Captain Star

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A quirky Anglo-Canadian cartoon parody of Star Trek that ran for only 13 episodes. Captain Star's mission is to visit exotic planets, name them after himself, and sell stuff. However his superiors have stuck him on a nameless planet at the ragged edge of the universe where he naively waits for his next orders, his ego oblivious to the implications that he has been Kicked Upstairs.

The actual work is done by his second in command Dana Scully-Ersatz (just look at that hair), Only Sane Woman First Officer Scarlette. She is sort of helped by the multi-limbed, multi-headed engineer "Limbs" Jones and navigator Black, a fish-obsessed cook.

Tropes used in Captain Star include:
  • Acme Products: Captain Star carries and sells goods by one of these companies, called "Arc".
  • The Ace: A parody of such. Captain Star is called the "greatest hero any world has ever known", and a legendary captain and explorer with hundreds of worlds named after him. Despite being effectively exiled to a remote corner of the universe, he still manages to save the day on numerous occasions. On his Show Within a Show, he's even more so.
  • Chickification: in-universe. Scarlette is portrayed as a bimbo in the Show Within a Show. Subverted in that the actress dislikes having to play her that way and is in fact an avid reader of Scarlette's scientific works.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Black. Fairly low key by the standards of this trope, but he's still very "out there". And there is that strange obsession with his fish...
  • Cool Ship: The Boiling Hell, along with virtually every other ship we see.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Star is Choleric, Scarlett is Phlegmatic, Black is Sanguine and Jones is Melancholic.
  • Genius Ditz: Jones. An extremely talented engineer and inventor; a bumbling moron and complete idiot in every other aspect of life, with a particularly horrible track record on pets.
  • The Kirk: Captain Star, obviously.
  • Last-Name Basis: Everyone in the crew, despite having adventured together for decades. It's often lampshaded that they know very little about each other personally, and don't much care for each other either.
  • Local Hangout: Black's Cafe, if only by default.
  • The McCoy: Black.
  • Mega Corp: Mission Control appears to be the military arm of one of these, known only as "Arc". Presumably "Arc" is also One Nation Under Copyright, though this is never explicitly stated.
  • Only One Name: Scarlette and Black.
  • Only Sane Woman: Scarlette.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica: The conceit of the series is that the crew has befallen this trope, but none of them seem to have realized it.
  • Show Within a Show: Star of Space, a televised depiction of the crew's adventures. Generally inaccurate in both historical recreation and characterization, but the crew watch anyway.
  • Stellar Name
  • The Spock: Scarlette.
  • Trademark Favourite Food: Halibut Surprise, which appears to be the only dish served at Black's Cafe.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Mission Control seems to think this of those over a certain age, whether or not it's actually true. In days of yore, they had a mandatory retirement policy; eventually they switched to Reassigned to Antarctica.