Line #40 Series/Starhunter


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/30863682_1200x1600.png]]
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3	->"I'm a bounty hunter, but it's just something that I do. I'm really looking for something that was stolen from me: Ten years ago, they took my son."\
4	"As I search, there are signs that something is happening, that humanity is about to change. But I won't be distracted."\
5	"How do you find one small boy in a lawless universe?"\
6	"I'm not sure; but I have to keep trying."
7	-->--Dante Montana, OpeningNarration of Season 1
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9	Three centuries in the future humanity has colonized the solar system, and spread beyond it. There are a number of nation states in the Solar system, with the 'Raiders' living at the fringes.
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11	''Starhunter'' (2000-2004) follows the adventures of a group of bounty hunters as they travel through the solar system.
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13	In the first season, Dante Montana (Creator/MichaelPare) is the captain of the ship; with him is his niece, WrenchWench Percy (Creator/TanyaAllen); Lucretia Scott (Creator/ClaudetteRoche), TheLancer (who has an agenda of her own); and the AI Caravaggio (Creator/MurrayMelvin) for crew. Dante is looking for his son Travis, who was kidnapped as a baby by Raiders. They work for Rudolpho deLuna (Creator/StephenMarcus), hunting bounties as a way to earn money, and have a legal reason to go after the Raiders.
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15	Created by G. Philip Jackson, Daniel D'or and Nelu Ghiran, this Canadian series ran on the Movie Network for 44 episodes across two seasons before its cancellation. The second season, titled ''Starhunter 2300'', premiered in 2003. In 2018, the U.S-based Creator/ElReyNetwork debuted a recut of the series, featuring updated special effects and newly-shot footage, called ''Starhunter Redux''.
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19	!!''Starhunter'' provides examples of:
20	* TheAlcatraz: One Job of the Week involves transporting two convicts to a prison on the sunny side of Mercury tended by robots. This involves landing the shuttle on the dark side, then taking a robot-driven car to the prison.
21	* AncientAstronauts: Possibly, there seem to have been aliens involved at one point in the distant past.
22	* AncientConspiracy: The Orchard.
23	* ArtificialGravity: One bounty actually comments she can tell Percy wasn't raised on a planet but in an environment that used grav coils because of the way she walks.
24	* BadassLongcoat: Dante and Lucretia.
25	* CaptainsLog: Duh, it's a space show. Dante is a bit more [[BeigeProse blunt]] than the average captain though, and there aren't stardates, just a narration segment.
26	* CasualInterplanetaryTravel: Interplanetary travel is semi-realistic but casual; push on the gas and you go faster, but it does take a couple of days to get from the moons of Jupiter to Mars. Interstellar travel exists (via {{Hyperspace}}), but is very new, cutting edge, rare, and dangerous.
27	* ConservationOfCompetence: kick-ass bounty hunters who frequently ignore their boss.
28	* CoolStarship: The ''Tulip''.
29	* CosmopolitanCouncil: the AncientConspiracy, the Orchard.
30	* CrusadingWidow: Dante won't rest until he finds his missing son.
31	* DeadManSwitch: Lucretia sets one up, to broadcast everything about Orchid if they are fired upon.
32	* DoomedFellowPrisoner: Dante's niece Percy gets arrested. They talk about how some of the prisoners are in "demand" by males, and she shrugs it off. Later, one of the other prisoners gets hauled off to be raped to drive the point home.
33	* EnergyBeings: They even have a ship.
34	* EnergyWeapons: In one episode Dante has had a particle beam installed on the ''Tulip''.
35	* EnlightenmentSuperpowers: As a result of the Divinity Cluster.
36	* FasterThanLightTravel: Present but usually ignored. The ''Tulip'' travels from place to place at relativistic, but very definitely sublight, speeds. Which makes the rare instances of FTL quite notable and directly plot-relevant.
37	* GroundhogDayLoop: "Twist in Time"
38	** And AnotherDimension in the next episode.
39	* HeroicComedicSociopath:
40	** Percy does some interesting things, notably blowing up the ship twice (it's complicated) without a second thought.
41	** She also adds a machine gun to one of the rooms just for the heck of it.
42	* HologramProjectionImperfection: [[spoiler: Dante's dead wife, Penny, who invented the VR projection technology.]]
43	* HormoneAddledTeenager: Percy frequently falls for any cute prisoner who comes aboard ship.
44	* HumanPopsicle: The Martian 'blank' clones used for organ replacement, are stored this way.
45	* KarmaHoudini: Five, a psychopathic killer, is able to create time loops and escape through them.
46	* MysteryCult[=/=]ScamReligion: The Va'huti religion finds followers in the hundreds, and then the leader convinces them (with his creepy mind-wipe powers) to fly into the sun while he escapes.
47	* NoNewFashionsInTheFuture: Aboard ship Dante's usual costume is a t-shirt and cargo pants. Dirtside, he'll add a BadassLongcoat. %%Somebody add the others? I don't remember them as well.
48	* OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness: the AncientConspiracy, oh so much.
49	%%* PlanarShockwave
50	* PlanetLooters: The Raiders.
51	* PhlebotinumBreakdown: The ''Tulip'' is a bit of a junker. Percy in one episode sends a probe and directs it by voice. She has to scream "Left! Left!" because it heads in the opposite direction of her voice command.
52	** Virtually every episode has something major in the ship breaking down or getting virus hacked, etc. making Percy earn her keep.
53	** The particle beam they got in one episode? It fried after one use.
54	* PlotRelevantAgeUp: Travis
55	* PointyHairedBoss: Rudolpho is frequently telling inappropriate stories about his sex life.
56	* ProjectedMan: Carravagio the AI takes the form of part elderly British gent; part ''skeleton''.
57	* RecurringCharacter: The guy they met on Mars later appears having stolen a painting.
58	* SpaceFriction
59	* SubspaceOrHyperspace (the latter)
60	* TalkingToThemself[=/=]LiteralSplitPersonality: Carravagio gets reprogrammed to attack the crew in one episode, and splits into a "yellow" and a "blue" Carravagio. He starts arguing with himself.
61	* TimeDilation: A couple of examples, some of which result from the fact that ships in the series accelerate to relativistic speeds to get from planet to planet.
62	** The "relativity is a pain in the neck" joke gets used at least once in the first series when Rudolpho complains that they're a couple weeks behind on their bills, and the crew responds that from their point of view they've got a couple of days still.
63	** At the end of the first season the protagonists end up being trapped in Hyperspace, and at the beginning of the second season one of them comes out 15 years later the same age, and much of the season is her searching for her uncle, who is still trapped there. At one point it's suggested that by the time they find him his son maybe be twice his age.
64	** One episode features a middle aged man who hires the bounty hunter protagonists to rescue his kidnapped parents, whose kidnappers had been traveling at very fast speeds for 50 years causing them to age only 8 months, meaning he's now twice their age.
65	* UnnecessarilyLargeVessel: The ''Tulip'' is a former luxury liner, but her [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal crew complement currently consists]] of three people and an AI, and she has so much unused space that the crew hasn't even explored the entire ship. Meaning there's ample opportunity for weird turns of events such as a HumanPopsicle thawing out in an unexplored corridor.
66	* UsedFuture: The ''Tulip'' is a decommissioned luxury liner and resembles an abandoned hotel on the inside.
67	* WrenchWench: Percy.

Context Series / Starhunter