Quark!!!

[Holst]

Soundmotor used the reference to "The Challenge" that movie was the great white on and he was Ahab.
Quark was a series have looked for over the years with no luck. It was a Buck Henry creation which starred Richard Benjamin in command of a United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol ship who then seems to go on to lead the battle against the dreaded Gorgons. Henry had worked with Mel Brooks on "Get Smart" and Quark had a feeling to it that was like a Brooks movie.
I remembered it as being damn creative and couldn't find it until a couple weeks ago.
You can watch the whole series online and in fact download it all. The quality isn't the greatest, I have my computer plugged into a pretty good stereo and I have to turn down the treble quite a bit to get through the episodes. But crap, it's funny. The pilot goes kinda slow but it's well worth watching.

http://quark.name/