Review STAR COPS: IN WARM BLOOD - Episode 06

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
feature-image-star-cops.jpg
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Your thoughts on this episode....

The returning crew of the survey ship Pluto 5 are discovered dead, appearing almost freeze-dried. There is a connection to a large Japanese corporation and the suicide of a scientist close to the Moonbase commander.






On to the next episode....

A DOUBLE LIFE

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/a-double-life-episode-7.3528/


Back to the previous episode....

THIS CASE TO BE OPENED IN A MILLION YEARS

https://www.imdforums.com/threads/this-case-to-be-opened-in-a-million-years-episode-5.3523/
 
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michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
Pure class, start to finish. I literally jumped out of my seat at THAT scene. It was exceedingly well done. KENZY showed leadership and is the proxy second in command really. I like Anna Shoun and thought she added a more thoughtful and considered aspect to the team . She and Richard Ho might have been a bit too Japanese stereotypes but they worked well. I'm not sure after Ho has recovered his composure after Nathan's shenanigans with the orange juice that he could be charged with anything that would stick. It was Nathan conjecturing after all, unless he had a recorder hidden in his sauna towel. A chilling insight into how medical research may indeed use unsuspecting guinea pigs, and the moral dilemma forthcoming from such research.
Devis an expert on demolition! I like it.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
Yes, a very good episode. Anna makes a great addition to the team, adding some much needed faith to contrast with an overabundance of faithless people. Again, a lot of the success is down to Graeme Harper's direction. Kenzy showed some vulnerability in the face of Theroux shouting her down, when explaining that her seemingly insensitive front was a defence mechanism, only for Anna to fail to defend her. Poor Pal.

One of the best episodes of the run, if not the best.
 
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Mad-Pac

Member: Rank 5
Aired Monday 8:00 PM Aug 10, 1987 on BBC Two

"Knowledge is light." "Ignorance is darkness." Science must succeed. Nathan knows that. But is that always true? When it means the loss of innocent lives, the Star Cops swing into action.


CAST

David Calder ... Nathan Spring / Box (voice)
Erick Ray Evans ... David Theroux
Trevor Cooper ... Colin Devis
Linda Newton ... Pal Kenzy
Jonathan Adams ... Alexander Krivenko
Sayo Inaba ... Anna Shoun
Richard Rees ... Richard Ho
Dawn Keeler ... Christina Janssen
Susan Tan ... Receptionist


WRITING CREDITS

Chris Boucher ... (series deviser)
John Collee ... (written by)


DIRECTED BY

Graeme Harper
 
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Brimfin

Member: Rank 3
This one has a different feeling right from the beginning. A spaceship comes floating into view, but no one responds to hails. We see a man’s hand inside set on a control but nothing else. There’s a feeling of fear and dread as the Star Cops approach. Theroux looks in through a window and screams. The whole crew is dead and mummified. Flesh-eating virus? Marrow-sucking monster? Vampires? It feels like anything might be possible.

Nathan has to wait for clearance to board the ship, the Pluto 5. Just as he is ready to go, Krivenko asks him to check on someone on a distant station who is not responding to calls. Nathan doesn’t want to do it, but Alex confesses that the woman is a dear friend and he is very concerned for her safety. Spring responds to his honest plea by agreeing to go check on her. He’ll do it to help a friend.

Pal and Theroux are joined by Anna Shoun, who is investigating the case for her boss’s company Hanimed. Kenzy is suspicious of her motives but has to let her board first. There’s no response for a few minutes, then she shows up okay. Investigating on board, they find only 7 corpses from an 8 member crew. Did one survive? No, the other one pops down from a hatchway somewhere right in front of Pal, making it her turn to scream bloody murder. (I like that both a man and a woman screamed in the episode. Seeing a mummified corpse where I wasn’t expecting one would make me scream too.)

