Okay, so Gerry Anderson is a genius, let's get that out of the way first. Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Stingray, even Terrahawks were all in a league of their own. Anderson's patented "Supermarionation" technique was, for its time, highly advanced. The problem started when he branched out into the live action stuff, like Space 1999 and UFO. It just didn't work for me. Space Precinct came along when I was about 16, 17 years old and I loved it from the start. It didn't initially register that it was a Gerry Anderson product, I thought it was so great. It certainly passed forty-five minutes on a Wednesday evening (the slot previously belonging to Star Trek: The Next Generation) and I thought it worked well at the time. When the series was released on DVD I decided to buy it to remind myself of how good it was...oh dear, not quite what I remembered. The real snag with the series is that the ideas and the finished article don't seem to have gelled. There are some great ideas (the co-operation between the three different species represented by the heroes does not always extend to the lower levels of Demeter City, for example) in the series, but it's hampered by the fact that the producers didn't seem to know whether they were making something for pre-teens or young adults. For instance, in one episode the cops have to hunt for this centuries old creature with a penchant for killing nubile young dancing girls and which can "hide" in the bodies of living beings, while at the same time you have a sub-plot concerning two other officers discovering an alien orang-utan in a rubbish skip with predictably humorous and slapstick results. This completely destroys any serious credibility the main story had as these two buffoons lark about "Every Which Way But Loose"-style with this ET-monkey while their colleagues face death at the hands of an ethereal and downright scary adversary. A clearer mission statement would probably have made this show run for longer than two seasons, especially if it had been darker and grittier. That said, not a bad show in all. The execution of good ideas just wasn't up to scratch. Sorry, Gerry...not your best work.
Review of Space Precinct
