You see endless shots of hallways. Cockpits. “Bridges”. Engineering, science, medical, and so on. All areas. What ships from what shows seem to feel right, opposed to just being some art director’s idea of fancypants sci fi?
Here’s my one example: In the Alien films ( especially the second one ), the flooring and ceilings are grilling material, not solid all around. As a dramatic device it’s fine- you know the humans can be seen through the grilling, etc. The acid dribbles through the holes faster, etc. But come ON- what spaceship isn’t concerned with insulation in the extreme? What spaceship wouldn’t have incredibly thick walls all around, and thick inner walls so that the support areas were not as well heated, or unheated entirely ( some machines and wiring would conduct more efficiently at near-zero Kelvin, right? ). To me, the whole see-through floor and wall thing smacks of unbelievable design.
What elements of what ships jump out to you as either very realistic or at least plausible, or total horseshit? Let us set aside sci-fi “science” ( i.e. if the Transporter Room in Star Trek looks realistic based on whether or not that technology will ever exist, etc. ).
Vacuum is actually rather an effective insulator (that’s why a thermos keeps you coffee hot) - contrary to popular belief, space isn’t cold - it isn’t hot either, because it’s nothing. A spaceship would only really have to be concerned about heat loss through radiation, which does not necessarily require bulky insulation.
Virtually none of it looks realistic. Vast open spaces filled with dead air, massive (presumably weak and largely useless) viewports, giant glowing (but seemingly non-radiation-emissive) engines and powerplants, and virtually all of them seem to have some kind of internal artificially-produced gravity which keeps everybody stuck to the floor even when power and life support is failing. Why would you put your command center and combat operations (the bridge) up on the “top” of a combat ship with big valunerable ports, rather than nestled deep inside, well protected. And nearly all are built in one upright orientation.
Clarke and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oddessy is one of the few films to really get it right. He has tight, nearly claustrophoic sets, gravity simulated by centerfuge, the powerplant seperated from the living habitat by as much distance and mass as possible, and the deadly silence of vacuum in space. I suppose 2010 did a suitable job F/X-wise (though it was thematically void as a film), and Apollo 13, naturally, portrayed that Volkswagon van-sized capsule accurately. Other space films, not so much.
Many ships from Babylon 5. They actually use rotating sections to creat artificial gravity, and most rooms aren’t that large. Hell, G’Kar (an ambassador from one of the five sponsering races for B5) had a room that looked no bigger than my living room! And it was mentioned several times that most rooms have no showers, to conserve water.
Oh, and starfurries (the Earth Alliance space fighters) are THE best designed space fighter ever.
I always thought that the ships in the Alien Nonatology (or whatever they’re calling the series now) were super-realistic, because they were believable. They were essentially oil tankers or ocean trawlers, just in space. Their galleys looked like a real place that real people would eat, and so forth.
I wish I’d see more cramped, enclosed submarine-like spaceships. Space at a premium, exposed piping, no large, roomy spaces. The grill-decks rather than solid fits in well with that. Not only does it look low-cost industrial but you can just imagine the bean counter back at headquarters who figured out how much reaction mass you would save if you replaced all the solid floors in the ship with grills.
For distant futures with technology indistinguishable from magic (Star Trek), I can swallow my disbelief at their besofaed, carpeted rooms with terrible decor by choice!
The Enterprise design bugs me sometimes. It seems that too much of the ship is vulnerable to attack from certain angles due to weapons blind spots (e.g., from underneath or side toward the rear of the ship). Photon torpedoes only fire directly forward and aft, for example, from whatever I have seen.
The photon torpedo launcher on Enterprise-A has both launchers right next to each other. If an enemy knocks one out, it will likley knock them both out with one hit.
Serenity is probably the most realistic-looking spaceship I’ve seen, other than from movies like Apollo 13. The ship makes sense. Its crew quarters make sense - little dorm-style rooms with toilets that retract into the wall and fold-out bunks. The galley makes sense - a table with enough space for the crew, surrounded by lockers and cooking stuff. The cargo hold, with its doors that open at each end so that cargo can be driven in or containers dropped by a carrier. It’s a little dirty, a little dented, and looks old.
One of the reasons it felt so real is because the ship was built whole and all the scenes filmed inside it. So lighting has to be done up close, just like it would in a real ship. Steadicams and travelling shots as people walk from one end of the ship to the other are the norm. You really feel like you’re watching people in a real spaceship when you watch that show.
The thing I find most unrealistic in SF/space movies/TV is the showers of sparks that come from the instrument panels without apparently having much adverse effect on their function. In real life, when you let the magic smoke out, that’s the end of the story.
The Music Boat natch, a fine craft. There’s a bigger picture here. This flies pointed end first and is powered by the music on the cheese rotor at the top of the mast.
