After having a little discussion with Foxstab about the merits (or lack thereof) of Star Trek spaceships, I thought I’d expand on the discussion. I know we already have this thread talking about the top five spaceships, but I thought we could use a different thread talking about people’s favorites. :)
So what are mine? Let’s see…
Favorite ship ever - Serenity, from Firefly. Maneuverable, speedy, versatile and comfortable. If I was gonna make a spaceship my home, this would be the one I’d want.
Favorite space fighter - The Dragon from Wing Commander IV. Beautiful and tough as hell.
Favorite capital ship - The Enterprise (refit) from the first six Star Trek movies. I’ve always loved this design.
I can likely think of more, but there’s just too many to choose from. What about you guys and gals? :)
Favorite ship ever - I’d have to go with Serenity as well, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say “comfortable”. It’s very much a ship as opposed to a mobile building/base like the Enterprise or carrier-size spaceships. I think I’d made the comparison to the HMS Surprise before, which wins for my all-time favorite ship (since boats > spaceships).
Favorite space fighter - The Star Wing gunboat from X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. It was basically the equivalent of a space tank, slow but maneuverable and hit like a brick.
Favorite capital ship - The Yamato. Nothing else comes close.
The B-Wing. It just was so weird and different from the other fighters in Star Wars. And it had that cockpit that rolled independently of the rest of the hull. Also, it was a true best in the games, with more firepower than any other standard fighter. (Not counting the overpowered ships introduced in Tie Fighter)
There are going to be a ton of replies and some great ship choices but, let’s face it, not much we haven’t seen before. I’m going to go way back to my childhood for this one, I had gotten a copy of Starfleet Tactical Command, a Star Trek board game. One of the best parts was actually thumbing through the catalogue and looking at all the finely-crafted ship models that you could buy and use in the game instead of all the little drab cardboard pieces. One of those really appealed to me, this one:
If you have seen Star Trek III recently, you might recall the design. It’s the merchant ship that was destroyed by Christopher Lloyd fairly early in the film.
It’s not a very special ship, I don’t think it has any armament, it’s just a cargo ship like the Firefly. In fact, the website I found this photo on just lists the name as ‘Merchantman.’ But I still really like this thing. If we could ever get some Trek games that might take their focus off starship battles and fleet maneuvers, we might find some great stories to be told on a little ship like this.
Only ever briefly seen on a computer screen in Enterprise during the episode Archer travels to the future, the Enterprise J:
It was later fleshed out more I believe for a Star Trek art book. It’s just so weirdly alien the only thing that really gives away that it’s a Federation ship is the nacelle design.
As far as movie spaceships go, I still vote for the Cygnus from The Black Hole as coolest spaceship ever. I’m not at all confident that the remake will be able to reproduce the gothic perfection of the original.
