LEGO Space Police

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

LEGO Space Police is a term referring to three separate-yet-related LEGO themes which, much as the title suggests, are about Space Police organizations. The first version ran in 1989, and was one of the first space themes to break from Classic LEGO Space; its successor, colloquially called "Space Police 2" ran from 1992 to 1993, save for a single promotional in 1998. Both themes share a common set of enemies in the Blacktron faction of LEGO Space as a whole, and a handful of Space Police sets contained Blacktron characters for the police to pursue and apprehend.

After a sizable Sequel Gap, Space Police was revived in 2009 and ran until 2010, and this revival is commonly called "Space Police 3". The reboot was a seismic shift in design aesthetic, both for the police and their targets; the line now played host to a wide variety of alien criminals (hmmm) and their vehicles.

As far as LEGO themes go, Space Police as a whole has always been one of the more popular ones; you could practically hear the entire fanbase cheering over the 2009 revival.

Tropes used in LEGO Space Police include:
  • All Bikers Are Hells Angels: The Space Bikers.
  • Exclusively Evil: The aliens.
  • Big Bad: Possibly Brick Daddy in III.
  • Continuity Nod: Space Police 3 was no exception to LEGO's recent love for nodding to their lengthy past; the most prominent was one set containing a statue of a Classic LEGO Space minifigure... which was being stolen by aliens.
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: 2010 saw the introduction of the Space Police Commandos. While wearing the same armoured spacesuit as everyone else, the Commandos dropped the repurposed leather aviator crash-helmet from the Adventurers theme that the regular officers got in favour of new heavily-armoured, fully-enclosed battle helmets with intimidating red visors.
  • Everything Is an iPod In The Future: The designs of the Space Police III craft sort of veer into this territory.
  • Generation Xerox: Design philosophy didn’t changed much between the first and second generations, most notably retaining the double-decker cockpit wedge on larger craft.
  • He Who Must Not Be Seen: The Galactic Council, the lawmaking body of the setting who the Space Police II answer to (and who are mentioned all of once in a brief flavor write-up in the pack-in catalogs).
  • Instant Militia: Not confirmed in canon, but the sudden emergence of the original Space Police I (not to mention some uniform similarities) makes it seem as though they immediately sprung from the Futuron ranks fully trained and equipped to fight space crime.
  • ISO Standard Human Spaceship: Not so much in design as in color; the later Space Police II ships replace the red/black/blue balance motif with mostly gray and black punctuated by small red highlights and green windows.
  • Name's the Same: The third run had an alien by the name of Slizer, who shares his name with an entire LEGO theme.
  • Oddly Small Organization: At least if you’re of the mind that every set is a one-of-a-kind ship in the setting, as Space Police II has one of the lowest number of sets in the Space theme. If not it’s more a case of Oddly Non-Diverse Organization, and with the general theme of increased regimentation this seems the more likely possibility.
  • Palette Swap: The uniforms of the Space Police I cops share the Futuron design but change to more distinct colors evocative of modern police uniforms and squad cars.
  • Pimp Duds: Brick Daddy, much to the amusement of fans.
  • Prison Ship: A staple occurrence across all three runs.
  • Red Herring: Blacktron of LEGO Space was the enemy faction opposing the original Space Police runs. Come the third run, one of the aliens, Rench, had the Blacktron logo on his uniform, which itself strongly resembled the Blacktron I uniforms. Some fans hoped we would see a return soon. but then Space Police 3 got cancelled.
  • Red Shoulders of Leadership: The Galactic Chief of the second run wears a striking red pair of naval-style epaulets over his spacesuit.
  • Refuge in Audacity: There's a PIMP. In a LEGO SET.
  • Sealed Evil in a Cell: Any set including a cell also had at least one enemy minifigure - Blacktron for the first two runs, an alien for the third - to fill it with. In the original run they were more like "normal" prison cells, but the other two provided cells similar in appearance to stasis pods.
  • Shout-Out: Space Police II is possibly one to another intergalactic peacekeeping force clad in green, black and white.
  • Space Base: The largest sets for Space Police I and III are space police stations, and several of the aliens' sets in III fell into this.
  • Space Police: Duh. A Space Police 3 set is pictured on the trope page.