Nothing fancy. Retire to a life of luxury (presuming I don’t need Federation credits to keep my ship going.) I’d travel with friends and family between hospitable worlds. I’d spend the days travelling bringing me up to speed with the advances that mean I have a ship with such technology.
I don’t really seperate the technology and spaceships from the civilisation. Take today, I like supercars and stuff, I think they look good and sound good and I imagine they’d be fun to drive. I have no real desire for one outside of having a fun experience with it. I don’t geek out over engineering things, or science for the sake of scientific mental masturbation. I think I like the totality of something, and it’s simple effects and what it reflects on a broader civilisation.
I’m quite a broad and shallow person. I like looking at the totality of things. I like rich worlds that are intricate with their societies, but I don’t think you can ever boil those things down to an exemplification or a totem by looking at specific devices. It’s a storytelling technique, and I like manifestations of a culture in objects but it lacks a life to really reflect any truth of a situation.
I know people say Serenity is like another character in Firefly, but I never got any of that with it. I find it to be quite a stretch. But then again I’ve never named a computer or a guitar.
While it didn’t have a singular “best” spaceship, I think Babylon 5 did a wonderful job of creating dramatically different ship styles for each race. The humans had their industrial looking designs, whereas the more advanced races had their much more organic looking designs.
All aspects included, Serenity wins. Nothing comes even close. It perfectly fits the part in every possible way, both in form and function. Much of it also has to do with the interior, and the fact that they built the entire interior as one consecutive set, apart from the two levels as separate sets. It is no coincidence that my laptop wallpaper is a picture of the dining room.
The only niggle I have with Serenity is the external design of the rear propulsion section. It was deliberately built to resemble an insect (specifically the firefly), but I’m a bit arachnophobic and to me it looks exactly like the abdomen of a giant, evil venomous spider.
In terms of external design only, the Milennium Falcon is fantastic. It perfectly blends a big long range spaceship with something nimble and agile that can outfox a star destroyer or a gaggle of TIE fighters.
In terms of internal design only, the Nostromo is the runner-up to Serenity (and in some ways was the inspiration for it). In particular how the rest of the (often spacious) ship clashes claustrophobic cockpit/navigation area where the crew seats are crammed in between monitors and controls. Dark Star with its ultra-cramped cockpit gets an honorable mention.
There are probably a load of others that I just can’t remember at the moment.
I don’t get the Serenity love. The thing has a freakishly awkward design that somehow manages to be both ugly and impractical. It looks like a beginner’s kitbash attempt, with chunks of different ships just jammed together end-to-end. Battle Beyond the Stars had better-designed ships than this.
My favorite spaceship is Legio VII Gemina from The Dragon Never Sleeps.
Second would be various ships from Iain Banks’ Culture series, such as GCU Grey Area (GCU Meatfucker), GSV Sleeper Service, GCU Experiencing a Significant Gravitas Shortfall, LOU Attitude Adjuster, et al.
Oh yeah, also the Dauntless from Doc Smith’s Galactic Patrol.
Edit: obviously I’m going by their qualities as described in text, as opposed to appearances, since none of these have been implemented in video to my knowledge. For imagery, I have to go with the inimitable Nell from that great Roger Corman production Battle Beyond The Stars (image linked, too big for page).
The overall designs aren’t bad, but the actual video implementation looked way too much like the kind of cheap 3D modeling I used to do myself for fun back in the day. Textures are too simple and the material qualities seem like they are the default plastic for the tool…
