Holly Ordway once accurately described the TV SF show Andromeda as "Star Trek's gangly younger sibling, wearing hand-me-downs while defiantly adding a few touches of individual style to assert its own identity."  To continue that analogy, Starhunter is Andromeda's even younger sibling wearing worn out clothes and trying to act like its big brother, but not making the grade.  Now Image has released the second season of Starhunter on DVD, but they've tagged on "2300" to the end of the name, and billed it as the "complete series."
 
Starhunter is very similar in plot to Andromeda: an old luxury liner, The Tulip, has been trapped in hyperspace for 15 years with one person on board, Percy.  After she emerges, Percy picks up a rag-tag team of bounty hunters who scour the solar system looking for criminals.  There are some significant differences between the two shows though.  The Tulip has an AI computer that presents itself as a holographic image, but where as the AI in Andromeda is an attractive babe, this one is an old man.

The main action revolves around the de facto leader of the gang, a rugged young man who has the unlikely moniker of Travis Montana.  He used to be the leader of a powerful gang of pirates, but was shot and left for dead by his 2nd in command when he ordered him not to kidnap a child.  His old gang is now hunting him down.  Montana's father was the captain of the Tulip, but didn't emerge from hyperspace with Percy when the Tulip finally escaped.  Though he didn't know his father, he is determined to find a way into hyperspace and find his dad.

Callie (pronounced Kali, of course) is the tough as nails exotic looking woman who is not only very attractive, but also an ex-special forces officer.  Oh yeah, and she comes from a very rich family, but she gave up all her wealth.  She's the muscle of the group.

Rudolpho is an overweight and slovenly looking man who has all sorts of disreputable allies.  He's the immoral money grubber who's only interested in money, and the one the other crew members distrust the most.

Rounding out the team, along with Precy who sepnds most of her time at the beginning of the season reminding everyone that she's the boss, is Marcus.  He's a young bright lad who is the engineer of the bunch, but also a bit of a het head.  Every time something breaks on the ship, he fixes it.

Each episode this team of misfits and ne'er-do-wells goes after a bad guy or solves a problem that is threatening humanity or both.   The plots all have a do-it-by-the numbers feel to them.  If the job is going well at the beginning, you know that 23 minutes into the show an unexpected snag will pop up.

A lot of the plots are fairly idiotic too.  The episode where the crew allows a reality TV show's team to follow them around on a raid is just ludicrous, especially since Travis is a wanted man.  But then again, this show takes place in a universe where one shot from a space ship destroys an entire space colony, the pirates where gang colors, and everyone points with guns.

The relationship between Travis and Callie is trite and cliched also.  The do-they-like-each-other-or-not subplot has been done to death and when watching this I had the feeling that I'd seen it all before.

The shows are also really dialog heavy.  For a supposed action SF program, people sure spend a lot of time just standing around and talking.  This doesn't advance the plot or give depth to the show, it just serves to slow down the pace.

Unfortunately the acting isn't very good either. Clive Robertson who plays Travis only has about three emotions that he rotates through and is fairly wooden in a lot of the scenes.  His acting is stellar compared to Tayna Allen (Percy.) She acts like she's been druged throughout the entire season.  She walks slowly, talks in a low voice, and slightly slurs her speech.  She never shows any emotion and sleepwalks through the show.

The real problem with the program was that I never really cared about the cast.  Other shows like Farscape and Star Trek are enticing because of their interesting characters, but Starhunter isn't able to make its cast feel unique or different.  They all seem like derivatives of characters from other shows trapped in recycled plots.
 

Image is billing this as "Starhunter 2300:  The Complete Series."  That's not really accurate.   This is really the second season of the Canadian show Starhunter.  In the US, it was syndicated as Starhunter 2300, but the opening credits still bill the show as Starhunter.  The six DVDs come in the book like holder with one disc on each page.  The whole thing is enclosed in a slipcase.  And, despite the name, no one hunts stars nor are there aren't any suns looking for prey.

Audio:

This show offers the viewer the choice of either stereo or Dolby Digital 5.1 audio channels.  Both soundtracks sound fine.  The 5.1 didn't make full use of the rears, and there wasn't a lot of LFE's either, which was a bit of a disappointment.  If the levels of had been a little higher in the rears, the soundtrack would have had a little more impact.  There are no subtitles.

Video:

The video is about average for a straight-to-syndication TV show.  They use a lot of dark colors for the show, mainly grays and browns, and this palate is reproduced well.  There is a bit of grain in the image, which I was surprised to see.  The picture is sharp and digital defects are at a minimum.

Extras:

Unfortunately, there are no extras included with this set.

Final Thoughts:

This show just didn't really do much for me.  It was mediocre at best, with most of the plots and characters feeling like recycled material from better shows.  The fact that the series ends in a cliffhanger that will never be resolved doesn't make me like it much more either.  This would be a good show to skip.