Sunshine's Icarus II

Spaceships must look cool

All good sci-fi spaceships should look memorable. Take the Imperial Star Destroyers or the Falcon in Star Wars. They are instantly recognizable for their shape and detail and that’s why we love them. Other less well known films like Event Horizon and Sunshine both have awesome looking spaceships, the former of which was based on Notre Dame cathedral (perfect for the eerie subject matter of the film).

Spaceships must look credible

Spaceships will most probably never fly the way they do in the movies in our lifetimes. There are many technical factors that stop us from zapping through the cosmos at light speed. Nevertheless, as with most fiction, things should at least look and feel credible and spaceships should look like they could fly and be practical enough to house and sustain a crew. Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Serenity and its TV series Firefly and Sunshine do well in showing the functional interiors of spaceships and their passengers living within them.

An intelligent ship/ship’s computer/robot/voice

Ship’s computers are cool. Think HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In fact there must be countless films and stories that have such a character and often they employ a soothing woman’s voice. Like HAL, A.I. characters are interesting because there’s always the opportunity for them to go rogue and turn on their masters and crew. Even if they don’t, it’s nice to have the option!

the Event Horizon

A cool and unpredictable crew

In the TV series Firefly we are introduced to a diverse crew all with different pasts and unique outlooks. In Star Wars a farming boy called Luke, a reclusive old Jedi name Ben, two lovable rogues Han and Chewbacca and the galactic princess Leia are thrown together to travel in the Falcon. While I love Danny Boyle films I just couldn’t get into the characters in Sunshine as there just didn’t seem to be much to the characters to get into. There was none of the likeable chemistry prevalent in his other films like Trainspotting and Shallow Grave, so when everything went tits up I didn’t much care. For this reason the Sunshine experience left me feeling cold, despite the awesome special effects and beautifully crafted spaceship. Also because the film I’d been to see in the cinema about a week before had been Rocky Balboa, which left me feeling so uplifted that I wanted to jump over park benches there and then (and it was late on a school night when I came out of the cinema).

Sterile and busy interiors with nice features

Sterile whites are a given. Nice and clean is the name of the game. On the other hand busy is also good. Sunshine’s Icarus or Firefly’s Serenity? both fit the mission and the crew like a glove. Points of interest can also come in the form of cool looking ship hearts/cores, like the one in the Death Star and Event Horizon.

Sunshine's gold spacesuit

An oxygen garden

Sunshine, for all its faults had the marvellous “oxygen garden”. This was an actual garden inside the spaceship used to produce oxygen for the crew to sustain them on their long voyage to reboot the sun. Apart from looking pretty and breaking up the monotony of the usual spaceship interiors, it actually had a practical use. Silent Running, a cult 70s sci-fi film (and indeed an influence for Sunshine) focused on a similar domed garden in space after all plant life on Earth had been destroyed. Orders to destroy the dome were defied by the ship’s botanist who chose instead to save the last surviving dome at any cost.

A dangerous cargo

Serenity and Firefly have the Tams who are wanted the galaxy over, Sunshine and Event Horizon have their dangerous interlopers and the former has an actual stellar bomb as its payload. Alien has its …well, Alien. We’re talking about dangerous cargo and being stuck in claustrophobic places in the darkness of space. Something threatening onboard always works well to introduce a spot of tension.

Weapons and speed/travel

While not essential, weapons mounted on spaceships are always good. For one thing they allow the crew to initiate or defend themselves during exciting space dogfights. Speed, notably light speed, enables the spaceship to travel fast (but even with light speed, it would take us 4.3 years to get to Proxima Centauri, our nearest star). Other theoretical means of space travel include the wormhole and having a good old sleep in cryogenics (used in the Alien franchise quite a bit) until you reach your destination. It’s a lot more complicated than all that though, so you might want to read a book on space travel or earn a degree in something science-y to learn more.

Spacesuit-clad crew of Event Horizon

Trophies and trinkets

Predators like their trophies and …erm, well I actually don’t know why I put this heading up, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a few trophies and past exploits scattered around the ship now would it?

A rich history

“It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs,” boasts Han Solo of the Millennium Falcon. As soon as we board the ship alongside our heroes we realise the Falcon is another character in the story. A quite different spaceship is the Event Horizon, which while splendid is also rather scary and its history is told through a number of horrific incidents prior to the film’s climax.

Quagga

I’m sure these points are just the top of the iceberg, so please reply to add some of your own if you think of any.