List of space pirates

Space pirates are a type of stock character from space opera and soft science fiction.[1]

Description

Space pirates operate as pirates in outer space and travel by spacecraft, as opposed to the more traditional pirates on the high seas of Earth, who travel by ship.[1] However, just as traditional seafaring pirates target sailing ships, space pirates serve a similar role in sci-fi media: they capture and plunder spacecraft for cargo, loot and occasionally they steal the entire spacecraft itself, and kill or enslave the crewmembers and any passengers found.[1] However, their dress and speech may vary; it may correspond to the particular author's vision of the future, rather than their seafaring precursors. On the other hand, space pirates may be modeled after stereotypical sea pirates. They may be humans who originate from Earth, or a specific race of aliens.

Space pirate characters and groups

Name	Work	Medium	Description
Atomsk	FLCL	Novel, Manga, Original video animation	Pirate King.
Abslom Daak	Doctor Who	Comics	Ex-convict, pirate and mercenary hired by the Time Lords to destroy Daleks.
Adjutant Booba	Dengeki Sentai Changeman	Television series	A former space pirate who joined Gozma Star League, possibly for money and wealth. He became very close to Adjutant Shiima, whom he freed from Gozma's dark influence near the end of the series - shortly after this, Booba dies in a climatic duel with Change Dragon.
Black Barney	Buck Rogers	Comic strip
The Bonne Family	Mega Man Legends	Video Games	Consists of Teisel, Tron, Bon, and 40 Servbots. They are air pirates in their own series, only being space pirates in the crossovers Namco × Capcom and Project X Zone.
Boskone	Lensman	Books	Galactic-wide pirate organization
Brak	Space Ghost	Television series
Bull Coxine	Tom Corbett, Space Cadet	Books	Pirate who in 2353 led a breakout from the Solar Alliance prison asteroid and proceeded to prey upon various spacecraft until Tom Corbett and his unit mates Roger Manning and Astro defeated him.
Captain Harlock	Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Arcadia of My Youth	Manga, Film, Television series, Original video animation	Captain of the Arcadia.
Captain CJ "Hawk" Hawkens	Space Raiders (film)	Film, Space opera	Roguish protagonist of Roger Corman's dark spin on Star Wars.
Cobra	Cobra	Manga, film, anime, original video animation
Dagg	Starchaser: The Legend of Orin	Animated film, space opera	Pirate, crystal smuggler and sidekick to the protagonist.
Dark Eldar	Warhammer 40,000	Miniature wargaming	A race of elf like aliens with a culture built around the torture and slavery of other species. They coordinate raids into real space from their interdimensional port of Commorragh
Divatox	Power Rangers Turbo	Television series
Elon Cody Starbuck	Star Reach
Hammerhand	Thundercats	High fantasy Anime, television series, Manga	Leader of a crew of cyborg Vikings.
Han Solo	Star Wars	Space opera, expanded universe literature, comics	Pirate,[2] mercenary and spice smuggler, best friend to the dog-like alien Chewbacca and lover to Princess Leia.[3]
Hondo Ohnaka	Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels	Animated series	Leader of a Weequay pirate gang.
Ironwolf	DC Comics	Comic book	Antihero resisting the tyrannical Empress Hernandez.
Jackals	Halo	Video games	A sci-fi race of reptilian-like creatures who are notorious for piracy in space.
John Crichton	Farscape	Television series	Astronaut from earth who finds himself sucked into a wormhole. He is rescued by the crew of Moya: a band of alien fugitives pursued by the evil Scorpius and the fascist-like Peacekeeper army.
Jonathan Rockhal	Nathan Never	Comics	A space pirate captain. John Silver, a man with a mechanical leg, is his second-in-command. Before they turned to piracy, they were generals of the Federal Army of Earth.
Kagato	Tenchi Muyo!	Television series, Manga, Original video animation
Gokaigers	Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger	Television series	Characters from a Super Sentai series who travel to Earth in search of the "Greatest Treasure in the Universe", only to be dragged into a battle with an invading alien force called the Space Empire Zangyack.
Space Pirate Fleet Descal	ChouSei Kantai Sazer-X	Television series	A band of space pirates in search of the wish granting Cosmo Capsules hidden on earth. In the original timeline, they succeeded, establishing a galactic empire. Therefore, the protagonists, who come from this dark future, travel back in time to prevent the pirates from succeeding their quest.
Talon Karrde	Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn	Book series	Karrde is a smuggler chief who becomes the leader of the criminal underworld after the death of Jabba Desilijic Tiure.
