the series' main comedy element and frequently gets the best lines. Pal Kenzy (Linda Newton) Australian Pal Kenzy is briefly glimpsed in "An Instinct for Murder" and then introduced properly in "Intelligent Listening for Beginners" where she is fired by Spring for corruption. Determined not to go quietly, Spring is forced to reinstate her when she foils an attempted hijacking on the Earth-Moon shuttle. She has a stormy relationship with Spring who mistrusts her but over the course of the series they develop a close bond. By the end of the series it is apparent that Spring has saved her from falling into a pit of corruption whereas she has restored his faith in humanity. Anna Shoun (Sayo Inaba) Rounding off the team is Dr Anna Shoun, a 29-year-old general physician from Japan. Spring takes her on when she is fired for betraying her employers, the multinational Hanimed corporation, to the Star Cops in the episode "In Warm Blood". The Shoun character has been criticised as a racial stereotype, a charge that has also been levelled at other aspects of the series such as depicting Italians as members of the Mafia, Arabs as Islamists and Americans as jingoistic warmongers. Alexander Krivenko (Jonathan Adams) Finally, introduced in "Trivial Games and Paranoid Pursuits", is Russian Alexander Krivenko, the commander of the Moonbase where the ISPF have their headquarters. A winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, it is Krivenko's research into bone damage that has contributed to enabling humanity to access space easily. Although the Star Cops are independent, Spring's relationship with Krivenko is often deferential and he frequently seems to capitulate to Krivenko's wishes. Production history Origins Chris Boucher began his television writing career in comedy, working on such programmes as Dave Allen at Large and Romany Jones, before moving on to write for drama series, including Shoestring, Juliet Bravo and Bergerac. He was no stranger to television science fiction, having written three serials for Doctor Who and having acted as script editor on the entire four season run of Blake's 7 as well as writing nine episodes for it himself. Boucher originally pitched Star Cops to the BBC in 1981 as a radio series but, with James Follet's epic Earthsearch serial in production that year, it was felt that science fiction was adequately served in the schedules and so Boucher tried to sell it to television instead. He sent the