Inspector Spacetime/YMMV


 * Alas, Poor Scrappy: Jeffrey was generally loathed throughout fandom until
 * Angst? What Angst?: While the actual transformation was more difficult than usual, the Fifth Inspector got used to being a woman very quickly.
 * Broken Base: The "Blogon" vs. "Blorgon" war has bitterly divided the fanbase ever since the alien race appeared in the series' second episode. For the record, Brian Swansea, the writer/artist who created the iconic Inspector Spacetime enemy, used to insist on "Blorgon" before admitting that he was never really paid enough to care, while Leslie French preferred to drop the R.
 * Fan Community Nickname: The Inspectrum.
 * Fandom Rivalry: Between this and that other show. This is mostly because of the amount of stuff taken from the show and given a new name in the latter.
 * Fetish Retardant: Roy Higginbotham as Petula, after the character's Gender Bender transformation but before Pamela Highwater took over the role.
 * Foe Yay: Averted. There is nothing implied about the relationship between the Inspector and the Sergeant.
 * Genius Bonus: In addition to setting up numerous HistoricalPersonPunchlines, BTV's writers enjoy showing off their Oxbridge educations in other fields. To name just a few:
 * The Inspector referring to the Maharini's 10-dimensional henchbeings as "p-braned" in "Space or the Maharani";
 * The chrono-crossbows in "The Envoys of Entropy" shooting "arrows of time"; and
 * The temporal disintegration of the planet Kadakeys alluding to two of Salvador Dali's Surrealist paintings in "The Persistence of Memory".
 * Harsher in Hindsight: Although the programme's typical ideas of what the future became obsolete soon enough, a few stories turned out to be coincidentally prescient.
 * The serial "The Revolution" climaxed in street battles between the Circuit-Chaps and the Paris police—which would soon look all too similar to the May 1968 protest's.
 * In "Exodus of the Blorgons", the Inspector successfully detects the space-time rifts his nemeses are using to relocate to London by installing special surveillance cameras across the city. Forty years later, the UK has an estimated 1.85 million CCTV cameras.
 * Ho Yay:
 * To some, The Inspector and Constable Horace Wigglesworth. To others, the Inspector and the Sergeant.
 * Or Wigglesworth and the Sergeant!
 * Memetic Mutation:
 * Bowler Hats are Neat!
 * WOT'S ALL THIS THEN???
 * The Optic Pocketknife has a thousand settings, but you'll only need the edge.
 * The intro to "Mark of the Maharani" has been making the rounds on YouTube in recent years and has spawned a few Image Macros. It consists of the Sixth Inspector (Graham Chapman) sitting in a darkened room, legs crossed, pipe in hand, staring unblinkingly at the camera, and reciting a summary of the upcoming episode in reversed Latin. While disquieting, the rumor that he addresses the viewer by name is, of course, completely apocryphal and easily disproven, as is the rumor that his eyes vanish at any point during the intro and are replaced with smooth, blank skin. Rumors that the shadows behind him contain roiling black shapes, like tentacles or smoke, were probably inspired by visual artifacts from the VHS transfer. These rumors are silly and should not be investigated further.
 * "Its not (where, what, who or how) but when".
 * "Look out, Blorgons!"''
 * Narm Charm: Naturally. It's part of the appeal, especially in Classic Spacetime. Those early Blogons! Adorable.
 * Nightmare Retardant: The titular monsters in "The Kittens". (They're just so darn adorable when they're pretending to eat people!)
 * Older Than They Think:
 * A great many science fiction and fantasy characters and concepts actually originated in IS:
 * Despite what the books' fans say, Nymeria of Kraken V was created long before George R R Martin even imagined the name Westeros, much less its history and legends.
 * Fans of that other show would do well to note that Inspector Spacetime began airing an entire year before it. In fact, the former show takes a lot of cues from IS.
 * Paranoia Fuel: The Snarling Lions will attack you as soon as you look at them directly. Made even worse in one of their later appearances, where it's revealed that.
 * Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Stephen Fry's turn as the Inspector was not well received in many quarters. He started on the road to redemption with his brief appearance in the Eighth Inspector TV-movie, (As one reviewer put it, "Where the hell was this guy during the last three years of the show?") And then, years later, when the show was revived again, he appeared in the episode Fry and Laurie, playing not his version of the Inspector, but an epically hilarious send-up of himself.
 * Retroactive Recognition: Sometimes it seems like every single famous British actor in the world started out playing a villain or Red Shirt on Inspector Spacetime. Perhaps the earliest example was Michael Caine, who hit it big in Zulu just months after appearing as the terrifying Cockney Circuitleader in The Lost Asteroid.
 * Seasonal Rot: The Seventh Inspector's run is generally regarded as the series' lowest point, mostly due to the banal, repetitive and/or appalling scripts (though as noted above Stephen Fry's Inspector has his detractors as well.) "Cattlefield", with its ghastly abundance of Toilet Humor, may be the worst of the worst.
 * Special Effects Failure:
 * The show's notoriously low budget often caused this. The most infamous example was the episode where the "monster" was clearly a carton of eggs with Dracula fangs glued on.
 * The Ocean's Teeth. Just, The Ocean's Teeth. Sharks are not supposed to have bare feet! Or mouths with visible hinges (that appeared to have been taken off a rusty old door). You could see the costume operator's fabulous red hair in the Grand Poobah Shark's mouth, making viewers certain that there would be a big Scooby Doo Reveal and cursing of meddling kids by the end. How the actors managed to keep straight faces is a miracle for the ages.
 * The Woobie: Almost any Associate, but Capt. James Haggard deserves a special mention.