Building A Starship
The general look of science fiction hardware has been an evolutionary one as much as a reflection of changing trends and general societal perspectives
It coalesces into an overall look on the covers of the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ‘30s with phallic shaped, art deco styled spacecraft and scantily clad women menaced by simplistic and (now) comical looking monsters and robots. In the 1927 film Metropolis we see examples of then conventional thinking as well as an admirable example looking beyond the general conventions of the day. The film’s flying aircraft were all propeller driven monoplanes that likely looked forward thinking at the time—given powered flight was then little more than twenty years old—but hardly stand as flying machines of a hundred years hence in which the film’s story is supposed to be set. Of course, the general public of the day could hardly have been expected to foresee jet powered aircraft. But in contrast the featured robot form of the lead female character, Maria, was very forward thinking even if likely dismissed as sheer fantasy.
In the 1940’s sci-fi spacecraft became variations of the German V2 rocket shape, an idea that prevailed well into the 1950s on magazines and book covers as well as in ‘50’s era films like Destination: Moon, When Worlds Collide and 20 Million Miles To Earth. And in the ‘50s another form of sci-fi hardware was introduced, the flying disc, inspired by the increasing number of sightings of unidentified saucer shaped objects supposedly seen in the skies and assumed to be vehicles originating from somewhere beyond Earth. The disc shape was featured most notably in films such as The Day The Earth Stood Still, Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers and Forbidden Planet. Yet it was also in the ‘50s that sci-fi hardware started to exhibit some credible sophistication beyond their elemental forms
The ‘50’s era film spacecraft began to acknowledge the reality of real science as well as extrapolate from theoretical or speculative science. The look of the hardware became somewhat more simplified and streamlined reflecting the notion that more advanced technology would indeed trend that way as it was doing in the real world. Those vehicles were beginning to reflect more closely how spacecraft were depicted in the better science fiction literature of the time.
In The Day The Earth Stood Still Klaatu’s spaceship is a very clean looking saucer with no obvious seams or surface detail and no obvious means of propulsion. Except for the one reference to atomic power the idea of how the ship operated was not offered in detailed exposition, but conveyed merely through showing it in operation. Anyone not a reader of SF literature might well have seen it as impossible magic while any fan of said literature likely would have immediately assumed the concept of advanced materials and engineering as well as the speculative science of antigravity. The clean design of the ship’s interior was also very forward thinking in going beyond obvious CRT screens, dials, levers and buttons. Klaatu operated the ships controls through hand motions and vocal command, displaying the then very advanced ideas of motion sensors and voice recognition/activation. More than fifty years on and many of the ideas in The Day The Earth Stood Still are still viable ones.
The other bit of hardware in the film is also very noteworthy even it is hampered by the costume and special effects limitations of the day. The robot Gort was an impressive execution that went beyond the usually clanking, awkward looking robots of the age. Gort could function independently guided by his own artificial intelligence. And his body looked more like a metallic “skin” rather than actual sheet metal. Apparently he could “see” without obvious eyes or cameras of any recognizable sort. What Gort lacked in execution was the f/x resources that would give us the liquid alloy of Robert Patrick’s Terminator from Terminator II thirty years later. The idea of an intelligent machine with a pliable metallic skin would have been very easy to convey in literature where you need only engage the reader’s imagination with just the right descriptive exposition, but it was beyond the f/x resources of the 1950s to depict even with a feature film budget.
Another saucer shaped spacecraft was the interstellar cruiser C57D featured in the landmark 1955 film Forbidden Planet. Again the technical references are kept spare and the concepts are conveyed mostly through depiction of operation. Again we see no obvious means of propulsion, but the audience soon understands and accepts the speculative ideas of antigravity, artificial gravity and faster-than-light space flight. We even see the idea of something of an inertia dampening field for the crew to endure the craft’s drastic deceleration from FTL. This was all very advanced for an audience who had not yet seen even an artificial satellite boosted into orbit. Yet for the readers of SF literature this was all already old hat.
Another example of the film’s hardware was Professor Morbius’ all purpose robot, Robbie. Robbie was a little more conventional looking than Gort, but he, too, exhibited an artificial intelligence as well as being able to communicate with humans in a somewhat colloquial manner. Also noteworthy was that Robbie was programmed to adhere to Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics, something not overlooked by the SF readers in the audience.