Meanwhile, Nathan finds Krivenko’s lady doctor friend dead. Though she isn’t mummified, she too died suddenly with her body frozen in position and the temperature on the ship at 41 degrees Celsius (or about 106 degrees Fahrenheit) just like on the Pluto 5 vessel. She wiped her computer clean first, but a download from her other computer reveals that she was involved with Hanimed as well. Nathan suspects a connection and wants Anna to investigate it, feeling she was sent there to cover their mistakes. “They’re using you!” he tells her. “So are you,” she replies fiercely. That leads Nathan to do a little soul-searching a little later on, and this wonderful dialogue (paraphrased as best I can)

Nathan: Do I exploit people unfairly?
Box: Is it possible to exploit people fairly?
Nathan: I came to you for some therapeutic reassurance, not to argue semantics!

Nathan takes advantage of the fact that Colin is getting ready for his physical, which if he flunks gets him sent back to Earth. He tells him he just flunked it, so he can go undercover at Hanimed. Unfortunately, Colin isn’t very good at it and gets caught trying to sneak into Director Richard Ho’s office, but flunking the facial recognition system. Nathan is told he can only get him released from custody with an apology. But Spring tests the iron tablets found in the diet of all the Pluto 5 crew on some mice in a 41 degree environment and they all die of instant blood clots. Further, Anna investigates her company’s records and finds a reference to P-5 for testing their newest experimental drug. She relays the message to Nathan, who almost doesn’t hear it because he’s complaining she called him in the middle of the night. Anna is caught, fired, and disgraced with Ho telling her maybe her father’s fishing company will take her back.

Nathan arrives to retrieve Colin, and confronts Ho in his steam room. We can all see what’s coming, but that just makes it all the more fun. He gives Ho a drink of water, and then tells him they’ve agreed to destroy the ship, but those iron pills they found on board – you just drank them. Spring prevents him from leaving and turns up the heat, theorizing that the Pluto 5 crew were unwitting guinea pigs for a new drug test – which turned out to have the side effect of clotting the blood instantly at 41 degrees. With the spa temperature approaching the same, Ho confesses – only to find that Nathan had only gave him plain old water. An exciting mysterious case comes to a satisfying end.

Other observations:

Another bull’s eye in future prediction with the facial recognition – a popular identification tool today.

Cloister56 had noted a few episodes back that the automated receptionist for the US space station was terrible, and he was right. But the Japanese counterpart was far superior, with a more believable image nicely encased in a sort of 3D glass bulb. Superb. The multi-screens in the background with optional differing images or combining to make pieces of a single image was also very impressive.

At one point as they are talking about the mummified bodies and how their families wouldn’t want to see them like that, Pal states she could think of some people she’d like to see like that. Theroux lashes out at her that just when he sees some humanity in her, it vanishes. She defends herself that joking about a grim situation is a defense mechanism (something we often heard on M*A*S*H.) Oddly enough, later on he defends Pal when someone else criticizes her, saying she’s a good person once you get to know her. The camaraderie among the crew is building; even Kenzy teasing Devis about sweating up the place when he runs on his treadmill comes off as good-natured banter. The episode concludes as Pal brags about the crew’s various expertises, and then asks Colin what his is. With an inscrutable pause, he announces “demolition”, and then launches into a comical kung fu attack.

So how to rate this episode? I’m torn between a 9 and a 10. For a ten, the episode usually has to have something extra beyond a good plot well executed. And this one comes through with that. That satisfying end I mentioned wasn’t quite the end. We find out that Anna Shoun applied for a position with the Star Cops and has just become the newest member of the team. She was willing to risk her career and honor to do the right thing, so Nathan came through for her in the end - and so this episode get 8 mummified corpses and 2 blood-curdling screams for a total of 10.
 

michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
This one has a different feeling right from the beginning. A spaceship comes floating into view, but no one responds to hails. We see a man’s hand inside set on a control but nothing else. There’s a feeling of fear and dread as the Star Cops approach. Theroux looks in through a window and screams. The whole crew is dead and mummified. Flesh-eating virus? Marrow-sucking monster? Vampires? It feels like anything might be possible.

