Space Island One

Now this was just awful! When I stayed in Canada, I watched this show one week. I was intrigued by the storyline, but felt my interest waning with each passing week. Soon, I could barely stand it.

It is probably the most realistic science fiction show I have ever seen--more so than Star Trek, Earth: Final Conflict, Babylon 5, ad nauseam. And that isn't a good thing. The realism means that it plays out like "Daily Life on the Space Shuttle", except it's a space station. The characters were all indistinguishable from each other, and the plots generally centered around corporate problems concerning the owners of the station, or a plot about the corporate problems, or one character attempting to seduce another with the use of pheramones.

It's so realistic that you won't enjoy it.

Sky tv are running Space Island One at 1am, but to their credit this is the second time the series has had a run since the summer. A thoughtful, well-written and highly plausible view of the near future, with the desire for exploration and discovery forced into an uneasy alliance with the mega-bucks which fund it through big business. Mostly station based, thus eschewing none too spectacular space walks, etc, but allowing character driven plots to explore the individuals and their claustrophobic but scientifically driven lives. At its best, excellent tv science fiction. Its not ray guns and aliens on the starboard bow sf and thus is likely to be doomed to appeal to a small audience, which is a shame. Good scripts and indoor sets, rounded characters and well acted--Judy Loe is superb-- make this a most enjoyable and thought provoking suggestion of the future.

This show did not have a big budget, or action packed stories, but it captured the feeling of the old British sci-fi shows of the 80's.

I liked the show for it's distinctive atmosphere, and the easily-likeable characters. It was a good break from Star Trek clone shows (although I generally do like those shows too :).

If you liked shows like Blake's 7, this show is for you, although the special effects are distinctly better than the effects in Blake.

Wish I could find a place to buy videos of this show! We're taping it at 1 a.m. on Mondays.

For us, and my friends with scientific training, this is a great show. It's much more realistic than any other "science" show I've seen -- the lab is kind of messy, there are personal tensions about research results, research is seen as an ongoing thing you do every day.

It is kind of dry, but that's partly why we love it.

We saw the first part of a two part one where they're abandoning the station -- and they didn't show the next episode, the next week! So we'd really like to find that one!

Kathges

Great concept, engaging cast, excellent production (for its time)... It all added up to much less than it could have, but was still very watchable if you took it with a grain of salt.

I had the feeling that the original intent was to do a truly 'realistic' space show, and that someone chickened out. It seemed like as soon as the first ratings came in, undoubtedly low, increasingly fantastic elements started to creep in to the series. These were fun, but more of a nod to the Doctor Who crowd than at all consistent with the original premise of Space Island One: life on a space station.

Still, I found the series to be an important 'island' of innovation in a perpetually childish and overwrought TV SF landscape. If you want to see a better show built on similar lines, try to track down the 1980s series Star Cops. Or the 1970s series Moonbase 3. Clearly, these low-key SF tend to come out of the UK every decade or so... We're overdue for another!