Search - Jupiter Moon: New Frontier (4pc) on DVD

Samuel K. (Solvanda)
Reviewed on 7/2/2018...

Welcome to the series which never ends and melts your mind, all 150 episodes of it. British space soap opera filmed in Birmingham. The action takes place aboard the Space Station Ilea (named after the recently abolished Inner London Education Authority) which orbits the Jupiter moon Callisto. There's a university on this space station with plenty of nubile, whiny students. Not much in the way of Scifi going on here; but if you hang on, there's a little bit here and there. It's mostly just self-involved, mundane lives at stake here. The sort of thing to play in the background whilst doing other things.

Trivia: The character Phillipe Gervais was named after the then associate producer Jane Fallon's partner Ricky Gervais.

Jupiter Moon: Adventures in the new frontier

Dean Shewring | 10/08/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In 1990, British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) launched a soap opera for their Galaxy Channel, appropriately set 60 years in the future aboard an old spaceship orbiting the Jupiter moon Callisto -- and housing Columbus College, a university of space.

Episodes were shown three days a week, with a full compilation of those episodes broadcast on the following Sunday. 150 episodes were made in total, with 108 shown before the infamous 'merger' of BSB with Sky.

I found it very effective as a soap opera. The mixture of the usual teenage angst and adult drama with the challenges of living and working in space worked together quite well. The acting in some of the earlier episodes was a bit shaky, but got better as characters were removed/added and the younger cast members became more experienced. (hence the '4' rather than 5) The model work was excellent for the period and most of the filming was realistic. There shouldn't have been gravity in the ship's hub, otherwise it did have a authentic feel.

My favourite characters were Anna Chancellor as Mercedes Page and Richard Derrington as Professor Brelan. Many younger cast members were very good as well and some have gone on to greater things.

I won't comment on costuming, as who will know what fa"

Surprising fun series

Janet E. Brown | Oakland, CA | 05/16/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I bought these DVDs on a whim, mostly because I like one of the castmembers. Knowing that it was supposed to be a "space soap opera," I was expecting something utterly low-budget, campy and ridiculous. In some ways, my expectations were met (lots of terrible 80's hairstyles, some of the most absurdly awful-looking costumes I've ever seen). But what struck me immediately was that the writers clearly had a sense of humor about the whole project. And they remembered university life quite well! The characters are all likable but have very human foibles: the students are often lazy, whiny and entitled-acting; the staff members snipe at and compete with each other; the ship's crew members know all too well that the assignment to the college is a dead-end career path; there are budget fights, turf wars and petty arguments; even the "soap" romances are closer to real-life than a typical soap-opera's over-the-top melodrama. The writers throw in plenty of hilariously dry lines (cynical, hard-drinking, past-his-prime Captain Elliott Creasy and tart-tongued postgraduate/aspiring navigator Mercedes Page have some of the best), and I found myself laughing out loud at many points while watching this series. I wound up getting quite caught up in their lives, and by the end of the series I was genuinely sad to bid them goodbye.

If you buy all 4 sets, it's 150 half-hour episodes, which certainly gives you plenty of material to watch. Highly recommended if you're looking for sci-fi with an emphasis on humor and human interaction as opposed to explosions and special effects. (There are no "aliens" in this series, either, which in my opinion is a big plus.)"