Nathan has to wait for clearance to board the ship, the Pluto 5. Just as he is ready to go, Krivenko asks him to check on someone on a distant station who is not responding to calls. Nathan doesn’t want to do it, but Alex confesses that the woman is a dear friend and he is very concerned for her safety. Spring responds to his honest plea by agreeing to go check on her. He’ll do it to help a friend.

Pal and Theroux are joined by Anna Shoun, who is investigating the case for her boss’s company Hanimed. Kenzy is suspicious of her motives but has to let her board first. There’s no response for a few minutes, then she shows up okay. Investigating on board, they find only 7 corpses from an 8 member crew. Did one survive? No, the other one pops down from a hatchway somewhere right in front of Pal, making it her turn to scream bloody murder. (I like that both a man and a woman screamed in the episode. Seeing a mummified corpse where I wasn’t expecting one would make me scream too.)

Meanwhile, Nathan finds Krivenko’s lady doctor friend dead. Though she isn’t mummified, she too died suddenly with her body frozen in position and the temperature on the ship at 41 degrees Celsius (or about 106 degrees Fahrenheit) just like on the Pluto 5 vessel. She wiped her computer clean first, but a download from her other computer reveals that she was involved with Hanimed as well. Nathan suspects a connection and wants Anna to investigate it, feeling she was sent there to cover their mistakes. “They’re using you!” he tells her. “So are you,” she replies fiercely. That leads Nathan to do a little soul-searching a little later on, and this wonderful dialogue (paraphrased as best I can)

Nathan: Do I exploit people unfairly?
Box: Is it possible to exploit people fairly?
Nathan: I came to you for some therapeutic reassurance, not to argue semantics!

Nathan takes advantage of the fact that Colin is getting ready for his physical, which if he flunks gets him sent back to Earth. He tells him he just flunked it, so he can go undercover at Hanimed. Unfortunately, Colin isn’t very good at it and gets caught trying to sneak into Director Richard Ho’s office, but flunking the facial recognition system. Nathan is told he can only get him released from custody with an apology. But Spring tests the iron tablets found in the diet of all the Pluto 5 crew on some mice in a 41 degree environment and they all die of instant blood clots. Further, Anna investigates her company’s records and finds a reference to P-5 for testing their newest experimental drug. She relays the message to Nathan, who almost doesn’t hear it because he’s complaining she called him in the middle of the night. Anna is caught, fired, and disgraced with Ho telling her maybe her father’s fishing company will take her back.

Nathan arrives to retrieve Colin, and confronts Ho in his steam room. We can all see what’s coming, but that just makes it all the more fun. He gives Ho a drink of water, and then tells him they’ve agreed to destroy the ship, but those iron pills they found on board – you just drank them. Spring prevents him from leaving and turns up the heat, theorizing that the Pluto 5 crew were unwitting guinea pigs for a new drug test – which turned out to have the side effect of clotting the blood instantly at 41 degrees. With the spa temperature approaching the same, Ho confesses – only to find that Nathan had only gave him plain old water. An exciting mysterious case comes to a satisfying end.

Other observations:

Another bull’s eye in future prediction with the facial recognition – a popular identification tool today.

Cloister56 had noted a few episodes back that the automated receptionist for the US space station was terrible, and he was right. But the Japanese counterpart was far superior, with a more believable image nicely encased in a sort of 3D glass bulb. Superb. The multi-screens in the background with optional differing images or combining to make pieces of a single image was also very impressive.

