Hyperdrive

[acb]

Last night, I saw the first episode of Hyperdrive, a new "scifi comedy" series from the BBC. The concept seems to be somewhere between Red Dwarf and The Office, and involves the crew of a British spaceship in 2150, their mission being to sell industrial estates in Peterborough to alien civilisations. The execution seemed a bit low-budget and superficial, and it seemed almost entirely comprised of second-hand scifi clichés (angular corridors with futuristic-looking sliding doors, people in lycra bodysuits running through said corridors, aliens looking like humans in lumpy prosthetic makeup, aliens having bizarre customs (a gag which they stretched in a Benny Hill-esque direction), and the standard computer-rendered shots of spaceships, this time one with a whopping huge Union Jack painted on it). It fell a bit flat; I'm not sure I'll bother with the second episode.

Some things I noticed about it: apparently, the UK in 2150 is an independent spacefaring power (and not federated with the EU or US or someone else); not only that, but it has exactly the same composition as it does in 2006—England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Which, given that 60 years ago, 1/3 of the world was administered from London, seems like an implausible length of time without change. And secondly, apparently 22nd-century spaceship designers have discovered that the best interface for piloting such a ship is to have a girl in a bodysuit dancing/miming on a podium on the bridge.