New List - Captain Crunch's fictional ship design by franchise

[CaptainCrunch]

Its no secret, I'm a big fan of Science Fiction and I love ship design. I've kind of wanted to do this for a while where I counted down the top ship designs by franchise. Basically on some of these decisions it could even be one side or the other in terms of franchises. I have decided that I would take designs from Books, Comics, Video Games, TV series and Movies. I'm not looking at the realistic functionality of them, but the ship designs over all. I'll break this down into 3 postings. Tonight we'll start with 10 through lets say 7. Without any further ado, here we go.


10. The Wing Commander Series


One of my favorite Science Fiction video game series, though I don't consider the terrible movie to be part of it. Spread out over multiple video games and novels, we had a conflict of design philosophies by each of the three main sides involved. The Human Confederation had very efficient looking ships that kind of mirrored ships from other series. The Kilrathi ships were built to be purely intimidating all knife edges and non symmetrical designs, and the Union of Border Worlds had to steal and build home made ships.


For the Terrans, my favorite designs came in the Wing Commander 1 and 2 games, while the ships in 3 and 4 and Prophesy were cool looking ships they couldn't match the slick looking ships of the first two. The Hornet was a light fighter, with little in the way of weapons, but built for recon and speed. On the other side the Raptor from Wing Commander was heavily armed and armored and designed to tear about enemy ships in head of attacks.


The Hornet


The Raptor





For the Kilrathi, as Video Game technology advanced they were really able to focus on a different design Philosophy. The Venerable Dralthi medium fighter had 4 variations with the last one being all knife edges and guns.


Dralthi IV





In Wing Commander 1 the toughest fighter to take on was the Jalthi, which featured 8 missiles and 6 heavy guns. Even in your heaviest fighter, if it got you in its sight, the first barrage would rip your shields down and the second would reduce you to atoms. It was slow and sluggish, but it was the definition of intimidation when you and your wing man came upon 4 of them circling like birds of Prey.


Jalthi





Union of Border Worlds Banshee


A home built Ugly Fighter that carried 4 fast firing lasers. It was always surprising that it could handle itself in a dog fighter, its design was ugly like a beat up alley cat but there was something appealing about it.


Banshee







9) Space Above and Beyond


A criminally cancelled series with a great story line and cast, but its ship design was top notch. You could argue that the Hammer Head fighter is an iconic design, and it looked like it should have been a Marine Fighter. It wasn't really designed to out maneuver anything, but it had a chin mounted cannon like you see on modern helicopter desings and a 360 degree dorsal mounted turret to keep enemies off of its tail.


The Human Carrier was a very cool looking design, that borrowed heavily from 20th century carrier designs, and the enemy Chig fighters just looked completely alien and were extremely maneuverable, giving them an early advantage in the war.


John F. Kennedy Carrier





Hammer Head Fighter





Chig "Ace" Fighter





8) Independence Day Aliens


I'm going to ignore the sequel, even though the ship design was fighter wise cool. But the original movie seemed to capture a design element that defined the alien culture. Their main city destroyer ships were all menace, but they were extremely industrial looking as well which makes sense, since they were a purely space fairing race and built around the idea of Grasshoppers that would strip a field before moving on. They were also built mainly to house and fire their massive stellar converter weapon.


Their fighters were extremely alien looking and even came with a unique engine noise. There was something terrifying about a massive swarm of these locust looking fighters ripping into everything around them.



Alien City Destroyer







Alien Raider







7) Buck Rogers in the 25th century


This one clocks in at number 7 because of one ship design that was so well done that it got you over the cheesiness of the rest of the series. The Thunder Fighter was designed by the late great Ralph McQuarrie, the interesting thing about this design was it was the original design for the Viper from BattleStar Galactica fame. There were some other very cool designs. In the second season which was terrible they added on Hawk as a character, and his customized fighter was very cool The Draconian Marauder looked like what it was a pirate fighter built for raiding.




ThunderFighter





Draconian Maurader




Hawk Fighter






Coming Soon 6 through 3. What are some of your Science fiction Star Designs that made you drop your popcorn in the theater, or beg your parents to buy a model of it for you for Christmas?

[DownInFlames]

[Fuzz]

[Dion]

From the early days of the Gerry Anderson cinematic universe, Fireball XL5 was actually named as a riff from a popular motor oil of the era, Castrol XL. The ship itself was based on a theoretical Soviet design for a suborbital rocket bomber called the Keldysh.

[Locke]

Space: Above and Beyond

Damn, now there was a fine show. Bring that back for a reboot!

I loved the carriers and the hammerheads, so good! And the Alien fighters were so different they were great! I did make a comment in the Star Trek thread that it did seem like Strange New Worlds kind of ripped off the Chig fighters for the Gorn...

[Buff]

Independance Day Aliens City Destroyer ship was a knock off of the Visitor's Motherships.

[Locke]

The Independence Day ships I felt were kind of lame and generic.

And speaking of lame and generic, hopefully we get some Mars Attacks ships in here! Those were awesome!!

[photon]

[Brendone]

[troutman]

Has there ever been ships that realistically manage gravity?

Maybe on The Expanse, and 2001.

[CaptainCrunch]

6) SpaceBalls


Who knew that a pure spoof on Science Fiction Movies would feature some great ship designs though there are only two.


SpaceBall 1 was a great design a massive ship designed to riff on the Imperial Star Destroyer, its massive and heavily armed and frighting, the opening pass over the camera felt like it took forever for it to pass.


Just when you thought you had it figured out, its also a transformer turning into a mighty maid with a vacuum used to harvest air from planets.


