"Meltdown Man", a year-long cliffhanger serial written by Alen Hebden, followed in 1980–81, in which an SAS officer was caught in a nuclear explosion and blasted into a future where humans have enslaved genetically-engineered humanoid animals, and leads the fight for their liberation. In 1981 writers John Wagner and Alan Grant created a new series for him, space haulage comedy "Ace Trucking Co.". Grant says they wanted to exploit Belardinelli's "fevered imagination" and wrote a series which featured "as few actual human beings as possible" - almost all the characters were aliens.