known as "Star Wars") both of which were underway in the early 1980s. Accordingly, space travel and life in space is portrayed in a realistic manner with depictions of weightlessness and low gravity environments and lengthy space journeys (months or years in cases of interplanetary travel) as well as hazards such as spacesuit failures, radiation exposure and explosive decompression. This air of realism has led to Star Cops being frequently compared with the 1973 BBC drama series Moonbase 3. Similarly, the pioneering spirit evoked by the process of colonising the Solar System seen in the series has led to comparisons with the Western genre among many commentators. The 'cops in space' genre had its origins six years earlier in the darker, R-rated 1981 film Outland. Law and order is provided by the International Space Police Force (ISPF), twenty part-time volunteers disparagingly nicknamed the "Star Cops". The decision has been made to put the ISPF on a permanent full-time footing and a new commander, Nathan Spring, has been appointed to accomplish this. Many of the series episodes deal with Spring's efforts to establish the Star Cops—he sets up a base of operations on the Moonbase, recruits new staff, roots out and dismisses corrupt officers and works to extend the Star Cops' reach first into the American space stations and then, at the end of the series, the far-flung reaches of the Mars colonies, all the while investigating whatever crimes occur along the way. Many of the crimes that the Star Cops investigate have a science fiction "twist" to them arising from the unconventional (for a police show) environment the series is set e.g. a murder in which the two victims are not yet dead, a ransom demand for kidnapped embryos, a hoax discovery of an alien civilisation, etc. It is out of these scenarios that one of the major themes of the series emerges: the conflict between human emotion and morality on the one hand and machine logic and rogue science on the other. Another major theme of the series is the "sins of the father": Spring's first assignment as a detective was to arrest his father for industrial espionage, the villain in "Intelligent Listening for Beginners" is motivated by his inability to match his father's reputation, Spring's deputy, David Theroux, watched his father die of radiation poisoning, the kidnapper in "A Double Life" is seeking revenge for his father's murder