Spaceball 1








Eagle 5, the ship owned by LoneStar and his copilot Barf, was built around a battered Winnebago, and the design worked and looked like a functional spaceship that was meant to be a riff on the Millenium Falcon.


Eagle 5







5) Mass Effect


One of the greatest Video Game series of all time until the fourth one. But Mass Effect had some great designs. From the SR1 Normandy a sleek stealthy Alliance Frigate that carried Sheppard from Planet to Planet and flown by the best pilot in the Galaxy Joker. It looked like a high speed race car and packed some punch. On the other side were the Reapers, massive AI driven ancient starships who repeated a cycle of annihilating all living creatures ever 50,000 years to in a sense preserve life. Heavily influenced by HP Lovecraft, the Reapers were based on ancient god like Sea Creatures who built them only to be betrayed and destroyed by their creation. The Reapers have everything to make them look like villains.


SR-1 Normandy.





Sovereign Reaper





4) Babylon 5


There are so many ship designs to choose from in this series, from the Earth Alliance Cruisers to the Narn Cruisers, or the White Star ships, but the best design because it was so alien, and so outright evil looking as a bio mechanical ship with an engine that sounded like a scream. The Shadows were just a devastating combination of fire power, speed and stealth and were the absolute embodiment of Death.

Earth Heavy Cruiser




White Star




Shadow Destroyer




Coming soon, the tough fight between the top 3.

[Puppet Guy]

^ it's a total shame that there were so few model kits from the B5 universe.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by troutman

Has there ever been ships that realistically manage gravity?

Maybe on The Expanse, and 2001.

Gravity? Its overrated.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by troutman

Has there ever been ships that realistically manage gravity?

Maybe on The Expanse, and 2001.

Any ship that Zap Brannigan pilots

[CaptainCrunch]

3) Star Trek Franchise


I do think that with the exception of the Enterprise Sovereign Class that the best designed ships in the Star Trek Franchise happened in the original series or the original franchise movies.


I was never a fan of the Galaxy Class Enterprise, the defiant was generic, Voyager was an ok ship design, but nothing special Discovery was as ugly as it gets. But give me the original Enterprise of the Refit Enterprise from STMP and I'm happy.


But the best designed ships, or coolest looking ships belong to the age old enemy of the Federation. The D-7 or K'Tinga Class is just a great looking war ship. The Bird of Prey is one of my favorite ship of all time.


Enterprise A





Enterprise E





K-Tinga (D7)





Bird of Prey





Star Wars


You can say a lot of things about George Lucas, that he can't write dialogue, or sometimes his stories are a stretch. But everything in Star Wars tells a story and adds to the Lore.


Take ship design. In the Original trilogy, ships were pretty color less, or even worn out telling a story of a militant society that's in a oppressive and uncaring state. In the Prequel Trilogy, we have sleek shiny chromed ships that harken back to the 1950's serials. The Republic War Ships had color schemes and the Droid army ships looked like brutish machines of war. We saw where that has fallen apart under Disney when the Sequels just ripped off the original trilogy designs and the TV series didn't do anything innovated.


While ships like the Millenium Falcon went against classic balanced ship designs, the Empire was the opposite and George made the Star Destroyers that looked like oppressive engines. The unshielded Tie Fighters were a different and neat design built to attack in swarms with disposable pilots. On the Rebels side their ships had a begged borrowed and stolen design. The Y-Wings looked like disposed of fighters that were assembled in a garage. The sleek X-Wings still had a batterred look to them. Even when you watched the PT, you could see the evolution of ship designs that were to come as the galaxy fell into darkness.


Imperial Class Star Destroyer





Venator Star Destroyer





Tie Fighter





Y-Wing





BattleStar Galactica Franchise


I'm counting the original franchise and the 2000's reboot. But the ship design by Glenn Larson was breathtakingly great. Though I prefer the design of the original BattleStar to the reboot for esthetics reasons. The reboot BattleStar looks old, battered a ship of the line that had fallen into disrepair and was ready for an honorable retirement before being called back into one more war. I preferred the original base stars to the twinkies style base stars. But the best designs are the Viper and the Original Cylon Raider instead of the bat wing Raiders of the reboot.


The ships of BattleStar made sense, The Vipers were high speed highly maneuverable fighters with the Maverick Button ("I'm going to hit the brakes and he'll fly right by me" Button). The Cylon Raiders looked like a heavy brawler, where its Cylon pilots were more then happy to ram an enemy for maximum damage. You can even reserve love for the ships of the Rag Tag Fleet whether it was space moving vans or oil tankers or garden ships.


BattleStar Galactica







Cylon Basestar





Colonial Viper





Cylon Raider





What are some of your favorite franchise ship designs?

[CaptainCrunch]

I do want to have an honorable mention, and that's the Orville, when the show started I thought it was a weird design and kind of looked like some kind of creature of the sea. But as the show went on it was clear that this ship was a labor of love, when you saw how they filmed the flyby. It was a beautiful to watch underdog ship. It wasn't a heavy cruser, or a large exploration ship. It was a Mid sized exploration ship that punched above itw weight.

[CaptainCrunch]

Secret O life flyby

[Locke]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I do want to have an honorable mention, and that's the Orville, when the show started I thought it was a weird design and kind of looked like some kind of creature of the sea. But as the show went on it was clear that this ship was a labor of love, when you saw how they filmed the flyby. It was a beautiful to watch underdog ship. It wasn't a heavy cruser, or a large exploration ship. It was a Mid sized exploration ship that punched above itw weight.

The spiral staircase never fails to make me laugh.

[Locke]

[Icantwhisper]

Why do so many spaceships have an aerodynamic design? and wings? wings ain't doing #### in space.