JUPITER MOON

BRITAIN’S FIRST SCI-FI SOAP WENT INTO ORBIT 30 YEARS AGO AS THE CENTREPIECE OF ILL-FATED SATELLITE NETWORK BSB. SFX LOOKS BACK AT WHAT WAS DUBBED “CROSSROADS IN SPACE”

- ALISTAIR MCGOWN

:BEFORE STREAMING OR THE internet, a satellite fired into orbit looked set to create a new dawn of space-age television. British Satellite Broadcasting planned to more than double Britain’s mere four TV channels with its subscription service of movies, sport and entertainment. At the heart of BSB’s new Galaxy channel was a thrice-weekly soap opera set aboard an orbiting space station.

Jupiter Moon was created by William Smethurst, former producer of ITV’s Crossroads. After the axe fell on the infamous Midlands motel soap in 1988, Smethurst responded quickly when that same year BSB canvassed production companies for new soap concepts. Alongside domestic effort Bartholomew Square, Smethurst added, as an afterthought, the sketchy outline of sci-fisoap Voyage Of The Ilea.

Jupiter Moon was essentially sold to BSB’s director of programmes John Gau on one sentence: “The loves, passions, and courage of the students and crew of a space polytechnic as it ventures through the universe in search of scientific discoveries.”

Smethurst boasted his collegiate space soap would provide a realistic view of the future: “There are no little green monsters at all. We’ve taken a group of people – young people as they are today with their domestic troubles, love affairs and so on – and put them in a hostile and challenging environment [60 years in the future]. It should make for some very gripping television drama.”

Pre-production began in February 1989, with Smethurst’s production company Primetime-Andromeda utilising Central TV’s former Crossroads studios in Birmingham, with a £6 million budget for a first year’s run of 150 episodes.