Spooks goes SciFi

The year is 2013. Thames House is gone and London has been evacuated following a nuclear attack. MI5 is now housed in a number of regional offices around the country.

The much rumoured BBC Three Spooks spin-off has finally been confirmed and a number of details released about the new series.

It’s set in the future, 2013 to be exact, and London has been evacuated after a nuclear attack. Thames House is gone and has been replaced by a number of Field Offices around the country.

the new series will still focus on a small core elite team - but instead of them all working within the system and out of Thames House and all being slightly ‘older’ top of their game officers - they’re all young and new.

The press release for Spooks: Code 9 asks “are six young new recruits tough, moral and clever enough to protect Britain’s future…?”

This series sounds amazing and may end up doing a Torchwood and being better than it’s main series - in this case Spooks instead of Doctor Who.

Actually that’s wrong - Torchwood isn’t BETTER than Doctor Who - just wonderfully different and I’m hoping that’s what Spooks: Code 9 will be.

This will be the second spin-off from Spooks - the first being MI-High on CBBC (although that isn’t technically a spin-off - more a related show from the same company) and is also being made by Kudos.

The cast looks pretty interesting. It’s basically a mix of up and coming young British actors all with a sort of edgy feel to them. In fact the casting is another parallel to Torchwood - you have a doctor, an ex-police officer, a tech genius and other related characters.

The team will be led by experienced spook Hannah (Joanne Froggatt) and team itself is made up of Charlie (Liam Boyle) a mathematician and genius problem solver, Rachel (Ruta Gedmintas) an ex-police officer with ambitions to be a leader, Jez (Heshima Thompson) a new breed of spook altogether – a former criminal gone straight.

There’s also Vik (Christopher Simpson) who chose MI5 over a career in his family’s business, Rob (Andrew Knott) who was a junior doctor at the time of the bomb and Kylie (Georgia Moffett) a psychology student, just back from her gap year.

The series follows on from the wake of the attack. The press release explains that in the wake of the attack, MI5 must completely restructured and established field offices across the UK, working to gather intelligence from the very heart of local communities.

As part of this they needed young, new officers on the ground, and fast.

And with not a small dig at the current youth of Britain it goes on to say “luckily, Britain’s youth is more than up to the challenge and is fighting back from the attack with a new sense of patriotism, combined with the hedonism that comes from being face to face with their own mortality. It is members of this new generation of patriots who help make up MI5’s new Field Office 19.”

“After the bomb, MI5 needed new officers with ability, dedication and potential on the streets as soon as possible,” explains Producer Chris Fry. “The team rallied to this call and joined MI5 in the weeks following the bomb. With the exception of their team leader, none of them have been in the field for more than four months and they will continually find themselves in situations beyond their experience and training – they’ll only succeed through grit and determination. ”

Executive Producer Karen Wilson continues: “Nearly one year on from the bomb, Britain is starting to get back to something resembling normality. But, under the surface, there have been massive changes: terror warnings and security checkpoints are regular features of everyday life, and there’s a flourishing black market in everything from ID cards to anti-radiation drugs. This is the world of Spooks: Code 9 and it holds a whole new set of dangers for MI5’s young pretenders.”

Jane Tranter, Controller of BBC Fiction, states: “It’s brilliant to have the chance of looking into the future of Spooks with Spooks: Code 9 on BBC Three. The series promises to be as entertaining and action-packed as Spooks on BBC One has always been, whilst bringing a more maverick, younger perspective.”

Danny Cohen, Controller of BBC Three, comments: “I’m hugely looking forward to seeing this new drama on BBC Three. I’m a big fan of Spooks and believe that this new show will bring a dynamic cast of young actors to BBC audiences.”

In line with BBC Three’s multi-platform strategy, Spooks: Code 9 will be accompanied by an exciting online extension produced by Kudos and leading alternate reality game studio Six to Start. The series will include a live alternate reality experience that provides a multi-dimensional setting for the show and allows viewers to explore and contribute to this changed world.

Now THAT sounds impressive - the online game surrounding Torchwood has been pretty good but it sounds like Code 9 is going to take this to a whole new level - something BBC Three can offer because it starts out life being multiplatform whereas BBC One and BBC Two have multiplatform thrust upon them.

Actually thinking about it more - Spooks: Code 9 is more to Spooks what Stargate Atlantis is to Stargate: SG-1 than Torchwood is to Doctor Who.

If the two series are to exist in the same universe then the Spooks team is going to have to go rogue within five years which is of course possible but probably won’t be as good as it is now as Thames House acts as a sort of holding ground.

My theory is that Spooks: Code 9 will take over from Spooks over the next couple of years - that they will never co-exist.

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