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Space Pirates: Difference between revisions
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== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Outlaw Star]]'' is full of the first type. As a rather interesting variation, they are Chinese and use Tao-magic. They seem to be modeled after the Triads.
* ''[[Captain Harlock]]'', a [[Loveable Rogue]] space pirate who has also appeared in other works of [[Leiji Matsumoto]]. The second version. His ship is a [[Military Mashup Machine]] with a submarine prow, a battleship body and a galleon rear. The [[Leiji Matsumoto|Leijiverse]] also has Emeraldas, who sails the Sea of Stars in a frigate attached to a dirigible.
* Buichi Terasawa's ''Cobra'' is also the second version. He is slightly less altruistic and noble-minded than Harlock, being mostly in it for his own interest, but he is also a hero, and has some morals and is better than an organized Guild of pirates that are his archenemies.
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* Cleo and his crew in ''[[Glass Fleet]]'' are more or less space pirates.
* The ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' spinoff series ''[[Gundam SEED Astray]]'' reveals a surprising number of pirates operating at the fringes of the SEED universe.
* The manga ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam|Crossbone Gundam]]'' has the main characters from ''Gundam F91'' opposing the Jupiter Empire under the guise of space pirates, even going so far as to take on the name of the original antagonists, the Crossbone Vanguard. They employ all the standard pirate tropes, including spaceships that look like sailing ships (complete with broadside beam cannons) and a robot parrot (apparently for no other reason than that they can), but are actually preventing the Earth from being attacked by the Jovians.
** It gets even crazier. The titular Gundam has X-shaped thrusters (though they're actually practical), a beam cutlass and daggers instead of the standard saber, a beam gun shaped like a flintlock pistol, a targeting lens shaped like an eye patch and an extra antenna on its head modeled after a feather. Apparently just sporting the Jolly Roger insignia on its forehead wasn't enough for Hajime Katoki.
*** This actually gets a [[Lampshade]] in the side manga ''Skull Heart'', where we're shown the Crossbone Gundam shortly after it's finished, and one of the pilots, Umon Samon, suggests adding the familiar pirate elements (like a skull and crossbones on the forehead). The Gundam's pilot Kinkaid Nau teasingly asks "Isn't that a little much?", to which the other man says "Well, if going to be space pirates, we might as well run with it!"
**** As a minor note, Umon had been inspired by a Dom pilot he fought at the Battle of Solomon in the One Year War, who used a skull and crossbones as his insignia.
* And ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam
* ''[[Oban Star-Racers]]'' has Lord Furter, a comical example most notable for his incompetence and non-threatening appearance, even though both he and his crew seem to think he's the most bad-ass thing ever. He's also self-aware. "I'm [[Boarding Party|boarding]] your ship! That's what pirates do, we board ships!"
* ''[[Sol Bianca]]'', also the name of the ship that serves as both the home and the interstellar headquarters for an all-female band of notorious space pirates.
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* ''[[One Piece]]'' -- a few appear during Enel's coverstory.
* They are seen in ''[[Kurau Phantom Memory]]'' when Kurau and Christmas attempt to return to earth from the colonized moon.
* Bojack and crew from the ninth ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' movie.
* In [[Fooly Cooly]], the Pirate King Atomsk is said to be so powerful he can [[Monumental Theft|steal entire planets]].
* ''[[Bodacious Space Pirates]]'' (aka ''Mōrestu Pirates''), as might be deduced from the title. They are definitely of the second variety, with the tons of [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]] to other similar shows, including ''[[Captain Harlock]]''.
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* Roxxas from the ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (comics)|Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' comics, which also gave us the Sklarian Raiders; an [[Amazon Brigade]] of space [[Pirate Girl|Pirate Girls]].
* In ''[[Wonder Woman]]'', the "Silver Serpent" saga featured an [[Amazon Brigade|all female cadre]] of Space Pirates who travel from planet to planet to steal that world's technology, recruit a small group of the females for membership and the remainder of the planet's people for food stock.
* Despite the name, Star Pirate, from ''Planet Comics'', did not do much pirating. Blackbeard, from the same comic, fits the Space Pirate motif better.
