Original air date: September 18, 1993
The Fall of the Human Empire: Part 1
After a raid spearheaded by the notorious Pirate Clan leader Jonas Simbacca results in a number of preventable deaths, the ExoFleet is tasked by the Homeworlds Congress with dealing with the problem.
Tropes:
- Artificial Gravity: Played with; the ore freighter Danube is supposed to have artificial gravity, but it's not functioning when Able Squad boards the freighter.
- Casual Interplanetary Travel: Everyone's zipping around the inner solar system like it's no more trouble than a long flight.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Able Squad struggling to combat the Pirate Clan ships.
- Colonized Solar System: Earth and Venus are colonized by humans, while Mars is home to the Neosapiens, and the Pirates hail from former prison colonies beyond the asteroid belt.
- Convicted by Public Opinion: The folks on the ground hold ExoFleet responsible for what happened to the freighter and work crew shuttle.
- Cool Starship: The Resolute.
- To a slightly lesser extent, the Pirate Clan ships.
- Death Trap: The pirates leave an explosive beneath the body of an unconscious survivor; Kaz accidentally triggers it when he tries to save the man.
- Explosions in Space: The ore freighter goes up in a very impressive (and improbable) fireball.
- Land Mine Goes "Click!": When the hidden bomb is activated, letting everyone present know what's about to go down.
- Outrun the Fireball: Able Squad succeeds; the work crew shuttle does not.
- Ridiculously Potent Explosive: A bomb small enough to be hidden under a body really shouldn't be that powerful.
- Rock Beats Laser: The Pirates attack the ExoFleet with thruster-equipped asteroids, and succeed in destroying the Defiant.
- Space Navy: The ExoFleet
- Space Pirates: The Pirate Clans led by Simbacca
- Space Station: Where the Homeworlds Congress does their business.
- Space Truckers: The ore freighter crew; they even have a holographic dancing dashboard lady!
- Stealth in Space: The Pirate fleet utilizes dark matter cloaking devices to hide from - and ambush - the ExoFleet.
- Strawman News Media: Seemingly Charles Makena's angle.
- Terraforming: Of Venus and Mars.
- Time Bomb: Able Squad only sixty seconds to escape the freighter before the bomb goes off
- Warhawk: The Homeworlds Congress is full of them, all itching to send the ExoFleet off to war and make them "earn their keep."
