What Makes Star Wars and Star Trek So Great, Part II
The ship designs are so good.
As I did in Part 1, I will state the answer to the above question and summarize all I am going to say right here and upfront. Star Wars and Star Trek before it, while blending the best genre elements and traditions of the Western and the Naval Adventure, also offer superbly designed spaceships as well as interesting and advanced tools used alike by the heroes and villains. Inclusion of these vital elements has made the two franchises truly classic, unforgettable, and a part of our cultural experience.
Before getting into matters of ship design, let me state up-front that I am merely a fan with little design experience, apart from my own amateur dabbling. I offer my observations only as an ordinary media consumer. That said, I believe my opinions about what works and doesn’t work are valid, as long as I back it up with some analysis. Here I try to do that.
And one other matter—for the sake of scope, I focus on the exterior design of the spaceships of these two franchises. As the interior decks of these vessels, I have less to say, except that it has been a long-standing fantasy of mine to decorate my basement like the bridge of the Enterprise. It would be, after all, the ultimate TV room.
Let’s get to the design elements that are so important. For a space-based action adventure, the most important designs must be that of the spaceships. As established in part one, heroes in great adventure stories generally have a great steed to accompany them on their adventures. And for a story involving space travel, there should be an interesting setting for your voyages in space.
Great Starships
A web search on “greatest spaceships” will get you countless list-style articles of everyone’s favorite ships. These lists are almost always dominated by ships from Star Wars and Star Trek. There are often others added, such as ships from Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as ships from video games and animated series. These are favorite ships for a reason—a lot of thought was put into their design and it shows. I will go through some examples right here of the good guys’ and the bad guys’ ships because both are equally important to the story.
The Good Guys’ Ships
The design of the good guys’ ships tells us a lot about the good guys and the story being told.
I’ll start with the U.S.S. Enterprise of Star Trek. She is elegant and fascinating to look at with her smooth lines and feminine curves and bulges. Her design starts with the basic circular “flying saucer” we traditionally associate with space ships, which contains a central swelling above for the bridge and one below for a downward facing dome. But then she’s given a narrow neck below that connects a large cylindrical section that forms her aft end. Connected to this by two diagonal pylons (that form a “v”) are her large cylindrical engines that, positioned above and in back of the saucer section, project out behind her. She is thus a pleasing combination of circular and triangular shapes. There are many versions that came from this original design, but the best, I believe, are the first two—the original series and the “refit” from the original cast movies.
She’s super-fast and packs a punch, with phasers and photon torpedoes. The Enterprise has that fascinating blend of beauty and deadliness. This combination is similar to that of the Supermarine Spitfire fighter plane of WWII. The Spitfire is arguably one of the prettiest pieces of machinery ever to grace the skies, yet was also one of the most lethally effective fighter planes of the war.
In Star Wars, the most notable “good guy” ships are the Millennium Falcon and the X-Wing fighter. The Falcon is fascinatingly irregular, most notably the position of her cockpit on the right side of the ship’s frame.
She, like the Enterprise, starts with a basic saucer shape. Added to this visually pleasing and simple structure, is a bow projection, with two side-by-side nose ridges, two waist projections, and an embedded engine cowling in the aft. Unlike the Enterprise, her lines are not smooth. She is utilitarian in design, intended to be a cargo vessel, with equipment and weapons secured all about her. She has that interesting combination of being futuristic yet realistic in appearance. Afterall, we would expect a functioning space cargo ship should look just as battered and worn as any cargo vessel seen in the seas of our own planet.
Her poor condition is tolerated because she’s the “fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.” However, she’s cool mainly because of who owns her—Han Solo. She fits his character well. He’s an egotistical, disreputable space smuggler, a nobody, yet he’s got hidden virtue and greatness within him. And in turn Han’s character effects how we see the Falcon. There’s something about the owner of a vehicle that changes the nature of it. For example, would the Batmobile be very interesting if it was just a car some guy made up to look like a bat?
The X-Wing is the hero’s fighter jet of the Star Wars universe. She is Luke’s hot rod and childhood dream of piloting come true. She’s designed with the good-looks of an early jet fighter model with straight wings, like a F-80 Shooting Star or a Navy F9F Panther. Yet, like the variable geometry-swept wing technology of the F-111 Aardvark and the F-14 Tomcat (designs developed in the 1960s and early 1970s) that transform the jet’s appearance, the X-Wing’s two wings split into four to create the memorable “X.” This is the design element that does the job—that makes the X-Wing so cool. Whether this would have any practical value to fighting in space, we do not know, nor care.
