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Best Sci-Fi Space Battles?
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?"
The obligatory Farscape plug. But in actuality, there were many very interesting space battles. Agile fighters, hulking battleships, and of course a myriad of species each with different ship technology and ways of fighting. While there were all-out battles with lots of ships, most of the battles were of course focused around the living ship and a few others. All of the battles were very well-done and worked with the storyline to add tension, instead of large-moving-object-laser-bolts-boom-repeat.
Of course there were quite a few Star Trek battles over the years, not all of which were good, but not awful considering the wilful ignorance of physics.
I'll not comment on the practicality of such battle tactics, nor on the movie's total disregard for the book, but Starship Troopers had some interesting special effects during the assault on Klendathu--the bug homeworld. Seeing the Rodger Young and other transports lumbering about, colliding stupidly, and eating bug plasma was pretty cool--a good example of what happens when close formations of stupid people in big ships blindly fly over excellent AAA.
Ack. If they'd just paid a little attention to Heinlein's book. Sigh.
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
Book space battles are always better than movie battles. The stuff in the Forever war was some of the coolest battle gear.
The chase in 'Protector' by Larry Niven was pretty cool too.
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"The battle against the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact was pretty good. Didn't last very long, though."
It didn't, but man it was effective. Remember when they listened in on the battle over the radio? All those ships reporting the damage they've sustained, etc. Seeing a bunch of ships flying around and blowing up is kinda neat, but that little audio blurb was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It caused me to imagine standing on one of those ships, knowing that if I didn't die, somebody I know did.
Then, to top it off, the explosion of the Borg ship took out one of the other ships that was too close to it. 500-1,000 people, isntantly gone even though the battle was decidedly over.
"Derp de derp."
"THey all seem to negate the whole "you don't need to make a wide arcing turn/bank in space to turn around" thing."
I've heard this complaint a lot, but I've never particularly subscribed to it. There's a few things that people don't typically consider.
1.) In a battle, it's important to keep moving. If you suddenly spin your ship 180 degrees and fire your thrusters the other way, you're going to come to a complete stop for a moment before re-accellerating back to your attack speed. A wide sweeping arc keeps you in motion and provides for better evasive maneuvers.
2.) Even though most ships have magic intertial/gravitic control force field thingies, there are probably still structural reasons to keep the ship oriented a certain way while it's moving.
3.) The most powerful thrusters on a ship are going to be to its aft, and along the lateral side of the ship. One's for moving forward, the other's for hovering over a planet. Banking the ship to perform a controlled turn is not necessarily wasteful seeing as how very little is known about how its basic maneuvering systems work.
4.) B5 did it all the time.
"Derp de derp."
I'm going to correct your use of that excellent quote, mostly because I think the correct version carries slightly more weight. :)
"This is Ambassador Delenn of the Minbari. Babylon 5 is under our protection. Withdraw... or be destroyed."
'Negative, we have authority here. Do not force us to engage your ship.'
"Why not? Only one Human Captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me, you are in front of me. If you value your lives... be somewhere else."
As for good space battles, B5 easily has the best ones that I've seen. Anything with an Earth Alliance cruiser is IMO opinion particularily fun to watch. I just love those massive cannons that they have mounted on the fronts of the ships.
The USS Odyssey, a Galaxy Class ship, went into the Gamma Quadrant, and the Jem Hadar ships made quick work of it with a kamakazi style attack. I was in shock. It wasn't the Enterprise, but it was the same class, and to see the new enemy just destroy it was quite amazing.
What about anime space battles? Someone mentioned The Legend of Galactic Heroes already. I strongly reccomend Macross Zero 1&2, the battle scenes are really impressive. Macross Plus is very good but the battles are mainly one-to-one. Also Voices of a Distant Star is a very good story and has quite good graphics.
Star Wars - the final minutes of the Death Star attack *still* get my adrenaline going, even after all these years!
DS9: 'Sacrifice Of Angels' - fighters! Wings of Galaxies kicking ass! Mirandas spinning and exploding right into the camera! Klingons to the rescue! The Defiant flying three feet above the hull of an exploding battleship! Geek porn!
The Last Starfighter - the CG looks cheap now, but the Gun Star was/is a fantastic design. Death blossom!
Starship Troopers - one of the few times big ships have been given a real feeling of mass, especially when they start crashing into each other.
You must think in Russian.
2.) Even though most ships have magic intertial/gravitic control force field thingies, there are probably still structural reasons to keep the ship oriented a certain way while it's moving.
But in space, moving at constatnly velocity is the exact same as being motionless (although what "motionless" means in what context is a good point as noted by the other post). As such, the structural integrity of the ship would have to be designed to support the direction of acceleration not motion.
As for the most powerful thrusters being located aft - why? Why even have an aft? Why not make the ship radially (or for that matter, spherically) symmetric?
It's important to keep moving, but if you're both going 150,000kmph in the same direction, you're relatively motionless to each other, making yourselves targets. And, if you're going too fast past each other your shots are going to be very difficult.
Babylon 5's 4th season space battles were some of the best I've ever seen.
As far as nitty gritty goes, The battle in Star Trek Nemesis was very in-your-face, very real. Unfortunately, there was a whole lot of unrealism within the scope of the Trek universe, but otherwise it was epic.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
Can't say much for the dogfights, but I was rececntly very impressed with what's an otherwise minor detail in Andromeda's pilot show.
In preparing to fight, Dylan says he's going to dump the atmosphere in most of the ship to reduce its mass.
DUH. That makes perfect sense. In over 40 years of sci fi reading and watching, I'd never seen that before.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B