Favorite TV spacecraft

It's been building and building, and now I finally gotta throw
out some spaceship talk!

Here's some of my favorites, I've limited it to TV ships
because... that's the group name, and because I feel it's unfair
to compare ships that never look larger than pop bottles with
ones that fill your field of view as you stare up at them.

I'm a bit of a Master of the Obscure, so I've tried to find
illustrations (preferably on obscure web sites) for lesser known
ships.


GRANDFATHERED IN:
Orbit Jet from Rocky Jones
http://www.geocities.com/jack.stinson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/shiptypes.htm
Every spaceship in the 1950s looked like a V2, with the US
government providing free special effects footage via their
launch tests. I'm told this is the classiest of the lot.


Mars "Umbrella Ship" from Disneyland, "Mars and Beyond"
http://farfuturecalling.blogspot.com/2008/01/mars-and-beyond-walt-disney-and-wernher.html
Well, not EVERY spaceship in the '50s was a V2. That's because
Disney rocket consultant Wernher von Braun was busy getting the
Jupiter C ready to launch, leaving Ernst Stuhlinger to develop
his idea into this once-seen, never-forgotten design.
This ship design is dominated by its propulsion system, which
seems to be the way to tell a "scientific" ship from a "science
fiction" ship. (E.g. the "V2"s: if they are mostly propellant
tanks, they are "scientific," if they have portholes all down the
side, they are "science fiction.")

The Enterprise from Star Trek
How much of it is the ship itself, and how much the mythology
built up around it? I say it had to be more than just "As Seen
on TV" that made it the best-selling model kit until the F-19.
And if a draftsman accidently created a new cottage industry by
executing deck plans, that's and indication of how consistently
it was treated as a place.

Klingon Battlecruiser from Star Trek
Gotta be able to tell the bad guys from the good guys. In many
ways this is the "anti-Enterprise." Its paired engines angle
down rather than up, and it is narrow in front, where the
Enterprise's saucer is, wide in the back where the other ship
tapers off.

Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation
Before I forget it. When I first say it I thought, "This is what
science fiction from James Kirk's time would have predicted."

Jupiter II from Lost in Space
No deck plans needed: you could *see* the whole layout. Playing
as a kid, it was nice to have a spaceship I could map one-for-one
to an area as small as a house. Here's a two-story family home
from the "Leave It to Beaver" of outer space.

Yamato (alias Argo) from Space Cruiser Yamato (alias Starblazers)
http://www.starblazers.com/home.php
I wanted to include a cartoon, but the American ones don't seem
to measure up. Only a few stick in my mind: Space Ghost's Ghost
Cruiser, and Flash Gordon's Earth-made and Mongoan models from
the 1979 cartoon. There is the ship from the animated Star Trek
episode "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" but that's mainly
because its outline allows it to project a hologram of a winged
serpent around it (a stylized representation of its crew, Kukla,
Fran, and Ollie) predating Battle of the Planet's (Japanese
Gatchaman's) Phoenix ship.
So I chose this icon of Japanese cartoons. The ultimate
expression of "Battleships in Space," it is literally a
battleship raised from the ocean bed into space. Arguably an
influence on Star Wars and certainly an influence on Japanese
spaceships designs and color schemes since.

Eagles from Space:1999
http://www.martinbowersmodelworld.com/html/space_1999.html
(scroll down near the bottom)
Taking design cues from 1960s spacecraft, it looks like something
we could have (*should* have!) had flying utility work around a
moonbase in the 1990s. If you ignore that it seems to have
artificial gravity on board, and probably a gravity drive rather
than continuous rocket thrust to keep its flight over the lunar
surface horizontal.

Space Academy from Space Academy and Jason of Star Command
http://www.70slivekidvid.com/spacea.htm
You might think of this as a space station, (coming next week:
Jack's favorite TV space stations!) with its visual design of
towers on an asteroid like a lighthouse on a sea-bounded rock,
but it could travel to destinations. This seemed to be at
drifting speed during Space Academy, but when they borrowed the
model and sets for Jason, the blue-skinned commander did order
"Full speed!" (or "Maximum warp!" I forget which)

Battlestar Galactica from Battlestar Galactica (original series)
Sorry, but the new beast looks like they raised frames on the
outer hull to cast the space between into shadow so they wouldn't
have to detail it. The old one had greeblies on top of
greeblies. Only two "You Are Here" signs, the landing bays and
the bridge (one of those lights in front...) but approaching a
mile ling, no one was going to fully map it, anyway.

Ship of the Gods from Battlestar Galactica
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/War_of_the_Gods,_Part_I
With all the ripping off of Star Wars, Close Encounters of the
Third Kind was getting jealous. Hey, it was a blockbuster, too!
(This ship was also used to rip off the movie Heaven Can Wait in
a later episode.) The blatant religious image of a cross is
turned into sci-fi by adding a third axis. Although I know it's
only neon tubes, point-of-light bulbs, and diffraction gratings,
I'm always expecting more details of structure looking at it.
(Even the gods of the Galactica universe follow the colonial and
cylon pattern of a large carrier of smaller "fighters.")

Starfuries from Babylon 5
No air in space! These fighters bank and spin, but that has no
effect on their course. Alternatively, when they want to change
course, they have to orient and fire their main engines.
Sticklers can point out lapses from real physical handling, that
only shows how hard it is to think in those terms, and how far
we've been lead astray.

Earthforce Destroyers from Babylon 5 and Crusade
http://www.b5tech.com/earthalliance/earthallianceshipsandvessels/earthcapships/omega/omega.html
Another injection of physics into science fiction. I liked
2010's Leonov, and I love these. Estimates put the length about
two kilometers, but you don't get the feeling it's for a vs
Romulan Warbird or Imperial Star Destroyer, rather humans need it
that big to cram all the workings into.

Serenity from Firefly
Another approach to adding some physics. I don't remember
Serenity flying without facing front, but its engines are on
gimbals, allowing it to decelerate, roll, snap turn, hop, and
hover, land, and take off.
The full interior of Serenity also existed on the set, for
another "house in space." (Hmm... I can't leave the implied
comparison to "Leave It to Beaver" hanging there... The Addams
Family house? I'd rather say Nero Wolfe's brownstone, but that's
from the books, I don't know that it's ever been done justice in
a TV adaptation.)

Well?

--
-Jack

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Favorite TV spacecraft
    ... Every spaceship in the 1950s looked like a V2, ... seems to be the way to tell a "scientific" ship from a "science ... Klingon Battlecruiser from Star Trek ... Battlestar Galactica from Battlestar Galactica ...
    (rec.arts.sf.tv)
  • Old Posting On Google.com. Part 6.
    ... about three feet thick, opened gradually, just ... he revealed to an ordinary Earth man a secret ... us was the smallest Spaceship I had yet seen. ... The circular room of the ship had a desk in the ...
    (sci.skeptic)
  • Re: Spaceship Question
    ... >>> Is has been established that absolutely no changes occur inside a spaceship as ... > Now you say it depends on the observers. ... > Are you claiming that the distance between the asteroid and the star ... > miraculously changes when the ship takes off? ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: Spaceship Question
    ... observed by a distant stationary observer, ... > I asked you if a spaceship increases or decreases length after firing its ... >>> It follows that the length of time during which the acceleration takes ... > The principle is that nothing actually happens to the ship or its clocks ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: I want to see attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Recommendations?
    ... adequate solo) spaceship exploration game on PCs. ... if it's a huge alien ship -- I ... exploring spaceships, first the interstellar colony ship that your ... ship is the major event that the game is based on. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)