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“I Don’t Need a Brolly, You Wally!”

Adverts

The greatest crossover event of all time? There’s clearly no contest. It’s Star Trek and Hi-de-Hi!, of course.

This early 90s advert for National Power and Powergen – specifically, for the sale of shares as part of the privatisation of the UK electricity market – exists in a weird hinterland for me. I don’t remember it from the time; I only really got into Star Trek in the mid-nineties.1 So who knows when I first saw it properly. All I know is that once I finally saw it on YouTube, it hung around in my head, ready to drop into conversation at a moment’s notice.

Even if you’re not keen on the main body swap gag – which is still more tasteful than “Turnabout Intruder” – there’s still plenty to enjoy. I’m a particular fan of Scotty’s paper aeroplane. The ad justifies its existence with Simon Cadell’s “Good afternoon” alone. But as I watched it recently for the 1,585th time, I started to wonder something. Exactly when was this advert shot?

At first, the answer seems obvious – so obvious that I did one of my ill-advised assumptions back in 2018. Surely they would have made this during one of the film productions – either 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, or 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. This is a case of a little knowledge being a very dangerous thing. Because there is at least a reason why I assumed this. And as usual with my stupid obsessions, that reason is to do with the sets.

Let me explain. I knew enough to know that Star Trek: The Next Generation reused many set elements from the TOS films.2 Just take a look at the refit Enterprise corridor in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, from 1979:

Corridor from The Motion Picture

And compare it to this shot from the first episode of TNG in 1987, “Encounter at Farpoint”:

Corridor from Encounter at Farpoint, looking broadly identical

By the time you get to the later films, with TNG already in production, the reuse can become even more blatant. Especially with sets which have limited screen time. Compare the transporter room in 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier:

Transporter room in Star Trek V

And then this shot from TNG’s “The Hunted” in 1990:

Transporter room in Star Trek V, looking broadly identical

My favourite example of reuse is in 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Here is the Federation President’s office:

Federation President's office, wide shot

Which is, of course, TNG’s Ten Forward, seen here in 1992’s “Power Play”:

Ten Forward, looking broadly identical

I could do this all day, but we’re straying from the point. And that point is: when we briefly see the engine room in Star Trek VI, Scotty is pretty much just standing in an unmodified TNG engine room set. Even the graphics in front of him are distinctly 24th century, rather than 23rd:

Scotty in the engineering room which looks remarkably like the Enterprise D

And this is why I assumed our advert at the beginning of this piece was shot at the same time as Star Trek V or VI: because there was already precedent for these films using distinctly TNG-era dressed sets. Scotty sitting in the Enterprise-D engine room in our advert made my brain leap for what the TOS films were doing, not TNG itself.

But there’s a problem with this. And the problem becomes very obvious when faced with our next question: exactly when did this advert air?

*   *   *

The answer to this is surprisingly hard to find out. The date usually given is simply “1990”, presumably due to the 1990 copyright notice at the start of the advert. But I needed something more specific than that.

Let’s start with the end date for this campaign first. There was more than one advert in the series; take a look at this one featuring Uri Geller:3

This gives the end date of the shares offer as Wednesday 6th March. The 6th March was a Wednesday in 1991, not 1990. So the very last date this advert could run was the 6th March 1991.

Next up: when did the campaign start? After much searching, I found this report in the Newcastle Journal, published 10th January 1991:

Screengrab of newspaper, but this is just flavour text - everything you need is in the main body of the article

This splendidly confirms that the specific advert we’re discussing started airing on the date this article was published. Meaning although it would have been shot in 1990, it was actually broadcast the following year. Specifically, between the 10th January – 6th March 1991.4

Which gives us a few problems, if we thought that this advert was made during the production of the films. Star Trek VI is immediately out: shooting for that film started in April 1991, a month after the share offer was closed. But Star Trek V is hardly any better; that film was shot between October and December 1988. It’s extremely unlikely that the share offer would have been organised in that much detail two years before the advert was transmitted.

All of which leaves us with a lot of proof about what didn’t happen, but not an awful lot about what did. Luckily, this is where I rely on people who know far more than me to shove me in the right direction.

*   *   *

So, thanks to James Cooray Smith, who pointed me towards that golden thing for any researcher: a contemporary article which tells you everything you need to know about the subject, and more besides.

Our answer lies in cult television magazine TV Zone – specifically Issue 15, dated February 1991. Brilliantly, it has an entire page going behind-the-scenes on the advert. The whole thing is worth a read – I’m not going to parrot it all back to you:



British readers will have seen a rather unusual Star Trek film on television recently. It features William Shatner as Captain Kirk and James Doohan as Scotty (who else?) and lasts a whole minute.

In fact, it was an advert for the British Government’s sale of the Electricity Generating Industries, which are currently government owned. 

The Advert 

Kirk and three crew members are caught in a metor shower and ask for help. Scotty beams down a unbrella! After Kirk's protests he and one female member gets beamed up but because of power problems they have their bodies swapped! An announcer proclaims Scotty has not got the power but you could by buying the Power shares! 

The Making Of...

Robin Gladstone, spokesperson for the campaign, told us that this advert is one of a series to promote shares in National Power and Powergen. but this is the only one to feature Star Trek. CDP is the advertising agency responsible for the  Power Sale adverts. Account director Grant Duncan told us that they all feature  some aspect of there being no power and that the viewer should buy shares in Powergen or National Power! They are all quite varied, the second ad. of the three or four in the campaign, features stock footage of someone launching a ship. When she is unable to break the Champagne bottle the announcer comes over  and says she has no power... The others at the time of going to press where still under wraps. 

