Space Pirates: Difference between revisions

** The first kind of space pirates appear in the serial "The Space Pirates".

** The Captain of "The Pirate Planet" in the serial of the same name. Cybernetic eye and robot parrot (the Polyphase Aviatron).

** The ending of "Curse of the Black Spot" in which a crew of regular 17th century pirates end up taking over an abandoned space ship. We are never told if they remain pirates or use their new ship for legitimate purposes.

** ''[[Doctor Who S 17 E 5 The Horns Of Nimon|The Horns of Nimon]]'' sees the Doctor and Romana accused of this.

* There is actually a children's TV show on [[The BBC]] called ''Space Pirates'', although the pirates in question are actually an unlicenced radio station. This doesn't stop them having a captain with a skull-and-crossbones hat and a robot parrot.

* The Reavers from ''[[Firefly]]'', whose typical method of raiding involves raping victims to death, eating their flesh, and sewing their skins to their clothing. The luckier ones get it in ''that'' order. Really, they are [[Space Romans|Space Vikings]] if all of the awful rumors about Medieval vikings had been true.

** As well, the crew of ''Serenity'' herself are referred to as pirates on occasion.

*** There are regular pirates as well, though they generally just let you come to them (with some prodding from/of an accomplice).

* ''[[Elite]]'', one of the earliest space trading games, featured pirates who would attack you between hyperspace jump-points and your destination. Or you could become a pirate yourself.

* ''[[Escape Velocity]]'' and its sequels has a lot of pirates. EV has straight up pirates, EVO has the Renegades and Strandless, Nova has pirates, marauders (weak pirates hated by everyone, including [[Even Evil Has Standards|other pirates]]), the Guild (a more organized group with a semi-legal veneer), the Association (technically; they are the Pirates mentioned below as being one of the major mission strings, only they aren't so much pirates as semi-legal free traders that [[Pay Evil Unto Evil]] with ''actual'' pirates and smuggle stuff because [[The Federation]]'s laws are blatantly [[Mega Corp]]-slanted) and Houseless (Auroran [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|Ronin]] pirates). It's also notable that you can ''be'' a pirate in any of the EV games. EVN even made it one of the possible primary mission strings. You could also attack, disable, board, steal from, and even ''hijack'' (basically everything the pirates themselves do) [[Pay Evil Unto Evil|the pirate's own ships]] without getting a bad rep for it. They had some serious cash, too...

** The primary reason for this is the practical impossibility of capturing ships in the game. The pirates are pretty much limited to blowing their prey up and then scavenging the debris for anything of value. Most of the valuable cargo is destroyed in the process. The only piracy is even viable in the game is because you have no fuel, maintenance or living costs so your only expense is cheap ammo.

** Hilariously enough, players seem to have no problem roleplaying themselves as either of the two varieties.