Forbidden Planet also utilized the idea of energy shields and laser weapon batteries that looked nothing like recognizable artillery guns—something already seen in 1953’s War Of The Worlds. There was also technology that could actually tap into a living mind’s thoughts. Although we never get to actually see one of the extinct Krell aliens our imaginations are engaged trying to imagine what it could possibly look like to need such odd looking doorways. And finally there is the Great Machine—vast alien engines of unknown complexity and purpose spanning across the planet and miles deep under the surface. The energy contained within the Great machine was sufficient to totally vaporize the planet when it finally ran amok and overloads.
In some respects Forbidden Planet might seem somewhat quaint by today’s standards although it was a landmark when it was released. But many of its ideas are still viable ones even if depicted differently today. And the film could arguable be said to have presaged much of what would follow in the next decade.
One notable exception to the V2 and saucer shaped vehicles of the ‘50s were the Martian war machines of 1953’s War Of The Worlds. Once again we see energy fields, antigravity propulsion and energy weapons. Yet the vehicles themselves were eerily sleek and triangular with a cobra like extension that appeared to serve as both viewing apparatus and weapons emitter. The triangular shape was the only recognizable nod to the immense tripedal walking war machines of H.G. Wells’ original Victorian era concept.
The interesting thing about many of the ideas incorporated into the more conventional looking hardware of the more notable ‘50’s era SF films were that they went beyond the awareness of mainstream society. Most of the viewing public likely dismissed these ideas as escapist fantasy while those more familiar with the concepts raised a thoughtful eyebrow of approval.
The SF hardware of the 1960s evolved away from the familiar rocket and saucer shapes and towards something often reflecting what was being conjectured for the American space program. The NASA look would culminate with the arrival of the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Although the film’s dating is off much of the hardware depicted there is still credible as what could be possible within the next century or so. 2001 is a good example of SF depicting believable spaceflight for the foreseeable future.
There were other examples of sci-fi hardware that didn’t stray too far from the familiar. The Interceptors of the British television series UFO looked very NASA derived. The alien ship in The Invaders was just another saucer as was the interstellar ship Jupiter II from Lost in Space. The submarine Seaview from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea was beautifully modeled, but not a truly drastic departure from the famed U.S. Navy nuclear submarine Nautilus.
But it would be a television space adventure series that would really remake the look of far future SF science and technology. When Gene Roddenberry managed to get Star Trek sold he had no idea what his hero ship was supposed to look like. His starting point was that he knew what he didn’t want: no rocket shapes, no fins, no trails of flaming exhaust, no flying saucer shapes and nothing remotely like what NASA could be planning. It had to look totally different, very advanced, like it had power and was from centuries in the future.
Walter M. Jefferies got the job of designing Roddenberry’s starship and subsequently much of the show’s sets and other hardware. He approached the project by developing something of a consistent logic for the ship’s design and how it was supposed to operate. He then built on that intelligent approach with an artistic license for something visually dramatic. The end result was the starship U.S.S. Enterprise.
When it flew across television screens in 1966 Jefferies’ design was totally unlike anything seen before in science fiction. Not only did it look uniquely different it was scaled differently as well—the Enterprise wasn’t a large aircraft sized vehicle usually seen in earlier SF, but was the size of a modern aircraft carrier with a crew of more than four hundred. It possessed elements already familiar to many in the viewing audience: FTL stardrive, defensive energy shields and energy weapons, artificial gravity, motion sensors and a computer system responsive to voice recognition. It also had instruments that could detect and monitor life forms and other phenomenon over vast distances. The ship’s odd configuration also suggested the idea of materials and engineering far beyond that already known. It introduced a compact communication system that functioned over thousands of miles without a supporting satellite network as well as a translation device that could convert alien languages into English. And finally it introduced a well established idea in SF literature to the mainstream television audience: the transporter, a teleportation machine that could “beam” inanimate objects as well as living beings from one point to another without a receiving apparatus on the other end. Star Trek adapted many ideas seen in Forbidden Planet a decade earlier and built on them to deliver a more convincing image of humanity in a star spanning far future.
Star Trek also followed the practice of not getting bogged down in extraneous and overly detailed explanations of how its science and technology worked. It merely showed the speculative technology in operation and let the audience’s imagination and intelligence take it from there. That in conjunction with how the Enterprise was often beautifully photographed and how the characters interacted with the technology in such a casual manner lent the whole exercise a very tangible sense of believability.
