These are in no real particular order but above are my 10 favorite TV show spaceships, ships I consider design classics, and I'm sure most would agree, although I think I may have trouble convincing some of my choice with the 'Seeker' from Space Academy/Jason of Star Command, but I've always thought it was a neat ship.As much as I like the new version of Battlestar Galactica I don't think you can beat the original ship designs, especially the Cylon raider, I'm not a fan of the newer Cylon ship.
If the US had the 'USS Enterprise' then the UK had the 'Liberator', both design classics, the only real shame about the 'Liberator' is the way it was put on screen in Blake's 7, sometimes it looked great, sometimes it looked like a paper cut out and other times it looked like an Airfix kit dangling on wires in a badly lit studio. I've always said I'd have loved to have seen that model filmed properly to give it the right amount of mood and scale.
'Starbug' from Red Dwarf took over from their other ship the 'Blue Midget', 'Starbug' for most of Red Dwarf was always a miniature, it was only in the last few series that some bright spark at the BBC replaced it with a crappy CG version.
The Space 1999 'Eagle' has got to be one of the best SF ships ever, such a great design.
The Buck Rogers in the 25th Century craft known as the 'Earth Directorate Starfighter' was designed by Ralph McQuarrie (Star Wars) and was the original design for the Battlestar Galactica 'Colonial Viper', I posted a bit about this a while back here Battlestar Galactica Concept Work
After the 'Liberator' was destroyed in Blake's 7 they got a new ship called 'Scorpio', kind of a Millenium Falcon type freighter, the model was built by Ron Thornton who went onto do the FX for Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Voyager
The original NCC-1701 'USS Enterprise' from Star Trek was a ship unlike any other ship from a Sci-Fi show that came before it, a really original design for it's time and still as iconic today.
The only really new ship in this list is the 'Earth Alliance Starfury' from Babylon 5 and that's 13 years old now, I thought it was a cool design and I like the maneuvering thrusters that they put on the ship.
The only other ship that sprung to mind for this list is the 'HMS Camden Lock' from BBC 2's Hyperdrive, but I thought that was been a bit cheeky seeing as though I co-designed and built it for the show. Series 2 starts in May.
14 comments:
Although it looks like you're only including ships from live action shows, my alltime favorite TV show spaceship has to be the X-Bomber from Starfleet. Not only did it look cool and have great weapons, but it had the DI-X which joined together to make a huge robot.
How about an animated top 10?
I have vague recollections of the ship in Starfleet being pretty cool - though I was but a nipper at the time. I seem to recall it was a forerunner of the whole Transformer scene.
Ah those were some of the happiest Saturday morning's of my life! Commander Makara and the F-01!
I agree with all apart from Star Bug and the one from Star Command. I'm surprised the Falcon didn't make the list!
The Millenium Falcon is not a TV spaceship, I'll do a movie list later on !!!
I loved the Liberator but I've never really been a fan of the Scorpio. I used to like the spaceship from Battle of the Planets.
Oh yeah thanks crookymike for posting, I loved Starfleet too. Thanks for your feedback.
HMS Camden Lock is excellent. I remember seeing it for the first time in the pages of SFX and thinking, 'this series looks cool' just based on seeing that ship. I love the Union Jack.
Thanks Ian, I really loved building that ship and I think the reason it works is it's just a really simple shape. The BT Tower with engines.
I would perhaps include many of the other Anderson/Derek Meddings-created space craft such as Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds 3 and 5 but especially the Interceptors from “UFO” even if they were only able to fire a single missile! The UFOs themselves might also be worthy of inclusion as well as SID, SHADO’s Space Intruder Detector.
Liberator is always my list topper, it's ace. Followed by the eagle of course. You left off the Tardis though...
HMS Camden Lock looks awesome. Way better that he other designs.
(I bet you only really like most of them because you saw them in childhood right?)
(I'd have added Thunderbird 2 to the list)
Cheers Moif. I may do another list of cartoon and kids show vehicles that'll include stuff like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet etc...
Its a great looking ship. Very realistic as I imagine a realistic ship might look and yet 'potent' too. Almost brutal. I don't know the film from which its from. Is it something new?
The HMS Camden Lock which I co-designed and then built is from the BBC 2 Comedy series called 'Hyperdrive' it stars Nick Frost from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Series 1 aired in January 06 and series 2 is due to air this May.
Here's a link to the site for series 1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/hyperdrive/
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