Netflix recently added a bunch of UK TV shows to their streaming service, many of which have not been released in the US by other legitimate means yet.  These include shows like the IT crowd and even Hyperdrive, a show that I am currently reviewing!  Rather than dragging out this worn out DVD-R that I burned a long time ago, I was able to sit in the comfort of my favorite chair and watch this on my TV.

 

Playing up the Star Trek parody to new levels, this episode shows the Camden Lock engaged in “would be” negotiations with two warring alien races.  The Space Marshal has come to Henderson to ask him to act as a go-between in negotiations between the Bulaahg and the Lallakiss races.  It seems that both races have staked claim on an asteroid, and neither want to share at all.  The ambassadors from both races arrive including a mixed sex pairing from the Bulaahg camp that immediately proceed to patronize and talk down to Henderson for being less intelligent than they, and a couple of guys from the Lallakiss race that seem to have the “hots” for Vine.

Despite the fact that the Space Marshal has basically told Henderson to “keep the two sides talking until the Americans arrive” he takes it upon himself to try to settle the dispute.  Henderson has his eye on a Nobel Peace Prize and decides to strong-arm the whole thing by implying that he will blow the asteroid up if nobody shares it, when both sides think he is bluffing he orders a nuke to blow up the asteroid.  This actually does unite the two races, but not in the way he had intended as they have declared war of Great Britain.

As a fourth episode, this one does the job well and is about as good, if not slightly better than the previous episode.  At this point, the show does seem to have hit its stride, but it still vaguely feels like a “mash up” of both Star Trek and Red Dwarf.  This isn’t bad per se, but it really makes the show falter a bit as it tries to stand on its own.  Some of the jokes in this episode were really nice, including one where both races collaborate on a “theme song” for the impending war.  This song, Kill the Humans, immediately goes into Jeffers’s music rotation – a fact that both angers and annoys Henderson to no end.  This just adds to the fact that Jeffers is about the biggest bastard in any TV show, and he doesn’t care.  In fact he almost exists as some kind of uber-hipster, a person that does EVERYTHING ironically and ruins everything.

We also see a bit more of the unrequited love storyline between Henderson and Teal pop up as we find Teal ready to share her last minutes on earth embraced with Henderson as he calls her desperately in the night.  Sadly, he just wants her for an officers meeting  and not by his side – a trend that we keep seeing a lot.

This episode does try to have a lot of unnecessary CGI shots, a fact that sort of hurts the episode for me.  Shows used to use models and such if they were on a small budget, but Hyperdrive insists on using cheap CGI and it shows.  These effects aren’t the worst I’ve seen, but it really makes the show a LOT cheaper than it is.  With two more episodes to go, I can’t wait to see what happens next!

My rating 3.3 out of 5