A significant visual element of the Enterprise’s design is that this massive construct was also very sleek and streamlined. This flew in the face of the growing understanding that because space is a total vacuum then a spacecraft needn’t be streamlined in any way whatsoever. It could look like an oil refinery and still function perfectly well (as evidenced in the ‘70’s films Silent Running and Alien), a fact supported by the ungainly appearance of real NASA spacecraft. But in rendering something visually dramatic Matt Jefferies may have unwittingly been conveying the idea that Star Trek’s far future society had mastered its science and technology sufficiently to the point that aesthetic considerations could be easily adopted into a sophisticated construct as a FTL interstellar starship.
Even if this is an unwitting idea it’s a wonderful one to contemplate. Because it mirrors the reality of our own familiar world. As our proficiency with a technology advances the hardware tends to adopt aesthetic considerations. It seems to be hardwired into our nature that form strictly following function often isn’t sufficient enough. Most of everything we create around us exhibit artistic attributes to evoke a sense of distinctiveness.
Star Trek sometimes faltered in its depiction of far future hardware. Yet the fault can be attributed mostly to the constraints of ‘60s era television production. The show foresaw many advanced ideas beyond the mainstream, but it didn’t foresee some things as simple as digital readouts for instrumentation—ironic considering it did foresee something like stealth technology used in combat. And even though its terminology could be dated many of its ideas would see reality: although little squares of coloured wood were referred to as record tapes they were remarkably similar in function to today’s USB flash drives.
The one unmistakable attribute of Star Trek in its depiction of far future hardware it shares with notable films that preceded it like The Day The Earth Stood Still, War Of The Worlds and Forbidden Planet: sufficient ambition to embrace big ideas beyond the mainstream. It reflected the essence of the better SF literature and brought it to the broader television audience. And its enthusiasm for the subject matter was usually tempered with intelligence in depicting the fantastic.
Sadly, just as Star Trek’s popularity was beginning to really build in the early ‘70s the U.S. space program fell to Earth…or at least low Earth orbit. Ambitious plans to possibly go on to Mars hit a wall of public and political ambivalence as well growing public disillusionment over governmental corruption. This general malaise was well reflected in popular culture in film and television. And science fiction in the visual mediums was on the verge of thinking small. Space adventure remained popular, but it wasn’t very ambitious in visual and conceptual terms. Star Trek would return, but would never really be what it once was. And in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s space adventure would get a couple of good turns (Star Trek – The Motion Picture, Alien and Aliens) even while it also got silly and conceptually cheap. And the signpost for much of what followed was Star Wars.
Star Wars showed you could do space adventure without brains. Just make it up as you go and give it a techy look. Unlike Matt Jefferies thinking his way through starship design (albeit with artistic license) the production crew of Star Wars came up with some interesting shapes and then just plastered them with plentiful amounts of various model kit parts then finished it off with some paint. The result was interesting in itself: unusual looking vehicles with something of an industrial hardware look, something like unrecognizable machine parts mated with an offshore oil rig and then scaled to spaceship size. In fairness it was a conceptually quick and rather resourceful way to come up with interesting spacecraft designs. Not surprisingly success breeds imitation and the success of the Star Wars films pretty much guaranteed that this method for designing sci-fi hardware would be copied by most everyone for a very long time to come. Indeed the Star Wars approach to hardware design is still with us and still prevalent. And generations of viewers have come of age convinced that there is no other way to depict a credible looking piece of far future hardware.
Except that there exist convincing examples that challenge this perception.
Over the years I’ve seen numerous SF book covers that have depicted very dramatic looking spacecraft that do not follow the Star Wars approach, particularly from artists like John Berkey, Vincent di Fate and Bob Eggleton. And perhaps the best film example is the refit U.S.S. Enterprise in Star Trek – The Motion Picture from 1979. Although differing in overall detail the refit Enterprise is conceptually similar to the original TV design in that it offers us an exotic and streamlined looking starship where advanced science and technology is conveyed through shape and how the vehicle is seen to operate. The design itself also subliminally conveys a sense of the future society that envisioned, designed, constructed and manned the vessel and perhaps how they see themselves and what they seek to communicate of themselves.