Apart from 2001 and Apollo 13 they’re pretty much all ridiculous for the reasons Stranger points out. Some flim space ships seem to be steam powered (in Alien at least) and many have flammable or explosive control panels (any Star Trek). I’ve seen very little of the show but some of the physics of the little fighter craft in the new Battlestar Gallactica looked convincing, unlike X-wings ST shuttlecraft and the like that all fly like WWII fighters.
I’ll have to second this. The toilet-sink pullout combo is, to me, just one of those drop-in bits of clever writing to show a lot about setting in v. few visuals.
Also, the whole ship is lived-in, from Wash’s dinosaurs to Kaylee’s paintings. Definitely looks like real, human people live and work in it.
Plus the engineroom looks like a real engineroom, not an Intel cleanroom with weird glowy crystals.
Of course, they have grille floors, but other posters have pointed out the fallacy there to the OP.
To me, the most horribly unrealistic ships are the “organic ships” that were all the range recently, from B5’s Vorlons and Shadows (scary, though) to Farscape’s Moya to the odd encounter in Startrek. I see this even in the Star Wars EU’s Yuuzhan Vong. A love affair with “organic” ships. I fail to see the reasoning behind the implied (actually, often outright stated) superiority. Anyone able to enlighten me?
I have to agree with all the designs where the space craft is aerodynamic. I can understand in some cases where the craft is launched from earth or a planet with an atmosphere but most arent. I think the Borg spaceship makes a good example of how aerodynamics in space is not logical. As far as realism goes I tend to feel the military craft in Aliens are pretty beleivable. They have a very military war machine feel to them.
Outland, not a particularly great movie, but not bad nonetheless, had a pretty realistic space-mining colony set. I thought it captured the dirty, grimy, close quarters realism of a possible space base pretty accurately. I think it might have stolen a bit aesthetically from Alien as many of this genre are wont to do.
Not having any sci-fi films to hand I may be wrong, but isn’t there a big lack of ‘signage’ in these spaceships? I know they wouldn’t get too many visitors, and don’t expect big ‘You Are Here’ maps everywhere, but all those space-age corridors must look the same after a while.
I agree about the ships i 2001 – one reason it was a landmark film is that it took a step back from the usual image of smooth cigar-shaped ships and re-imagined the whole thing, taking advantage of what was learned from the space program. Its ships and space station were startlingly different and believable. Nowadays everyone’s copied their ideas, and ships look (as one critic put it) as if they were dipped in glue and rolled in a box of plastic model parts.
It’s not really fair to criticize TV shows like the original Star Trek for unrealistic design – they had to make the damned corridors big enough to get the cameras through. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea gave us a submarine with huge corridors, for the same reason.
Not that there weren’t good space ships earlier. Read Robert Heinlein’s essay on the making of “Destination Moon”. They had to come up with a set that was believably small and useful plus one that was filmable. According to Heinlein, they demolished and rebuilt it several times, ending up with the compromise you see onscreen. Forbidden Planet’s cruiser C57D is also extremely claustrophobic. It’s basically mostly that big central arewa in the “hub”, and the men sleep there as well as work there, very much as in a WWIIsubmarine.
I agree about the unreality of the ship in Alien – it’s too damned big inside with a ton of wasted space, all of it filled with very expensive air that would be lost in a shot if the hull was punctured. Rattling chains and dripping water? I don’t buy it. Oil refineries in space, if they existed, wouldn’t look like this.
I don’t find the ship in **Day the Earth Stood Still ** believable – it’s too pretty. It’s a show-off piece, like someone’s living room that’s usually covered ion plastic. Likewise, the ship in Nightflyers is too frou-frou. The Control Room looks like the flight lounge for the premium-class passengers.
I liked the show, and the little design touches you mentioned work well, but all in all I have to disagree with you. It’s realistic for something like a submarine, but not a spaceship.
They still have that BS artificial gravity, for instance, and I have no idea how those engines are supposed to work.
The OP specifically wanted the question of sci fi [del]magic[/del]“science” excluded, so if that’s your objections, it’s irrelevant - this is not about the most scientifically accurate ships, only the most realistic given the technology that they have. At least, that’s how I read the OP.
I don’t think all of Serenity looks like a sub, the central cargo area is pretty roomy. It’s only in the crew’s quarters that things are cramped. Anyway, I’d say Subs and airplanes are good models for the kind of spaceship Serenity is - a light transport/courier ship. Certainly a better model than ST’s cruise ship one.
Oh, and Bosda , nice call on the Eagles. To me, they always looked like the logical extention of the Apollo program designs, given sufficient advancement and a working moonbase. Maybe it’s the landing struts that remind me of Apollo 11’s Eagle
