Starhunter
, on The Movie Network (Canada) / syndication (USA)So... the first season of this show aired in 2000-2001. The second season aired in 2003-2004. I'm sure I saw a little bit of the series, but I'm not sure when exactly (or which season). I do know I didn't see it on the network that originally aired it, but it's possible it was syndicated to whatever channel I did watch it on at the same time it originally aired. Or maybe I didn't see it until sometime later; either way, it couldn't have been much later. I surely saw it sometime in the early to mid 2000s. And I bought the series on DVD sometime in the late 2000s or early 2010s, and then didn't do anything with it for several years. I finally started watching it in 2016, and it wasn't until then that I looked for info about it online, and discovered there were two seasons. The DVD set I have says it's the complete series, but it's actually just the first season. (Though I guess the seasons might be considered separate series, by some sources.) Also I should mention that the first episode on the set I have is actually the sixth episode of the series. The actual first episode of the series is fourth on the DVD. But other than those two anomalies, the other episodes are all in their proper order.
Season One
The show is set in the year 2275. There's a spaceship called Tulip, which has just a three person crew of bounty hunters. The captain is Dante Montana (played by Michael Paré, who previously played Tony on Greatest American Hero). His son, Travis, had been kidnapped by Raiders ten years before the series starts. (I could swear it was said Travis was a baby at the time, but later episodes had Dante talking about him having been a young boy.) So Dante's main goal is to find Travis, and bounty hunting is just a means to that end. Dante's second in command is Lucretia "Luc" Scott (her nickname is pronounced like "Luke"). She previously served in the military, and I would say she's more competent than Dante, so I have no idea why he's the captain rather than her. (It's not that Dante is incompetent, per se, I just don't know what his qualifications are, and he doesn't seem particularly interested in his job.) But Luc has a secret: she's been given a mission by her father, Darius, who is a member of a group called the Orchard. They're interested in a mysterious cluster of genes called "the Divinity Cluster," which I guess was implanted in humans by aliens millions of years ago, and which may soon lead to a new stage of evolution, or something. The third member of Tulip's crew is an engineer named Percy Montana, who is Dante's niece, and the only character I particularly like. (In fact, the only thing I really remembered from when I originally watched the show on TV was that there was a girl I liked, though I didn't remember her name.) I think she's supposed to be like 16, though the actress who played her, Tanya Allen, was around 25. (And maybe I'm mistaken about Percy's age.) Anyway, aside from the crew, Tulip also has a holographic AI called Caravaggio. And the ship is owned by a guy named Rudolpho deLuna, whom we only see via video transmissions. (He has little speeches at the start of each episode, which usually have nothing to do with the crew's current assignment or the theme of the story, as far as I can tell. It seems pretty random, and he can be kind of... unlikable.)
So... it's hard for me to really say how much of the show is sort of standalone bounty hunting stuff and how much is part of the larger story arc, because not much of it made sense to me, and then there were probably plot elements that seemed random when they happened, but later it became apparent they were part of the arc. I guess. Um... I should mention that Dante's wife, Penny, was a scientist who was killed when the Raiders took Travis. But Dante has a sort of VR device and a disk on which I guess Penny's mind is stored, or something. So he occasionally uses the device to talk with her. And... I dunno, lots of stuff happens throughout the season. Sometimes people whose Divinity Cluster has been activated may disappear, and seem to be dead, but actually be in interdimensional space, or something. (We don't actually see what happens to them.) The most important of these people is a geneticist named Eccleston, who was in both the first and last episodes of the season. Anyway... another important thing to note is that Darius has enemies within the Orchard. Toward the end of the season, the person who is in control of the organization is a woman named Tosca. Darius was apparently murdered, though it's unclear whether he's definitely gone for good, as far as I can tell. Meanwhile, Luc received some help from an ally of Darius's named Navarre, a member of the Orchard who is opposed to Tosca. Meanwhile, Dante is finally reunited with Travis. (And again, I can't tell how old he's supposed to be, but he's definitely older than 10. I think he's a young adult, but I know he's younger than Percy, so... whatever.) Anyway, Travis (like most kids who were abducted and raised by Raiders) actually seems happy to be a Raider. (We do also learn some surprising things about Travis, which I don't want to spoil.) But he has an advisor and father figure within the Raiders, named Senaca, who turns out to be working with Tosca, and who has plans of his own that may not align with what Travis wants. And... there's this whole thing about some kind of "seeds" which could supposedly do the job of terraforming planets much more expeditiously than actual terraforming, and that's something the Raiders want. And, I dunno, there's just all sorts of weird stuff going on that doesn't make much sense, really. And the season ends with a great deal unresolved.
Anyway, when I started watching the show on DVD, I found most of the writing and acting kind of bad, but not terrible. However, I think the show does kind of get better, once you get into it. And the overarching story itself is kind of interesting (even if it doesn't make much sense). But the main reason I found the show enjoyable at all is because I basically adore Percy, both because I find her incredibly cute and because she she has a sort of spunkiness I find appealing. And... I guess she's the only major character to carry over into the second season. And since I didn't find anything except her familiar from season one, I'm still not sure whether I'd seen that before. So I guess I need to get season two and see if that's more familiar, or less.