This idea is not new or an alien one because we see evidence of it all around us every day. All we invent is a reflection of aspects of how we see ourselves and what we wish to communicate, consciously or not. Why else would something as utterly mundane as eating utensils often exhibit artistic designs on the handles? Automobiles are far more than just vehicles of convenience. Why does fashion exist? Even things supposedly totally functional such as naval ships and jet aircraft can have aesthetic appeal.
And so if a far future society can master the science of FTL starflight, gravity and antigravity manipulation, teleportation and far more then who is to say they cannot have progressed to the point where something as massive as an interstellar starship can have aesthetic considerations incorporated into its design?
When people suggest that designs like the original Enterprise cannot look futuristic anymore I’m inclined to think they’re exhibiting a narrow perspective. Matt Jefferies’ design was constrained by the limitations of 1960s television f/x resources and not by concept. The distinction is in how you depict it.
After Star Trek few to no one (to my knowledge) have ever really attempted to forgo the Star Wars approach to SF hardware design in film and television. The sheer predominance of the Star Wars look leads me to suspect that presently few can envision it being done any other way.
In fairness even the later Star Wars films had a couple of exceptions: the royal yachts were sleek looking and evoked the '50s era sci-fi. But the most recent departure from the industrial look hasn't been live-action but 3D animation: the recent Pixar film Wall-E. The starship Axiom of the film looks like it could have jumped right off a John Berkey or Vincent di Fate SF painting. And while I'm discouraged with the redesign of the Enterprise in the forthcoming Trek XI it doesn't appear to be slavishly adherent to the industrial aesthetic.
There is something of a distinction between the approaches to hardware design of Star Trek and Star Wars. Earlier Star Trek tried to convey a sense of credibility that sprang partly from the show's overall effort to make the stories and situations dramatic and credible. They were trying to challenge accepted conventions and perceptions. Star Wars design reflects the much more arbitrary approach to storytelling and science fiction in general where a sense credibility isn't a priority.
The industrial aesthetic can be appropriate in context, such as the Alien films, but it seems to have become something of a shortcut rather than trying to be more ambitious and distinct.
Just a thought.
The general look of science fiction hardware has been an evolutionary one as much as a reflection of changing trends and general societal perspectives
It coalesces into an overall look on the covers of the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ‘30s with phallic shaped, art deco styled spacecraft and scantily clad women menaced by simplistic and (now) comical looking monsters and robots. In the 1927 film Metropolis we see examples of then conventional thinking as well as an admirable example looking beyond the general conventions of the day. The film’s flying aircraft were all propeller driven monoplanes that likely looked forward thinking at the time—given powered flight was then little more than twenty years old—but hardly stand as flying machines of a hundred years hence in which the film’s story is supposed to be set. Of course, the general public of the day could hardly have been expected to foresee jet powered aircraft. But in contrast the featured robot form of the lead female character, Maria, was very forward thinking even if likely dismissed as sheer fantasy.
In the 1940’s sci-fi spacecraft became variations of the German V2 rocket shape, an idea that prevailed well into the 1950s on magazines and book covers as well as in ‘50’s era films like Destination: Moon, When Worlds Collide and 20 Million Miles To Earth. And in the ‘50s another form of sci-fi hardware was introduced, the flying disc, inspired by the increasing number of sightings of unidentified saucer shaped objects supposedly seen in the skies and assumed to be vehicles originating from somewhere beyond Earth. The disc shape was featured most notably in films such as The Day The Earth Stood Still, Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers and Forbidden Planet. Yet it was also in the ‘50s that sci-fi hardware started to exhibit some credible sophistication beyond their elemental forms
The ‘50’s era film spacecraft began to acknowledge the reality of real science as well as extrapolate from theoretical or speculative science. The look of the hardware became somewhat more simplified and streamlined reflecting the notion that more advanced technology would indeed trend that way as it was doing in the real world. Those vehicles were beginning to reflect more closely how spacecraft were depicted in the better science fiction literature of the time.
In The Day The Earth Stood Still Klaatu’s spaceship is a very clean looking saucer with no obvious seams or surface detail and no obvious means of propulsion. Except for the one reference to atomic power the idea of how the ship operated was not offered in detailed exposition, but conveyed merely through showing it in operation. Anyone not a reader of SF literature might well have seen it as impossible magic while any fan of said literature likely would have immediately assumed the concept of advanced materials and engineering as well as the speculative science of antigravity. The clean design of the ship’s interior was also very forward thinking in going beyond obvious CRT screens, dials, levers and buttons. Klaatu operated the ships controls through hand motions and vocal command, displaying the then very advanced ideas of motion sensors and voice recognition/activation. More than fifty years on and many of the ideas in The Day The Earth Stood Still are still viable ones.