Kraiklyn	Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks	Book	Captain of the pirate ship Clear Air Turbulence, an avid gambler who leads his crew on two disastrous raids before being killed by the main character Horza.
Krys and Jolly U	Alisa Selezneva books by Kir Bulychov	Book series	Krys is a shape-shifter, and Jolly U is a fat humanoid. They appear as Alisa's antagonists in several books and their adaptations, such as The Mystery of the Third Planet and Guest from the Future.
Lars Barriga	Steven Universe	Animated television series	A human who died on the Gem Homeworld and was resurrected by Steven, later becoming the captain of a group of fugitive gems on a stolen spaceship.
Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds	Firefly (TV series)	Television series	Former rebel Browncoat soldier and captain of Serenity.
Mark Watney	The Martian	Book and film	Watney notes with some glee that his plan to commandeer a NASA lander without explicit permission, as part of his rescue from being stranded on Mars, under his interpretation of applicable laws means that he is history's first "space pirate": citing that due to the Outer Space Treaty Mars is considered international territory, and citing that under the Law of the Sea, he is essentially hijacking a vessel without permission in international waters, "which, by definition, makes me a pirate." Other analysts have argued that he technically wasn't committing an act of piracy, however, due to the facts that 1 - it has not yet been explicitly established if the same laws for international waters apply to international territory such as Mars or Antarctica, 2 - "Piracy" explicitly refers to robbery by force from a manned crew, not "theft" of an unmanned vessel as Watney did, and 3 - under space law, the vessel Watney was stealing would be considered U.S. territory and NASA property, and Watney was already a U.S. NASA astronaut.[4]
Mito	Space Pirate Mito	Television series
Orions	Star Trek	Television series
Phantom Knight	D.I.C.E.	Television series
Pirate Clans	Exosquad	Television series
Queen Emeraldas	Queen Emeraldas, Galaxy Express 999, Captain Harlock	Television Series, Film	Spinoff character from Galaxy Express 999 and Capt. Harlock in Leiji Matsumoto universe. Sister of Maetel from GE999
Red Peri	The Red Peri	novel
Richard B. Riddick	The Chronicles of Riddick	Film	Escaped convict and last of the alien Furian race.
Ridley	Metroid series	Video games	A dragon-like alien that is a top ranking member of the space pirates.[5]
Ryoko Balta	Tenchi Muyo!, Tenchi Muyo! GXP	Television series, Manga, Original video animation
Saffron	Firefly	Television Series	A crafty con artist and occasional ship thief.
Scumdogs of the Universe	GWAR	Music, Film	Group of rogue ex-soldiers who were banished to earth. Penchant for rape, murder, stealing drugs, and destroying planets.
Sinbad and the Space Pirates	Challenge of the Super Friends	Television Series	Space pirates come to Earth to loot its treasure in the second part of episode 4.
Space Pirates Barban	Seijuu Sentai Gingaman	Television series	Characters from a Super Sentai series which was later used as the basis for Power Rangers Lost Galaxy.
Space Pirates	Kid Icarus	Videogame series	Antagonists that first appear in Kid Icarus: Uprising
Spike Spiegel	Cowboy Bebop	Television series, Manga	Protagonist in the Cowboy Bebop series.
The Star Pirate	Planet Comics	Comics
Starjammers	X-Men	Comics	A group of space pirates led by Corsair.
Garris Shrike	Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin	Book series	Space pirate, con artist, and mercenary who captured Han Solo as a child, turning him into a thief
Star Seekers	Transformers	Novels/Toyline	Transformer Pirates with a vendetta against Cybertron led by Thundertron. Featured in the novels Transformers: Exiles, Transformers: Retribution, and in the 2014 storyline for Botcon. Thundertron also appeared as a figure in the Transformers: Prime toyline.
Booster Terrik	X-Wing series by Michael A. Stackpole	Books series	Terrik was a criminal who was imprisoned by protagonist Corran Horn's father, as well as an old friend of another protagonist Wedge Antilles. Later in the series, Horn marries Terrik's daughter Mirax, despite Terrik's initial objections.
Tex Hex	BraveStarr: The Movie	Animated Space Western	Evil purple skinned outlaw, minion to the demon Stampede.
Alonzo P. Tucker	Lost in Space	Television series	Inspired by Long John Silver, especially as portrayed by Robert Newton.
Vyse	Skies of Arcadia	Video Game
Yondu	Guardians of the Galaxy	Film, comic book	Blue skinned space pirate and mercenary, mentor to Star-Lord.
Kaguyo Ryuutsugi	Space Pirate	Manga	Blue haired space pirate around 20 years old, mostly incompetent. Tracking down a bounty hunter who stole a precious item from him.

