The Event Horizon is great. So are the others that immediately come to mind. What’s your favorite forgotten/lesser known ship. Here’s the Cygnus from The Black Hole.
I’ve always loved the fighters (Starfury?) from Babylon 5:
I used to spend a lot of time modelling them in 3D software, just because! I love the aesthetic, how they have a hint of modern military (the cockpit is Apache helicopter-like), the way they’re held then launched almost like missiles, and how agile their design inherently is. Plus, the design obviously has some nods to the ship in The Last Starfighter and of course the X-Wing from Star Wars - both of which are cool ships.
In the game Elite Dangerous, there’s a ship called a Vulture that has similar elements (cockpit, size-ish, agility) and in VR is the closest I’ve come to feeling like I’m flying one!
Came to say these fighters. The forward/backward propulsion on each pylon just makes sense in space.
The organic spaceship Lexx.
https://i1.wp.com/www.scifimoviepage.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/lexx-crop.jpg
That was one seriously twisted show.
don’t forget the shuttles too.https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/087/741/large/lexx_moth_shuttle04.jpg?1401533919
Lexx is good but personally I prefer Moya.
The GunStar from The Last Starfighter blew me away as a kid. Pretty good CG for the era as well, but the design felt sleek and believable.
I’ve always loved the Vipers from BattleStar Galactica as well as the Veritech from Macross (well… robotech since that’s what it was called here when I was a kid lol) but I feel like those are both pretty mainstream now?
Always liked the Thunderfighter from Buck Rogers and his frienemy, Hawk’s, fighter.
The morphing ship from Flight of the Navigator was pretty cool. In that same era, the bubble ship from Explorers was pretty awesome concept.
Do personal vehicles count? I always wanted to have a Light Cycle from tron. I loved that they just turned it on and their disk became the steering and it just formed around them. Plus it was cool af. The Cylcone from Macross / Robotech was pretty cool in that same vein.
I’m honestly a little bit flabbergasted to learn that CG was in use on the Last Starfighter (1984). I was about to get pedantic, but as I usually do when that’s my instinct - I googled it. I would never have guessed.
Maybe I’ll see if my husband wants to watch it later. He hates early CGI
There was definitely some terrible weird looking CG from back in the day… but some of the examples were really well done and still hold up ok. There are some moments in Last Starfighter where you’re like “ouch… flat shaded cg” but some other moments where it looks great. I think a chunk of the ship was also practical, but there were some detailed CG in it.
When movies used it for something that wasn’t meant to look realistic, back before it was feasible, it still holds up ok. For a sci-fi spaceship or things like the vehicles in TRON, you don’t get that weird uncanny valley feel as much IMO.
These are all great. Loved all of these growing up.
I keep thinking of things I want to add to the list LOL.
you had it at GunStar. That thing was so cool. Great movie too.
Without question it’s Serenity from Firefly. I know Firefly is relatively well known on the internet, but in general I’d say it’s off the beaten path. That ship is my friend.
Definitely a great ship
Rocinate!! (It was a legitimate salvage)
Plus Talon is a bad ass warship.
The “Eagle” ships from Space: 1999. Great workhorses, very realistic.
I’m gonna say the Nostalgia for Infinity from Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space series. It’s the size of a small city and was built centuries before the start of the series to carry 100k passengers, but now it’s completely decrepit, crewed by 6 people, and the majority of the ship hasn’t been explored by anyone in decades.
So many good ones named, but I’m going to go with
-
The Hammerhead from “Space: Above & Beyond”
-
Any/all of the fighter ships from the video game series “Wing Commander”
-
How come nobody’s mentioned the fantastic Eagle Transporter System from Space-1999???
Hello presumable fellow child-to-teen in the mid-90s. I will always upvote references to Space: Above and Beyond or Wing Commander.
Heh. Nope, 30something in the 90s. Just enjoyed good sci-fi then :D
Then I shouldn’t have presumed! Space 1999 ought to have been a clue…
-
Oenone, a Voidhawk from The Night’s Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton
Those books were a mindfuck lol, I love them.
Will have to check those out
Thunderbird 2, and yes, I have the whole series. It was not technically a spacecraft, but it’s my favorite of the craft they had.
Thunderbirds are go! Definitely fun designs.
does the city from dark city count?
if not probably the Nightengale from Supernova
Mmm… Dark City… don’t sleep on this one. Great flick. Watch the directors cut, not the american release though… that intro spoiler was terrible.
The cylinder ship from clarke’s rendezvous with Rama.
Yes! As a teen, I was so baffled by the description that I drew a cross-section of the ship to try to understand the layout. Love me some Rama
I’m not sure if this counts as sufficiently off-the-beaten-path, but I’ve always loved the Omega Class Destroyer from Babylon 5.
Starfury has a special place in my heart.
They all count. And it’ll be new to somebody!
I’m thinking the shuttle from Interstellar, myself.
That’s a good pull
