Captain Space, Defender of Earth!

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He's saved the Earth, fought galactic empires, and obviously had hundreds of girlfriends.

Dr Chaotica: Captain Proton!

Tom Paris: Spaceman First Class, protector of Earth, scourge of intergalactic evil...at your service.

— Star Trek: Voyager, "Night"

In The Future, when mankind has explored the outer reaches of space, the forces of evil threaten our peace. But never fear, for humanity is under the stalwart protection of the parody hero of Space Operas and serials, known as Captain Space, Defender Of Earth!

Yes, his origins make him a Dead Unicorn Trope, based more on Captain Kirk and Adam West's portrayal of Batman than of the old Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers stories, but that does not stand in the way of his quest For Great Justice! Okay, it might, but even if he is an arrogant Jerkass (meant to mock the old values, or what we think they were), that won't stop people from admiring him (or Green Skinned Space Babes from falling into his arms) due to his deep, manly voice, larger than life mannerisms, dedication to truth and justice, and some of his trusty gadgets (Ray Gun mandatory).

When our hero actually is heroic, although sometimes an idiot, he leads the fight to stop Death Rays, alien armadas, Space Pirates, and Evil Overlords from destroying The Federation! Furthermore, he does not need to do this alone, as he is always accompanied by a Girl Friday, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, or a Space Cadet, who may also be parodies of their respective archetypes or the true saviors of the day!

In animation our hero is often drawn with an exaggerated chin, a top-heavy body, to show off his space manliness! In still art, he almost certainly will feature in a parody of a Contemptible Cover, most likely including a Leg Cling.

Compare The Cape, The Ace, Raygun Gothic, Captain Superhero (which this can overlap if a character is a space hero and a superhero), For Great Justice, SpaceX.

Note that this is not merely parodies of space operas. This is about any character(s) acting this way.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

The eponymous Space Dandy, though you'd be mistaken if you ever thought he was in it For Great Justice.

Comic Books

Nexus has more than a few elements of this, since he was based partly on Space Ghost.
The idealized Aryan hero Storm Saxon from the show-within-a-comic in V for Vendetta.
2000 AD:
- In 1981 Dash Decent who was mostly a Flash Gordon parody, but whose name also suggested Dan Dare.
- Around this same time, a "Tharg's Future Shocks" strip penned by Alan Moore centered around Rocket Redglare—"Golden-Haired Guardian of the Galaxy, Steel-Eyed Sentinel of the Spaceways, and Enemy of Evil Extra-Terrestrials." He's been living out his life as a washed up retiree, ever since he defeated his Meng the Merciless -styled arch enemy.
Nova becomes a reconstruction of this in Annihilation.
Lance Blastoff, from Frank Miller's Tales to Offend, is a parody with the sexist and racist elements turned Up to Eleven.
Rocket Raccoon of the Guardians of the Galaxy started as a very weird version of this trope plus Funny Animal. He later learned that the people he was protecting were actually abandoned mental patients; he'd been created to serve as the least-threatening asylum orderly possible. This leads to his modern characterization as a cynical, kleptomaniac bounty hunter.
- For that matter, the 2008 Guardians of the Galaxy started on the very premise of deconstructing this trope, taking some of Marvel's forgotten characters who had played it straight and remaking them as severely flawed characters.
DC has their own stable of space heroes: Star Hawkins, Space Ranger, Tommy Tomorrow, and so on. Twilight was intended to give an update to all of them, as was the New 52 story Threshold.

Film — Animated

Uncle Art in Meet the Robinsons (voice, appropriately enough, by Adam West) is a subversion—his spaceship is a conveyance for delivering pizza.
Zig-zagged by Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story, which plays up the parody factor because we see so little of the in-universe Buzz Lightyear franchise that it wouldn't stand out otherwise. The spinoff cartoon Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is more of a straight Space Opera for kids once it had room to stretch its legs.
Captain Sternn from Heavy Metal, although we don't get to see his exploits, just the trial.

Film — Live Action

The Prince of Space from Prince of Space.
- Also his Captain Ersatz Space Chief from Invasion of the Neptune Men.
Bronco from Gentlemen Broncos
Buckaroo Banzai from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Literature

Honor Harrington has the series within a series Preston of the Spaceways, often mentioned in the context of warning against stupid heroics. To be told one is "playing Preston of the Spaceways" is not a compliment.
The parody was firmly entrenched by the time Robert A. Heinlein wrote The Rolling Stones in The '50s: Roger Stone and, later, Grandma Hazel help support the family by writing a deliberately over-the-top three-vee serial in the Captain Space Defender mold.
In universe, this is how Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) is portrayed. Whether he is or not in person is debatable.
Used as a joke in-universe in the X-Wing Series.
"Elassar Targon, master of the universe!"
The Doctor Who New Adventures novel The Highest Science has the Doctor discover a triangular video cassette showing "Captain Millennium" battling "Libida, Queen of the Virenies", which he considers to be So Bad, It's Good. (And when it ends on a cliffhanger with the Captain's assistant being threatened by an evil robot, he concludes it's "almost like real life, in a glamorized sort of way".)
Toby Frost's Space Captain Smith, hero of the British Space Empire, is Captain Space with a Stiff Upper Lip.
In Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, Oscar Hoffa's work as a television producer includes watching an episode of The Adventures of Crunch Crandall, Spaceman, whose titular hero fights to "save the fair Skarlotta, a Martian lass from the foul clutches of 'It,' the nameless monster of Ursa Minor." Oscar's executive complaints include not seeing enough cleavage on Skarlotta and the monster needing to be recast on the grounds of being "a faggot."

