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In Praise of the Sci-fi Corridor
brumgrunt writes "Technically a corridor in a science-fiction movie should just be a means of getting from one big expensive set to the next, and yet Den Of Geek writes lovingly of the detailed conduits in films such as Alien, Outland, Solaris and even this year's Moon by Duncan Jones."
They should do the next article on technology in scifi movies that DOESN'T go horribly wrong or lead to some nightmarish dystopia.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What's mostly wrong with the corridors in Stanley Donen's Saturn 3 (1980) is that the floor-surfaces resemble the base floor of a movie studio, something which had plagued the corridors in the medium-budget Star Wars three years earlier (more on Star Wars corridors in a moment).
The movie that has an opening fight sequence in a corridor and later corridor after corridor on the death star followed by another fight sequence in a prison block corridor only leading up to the-equivalent-of-Jesus getting lightsabered in half in a corridor adjacent to a docking bay .... and you say "more on Star Wars corridors in a moment."
And the second movie? Hoth ice corridors. IV, V & VI are so dependent on corridor shots.
Did you mean to say "The Corridors of Star Wars article will be out later today with a 58 page thesis on the strength of corridor running and combat between rebels and imperials in the Star Wars cinema"?
My work here is dung.
Event Horizon! Can you imagine trying to walk down that hall with the walls spinning around you?
Of course, maybe Event Horizon doesn't actually qualify as science fiction.
Don't you mean a syfy corridor?
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
A friend of mine who films his own movies has a corriodor in his basement. He says that corridor is one of his primary sets.
The same was true with Trek. If they weren't on the bridge, they were in some damn corridor. One of the things I liked about DS9 and Babylon 5 was that they had lots of "open" sets, and tried to avoid corridors as much as possible.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Cause in the future we don't have cable management or flimsy plastic plates to cover up sensitive equipment and sharp corners.
You mad
That was the most vapid article I've ever read.
The author says he'll get to star wars 'later' but never does. It's no surprise that the author couldn't be bothered proof reading. If I was about to do a huge turd in public, I wouldn't look before I flushed either.
...for the space toilet special. An interview with George Lucas will explore the challenges of sci fi pooping, creating believable multi-species lavatories that account for physical as well as cultural differences, whether Jedi excrement has any force abilities, and the problems traditionally associated with merchandising this under-developed aspect of cinema.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
It never made any sense to have these huge waste-of-space tunnels in space craft.
When you have to carry your atmosphere with you, why create so many empty spaces that you have to then fill with air?
Use that space for something! Put labs there! Crew quarters! Something!
/sig
Why do I have a horrible feeling we're going to see a lot of goatse replies to this topic?
Dear god, I thought I was alone.
Corridors are the unappreciated bedrock of science fiction. I guess the original reason is because they could be repeatedly used for different parts of a ship/space station/alien planet, but they've taken on a life of their own.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Flash Gordon is indeed far superior to A New Hope [ducks, covers]
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I would think the "meat grinder"-like "containment corridor" from Event Horizon would be a great example for that article, but it's a no-show.
Like the ones in Cube (and se/pre quels) that separate one room from another, short, high, but usually was enough to give a hint on what is forward, or at least see the fate to the first one that went in. Or the one in Coraline (ok, is no sci-fi, but probably qualifies as a "special" corridor).
You can't really fault Trek for having so many corridors when most of the shots occur on the ship. If the space ships of Star Trek are anything like U.S. naval vessels, then they are mostly corridors connecting rooms. The rooms will be cargo, berthing, galleys, a few work shops, engineering, and the bridge. If the ship supports fly ops, it will have a hanger and flight deck.
The important thing is that there will be no "open" decks. Everything will be enclosed, much like a modern submarine. Space will be at a premium due to life support considerations, so rooms will be small and packed together. Plus, depending on how long it takes to get around, there is the matter of food and water storage, recycling systems.
In ST:TOS, the Enterprise would often be "three weeks out" from the starbase of the week. It had a crew of about 1,000. So, the ship had to have enough food, water, and air for 1,000 people for three weeks. Even with the "replicators", there would need to be source matter to create the food from. Let us not forget waste handling. Ejecting it from the ship means loss of material, water, and air. Storing requires voids. Recycling it requires space for the recycling equipment.
Also, a ship moves through space so it must have engines and fuel. The bigger the rooms, the bigger the ship, the more mass the ship has, the bigger the engines and the more fuel it needs.
Most people forget many of the details required for life because those details are taken for granted on a planet.
