Starhyke
It’s tough being a sci-fi comedy series. Even the mighty Red Dwarf only managed to cling onto a TV spot thanks to a devoted fan-base. Channels have since tried to recapture Dwarf’s audience with decidedly mixed results, namely the strained Hyperdrive which didn’t exactly blast off into the stratosphere. Vying for attention around a similar time as Hyperdrive (2006/2007) was Andrew Dymond’s Starhyke, a Star Trek spoof starring fan favourite Claudia Christian (Babylon 5) but with more British sensibilities. The show never aired but this didn’t deter Dymond and Lightworx Media from producing an entire series of 6 episodes. Now the series-that-never-was is available on DVD, in all its endearing, yet painfully flawed, glory.
If you check out Starhyke’s official site then you’ll see that Dymond has gone to great lengths to come up with a backstory for the show’s universe. Sadly, little of this makes it to the screen giving the series a very haphazard feel. The pilot episode, Disordered, begins in 3034, in a universe where human’s have suppressed their emotions and are on the verge of wiping out the last alien race of the galaxy. But the Reptids counter-strike by sending a ship back in time to the Earth of the 21st century where they plan to detonate a weapon that will reawaken human emotion. The Dreadnaught Nemesis is tasked with going back in time to stop them but is hit with a smaller version of the weapon so the crew must deal with their new, heightened emotions while hunting the Reptids.
Dymond’s main aim is to put some sex appeal back into sci-fi. The crew of the Nemesis will be familiar to fans of The Next Generation – there’s an android, a warrior, a brilliant engineer – but Dymond flips the stuffiness of Star Trek’s ordered and boring Enterprise by having the characters suddenly injected with feelings. Now they’re angry, crying, horny… mostly horny. Although Dymond’s premise is intriguing and allows for a few dramatic moments, including one where they all realise how horrible they’ve been to other races, the show very quickly descends into Benny Hill territory with nurses in short skirts and tired double entendres.
What’s first noticeable is that the Bridge of the Nemesis is mainly made up of women. Hot women who are soon all cleavage and legs. Obviously, the main selling point of the show is Christian as Captain Belinda Blowhard, who, let’s face it, is in a different league to Kate Mulgrew’s very prim Janeway, but they’ve travelled back to the 21st century, not the 1960s. In a later episode, Plug and Play, some of them get jobs in a strip club, yes, a strip club, which is a pretty handy way of getting Rachel Grant (as the aptly named Wu Oof) to show off her assets.
The men don’t come off any better and are aloof and unlikeable. Commander Cropper (Brad Gorton) is supposedly the dashing male of the group but is deeply uncharismatic, yet all the women fancy him, fighting for his attention. For some reason, Chief Engineer Sally Popyatopov (Stephanie Jory) lusts after him the most while on her quest to lose her virginity but this is sub-plot is never really explored. Meanwhile, the ship’s Doctor (Jeremy Bulloch, Star Wars’ Boba Fett) stares at his nurses bending over while experimenting with a very enjoyable new substance called alcohol.
All of this might be more acceptable if the show either a) had a story or b) was funny. Seven of Nine had sex appeal but she was also a character who had to deal with certain issues and obstacles. In Starhyke there is little in the way of character development, except they get more sex-crazed with each episode, and the plots themselves revolve around getting a random signal from somewhere and trying to track down a Reptid, preferably where not many clothes are needed. There’re hints of an actual plot involving the ship’s Hologram (Gene Foad) but this seems like an afterthought.
Many of the episodes feel like a first draft, especially Kill Jill which actually features some of the show’s better action sequences. As a real-life martial artist, Grant is given the opportunity to face-off with accomplished stunt woman Cecily Fay but the fight itself is pointless. They just get given the disc they wanted after an incoherent scene with a slightly bemused Sir Patrick Moore. Only in the final episode, Lock, Choc and Flying Hogs, does Dymond really get a story cooking as the Hologram’s plan is properly developed.
When it comes to gags, Starhyke mixes so-so Matrix and 2001 references with old fashioned wink wink nudge nudges. “I’m not getting it,” exclaims Blowhard while watching a dodgy video. “Neither am I but I intend to!” says Sally, bah-bum tsch. There are some clever moments in there, there’s a visual Mars Attacks joke that’s very amusing, but you spend most of the time waiting for a stern matron to appear and tell everyone off. It wouldn’t be surprising if the show was originally titled Carry On Up Uranus.
On the plus side, Dymond has done a fantastic job with the special effects and on a very low-budget created some incredibly detailed computer models. The starship dog fights are of a very high calibre and the show certainly demonstrates Dymond’s talents as a visual director. The acting is also top-notch despite the very thin material and fans of Christian will certainly get a kick out of her trying something different. Her comedic timing is perfect and she puts in an authoritative yet empathic performance with very little to go on. But the real star is Suanne Braun (as Dotty, the schizophrenic half-computer, half-human) who has fun mixing up expressions and accents.
Should the series have made it to TV? No. The episodes are too slapdash and the comedy is best left in the past, but the fact Dymond has put together a whole TV series without any backing is still a commendable achievement. Starhyke at least looks highly professional and there is a premise buried in there that makes fun of sci-fi shows that take themselves far too seriously. But, sadly, it’s another casualty for the growing tried-but-failed list of sci-fi comedies.
STARHYKE is out now and available from Play.
Review: Rich Badley