Left to right: Edith Kingpin (Evany Rosen), Dennis 4862 (Scott Yamamura), Darby Richards (Brendan Halloran), Mike Chet (Pat Thornton) and LN6-K (“Elle”, played by Tess Degenstein).
Space Janitors is a science fiction comedy show hosted on The Escapist, which updates every friday. Find it here
.The show follows several people involved as janitors and other low-grade employees at a very large space-ship/station belong to The Empire. There is also a series of shorts called "Space Janitors: Deck Crew." It is, obviously enough, based on Star Wars.
Now also available on Geek & Sundry and YouTube.
Space Janitors provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: Roarke who always gives a positive spin on things and tries so hard to be nice to people while finding Mass Genocide to be relaxing, blowing up planets to be someone's best idea yet and the best way to get to make new friends is to force them to spend their day off living their most embarrassing personal stories on the holodeck.
- Almighty Janitor: Invoked, Darby explains to Mike that they're really the most important people on the ship because they maintain the hyperdrive and the giant laser.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Subverted, what appears to be the Robot Girl L severely malfunctioning is really her reacting strongly to a taste bud upgrade.
- Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Invoked, Darby is upset that no-one thinks he's important enough to take a shot at.
- Backhanded Compliment:Darby: "...one of these days, I'm going to be somebody someone's gonna want to shoot at."Mike: "Hey, if it's any consolation, I already think you should be shot."Darby: "Thank you!"Mike: "Yeah, that wasn't a compliment"
- Benevolent Boss: The Emperor sends each clone a birthday card. Dennis-4862 thinks that writing all the cards for the billions of clone troopers is why HIH has such gross hands.
- Captain Ersatz: One of the rebel operatives from the pilot episode bears a strong resemblance to Zoe from Firefly if Zoe had an afro.
- Squall Troopers are, of course, Storm Troopers.
- Guess what the Emperor looks like.
- Darby's father is one of Admiral Ackbar.
- Clone Degeneration: Clones have a very short lifespan; after an 8-year tour of duty, they are retired to the resort planet Pyus Dunes.
- Creepy Child: Although she's grown up by now. Roarke says she finds Mass Genocide "relaxing".
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Dark Lord
- the Emperor.
- The Dreaded: Captain Roarke, although she's actually a very nice lady.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Empire is fond of laconic names for things. The world-destroying, moon-sized space station Of Doom? "The Station". The device that allows it to crispy-fry entire worlds? "The giant laser".
- Fantastic Racism: Referring to an android as cold and calculating is enough to make her cry.
- Future Food Is Artificial: Imperial rations are various colors of "mush"; pink mush, yellow mush, sweet mush. Also, some or all of it may be made from recycled Squall Troopers, or other Imperial subjects. The crew appears to like it, however. They react with horror to the idea of eating meat of the bone.
- Future Slang: "kiss" has been supplanted by the more juvenile "smooch."
- Grey-and-Grey Morality: Rebels are portrayed as egotistical adrenaline junkies while imperial citizens are portrayed as very happy with their dystopian lives.
- Groin Attack: Not deliberately, but every so often a deck crewmember nuts himself on a running-light probe; this is reffered to as "The ol' entire-ship-to-the-groin"
- Homage: The setting is more or less classic Star Wars with the
Serial Numbers Filed Off. - Human Resources/To Serve Man:"This is Mike Chet; we've got two squall troopers ready for soylent."
- Hypocritical Humor: Eating meat off the bone is regarded as "Cannibalism." Clone pate', however, is Ay-okay.
- Limited Social Circle: Enforced. The Empire groups people together based on their psych profiles, although nobody seems to mind that clone trooper Dennis-4862 spends a lot of time with the gang.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Used to give tests in a stress-free environment, although if the testee knows what's going on, they can manipuilate it in some ways.
- Machine Monotone: the psychoevaluation computer, Dr. Sabato
- Mess on a Plate: Similar to Starship Troopers, Imperial rations look like different kinds of pudding.
- One-Way Visor: Squall Troopers wear them.
- Perspective Flip: The show's pretty much Star Wars from the Empire's side.
- Released to Elsewhere: Retired clones are supposedly sent to the resort world Pyus Dunes. Darby thinks they're actually eaten, and Steve-225 finds evidence that they're sent to work in a gas mine. Turns out, Pyus Dunes is real. Oppressive the Empire may be, but at least it doesn't lie.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: LN6-K, or just L for short.
- One Deck Crew short had two female mechanics lamenting this trend, stating that the robots from their childhood had much more personality, and mentioning that the new-model androids border on Uncanny Valley.
- Shout-Out: Squall Trooper uniforms are 90% Storm Trooper, but have white Master Chief helmets with silver visors.
- Squall trooper training is dodging shots from a remote.
- Imperial fighters look like TIE Fighters; rebel fighters look like X wings.
- Dr. Sabato is very reminiscent of HAL 9000.
- The Enterprise bosun whistle can be heard in episode two during the scene where Dennis is introduced
- Mike uses the 11th Doctor's sonic screwdriver on the droid in episode 5
- The logo that appears on a lot of products that appear on the show is awfully similar to the sigil of ReBoot.
- A brief scene showing how the Dennis clones are "born" is straight out of Battlestar Galactica with a very cylon-looking ooze-pool and even the cylon's distinctive leitmotif.
- Standard Establishing Spaceship Shot: Subverted; it's really an extreme close-up shot of a bottle of window cleaner.
- Later episodes actually do a SESS with "The Station".
- Stock "Yuck!":Milk is gross...
- Tractor Beam: A portable model that looks an awful lot like a leaf blower.
- Trust-Building Blunder: How Captain Roarke meets the group; spending their single vacation day out of the entire year doing horrible team-building excersizes, such as having Edith read her epic-length My Little Phony fanfiction-disguised-as-a-novel (which she didn't want anyone else to know about), and making the group act out a Film Noir pastiche with Mike as the detective.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The pilot shows Mike and Darby blithely performing their duties while a dramatic space battle takes place outside the window they're washing.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Dark Lord, rather than being intimidating, is regarded as super-awesome. Darby mentioning that he's seen him in person makes his friends jealous. In fact, watching Dark Lord work is how Darby spends his vacation. His one-day-out-of-the-whole-year vacation.
- We Will Use Manual Labour in the Future: The Empire has yet to invest in some cleaning robots.
- They do, however, appear to have at least one robot that cleans up when a minion needs cleaning up. This may have been a custom robot, since it appears to be under control of Dark Lord.
- You Have Failed Me: A variant, Dark Lord can only telekinetically choke someone for three seconds due to a union rule. An unpopular superior being throttled is a source of mirth, rather than fear.