The other bit of hardware in the film is also very noteworthy even it is hampered by the costume and special effects limitations of the day. The robot Gort was an impressive execution that went beyond the usually clanking, awkward looking robots of the age. Gort could function independently guided by his own artificial intelligence. And his body looked more like a metallic “skin” rather than actual sheet metal. Apparently he could “see” without obvious eyes or cameras of any recognizable sort. What Gort lacked in execution was the f/x resources that would give us the liquid alloy of Robert Patrick’s Terminator from Terminator II thirty years later. The idea of an intelligent machine with a pliable metallic skin would have been very easy to convey in literature where you need only engage the reader’s imagination with just the right descriptive exposition, but it was beyond the f/x resources of the 1950s to depict even with a feature film budget.
Another saucer shaped spacecraft was the interstellar cruiser C57D featured in the landmark 1955 film Forbidden Planet. Again the technical references are kept spare and the concepts are conveyed mostly through depiction of operation. Again we see no obvious means of propulsion, but the audience soon understands and accepts the speculative ideas of antigravity, artificial gravity and faster-than-light space flight. We even see the idea of something of an inertia dampening field for the crew to endure the craft’s drastic deceleration from FTL. This was all very advanced for an audience who had not yet seen even an artificial satellite boosted into orbit. Yet for the readers of SF literature this was all already old hat.
Another example of the film’s hardware was Professor Morbius’ all purpose robot, Robbie. Robbie was a little more conventional looking than Gort, but he, too, exhibited an artificial intelligence as well as being able to communicate with humans in a somewhat colloquial manner. Also noteworthy was that Robbie was programmed to adhere to Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics, something not overlooked by the SF readers in the audience.
Forbidden Planet also utilized the idea of energy shields and laser weapon batteries that looked nothing like recognizable artillery guns—something already seen in 1953’s War Of The Worlds. There was also technology that could actually tap into a living mind’s thoughts. Although we never get to actually see one of the extinct Krell aliens our imaginations are engaged trying to imagine what it could possibly look like to need such odd looking doorways. And finally there is the Great Machine—vast alien engines of unknown complexity and purpose spanning across the planet and miles deep under the surface. The energy contained within the Great machine was sufficient to totally vaporize the planet when it finally ran amok and overloads.
In some respects Forbidden Planet might seem somewhat quaint by today’s standards although it was a landmark when it was released. But many of its ideas are still viable ones even if depicted differently today. And the film could arguable be said to have presaged much of what would follow in the next decade.
One notable exception to the V2 and saucer shaped vehicles of the ‘50s were the Martian war machines of 1953’s War Of The Worlds. Once again we see energy fields, antigravity propulsion and energy weapons. Yet the vehicles themselves were eerily sleek and triangular with a cobra like extension that appeared to serve as both viewing apparatus and weapons emitter. The triangular shape was the only recognizable nod to the immense tripedal walking war machines of H.G. Wells’ original Victorian era concept.
The interesting thing about many of the ideas incorporated into the more conventional looking hardware of the more notable ‘50’s era SF films were that they went beyond the awareness of mainstream society. Most of the viewing public likely dismissed these ideas as escapist fantasy while those more familiar with the concepts raised a thoughtful eyebrow of approval.
The SF hardware of the 1960s evolved away from the familiar rocket and saucer shapes and towards something often reflecting what was being conjectured for the American space program. The NASA look would culminate with the arrival of the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Although the film’s dating is off much of the hardware depicted there is still credible as what could be possible within the next century or so. 2001 is a good example of SF depicting believable spaceflight for the foreseeable future.
There were other examples of sci-fi hardware that didn’t stray too far from the familiar. The Interceptors of the British television series UFO looked very NASA derived. The alien ship in The Invaders was just another saucer as was the interstellar ship Jupiter II from Lost in Space. The submarine Seaview from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea was beautifully modeled, but not a truly drastic departure from the famed U.S. Navy nuclear submarine Nautilus.
