Gargantua Space Stations

Gargantua is the name given to two separate space stations built by Jonas Venture Sr. and Jonas Venture Jr. on The Venture Bros.

Gargantua-1

Gargantua-1

Created by Jonas Venture Sr., the Gargantua-1 was the original space station and was capable of housing up to 9,000 Venture Industries employees.

During the time of the Venture Industries Education Division film strip "Careers in Science" in 1971, the station boasted over 2,000 other employees, including 200 space welders, 74 flying nurses, and "one busy barber".

In 1987 a team from the Guild of Calamitous Intent, including Red Death, infiltrated the space station and performed an unsanctioned arching during a screening of the 1981 Burt Reynolds film Sharky's Machine. An unknown individual opened the cargo bay doors, sucking members of the crew and the Guild into open space in what came to be known as the Movie Night massacre. Jonas Venture Sr. was reportedly among those killed.

More than twenty years after the Movie Night massacre, Gargantua-1 was occupied by only two astronauts: American Colonel Bud Manstrong and Russian Lieutenant Anna Baldavitch. The station was also supposedly haunted by the "Phantom Spaceman", a legend that developed following the Movie Night massacre.

In Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?, Gargantua-1 plummeted to Earth, landing in a terrorist hideout, which killed Anna and caused Colonel Manstrong to be declared a hero. In reality, Manstrong had simply been lucky, as Baldavitch wanted to "go out with a bang", and gave Bud a handjob, at which point he passed out.

Revealed in The Venture Bros. & The Curse of the Haunted Problem, what seemed to be an exceedingly vague error indicator, PROBLEM, was actually a device for preserving life, and within was contained the still living head of Jonas Venture Sr. This device had been recovered by Jonas Venture Jr. from the crash site of Gargantua-1 and was placed in the lobby museum of VenTech Tower, where it took control of the building's automated systems after studying them from within for over a year.

Jonas Venture Sr., from within PROBLEM, apparently awoke just prior to the events in Careers in Science and attempted to communicate with the Gargantua-1 crew via Morse code using the single flashing light on the PROBLEM. When this failed, Jonas attempted to reach out directly to the space station's operating system, assuming he'd be able to communicate with it because he built it. His command for the station to go HOME resulted in a system error that accidentally caused Gargantua-1 to crash, as seen in Arrears in Science.

Gargantua-2

Gargantua-2

Gargantua-2 was built by Jonas Venture Jr. to replace the first Gargantua space station. Protected by the ray shields built in the episode What Color is Your Cleansuit?, the station was able to withstand incoming asteroids.

It debuted in the Season 6 episode All This and Gargantua-2, where it was the main focus on its grand opening and it was shown to function as an extravagant casino and luxury resort for the visiting guests on board.

The space station was held up by The Revenge Society but the original Team Venture were able to defeat them. The station then faced a bigger problem when The Investors caused a core meltdown, as this shut the ray shields down in the midst of a barrage of asteroids. However, Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture and Dean Venture were able to put the shields up long enough for the guests to evacuate and Jonas Jr., along with General Treister, ejected with the station's core to save the others from the explosion.

Episode Appearances and Mentions

• Careers in Science (Gargantua-1)
• Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner? (Gargantua-1)
• Bright Lights, Dean City (Gargantua-2)
• What Color is Your Cleansuit? (Gargantua-2)
• All This and Gargantua-2 (Gargantua-2)
• The Venture Bros. & The Curse of the Haunted Problem (Gargantua-1)
• Arrears in Science (Gargantua-1)

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