Western Animation / Dogs in Space

Dogs In Space is a 2021 cartoon show from Netflix created by Jeremiah Cortez, premiering on November 18th. A sneak-peek of the first episode was released in October 2021.

Captain Garbage (Haley Joel Osment) is a good boy... at least, that's what he claims to be. His human genetically engineered him to gain sapience and find planets that Earth can colonize as the main planet is dying. Garbage wants to find that planet, and show up his rival Captain Happy, a smug poodle that has the awe and worship of other dogs. The problem is that the Council finds him reckless, as he has come from too many failed missions where the aliens chase his crew off the planet. They order him to stay just as he prepares to investigate a planet that does not show up on anyone's charts. Garbage wants to prove himself, so he does not stay.

The series was renewed for a second season shortly after the Season 1 premiere. Season 2 premiered on September 15, 2022.

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Tropes for this series include:

• Aerith and Bob: The dogs' names range from standard dog names like Happy and Duchess, to regular people names like Stella and Penelope, to complete nonsense like Chonies and Pistachio Soup. Justified in that they are dogs with owners from varying backgrounds and naming preferences.
• Amazon Chaser:
  • Nomi all but develops a crush on Kira after seeing her fight monsters. In the season finale, Nomi arms up and thrashes Kira in a gunfight so that Garbage and Happy can thwart her plans. Nomi ends up saying that she learned how to kick butt from Kira so as to kick her butt.
  • Nomi is absolutely smitten when Kira returns to help combat the Shrubdubs. Amusingly, Pepper, who's rather Amazonian herself, agrees with the sentiment.
• Arc Words:
  • Garbage and, by extension, Stella are tested in being a good leader through three qualities: "Strategy, Insight, and Focus".
  • "Dogs look out for each other": Garbage and Kira's bond is tested throughout the series, occasionally clashing thanks to their different views for humans and how far they will go to help their fellow canines.
• Arc Villain:
  • Kira becomes one in the final episodes in the season.
  • The final two episodes of season 2 have the Shrubdubs.
• Big Bad Wannabe: It seems like Stardust, the former captain of The Pluto, will become Season Two's main villain, out of his determination to make Garbage a captain again. However, after Garbage discovers he sabotaged his friends and crew members and calls him out, Stardust caves pretty quickly.
• Brick Joke: At the end of his first message to his owner, Chelsea, Garbage begs her not to get a new dog. The message received at the end of the season has Chelsea finishing her transmission begging him not to get a new owner.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Garbage at first has Undying Loyalty for Chelsea. He's on the mission for her and to save her life. After they end up on the shapeshifter planet, Garbage comes to realize that Kira is right, that Chelsea used him and left him to carry nothing in the relationship. He agrees with Kira that the dogs need to be loyal to each other. Then his faith in Kira breaks when the machine that she manipulated him to build removes the dogs' sapience.
  • Nomi loves how cool Kira is for surviving on a hostile planet all of her life. She's not happy when Kira turned her friends back to regular dogs and tried to take over the M-Bark, but she forgives her because learning the older dog's skills allowed Nomi to stop her in the first place.
  • Given that Stardust was the one who passed his role as captain onto Garbage, he holds the old dog in fairly high regard. Said regard is completely shattered when Stardust, in his astral-projected form, reveals how he manipulated Stella and the others' emotions to sabotage them. Garbage sets to Calling the Old Man Out and shuts down any further attempts to "help" him.
• Brought Down to Badass: It turns out that the dogs didn't lose their intelligence or strategy when rendered non-sapient. Stella and Ed help Happy navigate through the air vents to where Kira's device is located. They then try to knock her down.
• Butt-Monkey: Loaf does not do well as a dog who is anxiety personified. Kira accidentally messed up his acupuncture procedure, Ed had him running around while disguised as Garbage, and he nearly crashed a tour ship when mistaken for a captain.
• Character Witness: Councilwoman Duchess retains her intelligence when Kira strips every dog on the M-Bark of their sapience. She sees Garbage attempting to talk down Kira and reason with her. As a result, Duchess is willing to grant lenience to Garbage for inadvertently enabling Kira at the latter's trial while Happy is demanding exile for both of them.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Season One's finale ends with Stella being made captain... of the Pluto.
