After nine months presumed destroyed, Venera 7 is heading back to Earth, but not everyone wants to welcome the crew back as heroes.

I concluded last week’s Star City review commenting on the shark-worthy implausibilites of its storyline thus: ‘There’s an overgrown Megalodon circling not far below, and I’m looking forward to donning my jet pack for next week’s finale. After all, I’m going to have to leap over it one way or another.’

Readers will be pleased to learn that I was not disappointed. As a kid, I dreamed of propelling myself into the air like Sean Connery in Thunderball, so it was exhilarating to fulfil this dream, albeit metaphorically, as I navigated the Himalayan heights of improbability, building with every scene as Star City hurtled towards its ever more ludicrous conclusion. To be fair, the term ‘science fiction’ has never felt more apposite – with the word ‘fiction’ doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

It’s hard to go into detail without spoilers, but while I did find myself exclaiming ‘As if!’ and ‘Seriously???’ and ‘Surely not!!’ on multiple occasions I can’t pretend that the sheer shark-leaping chutzpah of Ronald D. Moore and his team isn’t worthy of praise. I’m imagining that the phrase ‘never apologise, never explain’ was written in indelible marker pen on the writers’ room white board in huge letters.

Anyway, as the plucky crew finally come to Earth (thankfully nowhere near as smelly or unshaven as one might expect after nine months in a tiny space capsule), it’s a good job the effects of long term weightlessness only last about five minutes freeing them up for a race to the Finnish border, which luckily for them is no more than a barbed wire fence rather than the heavily militarized border zone (hundreds of metres wide) of 1970s historical reality. Also luckily for them, such Soviet soldiers there are, under Anna Maxwell Martin’s evil KGB command, have clearly been trained by the same folk who make Imperial Stormtroopers in the Star Wars universe such amazing marksmen.

Verdict: Star City has been a hugely enjoyable watch, not least because of its eccentric mash-up of gritty Soviet misery with daft-as-a-brush leave-your-brain-at-the-door space shenanigans. At the time of writing a second season is yet to be confirmed, but should one come to pass, I for one will be watching, even if my brain has to sit outside on the doorstep for the duration. 6/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com