Best Sci-Fi Space Battles?

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Posted by Cliff on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @05:00PM from the beams-missles-and-railguns dept.

ardor asks: "Recently, while watching Babylon5, I wondered about the space dogfights in popular sci-fi outings. I find the space battle in Star Wars VI to be still one of the best in existence, and some battles from B5 are amazing too. But where are more good space fights? I've found them to be surprisingly rare. Most are very short, or not very big (less than 5 ships). I know, large & complex scenes are very expensive, nevertheless I mean some with tons of small interceptor & bomber ships, large/huge cruisers, stations, and so forth. Have you watched a really awesome space battles, and if so, what show/movie was it?"

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Give Me Ramming Speed! by Trikenstein · 2004-03-31 17:19 · Score: 3, Funny

Any space battle that has that quote is usually a grabber.
It was used in B5, ST:DS9, and ST:V iirc.
1. Re:Give Me Ramming Speed! by neglige · 2004-03-31 22:20 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Ramming Speed? Awwwww... not good enough! ;)
  
  "Prepare ship for light speed!"
  "No no no, light speed is too slow!"
  "Light speed too slow?"
  "Yes, we're gonna have to go right to... ludicrous speed!"
  "Ludicrous speed? Sir, we've never gone that fast before. I don't know if this ship can take it!"
  "Whatsa matter, Colonel Sandurz? Chicken?"
  
  Spaceballs. Has a few space battles, too, but... well... ;)
  
  --
  My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
The battle I wanna see... by NanoGator · 2004-03-31 17:28 · Score: 2, Funny

I'd really like to see a fleet of eggs from Ork engage a fleet of Police Boxes from Gallifrey.

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"Derp de derp."
Re:Good scenes by NanoGator · 2004-03-31 17:31 · Score: 2, Funny

"The Wing Commander movie had some good space combat in it..."

Sorry, any good battles in that movie were nullified by the "Be quite, the other SPACE ship might hear us talking!" scene.

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"Derp de derp."
Ricardo Montalban as the devious and cunning by gnudutch · 2004-03-31 18:37 · Score: 3, Funny

KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHN!!!
Any Chase Scene by crem_d_genes · 2004-03-31 19:11 · Score: 2, Funny

In which the commander utters the words *we've gone to plaid* is worth sacrificing a few space vessels for.
Re:Red Dwarf by Psiren · 2004-03-31 22:00 · Score: 2, Funny

The best line ever is:

Rimmer: Step up to red alert!

Kryten: Sir, are you sure? It does mean changing the bulb!

Love it!
Re:Battles... by cthugha · 2004-03-31 22:55 · Score: 2, Funny

Wondered why the heavier cruisers didnt have multiple laser turrets, and smaller turrets to shoot smaller craft.

They do, sort of. Next Gen ships have omnidirectional phaser arrays capable of firing multiple beams coupled with sensors that can maintain a lock on multiple targets (DS9 had a scene in Sacrifice of Angels, IIRC, which showed a Galaxy-class ship firing two beams simultaneously from its forward ventral array at a Cardassian cruiser, pounding the s@#% out of it). The trouble is that this would make Federation ships far too kick-arse to use combat for dramatic tension in the plot, so the writers have to either: (a) have the crew do stupid things or under-utilize the capabilities their ships have; or (b) have systems perform unpredictably according to the needs of the plot (shields are the worst offenders as regards reliability, closely followed by the warp core and, of course, bridge control panels).