Live-Action TV

Tek Jansen of The Colbert Report is a Parody Sue who is written by Colbert himself.
"Ace" Rimmer (What a guy!); Arnold Rimmer's Alternate Universe self from Red Dwarf. Smoke him a kipper, he'll be back for breakfast.
Captain Video, the original TV space hero, was Played Straight in his billing as an "electronic wizard! Master of time and space! Guardian of the safety of the world!" All this while being the face of the No Budget DuMont network. His future space uniform was made out of an Army surplus uniform, and one of his weapons was made out of car parts.
Star Trek: Voyager. The holodeck program The Adventures of Captain Proton was an Affectionate Parody of this trope, even if downplayed compared to most examples.
Tom Paris: (making a Dynamic Entry as the hero) Captain Proton: Spaceman First Class, protector of Earth, scourge of intergalactic evil... at your service.
Captain Zoom, a Made-for-TV Movie, deconstructs this trope pretty thoroughly. Note that Captain Zoom is a parody of Captain Video, above - Captain Zoom is set on the DuMont network, which Captain Video really ran on.

Music

Devin Townsend: Captain Spectacular in Ziltoid the Omniscient is a parody of Star Trek captains. By the Z2 he became much more similar to Captain Space trope.

Newspaper Comics

Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin's Spaceman Spiff persona, who doesn't defend Earth so much as get randomly captured and shot down on faraway planets.
Comic strip character Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!!

Professional Wrestling

Masked legacy wrestler Astroman, primarily seen in the Dominican Republic, though Astroman III wasn't particularly heroic, suffering from Chronic Back Stabbing Disorder to the point "The Betrayer" was his Red Baron.

Video Games

Named for CAPTAIN GORDON, DEFENDER OF EARTH! of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness.
Captain Qwark of Ratchet & Clank
Chibi-Robo!: Drake Redcrest is an action figure from a Show Within a Show.
Captain Commando mixes this with Tokusatsu tropes.
The title character of Blasto (not to be confused with the arcade game of the same name).
Ace, AKA Dexter, from Space Ace.
The title character of Captain Quazar.
Captain Falcon of F-Zero and Super Smash Bros. fame is this trope as seen through Japanese eyes, particularly in the latter where he is voiced in overly hammy and terse Fake American Engrish.
Earthworm Jim was a deliberate parody of space heroes plus the Mascot with Attitude.
Rad Gravity.
Captain Cosmos from Fallout 3. Posters even showed the time slot of his show to be identical to the original air time of Star Trek: The Original Series. In the fifth DLC, one of the major NPCs is a big fan.
Commander Shepard in Mass Effect is a modern Reconstruction of this trope, alongside the myriad of other space sci-fi reconstructions that Mass Effect is famous for.
Captain Jethro from Planet 404

Web Original

Homestar Runner has "Space Captainface, pretender of the galaxies", Strong Bad's alter ego as head astronaut/poster boy for Strong Badia's space program, SBASAF (the Strong Badian Administration of Some Aluminum Foil, pronounced "sbace-aff"). His missions include Camera Spoofing an Italian spy satellite and attempting to turn fifteen bucks into a million dollars through a "vague understanding of the theory of relativity".

Western Animation

Atomic Betty, to add to the retro-futuristic appeal of the show.
Ben 10 and especially it sequels are known to play this trope straight. The Plumbers are a secret Space Police that deals with different inter-planetary issues, they travel between planets fighting against the bad guys with a different set of weapons or alien superpowers. It's clear that Ben wants to be like this, as he wanted to join in the first series a special organization that was mostly a lighthearted parody of this (They were portrayed as rather cartoonish but still capable and useful) and in the flashforward episodes he is seen as a straight example of this trope. The sequel series Ben 10: Alien Force and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien shows a very diverse set of Plumbers with many of them falling squarely on this trope.
- With the increasing Space Opera elements in the series, this is seen as a logical progression, inter-planetary travelling became a standard of the series, and many of the villains in the show are classical sci-fi enemies that must be dealt with a regular space hero.
Duck Dodgers, in both the original cartoon and its TV series Spin-Off.
Major Courage (a parody of Shatner's Kirk) of Courage of the Cosmos, a Show Within a Show in the DuckTales (1987) episode, "Where No Duck Has Gone Before".
Zapp Brannigan of Futurama, although unlike most examples he is explicitly a parody of Captain Kirk (his character was originally pitched as "What if William Shatner was captain of the Enterprise rather than Kirk?").
The "Starboy and the Captain of Outer Space" movie-within-a-show in Home Movies.
Crash Nebula in a Show Within a Show of The Fairly OddParents!.
Space Ghost is a rare example that plays this trope completely straight.
The Vindicators, and especially Vance Maximus (Renegade Starsoldier), from Rick and Morty, seem to be a more modern take on this, with Maximus himself being a clear nod to the film portrayal of Star-Lord. This contrasts with Rick and the various sci-fi beings he usually interacts with, who are based more on cheesy eighties and nineties cartoons.
In Steven Universe, Lars helps the Off-Color Gems steal a Cool Starship in an Offscreen Moment of Awesome. He then becomes the ship's commander, and gets fully into this trope when making decisions (while posing heroically).