* The Uralian Space Pirates, from ''Crusader from Mars''.
* Space Smith, from ''Fantastic Comics'', often fought Space Pirates.
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* The impossibility of space piracy and the trick Julian Forward uses to make it work is central to the plot of [[Larry Niven]]'s "The Borderlands of Sol".
* In [[Poul Anderson]] and [[Gordon R. Dickson]]'s ''[[Hoka]]'' stories, when the Hokas set out to emulate a Space Patrol, Alex has horrified visions of their being tried for piracy. He's not even sure that hanging isn't still in effect as the approved form of punishment.
* In [[Piers Anthony]]'s ''[[Bio of a Space Tyrant]]'' series, pirates of the second kind show up as a form of [[Refuge in Audacity]], since the authorities won't believe (or don't want to admit to) ancient-looking pirates operating in space.
* [[Lucky Starr]] confronts space pirates in the juvenile novel ''Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids'' by [[Isaac Asimov]].
* ''Consider Phlebas'' (the first [[The Culture|Culture]] novel by Ian M. Banks). The crew of the ''Clear Air Turbulence'' are ostensibly [[Private Military Contractors]], but are actually just a [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]] raiding whatever they think will be vulnerable. Seeing as they're carrying out their activities amidst the chaos of an intragalactic war, that tends not to be very much.
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*** He also shows how pirates would work in practice -- they're interstellar traders who covertly supplement their income with smuggling and piracy, rather than permanent raiders operating from a secret base.
* The Fat Men in [[Daniel Pinkwater]]'s ''Fat Men from Space'' act as a variation on type 1, closer to a [[Horde of Alien Locusts]] in that they invade a planet, steal the junk food, then force the inhabitants to prepare more of it until the raw materials thereof are at dangerously low levels before they leave. They return in ''Slaves of Spiegel'', where they [[Alien Abduction|abduct]] the greatest junk food chefs of the galaxy to compete in a [[Cooking Duel]].
* Pirates are major villains in the [[Warchild Series]]. One of them, Falcone, could even be considered the [[Big Bad]]...as much as anyone in such an [[Grey and Gray Morality|ambiguous]] universe. Lowachee never goes into detail about how the pirates find their victims. Most of the ships they prey off of, however, are running through the notoriously hard-to-police DMZ.
** The pirates' ''modus operandi'' deserves special mention here, too. Falcone, their de facto leader, was an ex [[Space Marine]]. He left because he thought the government of EarthHub was a little too civil, and saw a lot of opportunities to make his own empire out in deep space. He also believed absolute loyalty could be achieved by raising his "protégés" from early childhood. Of course, no one told him that ritualistic child abuse would maybe, possibly undermine what he was trying to do. In the end, {{spoiler|he dies at the hands of one of his ex proteges, and before this moment, spent much of his life on the run from a different protege. The man made his own enemies.}}
* The [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] has more than a few, most of them overlapping with information brokers and smugglers. Some Space Pirates are slavers. Since most interstellar travel in Star Wars has charted routes and it's considered dangerous to split away from them, and Space Pirates actually tend to strike planets and ships going to and from planets, it's basically justified. A merchant who had found a way to avoid the pirates lying in wait around a planet unfortunately bragged about this. By the way, if you're wondering why Han Solo wasn't able to use his reward for saving Leia to pay off his debt to Jabba the Hutt? A space pirate stole the money from him.
** The [[X Wing Series|Wraiths]], aware that the [[Big Bad]] was hiring pirates to harass his enemies, succeeded at [[The Infiltration]] by posing as a pirate band called the Hawk-Bats which focused on a system in Imperial territory, doing things like breaking into a hangar to steal TIE fighters, preying on merchants, and, once, robbing a bank. They had so much fun doing so that Wedge felt it necessary to remind his men that they weren't, in fact, actual pirates.
** Some Star Wars pirates play more to the cliches than others. For example, the space pirate Raskar loves every swashbuckling trope there is, and even carries a "lightfoil" (a relatively low-quality, short-hilt lightsaber otherwise mostly popular among Sith-wannabe noblemen of the Tapani sector) despite unauthorized ownership of anything that could be seen as "Jedi paraphernalia" being a death penalty offense in the Empire.
