Space Pirates is a musical published by Beat by Beat Press in 2015.
It follows a girl, Gabby, who is an outcast at her school due to her obsession with topics they view as nerdy. She is at a field trip when she's beamed up into space along with her classmates Taylor, Jai, and Jack, and they have to find a way back to Earth. But when space pirates infiltrate the ship, everything goes wrong.
Space Pirates contains examples of:
- Alien Arts Are Appreciated: The aliens are obsessed with everything relating to Earth, primarily human history and inventions. This is justified when you learn they're this way because they came from the planet Zooglebotz, where aliens only work and are controlled by a chip in their brain.
- Aliens Speaking English: (Possibly?) justified since they were studying Earth, but why they would learn English is still questionable.
- An Aesop:
- Be Yourself.
- Don't take Earth for granted.
- Answer Cut: The captain of the alien ship, in response to a crewmate insisting they get the humans off their ship, says "what's the worst that could happen?" Enter Space Pirates.
- Antagonist Title: The play is named after the space pirates, who infiltrate the aliens' ship and tie them up in exchange for the heavy human treasure they beamed up.
- Blatant Lies: Taylor, Jai, and Jack lie about having to use the bathroom to sneak away from the tour guide.
- Broken Pedestal: Jack is obsessed with pirates throughout the show, so much so that she wants to join them. But after her training, the pirates threaten to throw her off the plank because she didn't give them details on the aliens' treasure. She mentions she doesn't want to be a pirate anymore after that encounter and at the end of the show.
- Call-and-Response Song: If You Want To Be A Pirate, where the pirates give Jack instructions on how to be a pirate, and Jack repeats it back to them. This structure is inverted at the end, where Jack reviews the instructions as the space pirates repeat it back to her.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Gabby uses the lesson of the Trojan Horse taught by the tour guide in the beginning to sneak in and defeat the space pirates.
- Played for Drama. The aliens telling the kids about Zooglebotz was originally just to establish why they loved Earth so much, but when the pirates have the aliens kidnapped, they threaten to return the aliens to Zooglebotz.
- Comically Missing the Point: The aliens don't seem to understand what any of Earth's items do. To mention a few, they use socks as antennae warmers and think teacups are used to wash their toes after a long walk.
- Counterpoint Duet: At the end of Old Stuff, the kids sing the chorus while Gabby reprises her melody from earlier. They contrast each other because the kids sing about hating old stuff while Gabby sings about how much she loves it.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: The alien scientists are so excited by the humans that they don't realize there are space pirates on board before it's too late.
- Establishing Series Moment: One of the first moments of the show is Gabby saying a fact interesting to her and the rest of the students reacting by groaning.
- Fear Song: That's What Aliens Do, a song sung by Taylor as she tells Gabby about the horrible things aliens do. Of course, these rumors are soon proven wrong.
- Freudian Excuse: The space pirates say in the bridge of their song that they only steal because traveling the universe is expensive.
- "I Am Becoming" Song: Always On The Outside is originally an "I Am" Song for Gabby, but it becomes this when Gabby decides to break a few rules to be accepted with the others.
- Ironic Echo: In the original Always On The Outside, Gabby said she wanted to be on the inside, i.e. one of the cool kids. In the reprise, however, she sings about how they'll be on the inside, as in infiltrating the space pirates and defeating them.
- Kids Are Cruel: Downplayed, but the kids still outwardly bully Gabby and are dismissive of anything old in favor of their new technology.
- Ode to Apathy: Old Stuff is this for the kids, who are more interested in their phones than the history.
- Phoneaholic Teenager: The kids in Old Stuff are invested in their phones.
- Something Blues: Captured By Space Pirate Blues.
- Space Pirates: Naturally.
- Terrible Trio: The space pirate captain and his two comic relief lackeys.
- Triumphant Reprise:
- Always On The Outside was originally a song from Gabby's perspective as she was complaining about her constant teasing due to her knowledge of facts not interesting to others, but the reprise is a confident song about her putting that knowledge to use.
- If You Want To Be A Pirate was originally a song about the space pirates training Jack to be one of them, but the reprise is about them being allowed to join the alien crew.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change:
- Blarg A Riptoo and its reprise have a climactic key change at the end.
- If You Want To Be A Pirate has a key change as Jack is getting the hang of being a part of the space pirate crew. Its reprise has a key change as the space pirates agree to be part of the alien crew.
♪ Blarg a riptoo... ♫