  • Season Two's reveals there's a similar organization of uplifted cats who've found what they're looking for.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Happy is furious with Garbage for inadvertently giving Kira the means to overthrow the M-Bark. He says that as captain, Garbage had to stick to the mission of helping the humans. Garbage later tells Kira that they were wrong, that their humans still care for them, admitting that Happy had a point.
• Deadly Euphemism: "We'll be together again soon." Said by Garbage to Chelsea when the Shrubdubs are planning to destroy Earth and execute the dogs as revenge for the dogs accidentally destroying their vault of planet-saving seeds.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Happy wants to report Garbage for treason merely because Garbage promised Kira that he would never put the crew above the mission for humans ever again in an attempt to stop her from leaving. It turns out the Council is more even-minded; when Garbage and Happy's crew thwart Kira's coup, they hear the full story and agree to discharge Kira, sending her back to Earth with all the messages from dogs to their humans. They still have to demote Captain Garbage, but at least they won't punish someone for doubting the long years away from home.
• Do Wrong, Right: Atlas chides Chonies in the season finale for wanting to sneak off-ship and find their captains. Why? Because Chonies didn't think to look at the escape pod records to narrow down the potential locations where Happy, Garbage, and Jerry the security dog are stranded. Atlas is still a jerk, but he's willing to work with Chonies and break some rules to save the dogs that Kira launched off-ship.
• Dog Stereotype: Zig-Zagged. Seemingly, for every character who conforms to a dog stereotype, there's another character who doesn't.
  • On the Played Straight side:
    • Garbage is an optimistic, impulsive corgi.
    • Stella is a levelheaded Sheltie who often counters Garbage's zanier personality.
    • Happy is an arrogant, egotistical poodle, but he's also PRATS's top Pet Ship captain (perhaps alluding to the poodle's working dog background).
    • Penelope, a Tibetan spaniel, is a former dog show champion who now trains other dogs.
    • Stardust is perhaps a Deconstruction of the plucky, scrappy Scottish terrier, as his egomania and rule-breaking got him kicked off the M-Bark and set a bad example for Garbage.
  • On the Aversion side:
    • Ed is a Lovable Rogue con artist Jack Russell terrier.
    • Loaf is a neurotic, Big Eater bulldog.
    • Chonies is an almost fanatically loyal Gadgeteer Genius chihuahua.
    • Kira is a is a hardened, cynical Well-Intentioned Extremist sled dog (a Canadian eskimo dog to be precise).
    • Duchess is a Blood Knight St. Bernard.
    • Atlas is a snide, somewhat arrogant Boston terrier.
    • Pepper is a diligent, analytical, Genius Bruiser black Labrador retriever.
• Driving Question: Why did no one send ships to rescue Kira, and how come she's not in the records? Kira is disturbed by this when she learns that none of the crew has heard of her. We eventually get an answer: transmission to and from Earth are unreliable and combined with the theory of relativity, for the humans only a few months have passed on Earth while the dogs have spent years away. Olga sent transmission after transmission faithfully, but none of them made it through to Kira's ship.
• Enemy Mine: While they are technically on the same side, the crew of the Pluto and the crew of the Venus don't get along. However, when Garbage and Happy are stranded, Nomi and Chonie work together with Atlas (Happy's second in command) in order to rescue them.
• Everyone Has Standards: Happy is saddened when seeing Kira turned the whole M-Bark into nonsapient dogs.
• Evolving Credits: Season 2's opening is nearly the same as Season 1's, with two key differences: Garbage loses his Captain title (and shirt) to Stella since the end of last season, and Neptune's Pepper becomes the newest member and Tactical Officer of the Pluto.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Kira hears Garbage sending another message to his human. Garbage mentions that Kira is scary, but "in a cool way!" and that he's happy to have her on his crew because she's a good friend to have. While Kira has mixed feelings about humans, she's warmed up to Garbage considerably.
• Foil: Garbage is a kind, optimistic rogue; Happy, his rival, is vengeful, suspicious and by the book. Garbage's ship, the Pluto, is the furthest named rock in the solar system, while Happy's ship, the Venus, is close to Earth in both proximity and size.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Sadly, we know that most of Garbage's missions to find a planet will fail, as finding a planet for humans to live on will probably mean the end of the series.
