Short Summary
Spike takes his ship, the Swordfish, to his mechanic friend Doohan to get it overhauled. Meanwhile the rest of the Bebop crew try to catch space pirates, but didn't count on them being hackers as well...Main Summary
Jet and Faye are "fishing" for pirates. Faye is bored with waiting in space. She complains that Spike left to get his ship overhauled but hasn't checked in.Turns out Spike had a rough landing on the planet below. A recovery truck arrives, but instead of the Swordfish's creator Doohan, it's driven by his assistant Miles. They load the Swordfish on the back and head back to Doohan's workshop, Miles putting Spike to sleep with incessant baseball talk. Doohan walks out of the main hanger, suit smouldering from a small explosion. He's still trying to fix up his pet project, some old relic. He dictates a parts order to Miles.
Space pirates come for the bait (a pod). Faye approaches and demands they surrender, but the pirates inject her ship with a virus. Her ship opens fire on Jet's ship and the pirates make their escape with the pod... But not before infecting the Bebop with the virus too. A crabby Doohan and eager Miles work on the Swordfish, while Spike calls Faye to check in. Jet and Ed are trying to purge the virus from their systems as the Bebop is drifting in space. The delivery driver arrives with a part sold to him by a Penguin delivery ship. Spike deduces that it's a stolen part, bought from the pirates who were disguised as a Penguin delivery ship.
The Bebop tracks down two Penguin ships: It may a legitimate company that the pirates are using as cover. Spike and Faye decide to open fire and see which one runs away. Both run, so they split up to chase each ship. Faye's target is innocent: Spike's is not. The pirates counterattack and infect Spike's ship. Spike attempts to use manual controls, but drifts through an asteroid field. The pirate ship accidentally hits itself with its own harpoon, immobilizing it, and it's destroyed by an astroid. Jet moves in to rescue the Swordfish, but Spike's ship is now caught in the upper atmosphere and begins to burn up: Jet can't get close enough or the Bebop will burn up too.
Doohan and Miles have been listening in on the radio, and call to announce their plan. They blast out of the hanger in the relic: A renovated Space Shuttle Columbia. The shuttle reaches atmosphere and scoops up the Swordfish in its cargo bay. They return to Earth, crashing land on the planet's surface but all making it out safely.
See You Space Cowboy…
- Big Damn Heroes: Doohan and Miles showing up in an old space shuttle to save Spike.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Doohan uses an old American space shuttle he had been restoring to blast off into the Earth's atmosphere and rescue Spike. Interestingly, the ship itself may be old, but the launching method is not: It's propelled with several small rockets instead of one large multi-staged one.
- Grumpy Old Man: Doohan.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: One of the hackers' spikes is sent flying back at them and hits their ship. Causing it to go out of control and killing them when it crashes into a meteor.
- In the Hood / Cool Shades: Two of the hackers are spotting this.
- Internal Reveal: Doohan is doing something in his garage, and the viewer is the only one who doesn't know. It makes the climax in which Doohan rescues Spike with the motherflippin' Columbia, yes the old space shuttle, that he's been fixing up all that more awesome.
- It's Personal: Played for Laughs with Jet who wants to get even with the hackers for calling his ship a hunk of junk. Spike's expression to that is a silent "Are you serious?".
- Macross Missile Massacre: The hackers pull this when they can't initially get a bead on Spike.
- Reentry Scare: After Spike get hit with a computer virus, his ship is sent plummeting toward Earth. Jet works out a plan to save him but it relys on Spike's piloting skills to pull off. He actually manages to do well..until the landing gears falls off, sending his ship off balance. Done again at the end of the episode when it seems the Columbia starts to malfunction as it's returning to Earth. But the end of the episode shows they made it out okay.
- Shout-Out:
- Fitting in with the baseball theme, the hackers are named George, Herman, and Ruth. Which of course is the real name of the legendary baseball player, Babe Ruth.
- Spike scratching his trajectory in the cockpit windshield is one to Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, who did the same after a computer malfunction required manually firing his craft's retrorocket.
- Doohan may be named for James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty on Star Trek: The Original Series. Quite fitting for an engineer with legendary skills and a bit of a temper.
- His assistant, Miles, may have been modeled after LeVar Burton, who played Geordi on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also shares a name with the character Miles O'Brien from TNG and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which would further add to the Star Trek allusions.
- Doohan and Miles also save the day in an old shuttle - shades of "Relics", in which Scotty and Geordi save the day using an old space transport.
- Taking the Bullet: When the hackers' ship crashes into the meteors, it sends spears loaded with the computer virus all over the place. Spike pilots the Swordfish to intercept a few so it won't hit the Bebop.
- Titled After the Song: The episode name comes from a song by the Rolling Stones.