Space pirate media

Work	Year	Medium	Description
Miniskirt Space Pirates/Bodacious Space Pirates	2008–present	Light novel/ Television series	In the far future where space travel is the norm, Marika Kato, born and raised in the Tau Ceti planet Morningstar, is the newly recruited teenage captain of the space pirate(privateer) ship Bentenmaru, inheriting the title from her deceased father.
Galactic North		Short story
Independence War	1998	Video game	Pirates and terrorists are the target of the player in this space combat game.[6] Followed by Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos in 2001.[7]
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids	1953	Novel	Juvenile science fiction penned by Isaac Asimov.[1]
Metroid series	1986–present	Video game	Space pirates are the series' primary enemies.[8]
Outlaw Star	1997–present	Manga, Television series
Path of the Fury	1992	Novel	Written by David Weber, after a woman's family is slain by space pirates she is possessed by a Fury and seeks revenge.[1]
The Pirates of Orion	1974	Television episode	An episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, the crew of the USS Enterprise are threatened by a band of space pirates.[1]
The Pirate Planet	1978	Television serial	A Doctor Who serial starring the Fourth Doctor, written by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy creator Douglas Adams. A band of space pirates use their own planet to drain the life force of other planets by materializing around them, the Captain has a giant robot parrot.[9]
Planet Pirates series	1990–1991	Novel	Trilogy of novels by Anne McCaffrey.[1]
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction	2007	Video game	The main character, Ratchet, fights through hordes of robotic Space Pirates led by Captain Romulus Slag. This game is followed by Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty, where Ratchet again fights the Space Pirates.
Rayman 2: The Great Escape	1999	Video game	Platform game where robo-pirates from deep space have invaded Rayman's world and broken its heart into a thousand pieces of energy.[10]
The Red Peri	1935	Novella
Rogue Galaxy	2005	Video game
Space Pirate	1998-2008	Online/in-browser Video game
Space Pirate (Manga Series)	2019	Manga	A 2002-2005 RPG Maker video game series turned into a manga series. A space pirate currently only known as SP200 is tracking down a bounty hunter who ironically stole from him, not realizing the magnitude of the situation he's about to get himself in.
Sol Bianca	1990, 1992	Original video animation
Sol Bianca: The Legacy	1999–2000	Television miniseries
Space Pirates	1992	Video game
The Space Pirates	1969	Television serial	A Doctor Who serial starring the Second Doctor. The TARDIS materializes in the midst of a pitched battle between space pirates and the Army Space Corps. The pirates dismantle space beacons for their scrap value of a rare material.[11]
Space Quest III	1989	Video game
The Ice Pirates	1984	Film	Alien pirates raid cargo vessels carrying ice.[1]
Treasure Planet	2002	Film	Disney animated space opera version of the novel Treasure Island, the cast try to locate the treasure hoard of space pirate Captain Flint.[12]
Wing Commander: Privateer	1993	Video game	A space pirate computer game based in the Wing Commander universe.
Space Pirates	2007	Children's Television series	a TV series that was aired on The BBC's CBeebies Channel between 2007-2008

