Trivial Games And Paranoid Pursuits
Spring goes to pay a visit to Space Station Ronald Reagan, operated by the United States, to introduce himself and recruit a new American Star Cop to replace the disgraced Hubble; instead, he finds himself on the defensive as the station’s commander complains bitterly about the dismissal of Hubble from the Star Cops – and the fact that Theroux is still in uniform. Pal Kenzy, fresh from writing her own ticket to reinstatement as a Star Cop following the lunar shuttle hijacking rescue, is frustrated to find that her duties amount to little more than a dispatcher. She manages to annoy an American woman calling to report that her brother has gone missing from Space Station Ronald Reagan, whose crew insists that he was never even aboard. Kenzy goes to pay an unannounced visit to Station Reagan, which puts Spring on the spot. Having already been refused a new recruit by the U.S. State Department, Spring now finds himself in the uncomfortable position of exposing an international cover-up, without backup, at an isolated outpost that’s growing more hostile to his presence with each passing second.
written by Chris Boucher
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Justin Hayward & Tony ViscontiCast: David Calder (Nathan Spring), Erick Ray Evans (David Theroux), Trevor Cooper (Colin Devis), Linda Newton (Pal Kenzy), Jonathan Adams (Alexander Krivenko), Daniel Benzali (Commander Griffin), Marlena Mackey (Dilly Goodman), Robert Jezek (Pete Lennox), Russell Wootton (Marty), Angela Crow (Lauter), Morgan Deare (Harvey Goodman), Shope Shodeinde (Receptionist)
Notes: Trivial Games may be unique in that it features the only cast crossover between Star Cops and Star Trek: The Next Generation – Brazilian-born actor Daniel Benzali would go on to play a small role as a gruff surgeon who looked for things to make Picard’s artificial heart go in 1989’s Samaritan Snare; he has also appeared in the ’90s revival of The Outer Limits, Beauty & The Beast, The X-Files and Jericho, among other shows filmed on both sides of the Atlantic. Director Graeme Harper, who had already made a mark on Doctor Who behind the cameras of Peter Davison’s farewell story Caves Of Androzani, directs his first Star Cops episode here; as with his Doctor Who stint, he introduced a change in style by lowering the lighting (in some cases to pitch blackness as Spring snoops around the American space station). Harper would go on to a well-respected directing career that would see him returning to the revived Doctor Who series in 2006.
LogBook entry by Earl Green
Notes: There are several differences between the world established in the movie Stargate and that of the series. The location of the mountain base housing the Stargate has changed to Cheyenne Mountain, an actual Air Force base. (O’Neill mentions that he has been there before, suggesting that the stargate was not moved between the film and the series.) The spellings of “Jack O’Neill” and “Sha’re” have been changed from the original “O’Neil” and “Sha’uri.” The characters of Kawalsky and Ferretti were lieutenants in the movie, but majors in the series. In the film, Abydos was in another galaxy. In the series, it is one of the closest planets with a stargate to Earth, which is why the Earth gate is able to connect to it without adjustments to the address. The alien that possessed the human body Ra was a humanoid in the movie, not a snake-like creature. Ra’s guards were not called by any name or title in the movie, but were referred to as Horus and Anubis in the credits. Their headpieces folded away completely and disappeared, unlike the serpent guard headpieces of the series. (The name Anubis was later given to a major villain in the series’ later seasons.) In the film, O’Neil and Jackson agreed that the major danger was the Earth gate, and that O’Neil would find some way to have that shut down when he returned home. No explanation is given for why the stargate remained unburied and connected to power. Alexis Cruz played Skaara in both the movie and the series.
