Inspired by {OK, blatantly plagiarised from} Podkayne’s IMHO thread onMilitary Millinery, allow me to present the Science Fiction and Fantasy Headgear Thread. Given the preponderance of startling headgear in the genre {a natty tile is the sine qua non of any aspiring tyrant}, be it helmets, masks, cowls, hoods or just plain pointy hats, who has the coolest? The toughest? The spikiest? The most impractical? The silliest?
As a leading contender in the Stupidest Chapeau stakes, feast your eyes upon The Black Guardian from Doctor Who, played {with a straight face} by Valentine Dyall. While this creation does allow unrestricted peripheral vision, all aspiring galactic ubervillains should note that “You Cannot Be A Despot With A Chicken On Your Head” can be sung merrily by your foes to the tune of John Brown’s Body.
I make hats. Most of them are one of a kind; some can be called avant garde. I have two different sayings that I made up myself:
*
If you can put it on your head, it’s a hat.andJust because you can put it on your head don’t make it a hat.*
Both of these statements are true.
I have a friend with HUGE book about the history of fashion. HUGE: four milk crates and you got a coffee table. Leafing through it, you discover that over the history of mankind, there is not a single thing under the sun that somebody, somewhere, hasn’t put on his or her head and called it a hat.
It’s what distinguishes us from the animals. Well, except for like chimps, and some chihuahuas.
I can find it on line but I will keep looking. I was home today (torn up ankle) and the SF channel had a Buck Rogers marathon and in one episode all of the planet officials on this one planet had these orange hats that began like a legionaire’s hat and continued about a foot and a half more. All of the officials were Afro-American and I thought for the hat alone the black population of any number of countries should have brought a class action lawsuit for defamation of character.
Some sort of group-acheivement award needs to be crated for Frank Herbert’s Dune miniseries on the Sci Fi Channel. Aside from the Sardaukar Überberet mentioned in the military hats thread, we also have some awesome Bene Gesserit hats (cowboy hat meets flying nun). Put together a four of guild agents and four mentats and you have a good start on one of them life-size chess sets.
Best hat of all time, though, was the Wiseman in Labyrinth. “It is so stimulating being your hat.”
From comic books, the absolute worst has to be Mento, of the Doom Patrol.
Mordru’s classic look gets an honourable mention. (It has wings…and an eye…and it’s purple.) Of course, that’s nothing compared to the charley brown shirt he wore for a time, but we’re just talking about hats here for the moment…
World of Warcraft is good for this kind of thing. They recently revealed some of the models for high-level armor sets at their big convention last weekend. Here’s what’s known as the Wrath set.
Several people have already asked if they’re supposed to wear it or wield it…
And now, because nothing says “I’m A Mean Motorscooter From Outer Space” like a gorilla wearing a fishbowl diving helmet with a TV antenna stuck on top, the one and only Robot Monster .
You wanna see stupid hats? These are arguably more fantasy than SF, but they surely qualify in the bad-hat division –
Atlantis, the Lost Continent – George Pal’s weird 1960 film. There’s a council of Atlantean elders near the end, and it looks like a goofy-hat competition.
Outlaw of Gor – Jack Palance’s "Split-top Butter Spread hat has to be one of the weirdest hats ever. When they riffed on this on MST3K (Where the title was simply “Outlaw”, for some reason), they couldn’t stop talking about that hat.
