What was the name of this late-90s Northern Virginia community access channel show?

September 7, 2008 7:56 PM

Low-Budget Lesbian Space Adventure...filter: What was the name of this late-90s Northern Virginia community access channel show?

Back in 1997, a friend of ours pointed jocelmeow and me to a show that we think at this point was on local access, though we may be misremembering that detail. The show was a lesbian space adventure, and intended to be taken seriously, but the low production values and acting made that pretty difficult. Sadly, it didn't have that magic mix of ingredients to make it "so bad it's good" either. We made it halfway through one episode before the creaking of the risers on the incredibly cheap set drove the ex-theater geek in jocelmeow to distraction. We remember the following details with great confidence:

1. This would have been Arlington, VA or the DC area (if being local access helps).
2. There was a science fiction and adventure theme - space travel and being deep in space.
3. The actresses wore shiny silver suits of some kind.
4. The characters were all women, and part of the theme of the show was that they were all lesbians.
5. Again, the production values were so poor that suspension of disbelief was all but impossible.

I should mention that the women being lesbians made this anything but soft porn. It owed a huge debt to feminist utopian and sci fi writers like Ursula K. LeGuin, not to late-night Cinemax. Sympathies to those writers and gender politics were what led us to tune in, but we found ourselves saying, "Boy this is great, they're... in space, and... not constrained by male fantasies and ... their own narrative arcs and... boy, this set looks pretty cheap, but... new conceptions of the body without the male gaze and... god, this is horrible." As you might imagine, "lesbian space adventure" produces disappointing and NSFW search results. Our google-fu fails us. Anybody have any ideas what the name of this show might have been?

posted by el_lupino to media & arts (8 comments total)

It's pretty difficult for me to imagine this not being so bad it's good.
posted by abcde at 9:35 PM on September 7, 2008

You're going to have to trust us on this. We both remember going in thinking at least it would be that much, but it wasn't even Ed Wood-level charming.
posted by el_lupino at 9:49 PM on September 7, 2008

This sounds vaguely like Cleopatra 2525, albeit a lower-budget and more explicitly lesbian version.
posted by allen.spaulding at 10:03 PM on September 7, 2008

Star Crash.
posted by razzoid at 10:14 PM on September 7, 2008 [3 favorites]

You know it's obscure when Wikipedia doesn't believe it exists.
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:39 PM on September 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

I never knew such wonders existed on community access! Thanks el_lupino and razzoid for bringing Star Crash to my attention.
posted by Kattullus at 11:55 PM on September 7, 2008

Has to be Star Crash, they also showed this show in central virginia too (like Richmond)
posted by TeachTheDead at 5:38 AM on September 8, 2008 [2 favorites]

I think I have to give it to razzoid just for getting in there first, but that certainly looks like the answer. Many thanks to all those who knew and chimed in.
posted by el_lupino at 5:59 AM on September 8, 2008