So, can anyone recommend some movies or TV shows with some quality space battles? Preferably capital ship-centric combat, but spacefighters are good too.
Shows and movies that I’ve seen that fit in this category include the Star Wars movies, Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, BattleStar Galactica and Wing Commander.
*Serenity * has the Reavers vs Alliance battle.
The first few minutes of Star Trek One.
How about The Last Starfighter? The movie wouldn’t exist, but for the space combat.
And cool pre-Bab 5 early cgi, too!
Wait, what movie? I thought it WAS just space combat. 
Also, I like that the fighter in the movie bears some resemblance to a Thunderbolt Starfury from B5 (albeit a much clunkier, bulkier, far more heavily armed Thunderbolt with a nose turret)
If you’re fine with animated stuff, Macross Plus has some amazing fights.
Space: Above and Beyond, maybe?
Star Trek II has one of the coolest space battles ever.
Enemy Mine has a one-to-one ship battle, but with lots of movement.
An early example is This Island Earth, an influential but disappointing movie. There are scenes of two delta-winged enemy craft towing meteors and flinging them at the Metalunan saucer that look surprisingly good for the period.
Galaxy Quest has a good one-on-one space battle.
I like the old Flash Gordan seriel battles but sometimes the strings holding the space ships would catch on fire.
I also like the Flesh Gordan battles. They were fun.
Babylon 5, had some of the best for me. I’ve heard critics lambast that show for crude special effects and video game looking graphic but I loved it. Plus the battles had an extra level of excitement because you cared about the charactors fighting and about the outcome.
*“Who am I? I’m Susan Ivanova. Commander. Daughter of Andre and Sophie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I am death incarnate, and the last living thing that you’re ever going to see. God sent me.” *
Commander Susan Ivanova, Between the Light and the Darkness
B5 also tried to make the space battles so that they were space battles, not just airplanes in space. That’s very unusual.
RealityChuck, good point! Thanks.
By the way, hijack:
Is your sig line from, shall we say, Gertrude Perkins?
Believe it or not, I’ve actually seen all of those movies, though This Island Earth might have been an edited version; I don’t remember that scene, and it was on MST3K The Movie when I saw it.
Check the OP 
And I prefer:
“No Boom today, Boom tommorow. There’s ALWAYS a Boom tommorow.
…
What?
…
BOOM!”
Yeah, um… I was just backing you up man.
:smack:
Though there were no special effects to speak of, and no ships zooming about, the ST:TOS episode “Balance of Terror” had the best tactical battle ever. It turned on the capabilities of the two ships, there were mistakes, and both commanders were smart.
I’m really going to have to see The Enemy Below some day. (Or is it Beneath?)
As for movies, definitely A New Hope. I was reading the script the other day, and the Death Star battle was still exciting.
The Enemy Below (late '50s) was a WWII stand-off, mostly psychological, between an American Destroyer Skipper (Robert Mitchum) and a German U-Boat Commander (Curt Jürgens). A battle for space to be sure, but not “outer.”
And precisely considering the premised capabilities of the equipment, that would be the reasonable way such a space battle would be witnessed – remotely, from control centers, without any close passes, the two parties hardly if ever being within unaided-eye range of one another.
In a way, the SFX limitations of the day forced the writers to seek a combat model that would make sense within the technology and budget, which would have prevented them from showing any “dogfighting”. The solution? Make the vessels and weapons very powerful and long-ranged, and adopt the tactics of ASW or, at best, long-range battleship combat (Bismarck/Hood style), so that you’d never have to have both vessels in the same frame; then they could succesfully lift the plot from The Enemy Below.
This is why I like STII and STVI, much more character to the space battles, and less flash. STII’s battle was modeled on two sailing warships hunting eachother in the fog, a frigate in fighting trim, vs a badly mauled ship of the line. STVI had two warships going up against a submarine, stealth versus brawn, freedom of movement vs. safety in numbers, and preparation vs. improvisation (Chang went in with a carefully crafted technological advantage, Spock jury-rigged a countermeasure on the spot)
The big problem with the new SW movies’ space battles was that there was no time to actually see what was going on, just contextless flashes of action, with the exception of the intro shot of EpIII. Compare to RotJ, with relatively long shots and expository dialogue (“All ships, evasive action!” “They’re going after the Medical Frigate!” “Concentrate all firepower on that Super Star Destroyer!” etc.