Quentyn Quinn Space Ranger, a webcomic by Ralph Hayes Jr and a Spin-Off of Tales of the Questor, deals with one of Quentyn's descendants centuries down the track, IN SPACE!! Unfortunately updates can be thin on the ground, since Hayes only updates once the donation meter reaches a certain amount - and the meter resets every month.
Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Patoodines have a rather unique legal system: they launch criminals from a catapult a distance calculated by adding up the total and severity of your crimes. If you live, you're free to go. But if your crimes are severe enough, they'll launch you at the moon with a rail gun instead.
Disproportionate Retribution: 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 stellar lance.
Fantastic Racism: not so much subverted or inverted as turned completely inside out with the W'naybeans, a race of behavioral and cultural mimics (modeled on the real life Mimic Octopus.) Their habit of imitating not just other races and ethnicities but other race and ethnic STEREOTYPES caused them a great deal of trouble with various easily offended PC types, but eventually they became so ubiquitous that they are routinely employed in various tourist traps preferentially over the very natives they imitate as being "more authentic." The author's point is that "nobody seemed to be too upset as long as it was SOMEBODY ELSE being mimicked..." Ergo, if seen humorously, both racism AND ethnic hypersensitivity are easy to recognize as ridiculous.
Good Republic, Evil Empire: Seemingly subverted, the hero works for the "Empire of the Seven Systems" while the Star Trek Parody Federation is highly incompetent (and socialist). But according to Word Of God the Empire is a parliamentary republic and the emperor is mostly there to look good on TV.
Have I Mentioned I Am a Dwarf Today?: In the "Federation" arc, Groonch the G'norch makes a point of emphasizing his warrior-race pride (his hat, given by Captain Pidorq, is "token noble savage")—- only to have it brutally subverted when it's pointed out that his "race" has dozens of languages and hundreds of cultures, and "noble warrior" isn't even in the top ten....
Pleasure Planet: The Sapphire Star, though actually a massive starship.
Also (mentioned in passing) "Queela Quoola," which translates roughly as "Planet of casual sex and cheap beer..."
Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Kvrk-Chk are explicitly stated to be under the Nazi category, with their entire civilization being under an absolute dictatorship that allows no variation in culture, law, beliefs, anything in their society. This is a society where the nail that sticks up isn't just hammered down, it's violently ripped out and eaten on sight. And this is a civilization that occupies multiple star systems.
Or, in other words, Transparent aluminum. Yes, that's what sapphires ARE.
It'd be more surprising if they didn't have industrial sapphire production considering they grew plants that refined bauxite into sapphire centuries before.
A rather gratuitous one at that, given that most of the subjects he brings up were addressed by either Deep Space Nine or the TNG movies.
Also seems to have elements of Affectionate Parody, considering the obscurity of some of the Trek references (e.g.: rice-harvester accident, "make things go", etc.).
Time Dilation: A narratively brilliant example, which should be used more often - though Faster-than-Light Travel is fairly Casual, the amount of time trips take is randomly inconsistent, since time doesn't "flow" homogeneously through the galaxy, due to gravitational anomalies, the rotation of the galaxy, and distance from the galactic core. This means that years can pass while a traveler is gone for a few months. It forces more independence on the setting, and hardcore spacers Can't Go Home Again.
to give the reader some perspective: the mere gravitational difference between the Earth's surface and orbit is high enough that the atomic clocks on GPS satellites have to be readjusted by software on a continual basis, otherwise the satellites would be off by 38 microseconds—- and their coordinate readings by TEN KILOMETERS—- in a single day.
Too Dumb to Live: Somehow a large portion of the universe's population seems to fit into this category.
Thankfully, there appears to be a large number of unimaginably powerful beings that roam the stars, taking care of species like this.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The source of much debate on the Cartoonist's own forum. The Kvrk-Chk are made of pure Obviously Evil, and they commit a truly grotesque act of aggression. Even so, it's disconcerting to see the heroic Empire of the Seven Systems unleash a Class X-2 Apocalypse on "one of (the Kvrk-chk's) most heavily populated solar systems".
, a webcomic by Ralph Hayes Jr and a Spin-Off of Tales of the Questor, deals with one of Quentyn's descendants centuries down the track, IN SPACE!! Unfortunately updates can be thin on the ground, since Hayes only updates once the donation meter reaches a certain amount - and the meter resets every month.
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