** Ideologically motivated pirates are what led to the Trade Federation being allowed to build an army in ''Cloak of Deception'', a lead in to ''[[The Phantom Menace]]''.
* [[Stationery Voyagers|The Yehtzig Pirate League]]. But they're more like [[Religion of Evil|devil-worshiping]] space terrorists, who otherwise, seem to have as their [[Terrorists Without a Cause|only motive]] a fetish for [[Love Potion|date rape]] and [[Stuff Blowing Up|blowing stuff up]].
* Averted in Eric Frank Russell's "And Then There Were None": interstellar travel is so prohibitively expensive that a would-be pirate has to become a millionaire first.
* [[H. Beam Piper]] took this trope one step further in his book ''Space Viking''. That's right. Vikings, [[In Space]]!
* Though we never see any up close, [[Space Pirates]] are the background in the classic "[[Robert A. Heinlein|Heinlein juvenile]]" ''Citizen of the Galaxy.'' The protagonist destroys a ship full of them, and later learns that he was originally sold into slavery by pirates who killed his {{spoiler|fabulously wealthy}} parents. {{spoiler|He decides to devote his life to fighting the pirate-slaver complex, then has to decide if he will do it in the military or by using his family's money and influence.}}
* ''The Pirates Of Zan'' by Murray Leinster. The protagonist is from a planet whose sole occupation is space piracy. He tries moving to another world and going legit, but when things go badly wrong he has to resort to the traditional methods of his kin. Serialised for ''Astounding'' in 1959 as "The Pirates of Ersatz" with its famous [[Zeerust]] cover of a space pirate climbing aboard a rocket with a slide rule [[Cutlass Between the Teeth|clasped between his teeth]]. (A portion of this cover can be seen [http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/images/respectscience/respect04.jpg here].)
* In Andrey Livadny's ''The History of the Galaxy'' series, most [[Space Pirates]] come from the [[Single Biome Planet|desert world]] of Ganio. Oh yeah, and they're all Arabs [[In Space]].
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*** The novel ''The Resurrection Casket'' features robotic space pirates, and some extremely reminiscent, not to say [[Recycled in Space|recycled]], names and/or characters. (Let's just say it involves a young lad named "Jimm" and "Captain Glint's treasure" and leave it there...)
*** Blurring the line between both types (and the line between [[Space Pirates]] and [[Sky Pirate|Sky Pirates]]) is the [[Virgin New Adventures|New Adventures]] novel ''Sky Pirates!''
* The TV show ''[[Lost in Space]]'' had two episodes with space pirates: "The Sky Pirate" and "Treasures of the Lost Planet".
* 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.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Plenty of examples from ''[[Warhammer 40000]]''. Type one space pirates include Eldar Corsairs who raid the lesser races' shipping and settlements to survive, Dark Eldar who raid for captives and playthings (or more specifically, [[Fate Worse Than Death|souls]]), Chaos warbands including some traitorous Space Marines such as the Red Corsairs. And even perfectly average human pirates, mainly around some of the more unexplored and backwater sectors.
** Ork Freebooter bands are type two space pirates, and like hats and bandanas and fly the Jolly Ork. Examples include flash git Kaptin Badrukk, while the most recent ''[[Dawn of War]] II'' expansion gives us Kaptin Bludflagg, who cuts through scores of Imperials and aliens, culminating in a battle with a daemon prince and an inquisitor on the same day, all so he can claim the inquisitor's [[Nice Hat]].
** In Graham McNeill's [[Ultramarines (novel)|Ultramarines]] novel ''Nightbringer'', a Dark Eldar pirate is raiding the vessel carrying the Space Marines.
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* ''[[Spelljammer]]'' setting for ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' has The Pirates of Gith, an entire ''[[Planet of Hats|race]]'' of [[Space Pirates]], a third offshoot of the Githyanki/Githzerai. Additionally, the game also has plain ol' human [[Space Pirates]] who act pretty much identically to regular stereotypical pirates. Furthermore, the entire point of the setting is flying around in wooden sailing ships in space, and in the introduction to the setting the author mentions that they designed the setting's rules with the thought of a pirate standing on the deck of his ship--<small>in space</small>--as a guiding image.