• Faux Horrific: All the dogs are scared of Penelope, the dog trainer on the M-Bark. She's actually a Nice Girl and a Reasonable Authority Figure; while putting a Restraining Bolt on Garbage is overkill, Penelope points out she's doing her job to make sure he stays until he passes his captain training.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: On principle, Stella agrees with Garbage that Kira's discharge and return flight to Earth is the right course of action. Emotionally, she's still pretty cold with Kira for committing mutiny and shooting her friends with the sapience ray. Kira accepts the coldness, knowing she deserves it.
• Furry Reminder: Though they are evolved to behave more human-like by science, the characters on the M-Bark are still dogs, and tend to act as such on and off-mission. The Hydrant typifies this; an underground club where the dogs go to enact their more animalistic instincts.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Kira has spent ten years alone on the planet. As a result, she has started hallucinating and developed paranoia. The fact the local wildlife can change their structure doesn't help her stability. It means that when she sees the crew, she assumes that they are more hallucinations and prepares to shoot them. Garbage quickly reassures her that they are real.
• Hate Sink: Bernie, the dog who sabotaged Chonies in the mech competition, is hated more than Happy. He has only one scene, but it shows that he is a Sore Loser and a Jerkass. He destroyed Chonies's mech and did not even get punished for it. Happy at least has some Pet the Dog moments, and Atlus never goes to the same lengths that Bernie did.
• Hidden Depths: Garbage is more poignant than one may appear. In "Stay," he talks with the shapeshifter who looks like Chelsea; it's great that she can become his favorite human and recreate his home, but he would always know that Chelsea is stranded on a dying planet. Note that none of the other dogs sans Kira came to this realization.
• Humans Are Bastards: Garbage is not so tactful to avoid this issue when trying to negotiate with an alien queen. They point out that humans have a reputation for taking over stuff and overusing resources. Kira also shares this mentality, having been abandoned for many years.
• Hypocrite: For all of Happy's concerns of Garbage planning treason, he himself tries to sabotage Loaf's station in order to spy on Garbage's crew.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode consists of a command for a dog that relates to that episode's story. For example, Episode 1 explains that PRATS has sent the dogs to "Fetch" a new planet. "Here, Girl!" has the crew trying to convince Kira to join their team. "Watch Me" has Chonies hoping that Garbage watches him win a robot competition.
• Inflating Body Gag: In one scene in the final episode the dogs got inflated by Kira's normalizer device.
• Inspector Javert: Happy has it out for Garbage throughout the entire series, though he's not wrong in knowing that the latter is willing to disobey orders. He even goes so far as to try to take out/distract Loaf to prove such.
• Jerkass: Happy. While he is correct that Garbage is not the most competent captain, he goes out of his way to try to get Garbage in trouble. Even when they are stranded on a planet together, he and Garbage don't get along even when they do agree on something. In the season finale he tries to turn Kira back into a regular dog after she surrenders and tries to get Garbage banished as well.
  • The dog who destroyed Chonies's mech due to being a Sore Loser, something that Atlus didn't do. And said dog did not get punished for it.
• Just Eat Gilligan: The heist episode reveals that a planet has a seed bank where one seed can revive an entire planet. Garbage resolves to do anything to acquire it since that's a suitable alternative to finding a new planet.
• Let's Get Dangerous!:
  • When Loaf has ended up mistaken for a tour guide and accidentally crashes the ship into an alien creature, he is forced to admit he's not a captain. Then he sees a distress signal from his ship the Pluto. Loaf puts on the captain's hat, which is stuffed with food, and says that the captain is here. He lands successfully and evacuates the stranded crew.
  • Ed is in top form during the season finale. When the gunfight starts, his first response is to toss Loaf away from the danger, behind a protective barrier. Later, Ed helps Duchess and Stella find a rogue Kira, and even briefly grapples with her. When turned into a nonsapient dog, he helps take down Kira and pin down Happy when he attempts to use the sapience machine on Kira.
• Only Sane Man: Loaf has to be Mission Control for Garbage's crew, and it is torture for him. He keeps reminding them to follow the rules and the consequences for everyone involved. When Happy tries to distract Loaf from his duties or incapacitate him, Loaf is simply too dedicated to keeping his friends safe to move from his desk.
