JUPITER II - Ship Of The Week #22 5/19/2015
- Thread starter Admiral2
- Start date
Rubbish!
I like this ship- I know the show was corny and the second level (and once a third level) could not possibly fit inside the hull. When I was growing up it reminded me of a house, complete with picture window up front and a door to the left, but it could go just about anywhere and made it seem feasible. I could relate to it as a kid better than the Enterprise with all those decks and hallways.
The Jupiter II was my second space craft, and my second favorite to the Enterprise. My first space craft was The United Planets Cruiser C-57D from Forbidden Planet. It was pretty cool, but could hold even less of the impossible parts shown then the Jupiter II. But who cared then? Between the three of them, they started an imagination process that has yet to stop in many decades!
When I was a kid, I wanted to build a house that looked like the Jupiter II.
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Of course, in the original pilot when the vessel was christened the "Gemini 12" it had but the single deck with the suspended animation tubes, no impossible to fit lower deck with cabins. Neither did it have a "hyper-drive". I don't have the disc on hand to play for confirmation (I'm on lunch at work), but I' feel confident the announcer at Alpha Control stated it would take a century to reach Alpha Centuri. That's not even a decent percentage of light speed. A bit more believable than the vessel it would become. the one truly insane number presented in that opening scene was the "ten million launches a year". That's over 27,000 launches a day! If the purpose is to alleviate over population, dear g*d, there's some serious f*cking going on!!! That woould make the planet Gideon from Star Trek look like the Ghobi Desert.
Besides its sleek symmetry which I still love, the "fusion core" sound effects, especially the take-off and landing cycles just "screamed" insane amounts of power. Dare I say it? I think I like those sounds just a tad more than the somewhat more conventional "roar" of Trek's original warp drive.
Sincerely,
Bill
Besides its sleek symmetry which I still love, the "fusion core" sound effects, especially the take-off and landing cycles just "screamed" insane amounts of power. Dare I say it? I think I like those sounds just a tad more than the somewhat more conventional "roar" of Trek's original warp drive.
Sincerely,
Bill
Yes... The Space Pod, the Chariot, the Lower deck... Even as a kid I knew that all could not fit inside. And that episode where they went down into the huge, darkened space that held the engine core? I think someone got their hands on some Time Lord technology. Or Snoopy's doghouse tech.
I enjoyed this show a lot as a kid, and I thought the Jupiter II and the other vehicles were cool (I still like their design) (and the EXCELLENT Robot), and overlook the 'bigger on the inside' presentation as part of the story telling overriding the original (not well-thought-out) ship blueprints, but I really don't enjoy the show as an adult. It is my understanding that LIS was up against Batman and they took the 'camp' route to appeal to kids, but I really wonder where they could have gone with it if they had left Smith out, or kept him more menacing and less of a clown.
Awesome.
Agree.
My favorite spaceships from my boyhood in the '70s were and still are:
1701 / 1701-refit [TOS and TMP refit]
Jupiter 2
Eagle Transporter [Space:1999]
Agree.
My favorite spaceships from my boyhood in the '70s were and still are:
1701 / 1701-refit [TOS and TMP refit]
Jupiter 2
Eagle Transporter [Space:1999]
It's almost impossible for me to say "bundt cake" without it sounding like "butt cake". Add the description "flying" and I get the mental image of "cow flop frisbie".
Now there's a toy I'm surprised nobody manufactured at the height of the show's popularity, a "flying disc" toy of the J2. Cast in pliable "blow mlded" plastic, it could have had the overall silhouette of the craft and might have "flown" in a reasonable arc.
Sincerely,
Bill
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Eh, I like the 1998 Jupiter II better. 
I voted "rubbish."
Even as a kid, watching the reruns on Saturday, I knew that ship was just crap. It's a freakin' pie tin.
Even as a kid, watching the reruns on Saturday, I knew that ship was just crap. It's a freakin' pie tin.
That's pretty damned cool. I've seen pictures of the before, but had no idea who the architect was. That'll be some fun reading. It even has a name. "The Chemosphere."
Let's be honest here, the problems with the Jupiter II could easily be fixed by re-sizing the ports and the hatch. There are only two reasons why this wasn't done.
1.) It would have been expensive, particularly regarding the mock-up.
2.) Irwin Allen never really gave a shit about this sort of thing.
Still love the ship though.
1.) It would have been expensive, particularly regarding the mock-up.
2.) Irwin Allen never really gave a shit about this sort of thing.
Still love the ship though.
Agree.
If the pilot episode had the Jupiter 2 with three decks including the spacepod, then the upper deck set size and Jupiter 2 models would have been accurate. Production cost was Irwin Allen's concern.
I liked the ship okay. In terms of family ships, it compares well with Trek's Raven (Seven of Nine's parents ship)
I often wondered about the "star cruiser" in a live action Star Wars special a few years ago--one where they showed a blaster firing a constant, phaser like stream.
I often wondered about the "star cruiser" in a live action Star Wars special a few years ago--one where they showed a blaster firing a constant, phaser like stream.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Fitting in two (or even three) deck levels, as many fan-produced plans have tried to do, makes the ship so big that the control deck has way too much empty space around it. Look how much space there is between the main control console and the viewports!
Link
Let's just say the Jupiter 2 has TARDIS geometry and leave it at that.
That "empty" space becomes food, water, fuel, and equipment storage space. It's all gotta go somewhere after all.