At one point as they are talking about the mummified bodies and how their families wouldn’t want to see them like that, Pal states she could think of some people she’d like to see like that. Theroux lashes out at her that just when he sees some humanity in her, it vanishes. She defends herself that joking about a grim situation is a defense mechanism (something we often heard on M*A*S*H.) Oddly enough, later on he defends Pal when someone else criticizes her, saying she’s a good person once you get to know her. The camaraderie among the crew is building; even Kenzy teasing Devis about sweating up the place when he runs on his treadmill comes off as good-natured banter. The episode concludes as Pal brags about the crew’s various expertises, and then asks Colin what his is. With an inscrutable pause, he announces “demolition”, and then launches into a comical kung fu attack.

So how to rate this episode? I’m torn between a 9 and a 10. For a ten, the episode usually has to have something extra beyond a good plot well executed. And this one comes through with that. That satisfying end I mentioned wasn’t quite the end. We find out that Anna Shoun applied for a position with the Star Cops and has just become the newest member of the team. She was willing to risk her career and honor to do the right thing, so Nathan came through for her in the end - and so this episode get 8 mummified corpses and 2 blood-curdling screams for a total of 10.
Glad you're enjoying the show, not only are a lot of the predictive elements spot on, but the viewers are treated as being intelligent, the clues to the denouement presented for us to figure out ourselves in a realistic way, not presented on a plate, this isn't to everyone's taste, but I feel the more you put in to this show the more enjoyable it is.
Must agree with all your points, I really can't find anything to fault here.
Johnathan Adams as Krivenko was superb when his voice almost cracked up in tears when viewing Christina's x-ray slides with Nathan.
Great line:
Kenzy " what do I tell the bloody envoy?"
Nathan " tell the bloody envoy to go stuff himself. See how that translates into Japanese"
10/10
 

Mad-Pac

Member: Rank 5
At this point we can already predict what the show is going to come up with, and viewers in general would already have enough elements to decide whether the show was for them or not. Under normal circumstances, I would have already given up on it and looked for something else. But in a way I’m glad I didn’t because this was a fine episode, at least for Star Cops standards. The show is never going to be exciting and will always rely heavily on dialogue and, like in soap operas, scenes with two people talking in a room.

However, this time the show did not waste time and started packing a punch: a ghost ship with a crew of mummified astronauts approaches the moon and it is up to the International Space Police Force (I still refuse to use their silly moniker) to find out why they died. Not exactly an urgent mission, I figured, since they had been dead for over a year and the Star Cops might just as well waited a month or two to check it (they weren’t going to be any deader than they were already) if it were not for the case of another scientist, and a VIP one, also dying in the same strange circumstances.

Anyway, one thing this show does do well is to craft good and interesting characters, once we get to know them. And it is also funny to see how the show’s writers saw people from other countries. Let’s see… The Americans are cowboys, the Italians are the Mexicans of Europe and the Japanese… They are full of traditions and procedures, and they are a bit creepy. I mean, the other villains were bad, as villains should be, but this Japanese CEO was just terrifying.

The whole Japanese ambiance was very much reminiscent of the 1980s, the time when Japan was quite likely to become the next world power in a decade or two. I guess if this episode were to be shot now it would feature the Chinese instead. But in the 1980s this is pretty much how Japanese villains were portrayed. I remember one of the Robocop movies (I think the third of the series) in which OCP was bought by a Japanese corporation, and a movie called “Rising Sun” with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. Oh, and the 1980s were also the decade in which the fantastic miniseries Shogun was made, which I highly recommend. They simply don’t make shows and movies like those anymore simply because the Japanese are not trendsetters, and aren’t even fashionable any more.

Back to the show, we could understand why the writers did such a careful job weaving the personality and circumstances surrounding the Anna Shoun character. After all, she soon became a fascinating addition to the show. And it turned out they were grooming the character to become a cast regular. It’s just a pity that it’s a bit too late. Clearly, the producers planned the show to last much longer than it actually did.

On a final note, I think Kenzy berates Devis (well, truth be told, she berates everybody), but for a lovely, sweet person like her that’s foreplay. And I understand the manly smell of Colin sweating at the stationary bike was driving her crazy, so for her all that hostility was just foreplay. I think Colin and Pal should get a room and just get it out of their systems.

