Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A big heaping helping of 70s cheese, 9 Nov 2006
Silly dialogue, ridiculous costumes, corny special effects, plastic sets, gaping holes in logic, and everybody taking themselves way too seriously. Stone me, do I love this show! Never shown in America I purchased this collection based on the Amazon description and I was not disappointed.
A delightful hunk of 70s pop culture with a woefully poor understanding of woman's lib the show starts on the highly advanced planet of Medusa. "Highly advanced" as in being the retro future we were promised but which never came about on Earth.
Loosely based on the ancient Roman model of social order but divided along gender lines, men are in all but name slaves, while women are the citizens in control of the planet Medusa. The women also have ray guns which can immobilize men, virtually turning men to stone. Do you see what they've done there?
Despite being in charge of everything the women on Medusa are still overly concerned with fashion and personal beauty. "Does this spacesuit make my bum look big?" Okay, nobody actually says that but you get the idea. For example the police force (all women) wear uniforms consisting of crash helmets, form fitting shorty tops with a bare midriff and hot pants. Let's not forget the high heeled go-go boots, which, as any modern police force will tell you, are the perfect foot ware for chasing fleeing criminals.
An unintentional comedy, this show is a hoot.
Episodes are a bit light on content, relying on eye candy padding of space ships and special effects. The first episodes consists of two men from Medusa stealing a spaceship and flying it to Earth. They crash land and the female security force on Medusa are really annoyed. The End. That's it, that's episode one. Despite this, there are plenty of helpings of sci-fi cheese to satisfy viewers. Searching for food on Earth we are treated to a close up of the runaway slave Adam biting into an apple. Do you see what they've done there?
Not a show for everybody. However, if you are amused by Euro-Cheese, if you enjoy naff sci-fi then you'll love this show.
Fanboys and Fangirls stand proud and boldly go where no one has gone since 1975, and with good reason. Put on your Original-Dr-Who scarf, or your futuristic aluminum foil clothes or at least your anorak and enjoy a nitpicker fest called Star Maidens. (For a show called Star Maidens they sure focus a lot on the blokes. Hah! Let the nitpicking begin!)
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great show...but please stop crediting Sylvia Anderson!, 17 April 2007
To many, STAR MAIDENS means absolutely nothing at all. To me, it was a super little television series with a very catchy theme tune that entertained me in my early teens, being impressionable and very interested in watching anything that was remotely sci-fi.
Although I agree with other Amazon reviewers comments about it being cheesey and dated, STAR MAIDENS reminds us that Britain could produce quirky, imaginitive, and colourful sci-fi when it had the cash.
It is at this point though that I would like to dispel the myth that STAR MAIDENS is the work of Sylvia Anderson in an uncredited role. This mis-information appears to have started with a rumour among fans of 'Anderson' shows after it was originally aired and now, amazingly, seems to have gained a new lease of life on the Internet - even after carefully researched material (including the notes in the enclosed DVD booklet) has been published proving otherwise. To those of you who keep saying that STAR MAIDENS displays "the hand of Sylvia", then please offer some conclusive proof to support your statement, rather than simply assuming the IMDB is correct or perpetuating hearsay generated by obscure and dubious articles or websites. If viewers think the look of STAR MAIDENS is a bit Anderson-esque, it is almost certainly due to the fact that its production designer was SPACE:1999's Keith Wilson. The idea of the series itself came from Jost Graf von Hardenberg in Germany and was produced at Bray Studios in England by James Gatward and Eric Paice for the company Portman Productions. It may trigger memories if I mention ELEPHANT BOY, CASTAWAY, THE OUTSIDERS, THE FLYING KIWI and GOLDEN SOAK, as these are other shows made around the same time by Mr Gatward and Portman, and also worthy of future DVD release.
Delighted I am then that all 13 episodes of STAR MAIDENS have been released in this two-disc DVD set that is nicely priced by Amazon. I can once again disappear into my very own telly-heaven, and my 'Blue Remembered Hills'.
The only extra is a lengthy piece with Gareth Thomas sharing his memories of the show, which of course is very interesting if you are a fan like me.
Anyway the series itself is what I bought the DVDs for and I am very pleased with the quality of the transfers seeing that the source was 16mm film, the picture being as sharp and as colourful as it's ever likely to get. My only complaint is that the integrated 'end of part one' and 'part two' bumpers, that created a dramatic junction at a specific point in each episode, are missing - if you've watched any of Network's DVD releases of SPECIAL BRANCH, THE SWEENEY or ONE SUMMER, you will know what I mean. 8/10
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great great great!, 6 Nov 2005
Finally the complete series of "Star Maidens" is available on dvd, all the original 13 episodes. In Italy the show was called "Medusa" (the name of the planet, taken, I guess, from the mythological female monster who could turn men to stones) and was aired in the early '80 on local tv. I had a clear memory of the series but after so many years it's amazing having the possibility to se it again.... I've seen the whole series in 2 nights! Like "Sapphire and Steel", another show aired only once in Italy, "Star maidens" is a piece of tv that I'm glad to have seen when I was a child and be able now to watch on dvd! Only one complain: I'm sorry to see that many dvds made in england are without english subtitles. They are very usefull, first for hearing impaired but also for foreign people (like me!) that can understand a conversation in english but sometimes lose a word just because it's not easy to see an hour or more of a show in a language that is not yours!
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