The Star Trek advert was the brainchild of one of CDP's creative teams. Neither John O’Donnell and Gary Homer, who devised the script, are Star Trek fans. Grant Duncan said it was just that Star Trek fitted the campaign idea so well. The idea that Scotty never has the power when Kirk needs it was just what they wanted, especially as it was so familiar to the general public. 

Paramount was initially contacted about the idea. They liked it and gave the go-ahead. William Shatner and James Doohan were approached and apparently were excited about the script such that there was no problem in securing them for the advert. The actual shooting was done on Paramount lot in Los Angeles under the direction of Graham Rose of Rose Hackney productions. 

Paramount allowed them to film on the Star Trek: Next Generation's engine room and transporter set, with an existing planet set being adapted for their particular use. It was filmed over three days, November 26th. 27th, and 28th 1990. All went very smoothly. Then it was back to London for the editing and effects work. This was done on video (as Paramount do themselves for The Next Generation). CDP wanted for it to be as realistic and as close as possible to the series so there was close consultation with Paramount so they could copy the effects. The effect of Kirk beaming onto the ship as a woman was done by an electronic matte to switch around the heads, so William Shatner never wore the woman’s clothes as one might have imagined! 

Once it was finished Paramount was asked to give it the OK. They apparently  loved it for the British sense of humour! William Shatner and James Doohan did not have to be shown the finished product but it will certainly give them some interesting stories to tell at any Star Trek conventions they may attend!

Which means we finally have our answer. The advert was shot on the 26th, 27th and 28th November 1990. And a quick bit of digging over on Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha reveals that this is right in the middle of production of “Clues“, an episode of TNG’s fourth season.5 The shooting crew for the advert would have had to carefully work around the main TNG unit, to make sure they didn’t get in the way.

And there you have it. The story of how one of my favourite things in the world – Jeffrey Fairbrother looking bemused in the Enterprise-D’s engineering room – came to be. I’m sure everyone who has ever watched it on YouTube and then left a comment feels the same.

RichardM8422
Didn’t need that prat at the end.

The internet doesn’t deserve nice things.


  1. Blame my Dad wanting to see the 6 O’Clock News on BBC1, instead of me being allowed to watch BBC2. 

  2. For more on this, see Trek website Ex Astris Scientia, particularly this article on set reuse, which the examples given here are mainly taken from. 

  3. You are very sympathetic, yes. 

  4. The advert may well have stopped airing at least a couple of days before the share offer ended, but these dates are close enough for our purposes. 

  5. “Clues” first aired in the US on the 11th February 1991 – right in the middle of the “Power” ad campaign airing in the UK. Coincidentally, that episode has its own link to British comedy – the plot is extremely similar to Red Dwarf‘s “Thanks for the Memory”, broadcast three years earlier. 

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5 comments

John Hoare on 21 September 2022 @ 6am

I didn’t find the place to mention this in the article, but yes: it does amuse me that an advert about a shares offer is invoking Star Trek, with the Federation famously being a post-money society.

For that matter, Jeffrey Fairbrother is also as far from money-grubbing as you can get as well!


John Hoare on 21 September 2022 @ 6am

Incidentally, this advert was directed by Graham Rose, and co-written by Garry Horner This piece originally featured a section about another famous Graham Rose/Garry Horner advert, “Photo Booth”, for Hamlet Cigars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEwiyIsWbNg

What I hadn’t realised was that the advert is really just a remake of a Naked Video sketch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvC1KO9Lho

With the accompanying authorship issues that causes, as pointed out to me by Ian Potter, I decided just to cut the mention rather than have the confusion.


George Kaplan on 21 September 2022 @ 10pm

This was fascinating (and that wasn’t meant as a pun when I wrote it, hah). I don’t remember that commercial which is odd as it’s amusing and memorable. Simon Caddell’s appearance really makes it. Hi-De-Hi! was never as good when he left. Still, this ad explains why Jeffrey Fairbrother’s departure was so perfunctory and unlikely: obviously he ended up in the future when Kirk, Spock, and company travelled back in time to find a twitchily likeable fish-out-of-water holiday camp entertainment officer as they had been made extinct in the future and an alien probe would destroy the Earth if it didn’t receive reassurance that twitchily likeable fish-out-of-water holiday camp entertainment officers were still around.
I *am* keen on the bodyswap gag. It’s just silly! And this *is* Captain Kirk/Shatner we’re talking about. (Turnabout Intruder tho’… Yeuch. That deserves all the abuse that humourless extremists hurl at, well, anything now. Apropos of nothing, I read some right-wing berk describe Channel 4 as “globalist propaganda” yesterday. Hm. The human race – or much of it – seems to be going totally insane or fascistic. And people insult science fiction… e.g. The nameless person who linked rising energy prices with the country’s “security”. Um. Okay then. And power companies making ludicrous amounts of surplus profit helps national security how exactly? Yes, this comment has gone off the rails but this stuff is frightening in its illogicality and malevolent fraudulence. Bah!)
P.S. I re-read your Worst and Best of Red Dwarf Remastered today, John. Still hilarious.


George Kaplan on 22 September 2022 @ 12am

I note I spelt Simon Caddell’s name wrong. Idiot! Sorry, Simon. Wherever you be.


Greggles on 22 September 2022 @ 7pm

Cracking piece John


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