draft script of the first Star Cops story to Jonathan Powell, the Head of Drama at BBC television. Powell responded asking Boucher to write a second script and on the strength of this the series was commissioned. However, Powell insisted that the first story, which Boucher had intended to run over two episodes, be reworked into a single episode. This would be the first of many difficulties Boucher would have with how Star Cops was eventually realised for the screen. Boucher, who at this time was working as script editor on the crime series Bergerac, was also told by Powell he could work on Star Cops or on Bergerac but not on both and so chose to leave Bergerac. Production Assigned to produce Star Cops was Evgeny Gridneff, who had previously worked for the BBC on Tenko, Blott on the Landscape and Hold the Back Page. Gridneff and Boucher clashed over their respective visions for the series from the outset when, on their first meeting, Gridneff told Boucher that all his scripts would have to be rewritten. Boucher later remarked that their "relationship started out at the bottom and worked its way down". Boucher had intended to write all ten scripts for the series himself but the tight timescale under which the episodes had to be recorded meant he could only contribute five, with the rest written by John Collee (three scripts) and Philip Martin (two scripts). Having previously qualified and worked as a doctor, Collee was a journalist who wrote for The Observer newspaper and later moved into films, most notably writing the screenplay for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Martin was an experienced scriptwriter, best known for the controversial BBC drama series Gangsters, with previous experience in television science fiction, having written for Doctor Who. Two directors were assigned to the show: Christopher Baker, who had worked with Gridneff before on Hold the Back Page as well as BBC veterinarian dramas All Creatures Great and Small and One by One, and Graeme Harper who had directed two Doctor Who stories. At the time, most British television drama was shot on a combination of film and videotape. Usually location shooting would be on film and studio work would be recorded on video. The effect of the change in medium from film to video (or vice versa) during a scene change in a programme could be