TV series about humans living aboard a spacecraft

Question

I'm looking for the name of a series, likely American, that was on cable TV in my country alongside Farscape (which would make it around the early 2000s).

The main story was on board a spacecraft with humans and maybe some alien species. I remember a specific episode in which a teen/young woman mechanic was getting scolded by the main character (?) for rigging up an on-rails turret in the cargo hold, which eventually saves them from a attack at the end of the episode.

It's not much to go on, but maybe it rings a bell for somebody?

Answer 1

You may be thinking of Starhunter (2000), in particular, Season 1, Episode 19, "Bad Girls".

Starhunter tells the story of a bounty hunting ship, The Tulip, and it's crew: Dante Montana (captain, right), his niece, Percy (engineer, middle), and Lucretia Scott (security, left). Dante and Percy became bounty hunters after their colony on Titan was destroyed by Raiders, and Dante is obsessed with finding his son, who had been kidnapped during the raid. Luc is a member of a shadowy organization, and has her own secret motives for joining the crew.

In "Bad Girls" (from IMDB):

Dante agrees to transport Rudolpho's friend Stephen Hamilton and his two daughters Ayla and Cordula. However, Dante is unaware that Hamilton is being blackmailed by the Orchard to spy on him. Meanwhile, Percy befriends the daughters and clashes with Dante over a new addition to the Tulip's security system.

The episode begins with Percy "upgrading" the ship's loading bay with an automated gun turret for increased security when escorting bounties to the holding cells. The turret's IFF software proves to be flawed, prompting Dante to chew her out and demand it be taken offline.

At the end of the episode, the Tulip is forcefully boarded by shuttle through the loading bay, but the turret, which had not been disabled (or had been reactivated) proved successful in taking out the boarders.

Here is a blog post outlining the episode in detail with some screengrabs. There aren't any photos of the turret itself, but I recall it looked like a trash can mounted on the ceiling horizontally (which provided vertical pitch), with two gun barrels (that could angle horizontally) coming out of it. The post does have a photo of the boarders (dressed in black riot gear) getting shot up, though.

Edit: I just remembered, full episodes are available on YouTube; I won't link them since I'm not sure how legal that is, but here's a screenshot of the turret:

There aren't any aliens in the show, but one of the greater story arcs involves alien influence on human evolution, and this episode touches on that theme a bit. Additionally, the ship has an AI named Caravaggio, whose holographic avatar is somewhat strange looking.

Answer 2

This might be Firefly (or more likely its follow-on movie, Serenity). Jewel Staite, who played Kaylee, the ship's engineer, looked quite young in the series, and in the movie did in fact rig a gun (not in the cargo bay, but welded to the hull) to the Serenity ship. It didn't get fired "in anger", but rather served as a decoy, to make the ship seem more like what the "Reavers" would have (though the captain, Mal Reynolds, played by Nahan Fillion, did man the gun in a space suit).

There were two other young-looking women, too -- Morena Baccarin as Inara, the Companion, and Summer Glau as River.

Answer 3

Could it be Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda ?
2000-2005, small crew with aliens in a spaceship. Very similar in structure to Farscape.
I don't remember a young woman being a mechanic, and the other character that could be close t that description being the ship AI computer/android, no one will dare scolding her.