History Webcomic / QuentynQuinnSpaceRanger

* AnachronismStew: Of a sort. For the Federation expies, the tech, philosophies, and crew are all pretty blatantly based on those of ''The Next Generation'', but the design of their ship more closely resembles that of the first six movies' ''Enterprise'' rather than the ''Enterprise-D''.

%%** [[WaveMotionGun Stellar Lance.]]

** The Fedorks, after doing nothing to aid a bronze-age civilization that was annihilated by a comet, are required to completely rebuild the entire biosphere, sentient species, and civilization... down to the last piece of pottery. They're also going to be handed over to a new cosmic entity for handling in the future... one who is likely to be much more strict in regulating their behavior. And furthermore, once the terraforming is done, both planetary empires in charge of the area will step in for uplift/first contact procedures -- again at the Fedorks' expense.
* CoolPeopleRebelAgainstAuthority: Deconstructed. Rebels are treated fairly in certain, desperate situations(a far more detailed analysis would be ''Webcomic/NipAndTuck:'' ''[[http://www.rhjunior.com/nip-and-tuck-0659/ Rebel Cry]]''), but doing it for the hell of it is considered childish, stupid, and even downright suicidal.

* IndenturedServitude: Turing-level AIs have to serve a period of indentured servitude to pay off the cost of their manufacture. After that they're free citizens. But some unscrupulous owners tamper with their clocks so they think they still have decades left on their term, or replace their cortex with a copy printed off their MatterReplicator that thought it was fresh from the factory.

%%* NoWaterProofingInTheFuture: Only in the Star Trek parody; he exploits that.

* PleasurePlanet: The Sapphire Star, though actually a massive starship.

* SwissCheeseSecurity: The Federation expies, Omnibus hacked into their mainframe and downloaded everything ''while the Geordi expy was specifically watching for hacking attempts''.

* BrokenAesop : "The Coldest Equation" is a TakeThat against government regulations and bureaucracy. Which is resolved by a higher government going in and taking over the Parodian government. The judges do cite the events of the case as a GodzillaThreshold: normally, they don't get involved in another civilization's government unless they've messed up ''that'' badly, but it falls a bit flat when we learn said regulations were born out of the bribery/lobbyism of corporations. In the end, it is more a warning about letting money and corporation out of politics than anything else

* CorruptBureaucrat: Apparently [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0125/ the punchline]] of QQSR's riffing of ''Literature/TheColdEquations''. Even [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0126/ the idiotic strawmen]] from the strip's Federation expy use the engineering parlance "a pair and a spare" -- at least one totally redundant system for every vital one, with an extra 10% margin of error. The ''designer'' of the "Emergency Dispatch Ships" clearly ''[[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0123/ states]]'' that they have no margin for error whatsoever; no backup power, no backup fuel, no backup life support, and what it does have is shaved so razor-thin that it's within centimeters of catastrophe even in ''ideal operational parameters.'' Even the most [[Creator/CharlesDickens Dickens-esque]] caricature of greed would never use an EDS for ''anything'' -- let alone transporting indispensable medical supplies -- for the simple reason that a ship that will crash if the pilot ate too big a meal is ''a waste of money.'' They only could be built through ''institutionalized incompetence''; corners cut and cut again for no other reason than that ''no one would have to answer for it.'' And ''that'' can only happen in a ''[[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0136/ government]]'' bureaucracy; even IncompetenceInc would go out of business ''long'' before they built a lemon like an EDS, while government bureaucrats are ''immune'' from consequence right up until they utterly destroy the system they depend on...This is kind of missing the point though, as it is revealed said officials were either lobbied or bribed into building them by big corporations whose business was threatened by the concurrence of better alien techs. It is very much like the IRL case of both corporations ready to endanger people if paying the eventual reparation ultimately comes cheaper than providing security and well as slowing the research and implementation of better but competing tech like oil companies do with renewable resources.

