Starhunter, episode 3 "Family Values"

Sorry we're a day behind getting this post up. Igor's been soaking in the sights at C2E2, and you can see his photos here.

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In an opening video, Rudolpho tries to say something about families, but it's buried by his eating and laughter.

The Tulip is approaching Mars for its latest mission. In his quarters, Dante has Caravaggio give him half an hour of "maximum privacy" time, which he spends hooking up to a virtual interface headset. It's the anniversary of his marriage, and in the interface, Dante speaks to the digital ghost of his wife, Penny. Her mind was transferred to a computer board just before she died, but it wasn't complete and she's degrading. She sense their son, Travis, is near and tells Dante to hurry and find the boy so she can see him one last time. Back in reality, Percy hacks her way into Dante's room and sees her unconscious uncle hooked to the interface. "Whoa."

Starhunter, episode 2 "Trust"

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We open with a transmission from Rudolpho to an unknown party, as he rants about bounty hunters after having just dismissed Dante from his office. He ends by saying it all hinges on trust.

In a cargo hold on the Tulip, Caravaggio keeps score as an armored up Luc and Percy duel with staves. Just as Percy lands poorly and injures her arm, Dante bursts in, ripping into Luc for injuring his niece, and into both because he'd banned sparring on his ship. When he learns Percy had asked Luc for training for a tournament she'd entered, he flares up even more, saying Percy's betrayed his trust and confining her to her quarters.

Starhunter, episode 1 "Peer Pressure"

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We open on a video of a husky dude named Adolphus joking about his "first time" before he gives our heroes a mission to recover a mother and son. We then cut to a video of the beautiful but piercing Dr. Nasreen, standing over a man who's been strapped to a table with a device wrapped around his head. Blood is crusted in his nose. She asks him a series of control questions, focused mainly on the unconditionality of "A mother's love is never wrong." She then orders him to stand up, but when he tries, his expression turns pained and he starts to thrash. He then goes still. She turns back to her work, saying, "A mother's love is never wrong." Through a window on a door, we see the eyes of her teenage son, Ajit, turn away.

A Slightly Longer-Lived Showcase: Introducing Starhunter

NOTE: Technically, Starhunter doesn't fit our criteria for a Short-Lived show, as it ran for two full seasons instead of just one. It's side a project I've wanted to do for a while with Igor, and now, with the Showcase in hiatus, it seemed like the perfect time to take it on. And since it didn't fully fit the regulations of this site, we were going to host the project at Made of Fail's First Impressions and Second Time Around blog. But I kept looking at the Showcase, which had been the most successful and widely read of the blog projects I've created, and how it just suddenly cut off with its future still up in the air, and I figured, why not. No, this series isn't Short-Lived, but I figure exploring it for the next 44 weeks* is just what the Showcase needs to keep running while we sort out that eventual future. Igor is a great writer, and I hope you all enjoy him as a new member of the team. And while Tony's currently in the middle of a bunch of stuff at the moment, I won't give up on gently tugging him back, so we'll see where he's at once things are settled.

[* There's a good chance this may only run 22 weeks for the moment, as Season 2 has suddenly become incredibly elusive, with DVD sets out of print and going for wild collectors' prices and legal streams suddenly pulled offline. Either way, we'll see Season 1 through.]

Stay Tuned

The Showcase has languished long enough, so we'll be ending the hiatus next week with a new (slightly different than normal) project and a new contributor for you all to meet. See you soon! :)