Hyperdrive (2006)

Top comments

1. 

   Siskoid

   While certainly not the first British science-fiction comedy, Hyperdrive (or at least, the one season - of two - available for streaming here) is interesting for being a precursor to several of today's American shows. And Fry's Theorem of British Comedy is in full bloom. It's a Trekkish spoof like The Orville and - canon or not - Lower Decks, but those shows have a wisecracking hero surrounded by fools and zanies (Mercer and Mariner), whereas Commander Henderson of the Camden Lock (a ship that cleverly looks like London's radio tower, as seen in Doctor Who's The War Machines) is a British hero through and through, always ending up with egg on his face. In fact it seems like the whole of the British presence in futuristic space is a bit of a joke. Though I love Nick Frost and Miranda Hart as performers, the show never really crosses from amusing into outright funny for me, and the reason may lie in its overt caricatures. It's hard to find a real heart to the show when its characters are so often motivated by their particular recurring gag, or with such silliness as the "augmented" Sandstrom doing a kind of pole dance in the back to make the ship go. Episode 6 is as close as it gets to striking the right chord, so I'd be interested to see the second season, if it is ever made available to me.
   
   Season 2: They finally dropped the second season of Hyperdrive on streamers (despite having aired in 2007) and it's much the same as the first. The comedy doesn't often rise above the level of amusing, and in some cases - like a very 2007 transphobic joke or the fact that Sandstrom is still a practical slave (though the actress gets more to do, happily) - is rather ugly. It's all down to the same reasons that sank the first season: The characters are caricatures to the point where the show has no heart. The last couple episodes perk up, I felt, with better lore and more character depth, but it's a little too late for that and the show would not return. Not that I really care about the quality of the effects in Hyperdrive - the props and costumes have a B-movie look on purpose, after all - but in whatever conversion was used to make the episodes streamable, many of the CG shots are blurry, reminding me of the terrible Babylon 5 DVDs. Just a minor annoyance, but one nonetheless. 2 years 9 months ago

See all comments

Friends

Login to see which of your friends have seen this movie!