Corridors are the natural result of building large space ships with large crew compliments. Even a large cargo vessel will be some huge empty spaces for the cargo and a large space for engineering both connected to a small crew section which will be mostly small rooms off of corridors.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Am i the only one that doesn't want to see people walking around for 10mins of a 50min show! The worst offence is opening a scene showing somebody silently walking into a room from a corridor, in a 2/3hr film this isn't too bad as it can be used to set the scene (i'd still rather they didn't), but if you add up the time people walk about in a series like Stargate SG-1 it's got to be about a 1/5 of the show!!! I distinctly remember the lack of corridors on firefly as one of the reasons i loved the show!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
The liberator had corridors of POWER( and cardboard)!!! They were all lit up and meant business!!!!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Man I am so sick and tired of hearing about this Moon movie. It is allegedly the best sci-fi movie to come out in a while, and yet everyone but me on the Internets seems to be able to watch it. No theaters are showing it, it's not available on Netflix, USENET, or Best Buy. And yet you people can't shut up about it.
Where the fuck are all these people seeing this alleged movie that seems to not exist? Is it all a big hoax? I'd love to see it but it all appears to be a giant April Fool's joke in the Summer.
the more mass the ship has, the bigger the engines and the more fuel it needs
In space? Really?
[...] Even with the "replicators", there would need to be source matter to create the food from. Let us not forget waste handling. [...]
You just solved both problems with the same solution.
DON'T PANIC.
Hint: if you have multiple destinations, you're going to have to accelerate occasionally.
lonely asocial men, obsessed with the appreciation of dark tubes where magical things happen
sometimes a corridor is just a corridor?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I disagree. The whole ship could be remote controlled by FTL subspace communication, which is available in that universe. But even if you accept the presence of a large number of meat-bodied crew, they wouldn't need to be housed in such an inefficient fashion, let alone to cross those unneccessary distances on foot.
Of course this makes no sense because Star Trek wasn't made with realism in mind. But that is also true of your reasoning about how it is "natural" there would be corridors.
All in all, the corridor is popular simply because it is a single, cheap, permanent set that can easily be turned into any corridor going from anywhere to anywhere on the ship. And that's all.
blow your mind already
In ST:TOS, the Enterprise would often be "three weeks out" from the starbase of the week. It had a crew of about 1,000. So, the ship had to have enough food, water, and air for 1,000 people for three weeks. Even with the "replicators", there would need to be source matter to create the food from. Let us not forget waste handling. Ejecting it from the ship means loss of material, water, and air. Storing requires voids. Recycling it requires space for the recycling equipment.
This problem is solved.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
The first place i read about the sci fi corridor was in a set of books written using Walt Disney characters in a a space setting. IIRC, they were written at a high level for the demographic, and one of the favorite words was corridor. It took me a while to determine what a corridor was. The character were always going up and down corridors.
I really enjoyed many of the corridors in Dr. Who. Not so much the tardis, but the other places they went. What I found interesting was one set of commentary where one of the companions talked about the types of corridor acting they had to master. Perhaps they were joking, but it does seem that acting while in or walking down a corridor is different from acting in a larger space.
I wonder how many corridors we see are caused by budget constraints. For instance, it is said that Buffy only had one or two corridors that were redressed for the Sunnydale High School.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The best corridors were from the movie 2001. In it we have:
- The long corridor connecting the crew module from the propulsion system on the Discovery. Note it was octagonal in section and had no up or down as it was only to be accessed in zero-g.
- The short corridor/connector in the shuttle to the moon where the mod space stewardess walks in and, thanks to the tricks of a rotating set and fixed camera, travels up the wall onto the "ceiling" and exits. (She is supposedly held on by her velcro shoes).
- The short connector on the Discovery which is where the non-rotating main part of the space-craft meets the rotating part of the crew module. The astronauts must float down it and then clamber down a spinning opening to the part of the spacecraft that has artificial gravity. This is also another great "corridor", here Stanley Kubrik built basically an enclosed ferris wheel and in some memorable shots, had his astronauts jogging all around the "wheel".
Amazing what you can do with a script that isn't pseudo science and a director who cares (and has a good budget!).
I'd have to say my favorite Sci-Fi corridor is always going to be MST3K's during the transitions between sketch and movie.
"Oh no we've got MOVIE SIIIIIIIIGN!"
[...] Even with the "replicators", there would need to be source matter to create the food from. Let us not forget waste handling. [...]
You just solved both problems with the same solution.
do you really want to save on space for plumbing by crapping in the same place where you get your food?
Just as people currently endeavor to recreate the manufacturing methods for medieval stained glass or the great pyramids, the people of the future will be awestruck at the ability of 20th and 21st people to make such smooth walls out of the mysterious and amazing material known as drywall.
In Trek only two things really seem to take up any significant space: power generation and long-term/reliable data storage. Unfortunately, they haven't figured out how to run their consoles on light in the future, so people are always getting zapped on the deck. (Cars from the 1960s used fiberoptics to centralize light sources, and today we can retrieve information back from that channel... what're all these conductors doing on the bridge?) Oh, and of course, warp drives.
On the other hand, trek spaceships seem to be at least partially monocoque (yes, an inherent contradiction, but it is the convention) as naval vessels are by necessity, and for at least superficially similar reasons.
