Star Cops: Mars Part 1

When Chris Boucher, the original producer of the Star Cops television series was asked what he would have done had a second season been commissioned, he replied that he would like to have taken the characters to Mars. That finally happens in this, the first half of a two-part, six-episode, audio series. All three surviving members of the original cast appear again, although the two new characters introduced in the previous audio series do not. Nonetheless, there are enough connections with the prior series that it makes sense to listen to the two in order.

The New World/The Shadow of This Red Rock – in a break from the format of the previous two volumes, the first two episodes of this collection are essentially a single story, separated by a cliffhanger, rather than two stories fitting within an arc. The first half, of course, is setting the scene, with the Star Cops having been sent on a six-month preparatory mission to try to establish a police force on Mars. The exposition about how Martian society is set up is well done avoiding the large info-dump approach, and we're soon off to Olympus Mons to investigate some thefts on the verge of turning violent. That leads to an effective police procedural whodunnit that plays on tensions amongst the colonists.

Following the cliffhanger, the style of the story switches to suspense and a struggle to survive as Nathan and Kenzie are placed in danger as a direct result of events in the first half. Devis, meanwhile, is somewhere else entirely, equally endangered but in a different way; this is clearly a sub-plot setting things up for later, since the events pose far more questions than they answer. Even in this half of the story, however, we have exploration of how different people have coped with living on Mars, with an interesting guest character as well as some nice references to remind us how different Mars is from the ‘high frontier' setting of the usual series. 5 stars.

Whatever Happened to Gary Rice? – The title is the contents of a mysterious message received by the main characters at the beginning of this story. It leads them to an investigation at a couple of bases where it's clear that somebody is hiding something, but not initially what or why that might be. Although this sounds like the basis of another procedural, that's not really what we get, with the story flipping between exposition and action sequences once the antagonists realise they have been discovered. It drags a little in places, despite some good lines that add a bit of humour, and isn't one of the stronger entries in the “season”. The larger plot arc hinted at in the previous two-parter returns at the end, creating a cliffhanger that leads into the second volume. 4 stars.