• Only Sane Woman: Stella is much more competent than Garbage, leading by the book and trying to dissuade his recklessness. As a result, she quickly gets frustrated with him. In fact, that's why she passes her performance review with flying colors despite arriving late and with de-aged crewmembers in tow; Councilor Duchess heard the story and was impressed that Stella not only kept a cool head with a ship full of puppies but also knew when to improvise in a dire situation.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Garbage's crew is shocked when he agrees with Happy that it may be necessary to turn the sapience beam on Kira if his attempts to reason with her fail. He says that they don't know what they're facing.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Happy sincerely greets Atlas when the latter comes to rescue him.
  • Literally. In the first season finale, Ed pushes Loaf out of the way when the gunfight starts with Kira, giving him an opportunity to hide.
• Positive Friend Influence: Penelope has to fail Garbage on his initial captain qualification tests, accurately pointing out that he didn't fulfill any of the parameters. Then she sees how he applies the leadership skills to work with Kira and save a dog that became a full-on Eldritch Abomination. When Kira has a crisis of confidence by pointing out that she messed up all day while trying to fit in and avoid trouble, Garbage says that he knows fighting monsters is her specialty. Penelope comes to the sickbay to congratulate them. She agrees to let him become captain again, on the condition that Kira joins his crew. Kira decides she won't go back to the vine planet just yet. When the M-Bark Council agrees to discharge Kira and send her back to Earth as punishment for high treason, they have to demote Garbage for inadvertently helping her coup.
• Put on a Bus: Kira, at the end of season 1, is put on a mission requiring them to leave the M-Bark.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Duchess is the epitome of this. She is stern but willing to hear out dogs, such as when she passed Stella on her performance review after hearing that Stella had to manage a crew of de-aged puppies while the ship was under attack. The best moment of this is when Happy says that Garbage was talking of treason; Duchess asks him point-blank if he is questioning one of the most loyal captains on the ship, and if he has proof. She also gives him a What the Hell, Hero? because for them, 14 dog years have passed and there haven't been any messages from the humans; it's more than natural to have doubts after such a long time in space. Duchess says that Happy would need proof of Garbage actively planning a mutiny to merit attention from the Council.
• The Reveal: It's revealed that due to the theory of relativity, the humans' messages for their pets in space were never arriving. For them, it was only a few months while the dogs were in space for three years. It turns out that Kira's human never gave up on her, sending messages faithfully for ten years and promising to keep looking.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Happy suspects that Garbage is nursing disloyal thoughts and is determined to spy on him. As it turns out, he should have been more suspicious of Kira being the mastermind and manipulating Garbage to make a brainwashing device.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Spending ten years alone has done a number on Kira's social skills and reflexes. She can't even relax in a spa.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Captain Happy, and by extension all of the Venus crew, are this to Captain Garbage and their counterparts on the Pluto. Happy often goes out of his way to find that Garbage is doing something wrong.
• Smug Snake: Happy and his 2nd in command Atlas are both this. Happy is smug in the fact that he is both more successful in his missions than Garbage and is a member of the council, and Atlas is smug in the fact that he won the Robo Mech competition several years in a row.
• Special Edition Title: After most of the crew get turned into puppies in "Settle Down", the opening is changed to reflect this sudden change.
• Sticky Fingers: Ed has a reputation for stealing alien treasures from different planets, as well as from his fellow dogs.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Episode 2 ends this way; Captain Happy has busted Captain Garbage for violating orders as well as the terms of his suspension. The Council prepares to throw the book at Garbage for his insubordination and arrogance, stripping him of his captaincy. Kira covers for him, lying that she owes Captain Garbage her life, and Happy verifies that she's not another hologram. While the Council agrees that saving another dog's life is a heroic feat, they still sentence Captain Garbage to remedial captain training. They can't overlook him disobeying orders and endangering the crew.
  • The season finale has this in two ways. Garbage manages to relay the transmission towards Kira that Olga never gave up on her, and she surrenders after restoring all the dogs to normal. Duchess still has to arrest Kira for high treason and put her on trial, though Stella stops Happy from turning the sapience device on Kira. To a lesser extent, Garbage risks his fragile standing to vouch for Kira and suggests that she is discharged and sent back to Earth instead of having obedience training all over again or face exile. Because he inadvertently helped her build the device, however, the Council demotes him and makes Stella the captain instead. They can't ignore Happy's accurate "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot that Garbage could have chosen to overrule Kira.