When we build large buildings, they have a lot of corridors, especially back in the days when people had offices.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In ST:TOS, the Enterprise would often be "three weeks out" from the starbase of the week. It had a crew of about 1,000.
No, it was usually somewhat more than 400, IIRC.
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Probably, but they deserve to be modded up if they can find a goatse in the style of HR Giger.
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...the only thing I've read better than this article today have been the Slashdot responses.
Corridors and hallways are symptoms of bad design, actually. You put them in places where you don't want to bother figuring out how to arrange the rooms so you don't need them. But they're a waste of space and building materials if there aren't factors built into the design which necessarily require hallways (many same-sized rooms, for instance): They're rooms that have no function other than to connect other rooms.
Now, the place where corridors have a great place is literature where they provide a visual impression of the plot progressing (cribbed from an episode of house of all places).
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
the more mass the ship has, the bigger the engines and the more fuel it needs
In space? Really?
Yes really.
Mass != Weight
In fact, current understanding states that mass is what causes gravity. The more mass, the more gravity.
The sun is massive, and has a lot of gravitational pull, for example.
Just because you move yourself far enough away from another massive object to influence you via gravity (or to NOT influence you in this case), does not mean you magically lose mass all over the place.
... and is using it to create and render 3D objects in the past couple weeks. The first major thing he created in full detail was (I kid you not), a sci-fi corridor. :-)
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Now this was one cool corridor -- only it took you on a loooong trip.
great concept, but how could they neglect to mention bsg's or farscape's?
Approx 430 crew I believe, exact numbers depending on how many redshirts appeared in each episode.
However, the Enterprise and even the Enterprise-A did not use replicators. The ship had a fully functional galley which was seen in both TOS "Charlie X" I blieve - the one where the budding superman turned Yeaoman Rand into a lizard for rejecting him. The galley also appeared in at least one movie- "The Undiscovered Country" - I think that was ST VI.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Even with the "replicators", there would need to be source matter to create the food from.
The source matter is probably poop.
Did you know that Soylent Brown is made from feces? Feeeceeeesss I tell you!!!!!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Yes really.
When I read his post, I instantly thought he was referring to the lack of need to keep the engines constantly running.
You are correct, though, regarding bigger ships needing lots more fuel only if the engines are conventionally fueled. The dilithium crystals used in STdon't take up very much mass...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I disagree. The whole ship could be remote controlled by FTL subspace communication, which is available in that universe.
Not exactly. In Star Trek, maximum subspace radio speed is only 199,516 times the speed of light. So it would take roughly 183 days to send a message to a remote controlled ship on the other side of the galaxy. Even just controlling a ship on the other side of Federation space (which is only about 10,000 light years across) would take about 18 days. I suppose those limitations could be partially made up for with good future AI, but significant human interaction would be almost completely removed from exploration as a result. When that happens, half the point of exploration is lost as we turn over our desire to explore and learn to robots.
Not only that, but thanks to B5, the future FINALLY has bathrooms.
Turn in your pocket protector Crew NCC-1701 :430
"NCC one seven O one. No bloody A, B, C, or D."
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Present day astronauts recycle their urine for drinking water. The space and plumbing requirements are less than if they were to stock the ISS with plenty of water to last between resupply runs. Star Trek, having the tech to break apart and rearrange matter on a molecular level, recycles all waste, solid and liquid, for materials to make fresh provisions. This doesn't mean that they crap on the kitchen counter, it just means that whatever you flush goes to a system to recycle it.
My God! It's full of eval()'s.
Why did Den of Geek feel it necessary to set in excess of dozen cookies for one simple story? That just annoys the hell out of me...
Mass energy equivilence shows us that 1g of matter contains about the same amount of energy release by the Hiroshima bomb. Mass of fuel isn't going to be a problem for ships powered by matter/anti-matter annihilation.
In ST:TOS, the Enterprise would often be "three weeks out" from the starbase of the week. It had a crew of about 1,000.
The majority of your comment is insightful and accurate in so far as it maps to reality. I just had to nitpick on the one fictional element I know about. The crew complement of the original series Enterprise was around 400. In fact, in the episode "A Piece of the Action", Kirk explicitly says, "There are over 400 guys up there."
If you are interested in seeing Moon, don't read the wikipedia article.
Sheesh.
Reverse digestion?
"Women. Can't live with 'em. Pass the beer nuts." -Norm
Because living in the 1st room would be fantastic? You would be able to say hello to all the other people going to and from their rooms through your room. Corridors might be a waste of space in a private home, but not so when trying to cram a lot of people into a small space with a semblance of privacy. In a military setting you also need them for unobstructed movement. So that in a case of an emergency you don't trip over someones bean bag chair. Corridors are a good design. Even in barracks there'll be a "corridor" down the middle, it might not have walls, but try moving your bunk or private belongings in there and see what happens.