I'm thinking about changing up the subject matter. The ship's captain is a child with a talking dinosaur (thinking of Philip K Dick's artificial pets and people in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". The first-mate is a talking canine-humanoid (A "Mog" like John Candy's character in Space Balls). The planet's protective spheres from another image are disembodied cat heads (DCH: great name for a punk band) trained to defend the planet's central A.I.
Lots of people today are terrified about A.I. Perhaps that will be the child's (and space-pup's) antagonist in this "marooned in space" themed series.