* AuthorTract: Large swaths of the comic are summed up as long {{Take That}}s to various sci-fi franchises, with some strong libertarianism on the side. "The Cold Equations" is a good example of both, starting out as a deconstruction of the original short story ''Literature/TheColdEquations'' and segueing into blaming the whole thing on a government butting into private enterprise. Indeed, the author is quite aware of this, and claims to do it on purpose to get past the "defense mechanisms" of fans of the aforementioned franchises... The problem is that not only his knowledge about the various subjects he talks about is... Debatable, he often don't quite think through the actual message of his tracts, who will come as BrokenAesop to readers knowledgeable on the subject or sensitive to Fridge. The quoted exemple, "The Cold Equations" we learn said government who was supposed to be the source of the problems accepted bribes from corporations to forbid the use of zero-point power or other advanced technologies who would concurrence theirs, making it more a message about getting the money of big businesses out of politics than anything else.

* MoralDissonance: "The Coldest Equation" is a TakeThat against government regulations and bureaucracy. Which is resolved by a higher government going in and taking over the Parodian government. The judges do cite the events of the case as a GodzillaThreshold: normally, they don't get involved in another civilization's government unless they've messed up ''that'' badly, but it falls a bit flat when we learn said regulations were born out of the bribery/lobbyism of corporations. In the end, it is more a warning about letting money and corporation out of politics than anything else
** To be fair, it's also a TakeThat against the original story, which had its DownerEnding forced by ExecutiveMeddling
** Not to mention religious and political figures, like the Patoodines Pilgrim King. That last one got the CEO fired. Out of a railgun. Into a moon.

* MyGreatestFailure: Cmdr. Quinn gave Kalufrax replicator technology so they could weather their economic collapse and fight back against oligarchs attempting to maintain the status quo, [[spoiler: but one nation of religious extremists used the tech to bring down one of the planet's {{Floating Continent}}s, and the other nations nuke-glassed them in response. Quinn needs a [[CigaretteOfAnxiety Seda-stick]] before telling the story.]]
** Partially subverted in that Quinn and even his commanders conclude that Quinn’s solution was the best (ie, least destructive) one overall that he could’ve gone for. You can’t fix [[LowCultureHighTech a broken culture]] with technological uplift.

* Broken Aesop : "The Coldest Equation" is a TakeThat against government regulations and bureaucracy. Which is resolved by a higher government going in and taking over the Parodian government. The judges do cite the events of the case as a GodzillaThreshold: normally, they don't get involved in another civilization's government unless they've messed up ''that'' badly, but it falls a bit flat when we learn said regulations were born out of the bribery/lobbyism of corporations. In the end, it is more a warning about letting money and corporation out of politics than anything else

* MoralDissonance: "The Coldest Equation" is a TakeThat against government regulations and bureaucracy. Which is resolved by a higher government going in and taking over the Parodian government. The judges do cite the events of the case as a GodzillaThreshold: normally, they don't get involved in another civilization's government unless they've messed up ''that'' badly, but it falls a bit flat when we learn said regulations were born out of the bribery/lobbyism of corporations. In the end, it is more a warning about letting money and corporation out of politics than anything else
** To be fair, it's also a TakeThat against the original story, which had its DownerEnding forced by ExecutiveMeddling.

* UngovernableGalaxy: A DiscussedTrope in the initial SpacePirate arc, the current Warhammer 40,000 parody arc and the Tales of the Questor crossover;

* AbortedArc: Literally. The Warhammer 40k arc was abandoned because it sucked (in Quentyn and the Author's own words no less). This might have had something to do with Games Workshop enforcing the fanwork ban on their own property that year.

* CorruptBureaucrat: Apparently [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0125/ the punchline]] of QQSR's riffing of ''Literature/TheColdEquations''. Even [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0126/ the idiotic strawmen]] from the strip's Federation expy use the engineering parlance "a pair and a spare" -- at least one totally redundant system for every vital one, with an extra 10% margin of error. The ''designer'' of the "Emergency Dispatch Ships" clearly ''[[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0123/ states]]'' that they have no margin for error whatsoever; no backup power, no backup fuel, no backup life support, and what it does have is shaved so razor-thin that it's within centimeters of catastrophe even in ''ideal operational parameters.'' Even the most [[Creator/CharlesDickens Dickens-esque]] caricature of greed would never use an EDS for ''anything'' -- let alone transporting indispensable medical supplies -- for the simple reason that a ship that will crash if the pilot ate too big a meal is ''a waste of money.'' They only could be built through ''institutionalized incompetence''; corners cut and cut again for no other reason than that ''no one would have to answer for it.'' And ''that'' can only happen in a ''[[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0136/ government]]'' bureaucracy; even IncompetenceInc would go out of business ''long'' before they built a lemon like an EDS, while government bureaucrats are ''immune'' from consequence right up until they utterly destroy the system they depend on.

