But none of the one you’d want to watch…
Did you notice that the Omega class destroyers in Babylon 5 have the exact same configuration?
I personally liked the Star Furies in Babylon 5. It’s the most logical and plausible space fighter design I’ve seen.
On the balance, I think I’m going to have to go with the RMN battlecruiser Nike. Powerful enough to outgun anything faster than it, and fast enough to outrun anything more powerful than it. Bonus points if I get a treecat.
But I’ve got a lot of runners-up: The Skylark, with matter-annihilation machineguns and the ability to ignore pesky physics whenever convenient… The Long Shot, three hundred times faster than anything else… The Gay Deceiver, capable of taking you any place that does or doesn’t exist… The Heart of Gold, which even if it doesn’t do what you want, is never uninteresting…
Obviously, I need my own fleet.
Millennium Falcon, which is a custom modified Corellian light freighter.
The wookiee’s optional.
How about the Bistromath? Who knew you could get so much power out of a fake chicken cacciatore? (or rather the bill for it?)
What? No votes for Lazarus Long’s sentient ship, Dora? sigh Poor girl…
Pournelle’s 2nd Empire battlecruiser “MacArthur” from The Mote in God’s Eye. In an essay, Niven and Pournelle said the design was inspired by a plastic model (ludicously released in a glow-in-the-dark “ufo” version) that vaguely resembled a flattened whiskey bottle. It shows what can be done by creative adaptation from the most unlikely sources.
If we’re judging ships by personality, I’d choose Red Dwarf.
I’m torn.
I just watched an early episode of Babylon 5, and the Star Fury is a damn cool ship that actually obeys the laws of physics.
On the other hand, there’s the dropships from Aliens, which are also very cool. But they’re not counted as spacecraft in the other thread.
The Klingon Bird of Prey from the Star Trek movies:
EE Smith’s “Skylark of Valeron” and “Skylark Duquesne”… all the advantages of the regular Skylark, but over 500 trillion times larger and more powerful, fast enough to cross the universe while you eat dinner, and easily operable by a single pilot.
The ROU *Killing Time. Blowing up hundreds of ships in microseconds, flying at trillions of times the speed of light in bursts, having nanosecond reaction times, and flying badly into an impossible fight, wholly expecting to die, only to emerge victorious and unscathed at the end.
Ballsy Mind, that. The Sleeper Service is just as cool, just for building its own fleet of tens of thousands of miniature ships just from the excess matter that it carried about in its fields.
Zuh. Stupid coding. Don’t know why I used the URL code. Musta been effectorized.
The blackhawks from Peter Hamilton’s Nightsdawn trilogy. I always liked living ships.
What? No votes for Lexa Doig?
The excession. Can’t beat it for mysterious cachet or inscrutability.
The Liberator. If it’s good enough for Blake’s Seven, it’s good enough for me.
Gay Deceiver is the single-most useful craft around, and the Whitestar from Babylon 5 is the coolest looking, and safest in a fight. The big Shadow vessels kind of rock, but I could do without the neural implants and insanity.
Of course, the infinite improbability drive must be kind of fun to use.
I’d like to travel the universe in FIREBALL XL 5
Here ya go: The Leif Ericsson (aka UFO Mystery Ship)