Like the jets the X-Wing emulates, its weapons, though enhanced, are basically early post-WWII era in nature. Machine guns and cannons of the jets are replaced by lasers; rockets and dumb bombs replaced by proton torpedoes. More so, the X-Wing has no smart weapons; no laser or radar-guided, or even heat-seeking missiles. More advanced weapons would, of course, change the nature and tactics of the battle over the Death Star in the final scene of the movie—probably for the worst.
The Bad Guy Ships
The design of the bad guys’ ships helps tell the story every bit as much as the good guy’s ships. They tell us much about the enemy and provide a contrast to the good guys and their ships.
The most famous bad guy ship in Star Trek is the Klingon Battlecruiser. In sharp contrast to the Enterprise’s feminine beauty, the Battlecruiser resembles a manta ray with very masculine-looking fuselage sticking straight out in front. When they meet, the beautiful, feminine qualities of the Enterprise are countered by the manly, built-for-war features of the Klingon ship. Thus, the Battlecruiser is the perfect opponent for the Enterprise, much like the Spitfire dogfighting the fearsome Messerschmitt ME-109 in a repeat of the Battle of Britain.
For another great Star Trek comparison of good guy/bad guy ships, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan features a battle between the Enterprise and her more formidable, but less pretty sister ship, the U.S.S. Reliant. The Enterprise has since been refitted, most notably her cylindrical engines being replaced by more rectangular versions that are mounted on triangular pylons to her below/aft section, which take on a particularly visually pleasing look when viewed at various angles. Her golden inverted sensor dome is replaced with a glowing blue one (with no projecting antenna). She is every bit as beautiful as the original ship design.
Reliant has the Enterprise’s basic saucer section, yet like the Millennium Falcon, she is not smooth, but has projections and weapon platforms added about her frame. With no below-aft section underneath, her engines are attached directly to her saucer and project below her. She is thus handsome and deadly, but not beautiful.
The Reliant, after being captured by Kirk’s nemesis, Kahn, turns on the Enterprise. As they close on one another, just prior to the battle, the Enterprise glows in the soft blue of her sensor dome, blissfully unaware of her sister’s evil turn, while the Reliant is bathed in a reddish light, a visual touch that enhances the tension of the scene. They are not opposites; they very much alike, sister ships, yet one is good, the other now bad.
In Star Wars, the bad guy space ships are predominately the Imperial Star Destroyer and the TIE Fighter. The massive Star Destroyer is truly an Emperor’s ship with its majestic, elegant handsome looks. Quite obviously inspired by the great naval battleships of the past, its colossal tower bridge section, rather than being placed in the middle of the ship as with a WWII battleship, is placed the rear, more like the ship-of-the-line sailing warships of the 18th and 19th centuries. This provides the same pleasing visual effect of a tall ship’s masts and sails overhead as it sails through space.
Otherwise, the Star Destroyer is a series of superbly arranged triangles and polygons. This provides contrast to the otherwise boring Rebel vessels, the most notable being the transport ship, which has an odd resemblance to a chubby sand crab. In fact, other than the odd-looking blockade runner vessel seen at the beginning of “A New Hope,” it’s hard to really point out a truly distinctive “Rebel” ship. This is obviously intentional as an illustration to the audience of the rag-tag nature of the rebellion and the seemingly impossible odds of their ever winning a fight against the Empire.
The TIE Fighter is interesting for being so different from any other fighter ship design. While the rebel fighters have some visual semblance of fighter jets in space, the TIE fighter is totally foreign in appearance. With two hexagon-shaped wings set in vertical positions on either side of the circular center section, it seems truly to be a space-based design. It thus contrasts well against the more familiar, conventional X-Wing.
Like the X-Wing, the TIE Fighter’s weapons, while laser in nature, are also WWII-era in effectiveness. As a machine gun-equipped airplane must get behind its target in order to acquire a firing angle, so to must the TIE Fighter get behind its prey. It’s also seemingly far easier to destroy than its rebel counterparts. This harks back to the Mitsubishi Zero of the Japanese Imperial Navy of WWII. It was an incredibly fine aircraft, known for its speed, lightness and maneuverability, and overall effectiveness as a naval fighter. Yet all this came at a cost—it had little armament to protect the pilot and fuel tanks from fire from enemy fighters and was more easily shot down than the more rugged American fighters of that period, notably the Grumman F4F Wildcat.
These creative designs of starships helped to make these two franchises great. I went through only a few examples from each. There are many other examples of great designs, including the Romulan and Klingon Birds of Prey of Star Trek, and in Star Wars the many variations of the TIE Fighter and the Star Destroyers. Star Wars also offers many great ground assault vehicles, such as the AT-AT and the Republic Gunships from Episode 2 of the prequals.
My next two installments go into greater detail on the ships featured in the sequels for these two franchises. They remain great, for the most part. (You can’t win them all…)
See you next time!