Unsorted list

• The animated films of Japanese director Leiji Matsumoto include several pirate characters, including and the privateer Queen Emeraldas, the best known of these pieces being Galaxy Express 999 (1977) and Space Battleship Yamato (1974).
• Manjanungo is bloodthirsty space pirate in Race Across the Stars, part of the Spaceways series by John Cleve.
• Nabel is a nasty cyborg space pirate on the 1996 film "Space Truckers"
• Drongo Kane, repeated adversary of A. Bertram Chandler's John Grimes, is a clever and ruthless space adventurer whose acts constitute piracy by any common sense standard, but who manages to stay within the law by the help of sharp lawyers. The Duchy of Waldegren is also a popular haunt of several notorious space-pirates (no individual names given) in the series.
• Murdoch Juan is a bold space adventurer in Poul Anderson's story "The Pirate", part of the Psychotechnic League series. Whether Murdoch is to be actually defined as a pirate, or rather as a very daring but legitimate entrepreneur, is a major issue on which the whole story turns.
• Carson Napier, Edgar Rice Burroughs' dashing space-traveler, got to Venus by mistake, discovered there a tyrannical regime which sorely needed opposing - and the best way to do that was to assume leadership of the Pirates of Venus (also the title of the first book in the Venus series).
• Gammis Turek is the leader of a space pirate fleet in Vatta's War.
• Star Wars Empire At War contains a non-playable faction called the Black Sun Pirates, a large gang of mercenaries.
• Megaman Battle Network 6 includes a WWW member named Captain Blackbeard, an operator of Diveman.EXE who dressed as a sailor.
• Wolf O'Donnell is a space pirate in the Star Fox series, and gains a techno-eyepatch.
• In Dinosaur King Gavro, Foolscap and Sheer are members of the “spectral space Pirates” and collect cosmos stones throughout time.
• Cannonball (Transformers) - is a decepticon space pirate.
• Female space pirates make up a number of characters in the anime Vandread
• Nina's World has girls pretend to be a space pirate captain and space pirate princess[13]
• Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross (aka Robotech in the west) mentions space pirates as being descended from the colonization missions to found Liberte and Glorie. It is assumed at first that The Zor Lords are in fact space pirates. This theme is slightly carried over into the Robotech episode Half-Moon where Colonel Rochelle muses that the invaders at SX.83/Ruins of the SDF-1 are in fact space pirates looking for salvage.
• Space pirates serve as antagonistic forces in seasons 11-13 of the web series Red vs. Blue, collectively known as the Chorus Trilogy.

See also

• Air pirate
• List of fictional pirates
• Outlaw (stock character)
• Space Cowboy (disambiguation)
• Space marine
• Space Western
• Space pirate (disambiguation)

References

1. Westfahl, Gary (September 30, 2005). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works and Wonders. 2. Greenwood Press. pp. 600–601. ISBN 0-313-32950-8 – via Google Books.
2. Han Solo
3. Space pirates in Star Wars spinoff
4. Matian Law: is Mark Watney really a space pirate?
5. Schedeen, Jesse (2009-11-20). "Big Boss of the Day: Metroid's Ridley - Forget Mother Brain, this is the real villain of the Metroid franchise". IGN. Retrieved 2010-08-18.
6. Marriott, Scott. "Overview - Independence War". allgame. Retrieved 2010-07-09.
7. Deci, T.J. "Overview - Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos". allgame. Retrieved 2010-07-09.
8. "Space Pirates - The Sworn Enemy". Computer and Video Games. 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2010-07-09.
9. Erickson, Hal. "Overview - Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet, Episode 4". allmovie. Retrieved 2010-07-18.
10. Thorpe, Damien. "Overview - Rayman 2: The Great Escape". allgame. Retrieved 2010-07-09.
11. Erickson, Hal. "Overview - Doctor Who: The Space Pirates, Episode 1". allmovie. Retrieved 2010-07-09.
12. Klein, Andy (2002-11-24). "Treasure Planet Review". Variety. Retrieved 2010-08-18.
13. "Nina's First Sleepover". Nina's World. 2015. 5 minutes in. Chelsea: "How about you're a space pirate princess and I'm your space pirate captain?" Nina: "A space pirate princess? I don't know... but I think I'll try it!" .. Nina "You 'arrrrr' a great Space Pirate Captain." Chelsea "C'mon Space Pirate Princess Nina."