Headscratchers / Starship

• Datadogs are introduced in the first scene. We never see a datadog afterwards nor do we get any mention outside of Bug reciting the commercial. What happened to them in eighteen years?
  • Do we need to see a datadog? It was just a throwaway joke if you ask me. They're most likely still around, just not part of this particular team of Starship Rangers.

• Believe it or not, a human can survive in outer space without a suit for a very short time- about 15 seconds before going unconscious, and a few minutes more before dying from asphyxiation or the effects of pressure reduction in space. If they'd managed to grab Bug quickly after throwing him and Pincer out the airlock before this happened, he could've still kept his human body.
  • This troper thought that upon ejection both Pincer and Bug experienced a gruesome death because they got sucked up by the vacuum that is space. So maybe their bodies were destroyed or something along those lines that gave them a quick death because at the ending scene where the Rangers were mourning Bug they only had a few ripped pieces of his body.
    • The funeral scene was intended to spoof the old science-fiction myth that leaving an airlock in space will cause you to explode from pressure imbalance. So, apparently, Bug's human body did get torn to pieces, although it is questionable whether this was because of space or because he was floating off with an angry giant scorpion named 'Pincer'.

• How did Pincer get the technology to create a psychic link between Bug and the body? None of the other bugs seem to have anything close to this...
  • Didn't you hear Pincer's explanation? It's a brain leech that can create a mind meld between two creatures- an organic creature, not technology. I presume none of the other bugs of the Hive discovered the leech or its use except Pincer, who'd already left the Hive at least 18 years before the show starts. He also says in his conversation with Junior that it's "a tradition" of his to use it with all his victims for quite some time.

• Pincer had a human body (Bug's) laying around for 18 years. He must have been able to see the future or be a freaking genius to know that, in the future, he'd be able to trick another bug into taking the body and bringing another crew of humans to him. For that matter, why did Pincer need Bug? Couldn't he or one of the Mosquito Brothers have taken the body?
  • They didn't know how to speak human language. The headbands only worked if both people were wearing them. And Pincer says that he only likes eating brains, so the braindead body probably wasn't tasty to him. So he just kept him around just in case, I guess.
  • ...That makes sense.
• They said Megagirl could only be destroyed by being slowly lowered into lava, but later she says that the probability of her surviving a fight with an Starship Ranger while under the inhibitor chip was zero.
  • Maybe they had a pit of lava lying around somewhere?
  • It's possible that she wouldn't be destroyed, but too damaged to work.
  • Or Up didn't know what he was talking about.
• Why is Tootsie the only starship ranger not from Earth aside from Bug, but they didn't know that at the time.
  • The faster than light travel is limited (they need crio chambers) so is not really that casual to take people from multiple worlds to a single mission
  • It would make sense that Farmplanet is simply a planet that humans colonized (like they were trying to do with the Bug planet) after Earth was destroyed by the Robot Wars.
• If Junior's dad is the leader of G.L.E.E. wouldn't he pissed that they ruined their plans and killed his kid?
  • Logically, yes. But we don't know exactly how much power this guy have, nor how big the universe is. So it's supposedly possible for the crew to just hide somewhere: if the setting isn't too dark, we can also imagine that he will have trouble explaining what went wrong. There is also is attitude toward his wife's death - perhaps he's just 'that' coldhearted. And, of course, the heroes are nearly a Badass Crew, with Up, Taz, Megagirl and, arguably, Bug himself.
  • Sequel! Sequel!
• More a question than anything else (will delete when answered so I'm not clogging the page up): there are loads of rumours going around that stuff was cut from the youtube broadcast, was just wondering if anyone who saw the live version can confirm/deny this? (And I mean like plot pointy stuff - I'm aware that no two stage performances are identical). Thanks
  • I didn't hear, but apparently there was a romance with Specs and the other guy.
  • Yep, in the stage version Krayonder and Specs had a pretty "involved" relationship. It sucked that it was cut out, because it was actually really cute.
• Junior probably had the ability to trick many people into Pincer's lair. Also, did Junior expect all the starship rangers to die? They had superior weapons and could have taken down Pincer and gain control of the ship?
  • Junior knew from the logs that Pincer had made short work of the crew from the wreck. He figured the Rangers wouldn't have any better luck this time. My guess is that Pincer was incredibly tough, and Bug was only able to hold him off in the airlock that long because Bug, being of the same planet's biology, knew what to aim for (like a pressure point or something), which the humans of course didn't.
• Was Doctor Space-Claw supposed to be a secret identity? It's one of the most Obviously Evil names ever, so why is he in charge of The Federation? My working theory is that he was written as a Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious ersatz, but it never got fleshed out. If anyone has something better,I'd like to hear it.