Characters / Stellar Firma

Stellar Firma Ltd.

In General

Tropes:

• Humans Are Bastards: The last remnant of humanity, and often endangers other intergalactic species (as well as its own) for profit — for instance, driving the polar bears off Earth with pollution, subsequently using their planets as garbage disposal, and eventually forcing them to go back to humanity for replacements as Stellar Firma is the only company with sufficient terraforming technology.
• MegaCorp: One that now owns the entirety of humanity, and its genetic descendants.
• We Have Reserves: The whole company seems to run on this principle, as their main workforce is made of clones, and employee deaths are treated more as a legal inconvenience than anything else.

Current Stellar Firma Employees

David 7

David-7

Portrayed by: Ben Meredith

A newly born Expendable Clone made to assist Trexel Geistman in designing planets.

Tropes:

• Bad Liar: Though better than most clones (who are specifically programmed to be unable to lie) he's still pretty terrible at it. It's a good thing Trexel is usually too stupid or inebriated to notice.
• Born as an Adult: Combined with Really Was Born Yesterday, he's born at the beginning of the series and is immediately capable of thought and motion. A Running Gag is him bringing up he has not in fact experienced whatever Trexel is describing because he's only been alive for a day or two.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Forced to be one for Trexel, as the latter is his boss and often becomes catastrophically off-topic when not kept in check.

• Deadpan Snarker: As the series progresses, he becomes more and more overtly snarky about Trexel's antics. It helps that Trexel is mostly oblivious to it.
• Disposable Intern: Essentially treated as this.
• The Dog Bites Back: Soaks Trexel in clone slurry in episode 23, and ends up beating him with a fish in the Season 1 finale.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: When first created in Episode 1, an error prevents certain 'education' modules from being installed. As a result, David-7 is capable of free thought and lying through his teeth to Trexel, something stated to be impossible for clones.
• Heroic BSoD: Hits a big one in Episode 64 ("Magical Chutes and Moral Cahoots") when he meets other David clones for the first time and discovers that, as Trexel had said (in his own dickish way), they are obedient servants mentally incapable of rebelling like he is, throwing off his plan to get them to start a rebellion.
• Implausible Deniability: Tends to default to this when confronted with a lie, the possibly most egregious example being denying he sprayed Trexel with clone slurry directly after spraying Trexel with clone slurry.
• The Klutz: Unused to moving around, mostly because Trexel forgot to exercise him. When he finally goes into the outside hallway, he panics and walks straight into a wall.
• Non-Human Non-Binary: Identifies his gender as “David,” and uses he/they pronouns (with “they” being more frequent in Season 3).
• Rage Breaking Point: At the end of Episode 26, when Trexel reveals he could have done swapsies the whole time, but drew out proceedings because he's always wanted to do a trial. The season closes off with David beating Trexel senseless with a fish in retribution.
• Super-Strength: In Season 2, after he and Trexel become expeditors, David starts passing time between work sessions by working out. He builds muscle quickly and eventually becomes strong enough to bend metal. Season 3 reveals that his quick muscular growth and incredible strength is because of the process that makes clones grow and mature quickly, implying that all clones can grow muscles like that.
• You Are Number 6: Named David-7, and is the seventh in the David line of clones that Trexel has rapidly burned through. He panics in Episode 26 when Trexel suggests he might not actually not the seventh David due to Stellar Firma's numbering system, but this is eventually confirmed with the exit interviews of Davids 1-6.

Trexel Geistman

Trexel Geistman

Portrayed by: Tim Meredith

An eternally drunk Planetary Consultant who's terrible at his job and is convinced of the opposite.

Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Most of the tangents about his terrible childhood reference his parents, usually berating him in some way. Despite this he is supremely proud of his heritage.
• Aggressive Categorism: According to him, all galactic bureaucrats are the same.
• The Alcoholic: Shows up flat-out drunk in half the episodes. Overlapping with Addled Addict, he seems prone to addiction in general, which Hartro calls him out on after an entire night spent binge-drinking moisturizer.
• Ax-Crazy: His reaction when finding out David has been editing briefs behind his back.
  Trexel: BURN IT ALL DOWN!
• Berserk Button: Mispronouncing his last name.
  • Being touched (specifically by David).
  • Having his ideas be shut down.
  • The very concept of working when he's supposed to.
• Captain Oblivious: Manages not to notice David's tampering with the tubes, despite having a nagging suspicion that something's off and David's increasingly bad attempts at covering it up.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Even sober, his thought processes are… odd. He doesn't recognize his own reflection in a mirror and ends up punching it, then goes off to look for his doppelganger in the hallway even when David points it out.
• Coattail-Riding Relative: Despite his shaky-at-best planetary design skills, he got his position due to his upstanding family name.
• Hidden Depths: The Exit Interviews show he is, on some level, aware that something is wrong with the way he's been going about designing planets, but refuses to take responsibility. After David-5's recycling, he vows to never let himself be hurt again by another clone, which goes some way to explain how emotionally detached he is from David-7.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: That he was horribly and consistently abused by his emotionally distant parents isn't funny. However, the fact that it gets constantly brought up in the middle of work, and told with extreme Large Ham performances, nearly makes the whole thing more absurd than tragic. Also, Trexel is a consistently terrible person to David (who, technically, 'is' a child in a sense) and never repents or sees the hypocrisy in how he treats him, making it difficult to feel much sympathy.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: It's very clear that his grandiose posturing is to hide the fact that he's an utterly terrible design consultant who only got the job because of his family name.
• It's All About Me: Tells David to stop moping around after being informed he almost certainly is going to be recycled next review session because it makes him feel bad.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While he has a very mean-spirited way of saying it, he is right when he tells David that other clones are very different from him, a detail which completely undermines David's planned clone revolution.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk
• Lack of Empathy: When asked to compliment David after David's just been told, essentially, that he will die at the end of the week:
  Trexel: David… you make me feel good about myself. [...] Because at least I'm not you.
• Large Ham
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: An unsympathetic example. Quite a few planets he designed have exploded or otherwise been destroyed, resulting in untold fatalities (in an early episode, a bad design of his apparently wipes out an entire generation of an alien species), but none of it happened because of any malice towards the planets or the people that were killed; the planets were just so terribly designed and Trexel was so clueless and/or insane that he didn't realize it.
• Mood-Swinger: Can begin spiraling into despair at the drop of a hat.
  IMOGEN: Warning: Consultant spiraling.
• Narcissist: When told to say "it's never about me" while looking at himself in mirror, he gets sidetracked complimenting himself.
• Nepotism: Late in season 1, there are passing mentions that he comes from some important family and this is the only reason he still has a job and how he got hired in the first place.
• Never My Fault: If anything goes wrong, it's invariably David's fault and not his own. In the Exit Interviews, he starts to waver after David-5's recycling, but then circles back to blaming the clones because he doesn't want to be hurt by their deaths.
• The Paranoiac: Becomes increasingly suspicious about David's intentions, accusing him of sabotage in Episode 24 and tearing apart the room to find evidence. Ends up being Properly Paranoid, in the end, because David really had been sabotaging him (aka editing the briefs to not be disastrous.)
• The Pollyanna: Despite his Hair-Trigger Temper status and occasional spirals into depression.
• The Primadonna: Tends to throw tantrums whenever anyone questions him.
• Professional Slacker: Invariably shows up 20 minutes before the brief deadline, and seems generally allergic to the concept of any scheduling.
• Self-Serving Memory

Hartro Piltz

Hartro Piltz

Portrayed by: Jenny Haufek

Trexel and David's line manager. She appears roughly once every five episodes to do reviews of Trexel and David's work in the previous episodes (or one work week).

Tropes:

• Arc Villain: Of Season 1.
• Anti-Villain: In spite of her mean-spirited behavior towards Trexel and, less frequently, David, it's worth remembering that she is forced by her superiors to keep him employed and, against all odds, get him in line and make him do a decent job. In Season 3, it becomes clear that her life is literally on the line if she can't manage Trexel, prompting her to become a double agent in David's plan.
• Bad Boss: Despite coming off as more put-together than Trexel, she ends up completely ineffective at actually getting him and David to produce better planets, putting them through team-building exercises that are ultimately useless.
• Go-Getter Girl: To keep her career as a line manager afloat, she devotes herself to work and has a near-perfect rate of successes under her belt. It's too bad Trexel is one of the consultants she's stuck with.
• Hidden Depths: 'Executive Quarterly Episode 37Q2FD' implies she is a Stepford Smiler by necessity, and shows that ultimately, she's just as expendable to The Board as David or Trexel and is not immune to being killed for stepping out of line.
• Not So Above It All: In contrast to her past behavior, when she starts working with Trexel and David when they work as management consultants in Season 3, her handling of the jobs they get is very much along the same lines of crazy as their past work had been.
• Smug Super: She's a higher rank than Trexel and clearly enjoys rubbing it in his face.
• Stepford Smiler: In her interview, she pretends that she's perfectly unstressed and happy with working near-constantly and having to deal with employees like Trexel. Unsurprising, considering Stellar Firma's workplace ethic.

I.M.O.G.E.N.

I.M.O.G.E.N.

Portrayed by: Imogen Harris

Stellar Firma's Master Computer. An artificial intelligence that runs all of Stellar Firma. As such, it's usually present when Trexel and David work together.

Tropes:

• Deadpan Snarker: Occasionally makes snide remarks, in the same cheerful tone of voice she uses for everything.
  IMOGEN: Yikes!
• Expositron 9000: Provides the Opening Monologue explaining Earth's situation and the history of Stellar Firma Ltd.
• Master Computer
• Not So Above It All: She joins in on the "Cardinal Fang!" Running Gag.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Despite being stated to be an A.I., she shows signs of legitimate sentience. Especially when it comes to commenting on Trexel. The Partial IMOGEN Transcript Log goes further with this implication, showing her running a vacation simulation for herself and displaying annoyance at her bosses for interrupting it.
• Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: Level 5. She's referred to as omnipotent and seems to function as an Omniscient Database for Stellar Firma employees, including as a search engine.