• Space Is an Ocean: Most of the creatures seen wandering (shipless) through space greatly resemble aquatic life.
• Take a Third Option: Kira's fate becomes this. While half the Council wants to throw the book at her, with Happy calling for Garbage to be punished as well, the other half wants to give her a fair trial. Garbage suggests that she is discharged honorably and returned to Earth, with the fireflies carrying messages for their humans.
  • The Robo-competition kind of ends like this. Chonies tries so hard to beat Atlas, but his robot (brought to life by sentience stickers) refuses to fight for the sake of winning. Atlas at first thinks he has won before the Jupiter's med tech officer crushes him.
• Theme Naming: All of the shuttles are named after planets in the Milky Way. Garbage's ship is the Pluto, the furthest named mass from the Sun.
• There Are No Therapists: Penelope is the closest thing to a therapist that the M-Bark has, and she's an obedience trainer. Dogs also don't want to get assigned to her because she determines their fate if they're in trouble with the Council, going Anything but That!. When Kira shows signs of PTSD while aboard the shuttle, the Pluto crew's attempts to help her relax go south, except when Garbage tells her to play to her strengths — fight monsters— to save Dave after he becomes an Eldritch Abomination. Not to mention that merely expressing doubts about the mission or if the humans are waiting for them back at home is enough to get Happy on the case and he wants to report them to the Council; Duchess has to give him a What the Hell, Hero? that a few minutes of doubt is not treason given how long they've been away from Earth. If Kira had been assigned some counseling and given a safe space to vent her anxieties about humans, it's likely she wouldn't have tried staging a coup in the season finale.
• Unanthropomorphic Transformation: Kira ends up making a mini-enhancer which takes away the sapience of any intelligent dogs it hits, reverting them back to regular dogs. They are revealed to have retained their intelligence and strategy from when they were anthropomorphic dogs, however, with the affected Stella and Ed helping Happy navigate to where Kira's device is located.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • The main reason why PRATS assigned dogs on the mission to find a new planet, being "man's best friend".
  • The Pluto crew has varied opinions about Captain Garbage's leadership, but they almost always back him up where it counts.
• Uplifted Animal: The main cast were once normal dogs which were genetically engineered into anthropomorphic animals suitable for the mission. The closing moments for Season 2 also suggest that cats were uplifted alongside them for the same purpose of finding a new home for humanity.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Zigzagged. Despite the fact that Garbage refused to subject him to a Fate Worse than Death by firing the sapience ray at him, Happy is angry at Garbage for enabling Kira's plot in the first place. He keeps accusing the other captain of mutiny when they get stranded on the magnetic planet, and calls for his banishment when Kira returns everyone to normal and surrenders to Duchess. Garbage, however, doesn't argue that he is indirectly responsible for Kira going off-script.
• Unperson: The Council is shocked to see Kira as she vouches for Captain Garbage and claims she was stranded on the ghost planet for ten years until he rescued her. They say there's no record of her, and they don't know who she is. While Kira hams it up that she was forgotten, Garbage knows that she's hurt for real because of it.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Kira's actions in the last episodes of the season are driven by her thinking that her owner forgot about her and wanting to find a planet just for dogs. Garbage snaps her out of it, and she surrenders after restoring everyone back to normal.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • The Chelsea shapeshifter in "Stay" tries to convince Garbage that he and his crew can stay on the planet, recreating their old lives without needing humans and abandoning the mission. Garbage is tempted, but then he sniffs her. Shapeshifters can't recreate familiar scents. He then says poignantly that it would be good for him and the crew, but what about Chelsea and the humans they left behind? Garbage would always know that he abandoned Chelsea, and this motivates him to leave.
  • Happy tries to invoke this on Garbage in the season finale when it's just the two of them on the magnetic planet, unable to send or receive transmissions. Garbage tells him honestly that Kira manipulated him because she said that her owner abandoned her, and he doesn't agree with her anymore. He says that Kira went off the rails, and they need to stop her.

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