Frontier" a crime-free zone."

At the time this was on I was doing a computer course and would have to record it onto tape so I could watch it later. I always thought that Spring's hand-held computer called BOX should have had a more funkier name-surely in 2027 someone could have come up with a better name. David Calder, who played Nathan Spring would turn up later in the James Bond film 'The World Is Not Enough' who gets blown up for his trouble. After that we had a bit of a wait until this odd comedy set in space called RED DWARF-now this looked good from its trailer and it proved to be really good and genuinely funny. It would last 7 series on the BBC, moving later to UK Gold. A planned film never came about.

(10-02-2019 16:11 )GreenMachine Wrote:  We were rather starved of sci-fi stuff in the 90's until Star Cops came along on BBC2.

After that we had a bit of a wait until this odd comedy set in space called RED DWARF-now this looked good from its trailer and it proved to be really good and genuinely funny. It would last 7 series on the BBC, moving later to UK Gold. A planned film never came about.

Star Cops was first shown in 1987 ?
Similarly, Red Dwarf started in 1988, originally there were 6 series, so it went on into the early 90s, had a bit of a rest for a few years, and was then rebooted towards the end of the decade when they brought in Kochanski as a regular character (and it was never quite as good imho, the BBC killed it off after Series 8.)
Comedy Channel Dave then rebooted it again in the noughties.

In my defence I was doing a course in the 90's so I think it might well have been a repeat that I saw of Star Cops. Yes 1988-well only two years out Kochanski was originally played by Claire Grogan and only rarely seen. Dave is part of the UK Gold group so I was right on that account but yes it was DAVE who picked it up.

No worries mate, I'd agree Red Dwarf is mainly 90's in association, the first couple of series, though good had a different and slightly lower key feel to them; from Series III onwards when Kryten really became a regular with Robert Llewellyn and they made Holly a female was when it hit its stride.

In terms of sci-fi on British TV in the 90s, I tend to think of US shows like Babylon 5, and the X Files; British TV didn't seem to be interested in making anything.
The classic series of Dr Who still seemed to be unloved by the BBC,though in fairness I do remember some repeats of old Jon Pertwee stories and Genesis of The Daleks I think was wheeled out again. BBC 2 started showing Pertwee from Spearhead in Space towards the end of 1999, I believe there was a plan to show a whole series but they gave up after the Silurians because ratings were poor, and jumped to the old standby of Genesis of the Daleks again(!).

For the children of the 1970s like me, of course, one of the big deals of the 1990s was the original Star Wars trilogy hitting the cinema screens again in 1997; even if Lucas couldn't resist tinkering with the special effects. Little did we guess what a let-down "The Phantom Menace" was going to be

There was the Demon Headmaster and Century Falls which was sci-fi of sorts on BBC1 but major series were as you say were things from the US like Babylon 5 which was very good and of course Star Trek: The Next Generation on BBC2.

Space Precinct was pretty good while it lasted.

Here is the first issue of that comic which I've had sealed for years.
https://jmp.sh/kQW1aHe

Cars in the 90's seemed to get the same there wasn't the variety that you got in the 80's or indeed the 70's. Most had silly names and were foreign, indeed the rise of the BMW continued apace whilst British motor cars were in decline -thanks to the strikes all the time at Leyland and other places, the management just couldn't keep up and Japanese cars became normal on the roads. The big Marques like Lambourghinis and Ferrarris just got more and more expensive and only the super rich could afford those. Aston Martins returned to the James Bond films like the Vantage in Goldeneye(and the iconic DB5) but then a BMW crept in to the next one 'Tomorrow Never Dies' sacrilege!! The Mini was saved from oblivion thanks to the Germans and although it looked good, it just wasn't the same car that had been so loved in The Italian Job film.

I suppose the biggest thing of the 90's was we finally said goodbye to the Conservative govenment as Labour swept to power with a massive landslide victory for Tony Blair. Gone was the me me me attitude of the 1980's and Thatcher's Britain with no propsects for finding work and the accursed Yuppies and in its place was a more caring society and a chance to start afresh. Fashions changed thank goodness except the awful shellsuits in lurid colours and big hair. School curriculums changed and now everything was logged and archived but by then I had already left school to try and find a job but all I ended up doing was a few schemes whereby I could get computer time and also learn how to teach-I am in fact a qualified Associate Member of the Institute Of Training and Development(AMITD) which I am entitled to put after my name. However, nothing came of it and I went back on the dole, signing on for years doing other schemes which again didn't really help me. I was even helped to redesign my CV into a super-whizzo, all-singing, all-dancing, guaranteed-to-get-an-interview sort but I didn't get any at all, just rejcection after rejection letter. Inbetween times I wrote my magnum opus-a children's story I'd had in my head for years...alas that was rejected by some publishers; one called it "too Enid Blyton!"

(22-02-2019 04:05 )GreenMachine Wrote:  I suppose the biggest thing of the 90's was we finally said goodbye to the Conservative govenment as Labour swept to power with a massive landslide victory for Tony Blair. Gone was the me me me attitude of the 1980's and Thatcher's Britain with no prospects for finding work and the accursed Yuppies and in its place was a more caring society and a chance to start afresh.

well, imho there was a lot of marketing guff put about at the time (even before Labour won in 1997) about the 90s being the "caring decade" - but I'm not sure there's any real evidence this was the case ? If anything it was an even more me-centric hedonistic "laddish" decade, if you can judge it by the media.

I was also on the dole for a period during the mid 90s, and it's my impression we crept very slowly from a recession under John Major to a fairly slow increase in confidence, but far more hype than substance?, under Blair : Labour still kept the Tory screws firmly down on public spending so as not to scare the bankers until they were trying to re-elected in 2001.
(It was only Mr Greenspan in US keeping interest rates ridiculously low that kept the mini-recession at the beginning of the 2000s from being worse ?
Until we hit the mother of all hangovers in 2008 of course, which we're still not free of; itself mostly a consequence of all the financial regulations put on banks in the 1930s after the Wall Street Crash being got rid of by Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s ? Politicians and financial markets don't learn anything it seems to me, they forget just enough of the last financial disaster to get confident again for no reason about the next big up-and-coming-money-making-scam, milk that for all its worth, and then run for the hills expecting bailouts when it all comes crashing down; and they just repeat the process every 10 years or so. Throw in the Iraq War, global militant Islamists, and catastrophic climate change on top of that and you have all the ingredients for the people electing populist chumps claiming to be strong men who can bring back greatness like they've never heard of Mussolini. Or that other chap with the toothbrush moustache, what was his name again ? But we can save all that cheeriness for the Everything Zero's thread )