I think that’s as high as Star Cops will get. In Warm Blood gets 9 creepy communication monitors that look more like a head in a bottle, Futurama style.
 

Cloister56

Member: Rank 3
The episode opens with an interesting mystery. A ship with a dead crew, who all appear to have died suddenly and at the same time and why is the temperature so high.
This elements give the opportunity for different causes to be explored but none fitting all the facts.
The episode has a creepy atmosphere throughout, especially during the exploration of the craft and space lab but also continues in the scenes with President of Hanimed Richard Ho.
Janssen's space lab is interesting to me. I love the idea of these remote installations (Nathan mentions he arrived 2 hours too late), but would they really be for only one person. Again maybe they are so common that it is feasible but it seems like a lot of resources for one person and not very safe.

Krivenko gets to play a bigger part in this episode. He is acted very well especially during the review of the medical imagery, his voice halting at certain stages.

Dr Shoun is an interesting character and I think should make a good addition to the Star Cops team. I think that should be the total cast as we now have 5 Star Cops and I suspect any more may mean giving them all interesting things to do would get tough.

Again we get more international representatives with this time the Japanese joining the frey. They do use strong stereotypes such as honor, deference to superiors and even touch on suicide to save honor. It does make it interesting and I don't think descends into racism, unless the next Japanese representatives are presented the same it could just be the culture of that company.

The whole Japanese ambiance was very much reminiscent of the 1980s, the time when Japan was quite likely to become the next world power in a decade or two. I guess if this episode were to be shot now it would feature the Chinese instead. But in the 1980s this is pretty much how Japanese villains were portrayed. I remember one of the Robocop movies (I think the third of the series) in which OCP was bought by a Japanese corporation, and a movie called “Rising Sun” with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.
Yes I remember that movie, you are right this episode seems to follow the common media representation of Japan at the time.

I noticed this a few episodes ago but I love how whenever Nathan is in zero G then fluff up his hair, it's a nice little touch.

Devis is amusing in this episode with his frantic cycling to try and get in shape.

Nathan takes advantage of the fact that Colin is getting ready for his physical, which if he flunks gets him sent back to Earth. He tells him he just flunked it, so he can go undercover at Hanimed. Unfortunately, Colin isn’t very good at it and gets caught trying to sneak into Director Richard Ho’s office, but flunking the facial recognition system.
It didn't seem clear what Devis' plan was. I can only think that he wasn't aware of the facial recognition so thought he could bluff his way in by dropping the Presidents name.

The episode concludes as Pal brags about the crew’s various expertises, and then asks Colin what his is. With an inscrutable pause, he announces “demolition”, and then launches into a comical kung fu attack.
The expression on his face was great.

Richard Ho is very cold and calculating. His "fact" speech is a terrifying insight into his character, justifying using the crew of the ship as unwitting test subjects with the benefits a successful test could give. He is spurred on in that principle has previously worked with Janssen's previous drug.
I do wonder how he expected to market this drug knowing any hot countries and those with saunas would have huge death tolls.

One thing that I don't think was clear was how did Janssen get to see the footage of the search of the ship. She appears to be watching it as it happens but why would she be allowed to see that. It works to link the 2 events but I don't think makes sense unless I missed something.

An interesting little mystery, a new team member and a good villain. Overall a very good episode.
8 pages of medical side effect warnings accompanying every Hanimed drug, out of 10
 

michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
The episode opens with an interesting mystery. A ship with a dead crew, who all appear to have died suddenly and at the same time and why is the temperature so high.
This elements give the opportunity for different causes to be explored but none fitting all the facts.
The episode has a creepy atmosphere throughout, especially during the exploration of the craft and space lab but also continues in the scenes with President of Hanimed Richard Ho.
Janssen's space lab is interesting to me. I love the idea of these remote installations (Nathan mentions he arrived 2 hours too late), but would they really be for only one person. Again maybe they are so common that it is feasible but it seems like a lot of resources for one person and not very safe.