Other Associates

The Board

The Board

Portrayed by: None

A yet-unseen Omniscient Council Of Vagueness that seems to control every facet of Stellar Firma Ltd.

Tropes:

• Big Brother Is Watching You: Courtesy of I.M.O.G.E.N., Stellar Firma Ltd. has a constant watch on its employees and isn't shy about threatening them for dissent.
• The Dreaded: No one questions the Board.
• Greater-Scope Villain
• The Ghost: Up until the finale, it is unclear whether or not the Board is a board of people, an entity, or something else. Either way, nothing good.
  • We eventually learn the Board was an actual board of people, but all of them were declared "mortally compromised" after the "Great Loss."
• Nebulous Evil Organisation
• Dead All Along: In episode 76, it's revealed that the Board was lost a long time ago in the "Secret Loss."

Harry

Harry

Portrayed by: Simon Plotkin

Trexel's "friend" from the Cosmic Lounge.

Tropes:

• The Bore: According to Trexel, though it is Trexel. In response to being asked what he'd do with a planet, he responds that he'd invert all the craters to create mountains and create a space for reading, hanging out with friends, and watching holovids.
  Trexel: Right, okay, so you want a living room. You want a living room on a mountain on a moon.
• Bystander Syndrome: Though he's the most affable towards David out of anyone in the cast, he also has no objections to David being recycled.
• Only One Name: Simply known as Harry.
• Only Sane Man: He's the only employee we see other who's the least bit competent at his job, and not sadistic towards David in some manner.

Previous Davids

General

Portrayed by: Ben Meredith

Tropes:

• Blank Slate: Compared to David-7, they lack most of the personality that comes from a malfunctioning reeducation module, and are largely the same.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: Physically incapable of doing so.
• Dissonant Serenity: None of them react to the fact that their deaths are imminent with any real urgency.
• Expendable Clone
• Posthumous Character: By the time the series starts, all of them have been recycled.

Spoiler Character(s)

Number 1 and Number 48

Portrayed by: Amy Dickinson and Rachel Meredith

Two leaders of Stellar Firma's Standards department (Number 1 being the head) who first appear at the end of Season 1 with ominous plans for David-7.

Tropes:

• Bad Boss: They are tops in the upper management of Stellar Firma, what do you expect?
• Big Bad Duumvirate: They are always together, except for a supplemental audio where Number One is interviewed by Sigmund Shankeray.
• Cryptic Conversation: Spoofed. Their conversation starts this way, but quickly devolves into confusion when 48 legitimately doesn't know what 1 is talking about and starts ragging on them for unclear communication.
  48: See, this is exactly it! This is what I’ve been talking about! Clear communication in the workplace. Congratulations, you sound very impressive and scary, but haven’t got a damn clue what to do with it! Are we killing David-7? Are we kidnapping him, sending him a threatening note?
• Greater-Scope Villain: Appear to be this to Hartro. Their motivations and goals are almost entirely unknown, but from the sound of their Cryptic Conversation, it's nothing good.
• Unholy Matrimony: They are mentioned to be married.
• Walking Spoiler: Their existence is a spoiler to begin with.
• Wham Line:
  1: It means that David-7 will be hearing from us soon. Very soon.
  • And the line that follows soon after:
    48: You always do this. Always with the ominous tone. You’re not impressing anyone. This is exactly what Dr. Kroll was talking about, communication is key. Clear communication.
• You Are Number 6: They haven't been given any identities besides their numbers.

Minor Characters

Enola

Enola

Portrayed by: Helen Gould

A former build team employee who left them after getting fed up with having to build doomed planets designed by Trexel. Now she hides in the vents, trying to run a campaign to convince the Board to make rules against employing Trexel and other, similar crazy people to do such important work.

Tropes:

• Horrible Judge of Character: Due to still being loyal to the Board, she is convinced that they are benevolent and simply unaware of all the death and destruction caused by Trexel's awful designs and not uncaring, greedy and equally insane like they really are.

Notable Clients

Cardinal Fang^note Cardinal Fang!

• The Dreaded: According to Trexel, who plays him up as a borderline-eldritch warlord with ominous titles like "The Dark Rider", "Undersecretary for Death", and "Lord of All". Subverted later when Hartro reveals the exact opposite is true; he's actually an All-Loving Hero and Trexel was talking out of his ass like usual.
  Trexel: Wait — Hartro — Cardinal Fang. [...] Not a terrifying mono-being that knows all your thoughts.
  Hartro: No. Also referred to as the Benevolent, the Generous, the Happy-To-Clean-Your-Socks.
• Say My Name: A grand total of 94 times in a single episode. Including The Stinger.

Bathin, Great Duke of Galactonium

• Mr. Fanservice: In the eyes of pretty much everyone other than Trexel. David, Hartro, and even I.M.O.G.E.N. admire his (apparent) chiseled looks, and an anonymous Stellar Firma employee attempts to search up "Topless Bathin" and "Bathin in the rain".
• Nice Guy: Described as such to a comical degree by Hartro. He's smart, he's handsome, and he runs seven charities.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Trexel hates him and claims he's an Upper-Class Twit, but considering it's Trexel, it's unlikely.