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The Stardust Café is voyage-end for hundreds of space
travellers. It's the most romantic rendezvous beyond the Asteroid
Belt, the first civilised restaurant beyond Island 5, and
the haunt where captain Creasy drowns his sorrows. It's where
Chantal is offered a place on a Daedalus 10 mission.
Twelve years on a starship - with the lover who rejected her...
Jupiter
Moon was
originally broadcast in 1990, and to be quite frank the production
values are pretty atrocious. It looks not unlike any number
of 70/80s sci-fi shows which were studio bound (Moonbase
3, Doctor Who or Blake's 7, for example).
And the acting... Don't even get me started. It's like a cross
between a poor Australian soap opera and the aforementioned
sci-fi shows at their worst.
I
cringed at the poor use of cameras (especially when they try
to suggest elevator movement by panning the camera up or down),
the clichéd sci-fi sets and costumes (everything is
either chrome, or white and clinical, and the costumes...
the doctor has a very large red cross pinned to his uniform),
and the Crossroads style cliff-hangers.
But,
despite all these elements, there's something here that is
almost hypnotically compelling about the episodes. Sure most
of the actors can't act, and the script is flat (maybe the
odd joke or amusing incident would have helped), but I really
did start to care for the characters.
There
are plenty of familiar faces here, including Anna Chancellor
(Four Weddings and a Funeral), Karen Murden (Your
Mother Wouldn't Like It - I'm probably the only person
that remembers her in that.), Alison Dowling (Emmerdale)
and Lucy Benjamin (Eastenders).
Extras
are a little thin on the ground. There's an image gallery
(continuity polaroids; interesting production notes; two 'blink
and you'll miss them' featurettes that are just pointless
(in fact it looks like they've been taken from a longer feature
as we get a burst of music and then it cuts back to the main
menu) and an Easter Egg - that I really couldn't be bothered
to hunt for.
The
fact that the quality of the image is comparable to a very
bad video print (understandable given the original source)
is another thing that will have you turning your nose up in
disgust.
This
DVD release is really only for those who loved the series
when it was originally broadcast.
Nick
Smithson
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