* AbortedArc: Literally. The Warhammer 40k arc was abandoned because it sucked. This might have had something to do with Games Workshop's Fanwork Ban on their own property.

* AbortedArc: Literally. The Warhammer 40k arc was abandoned because it sucked. This might have had something to do with Games Workshop's FanworkBan on their own property.

* AbortedArc: Literally. The Warhammer 40k arc was abandoned [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-22/ with the reasons pointed out in the final page]]. This might have had something to do with Games Workshop's FanworkBan on their own property.

* AbortedArc: Literally. The Warhammer 40k arc was abandoned [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-22/ because it sucked]]. This might have had something to do with Games Workshop's FanworkBan on their own property.

* AuthorTract: Large swaths of the comic are summed up as long {{Take That}}s to various sci-fi franchises, with some strong libertarianism on the side. "The Cold Equations" is a good example of both, starting out as a deconstruction of the original short story ''Literature/TheColdEquations'' and segueing into blaming the whole thing on a government butting into private enterprise. Indeed, the author is quite aware of this, and claims to do it on purpose to get past the "defense mechanisms" of fans of the aforementioned franchises... The problem is that not only his knowledge about the various subjects he talks about is... [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment Debatable]], he often don't quite think through the actual message of his tracts, who will come as BrokenAesop to readers knowledgeable on the subject or sensitive to Fridge. The quoted exemple, "The Cold Equations" we learn said government who was supposed to be the source of the problems accepted bribes from corporations to forbid the use of zero-point power or other advanced technologies who would concurrence theirs, making it more a message about getting the money of big businesses out of politics than anything else.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Bordering on PoesLaw; the delivery is insane, but the data is absolutely real.
** The step-by-step dissection of [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0123/ the deathtrap shuttle]] in "The Cold Equations" arc; all the events in the issue were caused because big corporations whose products would have been severly concurrenced by the Empire's zero-point power and other more advanced technologies lobbied/bribed the government officials in charge of building and using the shuttles to not use them, which ended up making them a deathtrap.

* AerithAndBob: The first panel of [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0115/ this strip]] seems to be a [[GenreSavvy knowing]] [[ShoutOut reference]] to the trope.

* AfterActionHealingDrama: After catching the assassin.
* AlienArtsAreAppreciated: [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0053/ Robots and food]]

* AndIMustScream: [[spoiler:[[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0091/ the result]] of BrainUploading. Thankfully can be avoided by quickly simulating bio feedback and senses into the new AI.]]
* ApocalypseHow: [[spoiler:Class X-2: Stellar annihilation]].

* BadassBoast: [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0012/ Page 12]].

** BlaseBoast: On [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0130/ Page 130]], when Quentyn is asked "how often do you have to make life or death decisions on your job?" he casually responds with "Every day of the week and twice on Sundays."

** [[WaveMotionGun Stellar Lance.]]

* FamousLastWords: Oops.
-->'''Omnibus:''' I'd heard it was something [[PrecisionFStrike more prosaic...]]

** When the Kvrk-chk ate a Racconan colony ship's passengers, broadcasting every crunching, screaming second live to the Empire of the Seven Systems, with a stated intent to continue such practices, the Empire retaliated by roasting one of the more populated Kvrk-chk star systems with a [[StarKilling stellar lance]]. The Kvrk-chk got the point.

** When the Kvrk-chk ate a Racconan colony ship's passengers, the Empire retaliated by roasting one of the more populated Kvrk-chk star systems with a [[StarKilling stellar lance]].
*** To be entirely fair, they broadcast every crunching, screaming second live to the Empire of the Seven Systems, with a stated intent to continue such practices. So YMMV.

