Well, it’s hard to believe we’ve reached the end of this series already. What a difference between this experience and TWIN PEAKS. There was no sense of finality as they had still intended to do one more episode but it didn’t pan out. The good news is that the series ends on a good episode. The main complaint about it was that it had too many ingredients. There was so much going on, it was hard to keep up with it all. There was even a line in the script about keeping up with all the goings-on.
This one teases us with a mission to Mars that ends with the astronaut finding something buried in the soil but not telling us what. Rumors about that it might be an actual Martian or some other Earth-shattering (or maybe Mars-shattering) item. Meanwhile, an inspection of a spaceship reveals an old statute hidden on the ship – not drugs or radioactive materials or anything else they were expecting. It’s a little while later that Kenzy sees it and realizes it’s actually a valuable piece of pre-Colombian art. But who was smuggling it, and why?
There’s also the deaths of two pilots – one a female who dies in a crash while flying low over the Moon, the other a male who dies just before meeting a reporter and telling him “I…Dee…Two” or something, which he doesn’t tell Nathan about until much later. Yes, we also have that reporter rummaging around who apparently gave the subject of his pieces a bad reputation so he isn’t very popular. He’s even a former teacher of Kenzy, who is disillusioned by him now. He has a flask which he carries around and drinks in front of people. Pal finds out it just contains water, though she also finds out he has a stash of real booze in his luggage. Apparently, he likes to catch people off guard by pretending to be drunk.
Theroux isn’t around this week – he’s on Earth rest. (In reality, he had chicken pox and so he was absent and some of his lines ended up delegated to others.) Meanwhile, Nathan is headed on a long trip to Mars. I never could catch exactly why he was going there. He no sooner heads out toward Mars leaving a message behind before the entire ship explodes and he is apparently killed. Lucky for him, he changed his mind at the last minute and thus lived to see another day. It was a good chance to see how his team reacted to his death and his subsequent survival. Kenzy was genuinely sad to see him go and then delighted to find him still alive. She’s truly grown fond of the man who started out as her adversary.
The crux of the story – the connecting element between the deaths, the smuggling and the reporter (who was tipped off about the possibility) was that it was an elaborate ruse to plan a piece of Mayan sculpture on Mars to be found by the explorer back in the teaser. That would make it appear that the Mayans or their mentors really were space explorers (as some have genuinely speculated) and that they had visited Mars as well. This would make the sculpture rare and valuable and the museum would get possession of it and have a priceless exhibit for life. When the plan began to unravel, they started to kill everyone and destroy everything to cover it up. This leads to an exciting climax where the museum curator tries to set off an explosion that will kill everyone (himself included) in order to destroy the one piece of holographic photography to prove that the sculpture was from Earth and planted on the moon. While Nathan struggles to keep the man from pushing the button, Kenzy frantically tries to disarm the charge, which she does with about half a second to spare. Whew! Those dying words the reporter heard were actually ID2, referring to the dead female pilot’s second ID badge which had the photo hidden behind it.
I know I haven’t gotten all the elements in there, and probably have a few wrong, as I have done before. This is one script I’d love to have a copy of so that I could catch all the dialogue, as I know I missed a lot of good lines and couldn’t write down the ones I caught fast enough. The ones that I caught below were written quickly, and in some cases, I wasn't sure who said them.
(paraphrasing)
(talking about a disparaging article Daniel Harwood wrote about cops:
Nathan: I’m not passing judgment.
Daniel: A lot of your colleagues were willing to be judges. They volunteered to be jury and executioner, too. I took to carrying a gun around.
Nathan: Some people get carried away.
Daniel: Yes…in body bags. That’s what I was worried about. But you’ll protect me here.
Nathan: Yes, I’ll protect you… and everyone else who obeys the laws here.
“Colin Devis is not as stupid as he pretends to be.”
“Who could be?”
Devis?: So you’re not looking for any particular story?
Daniel: No, I’m not that particular any more.
Kenzy: Were you ever?
Nathan: I just don’t want to see things fall apart here while I’m on my way to Mars.
Kenzy: That’s not a problem. There’s no video link between here and Mars.
“Is it even possible to expect a surprise?”
(After being told someone died too young)
“Who’s ever old enough to die?”
Besides the fun dialogue, there are some good models and special effects. The Mars rover is a different design than the Moon rover. There’s a crash from the pilot’s point of view, primarily to save money on the effects but clever nonetheless. And there’s a spectacular explosion of the Mars shuttle ship that Nathan was supposed to be on. Overall, I’ll give the episode 9 harried female workers, who have to deal with all that extra space traffic when Mars is much closer to Earth than usual.
And the final line of dialogue is “Anyone for Mars?” Okay, not a great line to end on. It hardly compares to “Land sakes, I’m on fire.” from The Time Tunnel. But overall STAR COPS was an enjoyable series and I’m glad the Sages stayed around to get to it. The cast was great and the show was surprisingly timely for having been made 30 years ago. I did love the theme, especially the way the STAR COPS logo appears when they sing, “Reach across the stars…” I can understand why some viewers thought the theme music inappropriate for a sci-fi drama, but the song was just so good, I couldn’t help but love it – especially at the end when it played full length. One line I got a kick out of was after, “Send out the word” “I’ll remem-ber you.” At first it sounded like “Are we men?” before I’d hear the "ber you" and realize what was actually said. And that always reminded me of that song by Devo where they say, “Are we not men? We are Devo.” Okay, just wanted to share that.
Well, I’m hoping the Sages can stay together and head on to another series. We’ll soon know. I'll try to get to my By the Numbers ASAP, but I'm just running way behind now in just about everything I am doing.
