Those who know me know I like Sci-Fi and Westerns. Did you know 1/3 of all cowboys were black? Its true!

Anyways, westerns in space, not as strange as it sounds as the basic situation of places on the distant frontier, in space or on the ground, tend to be more or less the same except in the fine details like needing domes or terraformed planets, etc. Go see the movie Outland With Sean Connery.

Thene there are space westerns that use more of the trappings of the American and Mexican west but in space. Three examples come to mind.

The first is The relatively unknown Oblivion movie series. Largely a comedy with a rather well known cast with people Like George Takei as the drunk Doctor, Julie Newmar as the saloon keeper/Madam and a bunch of others. Julie every so often makes catwoman noises. Mussetta Vander is in there as well as Issac Hases. Very obscure but funny.

A more well known failure of a show that had a movie is Firefly with the rather confusing movie Serenity. Not confusing storywise but rather as the pilot episode is also called Serenity and is also movie length. This story involves a starsystem colonized by a Sino-American Alliance which became the government of dozens of terraformed planets and hundreds of terraformed moons. The outer part of the system revolted against the Alliance government and lost. The story involves the misfit crew of the Serenity, a small firefly class cargo ship, who are involved in the "small packet trade" aka smuggling if not outright theft. Noble outlaws more or less and somewhat small time except one of the crew, a crazy teenage girl, is wanted by the Alliance parliment in a REALLY BAD WAY. Seems she was an experiment to make a psychic killer and has a dangerous secret in her head. There is horseriding, whorehouses, train robberies, and everyone speaks chinese. I like this show.

The Final one is a show from 1986 Called Galaxy Rangers. Animated by the Japanese studio TMS with very high quality art this show is very complicated compaired to Firefly. Aliens come to Earth to traid a hyperdrive for military assistance against an evil empire in the persius arm of our galaxy and Earth is in the Orion Arm. Humans expand out and settle on lots of worlds but since the story takes place about 20-30 years after the aliens arrive the colonies are small. Styles look very 1880s. Imagine Shane or Pale Rider except with Lasers, Robots, Satelite dishes, Robot Horses, and lots of aliens and you get the idea of what Earth colonies look like. The Galxy rangers are modeled after the Texas Rangers but the main characters are the series 5 rangers who have special implants giving them special abilities. Add to that the Evil Empire Run by an immorat queen who removes souls from victims and makes wraithlike beings called slaverlords, space pirates, oddball wizards, dangerous undead things, and typical western outlaw bands except they happen to live in orbit of a Black Hole or equally odd places and you get the idea. It is actually a lot of fun and one of my favorites.