* PlausibleDeniability
* PlanetEater: That chants [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments "YOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM"]] while it's eating.
* PlanetOfHats: [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0017/ Subverted]].

** NoWaterProofingInTheFuture: [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments Easiest. Jailbreak.]] [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0030/ Ever.]]

* GreatEscape
** MacGyvering
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: On the cover.

* TheNoseKnows: The snorf.
* NoConservationOfEnergy: See ShapeshifterBaggage.
* NoWaterProofingInTheFuture: Only in the Star Trek parody; he exploits that.

* OddShapedPanel
* OhCrap: [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0091/ ...The template is still active!]]

* CorruptBureaucrat: Apparently [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0125/ the punchline]] of QQSR's riffing of ''Literature/TheColdEquations''. Even [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0126/ the idiotic strawmen]] from the strip's Federation expy use the engineering parlance "a pair and a spare" -- at least one totally redundant system for every vital one, with an extra 10% margin of error. The ''designer'' of the "Emergency Dispatch Ships" clearly ''[[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0123/ states]]'' that they have no margin for error whatsoever; no backup power, no backup fuel, no backup life support, and what it does have is shaved so razor-thin that it's within centimeters of catastrophe even in ''ideal operational parameters.'' Even the most [[Creator/CharlesDickens Dickens-esque]] caricature of greed would never use an EDS for ''anything'' -- let alone transporting indispensable medical supplies -- for the simple reason that a ship that will crash if the pilot ate too big a meal is ''a waste of money.'' They only could be built through ''institutionalized incompetence''; corners cut and cut again for no other reason than that ''no one would have to answer for it.'' And ''that'' can only happen in a ''[[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0136/ government]]'' bureaucracy; even IncompetenceInc would go out of business ''long'' before they built a lemon like an EDS, while government bureaucrats are ''immune'' from consequence right up until they utterly destroy the system they depend on....This is kind of missing the point though, as it is revealed said officials were either lobbied or bribed into building them by big corporations whose business was threatened by the concurrence of better alien techs. It is very much like the IRL case of both corporation ready to endanger people if paying the eventual reparation ultimately comes cheaper than providing security and well as slowing the research and implementation of better but competing tech like oil companies do with renewable resources

* DestructiveTeleportation: This form of technology technically exists, though use of it is banned, not because they're afraid of it destroying their souls, but because the recreation process is imperfect and results in a condition similar to CloneDegeneration.

* MoralDissonance: "The Coldest Equation" is a TakeThat against government regulations and bureaucracy. Which is resolved by a higher government going in and taking over the Parodian government. That said, the judges cite the events of the case as a GodzillaThreshold: normally, they don't get involved in another civilization's government unless they've messed up ''that'' badly.

* CorruptBureaucrat: Apparently [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0125/ the punchline]] of QQSR's riffing of ''Literature/TheColdEquations''. Even [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0126/ the idiotic strawmen]] from the strip's Federation expy use the engineering parlance "a pair and a spare" -- at least one totally redundant system for every vital one, with an extra 10% margin of error. The ''designer'' of the "Emergency Dispatch Ships" clearly ''[[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0123/ states]]'' that they have no margin for error whatsoever; no backup power, no backup fuel, no backup life support, and what it does have is shaved so razor-thin that it's within centimeters of catastrophe even in ''ideal operational parameters.'' Even the most [[Creator/CharlesDickens Dickens-esque]] caricature of greed would never use an EDS for ''anything'' -- let alone transporting indispensable medical supplies -- for the simple reason that a ship that will crash if the pilot ate too big a meal is ''a waste of money.'' They only could be built through ''institutionalized incompetence''; corners cut and cut again for no other reason than that ''no one would have to answer for it.'' And ''that'' can only happen in a ''[[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0136/ government]]'' bureaucracy; even IncompetenceInc would go out of business ''long'' before they built a lemon like an EDS, while government bureaucrats are ''immune'' from consequence right up until they utterly destroy the system they depend on.

* FamousLastWords: Oops.
-->'''Omnibus:''' I'd heard it was something [[PrecisionFStrike more prosaic...]]