IMDB meta-data is 13 episodes of 30 minutes, rated 6.5 by 163 cinematizens.
Genre: SyFy.
Verdict: A winner (see the last paragraph below before ordering).
Thanks to the physics of script writing a distant planet shifts into the solar system. Astronomers notice this aberration and squint into lens. This planet is Medusa which is ruled by women who regard men as noisome necessities to kept in their places as stronger and bigger but less intelligent, less rational, less stable, less disciplined, and less creative than women are. All of this is made clear from the many condescending, patronising, and sexist remarks the women make about men as dumb, flighty, unstable, vain, inattentive, hysterical and so on, applying to men all the stupid and sexist remark contemporary men applied to women. Though absent are the sexual innuendo and double entrendre common to the era.
Medusa’s women wear Sylvia Anderson styles (though she is not credited the wardrobe and sets shout her name) with clear visors, thigh-length boots, six-inch high heels, floor-length hair, elbow gloves, face studs, glitter, sparkle, and hot pants — all in primary colours: All 1970s.
By the osmosis of the script, word passes among the kept, domestic pet-men of Medusa that Earth is ruled by men! Psst, pass it on. An underground Mens Liberation Front takes form, led by Gareth Thomas, and Pierre Brice who decide to escape from their feathered life and steal a spaceship. They land on Earth and bumble around.
Can’t have uppity men stealing and leaving – never quite sure which was the more important crime: leaving or stealing – and so two women set off in slow pursuit and thus the two worlds come into contact. Each society changes a bit as a result. The end.
I may have missed some of the subtlety because at times I engaged the mute during some episodes.
Star Maidens was an Anglo-German production. The German actors, some of whom are Swedish, all speak nearly accent-free English, diluting any exotic element.
It is all played deadpan with awkward scenes, inconsistent characterisations, black holes in the plot, and timidity in the basic idea of gender role reversals. On this point more below. Along with the clothing fashions, the model work of space ships and alien cities – Sylvia again, I suppose – intrudes.
On the credit side, Medusa is not trivialised into either a paradise or a hell. Beneath the matriarchy normal emotional relations exist, just as they do within the Earth’s patriarchy. Though no children are ever seen on either planet. Hmm. There are no villains but collisions among differing ways of life. No shoot ‘em ups, no flames in space, no usual SyFy nonsense. It is all very low key for the most part and when that is combined with pedestrian writing, distracted acting, leaden direction, and butchered editing it is no wonder it died on release.
There are some nice, if heavy handed, role reversal moments. As when the hairy-chested Medusan runaway Brice on Earth has a coffee klatch with neighbourhood wives and shares recipes he got from his father and grandfather. Indeed most episodes are variations of the battle of sexes with nary a hint of science fiction. There are two exceptions, one involving self-conscious computer AI and another about time stopping. In addition, a promising idea set out at the start disappears, namely why the surface of Medusa is uninhabitable. It was implied in episode one, I seem to recall, that the surface was rendered uninhabitable by human action, though the opening background under the credit belies that. Oh, and by the way, recalcitrant men are assigned to work on the horrible surface though what they are doing there apart from whinging is never made clear.
Certainly the gender role reversal motif was daring at the time but the execution is half-hearted. After all it must still be the women on Medusa who bear children and somehow that is elided. There is nothing about domestic violence, unwanted children, child care, sexual abuse of children, abortion, slave labour, rape (in marriage), or any of the unpleasant reality of permanent domination. Entrenched matriarchy is likely to produce such corruptions as entrenched patriarchy, but in the 1970s these realities were far beyond the outer limits.
Gareth found fame later in the seldom seen Blake’s Seven. This seems to be Brice’s only credit in English, but he was Winnetou in eleven German western feature films of the 1960s based of Karl May’s books which I have noted elsewhere on this blog. Thomas is perfectly cast as a dolt, and does it convincingly. Brice frequently looks like he wants a stern word with his agent. In one episode the larger than life Terence Alexander is woefully miscast as a Soviet spy in a three-piece pin-stripped suit with a Scots accent.
The IMDb rumour mill has it that the episodes were originally prepared as 50-minute programs, but no one would pay or run them for that length, and so each episode was re-edited and cut to 25-minutes. It shows. The result is cryptic to say the least.
Among the cognoscenti rages an argument over which is the worst ever Brit SyFy television series. True, SyFy offerings are few — leaving aside the good Doctor (Who) — from within that small number there are many candidates for this accolade. Blake’s Seven springs immediately to mind only to be displaced by Space 1999 (1975), but then what of UFO (1970)? Indeed, what of it? And there is the reigning champion, Starlost (1973). But Star Maidens might give it nudge. Whatever its intentions the result is serial inanity. Needless to say some viewers think it is great. Indeed, one user’s review on IMDb takes the whole thing as ironic, showing how terrible a woman’s world would be.