Starhunter

Three centuries in the future humanity has colonized the solar system, and spread beyond it. There are a number of nation states in the Solar system, with the 'Raiders' living at the fringes.

Starhunter follows the adventures of a group of bounty hunters as they travel through the solar system.

In the first season Dante Montana (Michael Pare) is the captain of the ship; with him is his niece, Wrench Wench Percy (Tanya Allen); Lucretia Scott (Claudette Roche), The Lancer (who has an agenda of her own); and the AI Caravaggio (Murray Melvin) for crew. Dante is looking for his son Travis who was kidnapped as a baby by Raiders. They work for Rudolpho deLuna (Stephen Marcus), hunting bounties as a way to earn money, and have a legal reason to go after the Raiders.

There is a plot running through the season concerning the Divinity Cluster, which Travis may be linked to through his genes; an Ancient Conspiracy called The Orchard, which may not be that ancient; and possible alien lost technology.

Dante is lost at the end of the season in an incident involving the Divinity Cluster and hyperspace. Percy, Caravaggio and the ship are thrown into hyperspace and presumed lost.

They return next season about twenty years later, long enough for Travis to have grown up, left the Raiders and to have started searching for his father. Travis, his engineer sidekick, an ex-Matrian cop and Dante's old employer, Rudolpho, all end up on the ship with Percy.

As in the first season, they end up taking bounty hunting jobs to pay the bills and have a reason to fly around the solar system.

Not a bad series, though somewhat harmed by the CGI effects. The second season actors all do a good job with what they have to work with. Tanya Allen is rather good as the somewhat paranoid, heading for a breakdown Percy.

Cowboy Bebop has a better sound track but Starhunter is still worth a look.

The second season, re-titled Starhunter 2300, is currently (5/30/2012) available on Hulu.

Starhunter provides examples of:

 * Ancient Astronauts Possibly, there seem to have been aliens involved at one point in the distant past
 * Ancient Conspiracy: The Orchard.
 * Artificial Gravity One bounty actually comments she can tell Percy wasn't raised on a planet but in an environment that used grav coils because of the way she walks.
 * Badass Longcoat: Dante and Lucretia.
 * Casual Interplanetary Travel: Interplanetary travel is semi-realistic but casual; push on the gas and you go faster, but it does take a couple of days to get from the moons of Jupiter to Mars. Interstellar travel exists (via Hyperspace), but is very new, cutting edge, rare, and dangerous.
 * Cool Starship: The Tulip
 * Cosmopolitan Council: the Ancient Conspiracy, the Orchard.
 * Conservation of Competence: kick-ass bounty hunters who frequently ignore their boss.
 * Crusading Widower: Dante won't rest until he finds his missing son.
 * Energy Weapons
 * Exty Years From Now: Season One - set in 2275 - made in 2000.
 * Hologram Projection Imperfection:
 * Hormone-Addled Teenager: Percy frequently falls for any cute prisoner who comes aboard ship.
 * No New Fashions in the Future
 * Omniscient Council of Vagueness: the Ancient Conspiracy, oh so much.
 * Planar Shockwave
 * Planet Looters: The Raiders.
 * Plot-Relevant Age-Up Travis
 * Pointy-Haired Boss: Rudolpho is frequently telling inappropriate stories about his sex life.
 * Projected Man: Carravagio the AI takes the form of part elderly British gent; part skeleton.
 * Space Friction
 * Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: And how.
 * Subspace or Hyperspace (the latter)
 * Suspended Animation (The Martian 'blank' clones used for organ replacement)
 * Used Future
 * Wrench Wench: Percy.