Try episodes…
151 & 152: POWER SWORD, parts 1 & 2.
This one’s a slasher/murder mystery space opera that takes place on a planet that supplies mercenaries to an interstellar empire. It’s about cool swords and fighting for your family. It’s also about the empty promise of nationalism, and about what may lie beyond that.
143 & 144: Existential Threat, parts 1 & 2.
This one’s a monster movie that takes place in a far-future commune built on the ruins of a high-tech civilization. It’s a look at how sane societies respond to crises--and how a big enough crisis can derail even a utopia.
140: Champion
This one’s about an ordinary man who gets abducted to fight in alien gladiatorial pits… and discovers that he’s pretty damn good at it. It’s a story about how viciousness can hide who we really are.
133: The Feeling of Control
‘What if they did a season of Gundam about the Afghanistan war?’ It’s about prison labour, about how “A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision”, and about how easy it can be to surrender your humanity when given a polite nudge.
Pledge Drive #5: BITEFORCEQUOTIENT (Season 8)
A genetically engineered super-soldier hatches from his cryopod thousands of years too late. He roams the irradiated wasteland slaughtering giant bugs as he tries to fulfil his final mission. A story that dares to ask: What if Being A Man™ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?
97: Recording Angels
A ghost ship story. Set in a space utopia where human & artificial minds live in harmony, a depressed teenager and a sentient ship explore the wreckage of a failed colony vessel. What does it mean to live in utopia? What debt do the citizens of a place like that owe to the countless generations who suffered before?
See also:
65: Unbridled. A living planet; a doomed love.
42: Hunter, Hunter. Bored space aristocrats hunting an even more dangerous game.
40: All Alone. The isolated crew of a colony ship fall into paranoia.
27: Come and See. A maze of insanity at the universe’s edge.