* Piracy is alive and well in the ''[[BattleTech]]'' universe due to the relative ease of capturing most recharging JumpShips, though actual independent pirate and bandit groups are seen more in the Periphery beyond the reach of either the Clans or the Great Houses. They don't so much attack civilian shipping as they raid poorly defended worlds directly, though.
* ''[[Mutants and Masterminds]]'' has Captain Kraken, a space pirate who crashes on Earth. [[Justified Trope|Thanks to his translation matrix latching onto Earth pirate culture,]] he speaks and dresses like a stereotypical pirate.
* Piracy is part of the ''[[Traveller]]'' universe, and pirates vary widely. The most notable variety are the Vargr corsairs which have considerable force behind them and are considered a respectable profession by other Vargr who are willing to shelter them. This makes them kind of like Barbary Pirates in space.
* The Steve Jackson Games card game ''[[SPANC: Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls]]'' features space pirate [[Catgirl|Catgirls]] who take part in nefarious capers to win the most loot. Some of the capers are just there for cuteness, others are space-opera specific, like the Stuck Airlock.
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** Not to mention that they were kidnapping people and sticking them in their hold for ''time''. It's also made clear that there are about a million easier ways to do it, but 1) pirates are anti-social, so they don't want live in the villages necessary to survive normally, and 2) {{spoiler|they're all a bunch of nerds acting out pirate fantasies.}}
*** What's made clear is that there are ''two'' ways to do it, neither of which are necessarily easy as both have their problems. Even the ones who choose the community-building method aren't above piracy on those not with the in-group.
* The webcomic ''[[Starslip Crisis]]'' parodies the second form of this trope with Infra-Redbeard and his crew. They fly around in an open-decked ship with solar sails, fight with Atom Cutlasses, and otherwise fill every pirate cliche while just happening to be in space.
** Cutter Edgewise himself was a former Pirate Science officer. These man the Rum Sensors.
* The [http://zapinspace.com/d/20071105.html story arc] started in November in ''[http://zapinspace.com Zap!]'' involves pirates that appear to be a mix of this and [[Sky Pirate]] kidnapping two main characters.
* The Webcomic ''[[I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space]]'' features a girl who was... well, just that.
** Come to think of it, so does ''[[Vandread]]'', although it was three guys in this case.
* The webcomic ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'' has the Pirates of Ipecac, who resemble giant lobsters.
* The webcomic [http://zeera.comicgenesis.com ''Zeera The Space Pirate''] is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]].
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== Web Originals ==
* The main characters of ''[[The Endless Night]]'' are [[Space Pirates]], and the podcast mainly focuses on their exploits as they raid and pillage across the galaxy.
* The browser game ''[[Star Pirates]]'' is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]], from digging through orbital debris to attacking other players and everything between.
* ''Mighty Moshin' Emo Rangers'', a fan parody of ''[[Power Rangers]]'' and emo culture, has an episode where the Emo Rangers battle the Rave Pirates from outer space, who have come to infect earth teenagers with their "New Rave"
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* Long John Silver the 23rd in the ''[[Duck Dodgers]]'' episode "Shiver Me Dodgers".
* An unnamed space pirate (with three peg legs out of four, parrots on three of his four shoulders, and eyepatches on two of his three eyes) menaced the Planet Express Ship on ''[[Futurama]]'' with galleon-style spaceships and cannons, vowing to send them to "Davy Jarg's locker" if they don't electronically transfer their space-doubloons, and realizing too late that his children are his only ''real'' treasures. What made it even funnier was Leela's explanation on what [[Space Pirates]] are: "They're like Pirates...but [[In Space|in space!]]"
* Sonny Blackbones and the pirates in ''[[Galactik Football]]''. They're really more heroic space outlaws but they do have at least one member who likes to say 'Arr!' No parrot, though they do have a football team.
* ''[[Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors]]'' had [[Amazon Brigade|an all-female crew]] of the second type in one episode, but they decided to [[Heel Face Turn|go good]] at the end.
* The Pirate Clans of ''[[Exo Squad]]''
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