The year was 1996.

Creator Caetlyn McLean had just finished watching an episode of the Australian police TV series Water Rats when she had an idea. What if she made a series about the suburban police who patrolled the city of Adelaide in a future year? The wheels of cognition began working overtime and before she knew it she had written the first chapter of a novel then named TechnoCops set in the year 2198. It was a rather crummy title but it was the only thing she could think of at the time.

She had originally decided to write it as a form of a novel with about 27 main characters. She had written several other short stories and had given TechnoCops to Belinda Darling for proof reading. She got back to Caetlyn and pointed out just how crummy the title sounded and suggested a better title – GlobalPol. GlobalPol then evolved to becoming police who patrol the streets of planet Earth – very much like the combination of state and federal police roles.

Caetlyn was very ambitious at the time and met a friend of hers who had an avid interest in film making. She somehow managed to slip the name of GlobalPol to him and he asked for the manuscript. She obliged and a few days later, he expressed his disappointment about not having any space travel. This got Caetlyn thinking and she discussed it with Belinda who agreed. After a brainstorming session, they decided StarPol would be the name of the series about police who patrolled the universe on the lookout for crime. To make it more credible, they decided to set it in the year 3198 instead. They retained the GlobalPol title for one of their sub-divisions in the series and StarPol was officially born.

When recording of the first audio series went ahead in 2010, StarPol was still being used as the main series name. It wasn’t until a listener pointed out that Starpol was also the name of a series of children novels written by John Tully in the 1980s. It was here Caetlyn changed the name of the series to Governance in order to avoid any copyright infringement.