Krivenko gets to play a bigger part in this episode. He is acted very well especially during the review of the medical imagery, his voice halting at certain stages.

Dr Shoun is an interesting character and I think should make a good addition to the Star Cops team. I think that should be the total cast as we now have 5 Star Cops and I suspect any more may mean giving them all interesting things to do would get tough.

Again we get more international representatives with this time the Japanese joining the frey. They do use strong stereotypes such as honor, deference to superiors and even touch on suicide to save honor. It does make it interesting and I don't think descends into racism, unless the next Japanese representatives are presented the same it could just be the culture of that company.



Yes I remember that movie, you are right this episode seems to follow the common media representation of Japan at the time.

I noticed this a few episodes ago but I love how whenever Nathan is in zero G then fluff up his hair, it's a nice little touch.

Devis is amusing in this episode with his frantic cycling to try and get in shape.



It didn't seem clear what Devis' plan was. I can only think that he wasn't aware of the facial recognition so thought he could bluff his way in by dropping the Presidents name.



The expression on his face was great.

Richard Ho is very cold and calculating. His "fact" speech is a terrifying insight into his character, justifying using the crew of the ship as unwitting test subjects with the benefits a successful test could give. He is spurred on in that principle has previously worked with Janssen's previous drug.
I do wonder how he expected to market this drug knowing any hot countries and those with saunas would have huge death tolls.

One thing that I don't think was clear was how did Janssen get to see the footage of the search of the ship. She appears to be watching it as it happens but why would she be allowed to see that. It works to link the 2 events but I don't think makes sense unless I missed something.

An interesting little mystery, a new team member and a good villain. Overall a very good episode.
8 pages of medical side effect warnings accompanying every Hanimed drug, out of 10
Janssen seems to have been a long standing employee of Hanimed, so they provided her top of the range Spacelab. The company seems a rich and powerful one. As Pluto 5 was a Hanimed ship maybe she asked and was granted video access to the ' homecoming '. I guess Hanimed would have insisted on this.
I also think Janssen was aware of Ho's methods and probably suspected what was about to unfold.
 

Cloister56

Member: Rank 3
Janssen seems to have been a long standing employee of Hanimed, so they provided her top of the range Spacelab. The company seems a rich and powerful one. As Pluto 5 was a Hanimed ship maybe she asked and was granted video access to the ' homecoming '. I guess Hanimed would have insisted on this.
I also think Janssen was aware of Ho's methods and probably suspected what was about to unfold.
That all seems very plausible thank you.
 

Gavin

Member: Rank 6
VIP
At this point we can already predict what the show is going to come up with, and viewers in general would already have enough elements to decide whether the show was for them or not. Under normal circumstances, I would have already given up on it and looked for something else. But in a way I’m glad I didn’t because this was a fine episode, at least for Star Cops standards. The show is never going to be exciting and will always rely heavily on dialogue and, like in soap operas, scenes with two people talking in a room.
I'm with you on this. It's an interesting concept of a show but I can see why it never made it past the first season. Those that are interested in the sci-fi elements would have been put off by the slow pace and those that like the British police drama style probably weren't interested in the sci-fi. That's not to say its a bad show, I just don't think it really knew who its audience should be. I probably wouldn't have made it past the third episode. But its intriguing to see how the show develops (although I'm never going to like the theme song).

This was definitely an interesting episode though and for once I didn't work out the solution ahead of time (despite the clues all being available). I'm enjoying seeing the characters continue to develop and I like the fact that they don't all just get along instantly once they start working together. It's definitely an realistic attempt to depict the not to distant future.

I do struggle to keep my attention focused given the slow movement of the plot.

I'll give this 6 out of 10. It gets an extra point for keeping me from guessing the murderer.
 
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