Ok, so here’s a scenario: you’ve been taken hostage by some terrorists / aliens / Volgans / generally hostile people. One of your kidnappers sticks a gun in your back, and tells you to speak on camera to reassure your friends and family that you’re ok, and are not in any kind of trouble at all, honest. Hands up everyone who would tell the folks back home to “Get Everything on an Even Keel”, in the hope that someone watching would be a VCs fan, who would suss out that you were in trouble and send out a rescue party.
I’m counting hands – do I see a full house?
OK, maybe not everyone has their hands up, but that’s only because you haven’t read the VCs yet. The VCs, you see, are space soldiers who fight the evil geeks. So if someone tells you to Get Everything on an Even Keel, it means they’ve been kidnapped by geeks, and need some ass-kicking VC rescue action pronto.
What I’m trying to demonstrate here is both the ridiculousness of some of the plotting in this here volume, but more importantly the fact that it really works, to the extent that I really, honestly, and truly would try that trick if I’m ever kidnapped. Because I love this series almost as much as Dan Abnett does.
The VCs is a future war story set in space. Think about how many images that phrase conjures up. Now be thrilled to learn that absolutely every single one of those images will feature in this story!
Cool looking spaceships shooting lasers at each other in space? Check.
Space warriors blasting out of spaceships and shooting lasers at each other? Check.
Huge armadas of spaceships beaming out of warp drive? Check.
Weird-looking aliens with creepy faces? Check.
Spaceships landing on alien planets? Check.
Hand to hand skirmishes on said alien planets? Check.
Hard-talkin’ space rogues getting on the wrong side of incompetent commanders? Check.
You get the idea.
More than his subsequent work on Rogue Trooper, I think the VCs highlights the genius of writer Gerry Finley-Day. History (and more specifically Thrill-Power Overload) tells us that sub-editors such as Alan Grant had a job rendering the man’s plots intelligible, and dialogue readable, on this and other scripts, but the point is that he took on the challenge of a sci-fi space fighting epic and really went to town with it. Yes, it’s kind of incoherent, and the plot details are often implausible, but the mood and delight shining through it all is sublime.
Let’s not forget, the iconic VC spacesuit design comes from Mike McMahon, and much of the series was drawn by Cam Kennedy, an artist that any Star Wars fan can tell you was born to draw spaceships and alien planets. And then there’s Garry Leach, whose style is entirely different, more on the photo-realistic end, and it adds a cracking dimension of grit. His work is fantastic at getting across the feeling of being cooped up in a spaceship with a bunch of hard-nosed spacers.
To be honest, I don’t really like McMahon’s work on the first episode (sacrilege!), but he gets the credit for setting the scene, and designing the 6-man crew of the VCs. For me, it’s Kennedy who makes the series great, he really got to grips with his drawing here. It’s a shame he didn’t see it through, although John Richardson does a neat, if gooey, job with the final episodes.
Ex-Tharg Steve MacManus delivers a few episodes along the way under the pen-name Ian Rogan. It’s not a noticeable change in style, although perhaps his plots seem a little more plausible. It may have been he who supplied the idea that then VCs on-board computer has a malfunction and becomes a hippy. Whoever’s idea that one was, it’s pretty silly and is quietly dropped, but it has a certain charm nonetheless.
The other idea that gets beaten a bit to death is the strange obsession with initializations. The title VCs – which stands for Vacuum Cleaners –sets up the theme that this series will introduce lots of made up future weaponry that the troopers refer to by initials. Writers in the present day would perhaps use this as an excuse to make jokes about office jargon. In the more innocent early 80s, Finley-Day just drops names like SDB (Solar Death Burst) into the script. If you’re in the wrong mood, this sort of thing would be annoying, but it doesn’t really get in the way of the story.
Getting onto the good bits: the central cast is great. Each VC is from a different part of the solar system, with different characteristics to match. They all hate new recruit Smith, the Earthman, but the camaraderie builds as it must in these kinds of tales. The overarching plot is pretty good to. The series tells the complete story of the humnan-geek war, and it feels solid. Where Rogue Trooper is endlessly searching for the Traitor General, and then one day finds him somewhat at random, the VCs builds carefully to a natural conclusion. I can’t imagine this was a deliberate editorial mandate from episode one, but whether by chance or design it works out that way. There aren’t plot episodes sandwiching filler episodes – like the best HBO TV shows (sorry, more initials!) it’s all setting the scene, establishing the characters, and then nailing down the plot.
Yes, the story is more than ludicrous at times. And yes, the plot relies on coincidence and convenience. But if you like the idea of a space war romp, you’ll surely fall in love with this, the original outing of the mighty VCs.