But it would be a television space adventure series that would really remake the look of far future SF science and technology. When Gene Roddenberry managed to get Star Trek sold he had no idea what his hero ship was supposed to look like. His starting point was that he knew what he didn’t want: no rocket shapes, no fins, no trails of flaming exhaust, no flying saucer shapes and nothing remotely like what NASA could be planning. It had to look totally different, very advanced, like it had power and was from centuries in the future.
Walter M. Jefferies got the job of designing Roddenberry’s starship and subsequently much of the show’s sets and other hardware. He approached the project by developing something of a consistent logic for the ship’s design and how it was supposed to operate. He then built on that intelligent approach with an artistic license for something visually dramatic. The end result was the starship U.S.S. Enterprise.
When it flew across television screens in 1966 Jefferies’ design was totally unlike anything seen before in science fiction. Not only did it look uniquely different it was scaled differently as well—the Enterprise wasn’t a large aircraft sized vehicle usually seen in earlier SF, but was the size of a modern aircraft carrier with a crew of more than four hundred. It possessed elements already familiar to many in the viewing audience: FTL stardrive, defensive energy shields and energy weapons, artificial gravity, motion sensors and a computer system responsive to voice recognition. It also had instruments that could detect and monitor life forms and other phenomenon over vast distances. The ship’s odd configuration also suggested the idea of materials and engineering far beyond that already known. It introduced a compact communication system that functioned over thousands of miles without a supporting satellite network as well as a translation device that could convert alien languages into English. And finally it introduced a well established idea in SF literature to the mainstream television audience: the transporter, a teleportation machine that could “beam” inanimate objects as well as living beings from one point to another without a receiving apparatus on the other end. Star Trek adapted many ideas seen in Forbidden Planet a decade earlier and built on them to deliver a more convincing image of humanity in a star spanning far future.
Star Trek also followed the practice of not getting bogged down in extraneous and overly detailed explanations of how its science and technology worked. It merely showed the speculative technology in operation and let the audience’s imagination and intelligence take it from there. That in conjunction with how the Enterprise was often beautifully photographed and how the characters interacted with the technology in such a casual manner lent the whole exercise a very tangible sense of believability.
A significant visual element of the Enterprise’s design is that this massive construct was also very sleek and streamlined. This flew in the face of the growing understanding that because space is a total vacuum then a spacecraft needn’t be streamlined in any way whatsoever. It could look like an oil refinery and still function perfectly well (as evidenced in the ‘70’s films Silent Running and Alien), a fact supported by the ungainly appearance of real NASA spacecraft. But in rendering something visually dramatic Matt Jefferies may have unwittingly been conveying the idea that Star Trek’s far future society had mastered its science and technology sufficiently to the point that aesthetic considerations could be easily adopted into a sophisticated construct as a FTL interstellar starship.
Even if this is an unwitting idea it’s a wonderful one to contemplate. Because it mirrors the reality of our own familiar world. As our proficiency with a technology advances the hardware tends to adopt aesthetic considerations. It seems to be hardwired into our nature that form strictly following function often isn’t sufficient enough. Most of everything we create around us exhibit artistic attributes to evoke a sense of distinctiveness.
Star Trek sometimes faltered in its depiction of far future hardware. Yet the fault can be attributed mostly to the constraints of ‘60s era television production. The show foresaw many advanced ideas beyond the mainstream, but it didn’t foresee some things as simple as digital readouts for instrumentation—ironic considering it did foresee something like stealth technology used in combat. And even though its terminology could be dated many of its ideas would see reality: although little squares of coloured wood were referred to as record tapes they were remarkably similar in function to today’s USB flash drives.
The one unmistakable attribute of Star Trek in its depiction of far future hardware it shares with notable films that preceded it like The Day The Earth Stood Still, War Of The Worlds and Forbidden Planet: sufficient ambition to embrace big ideas beyond the mainstream. It reflected the essence of the better SF literature and brought it to the broader television audience. And its enthusiasm for the subject matter was usually tempered with intelligence in depicting the fantastic.
Sadly, just as Star Trek’s popularity was beginning to really build in the early ‘70s the U.S. space program fell to Earth…or at least low Earth orbit. Ambitious plans to possibly go on to Mars hit a wall of public and political ambivalence as well growing public disillusionment over governmental corruption. This general malaise was well reflected in popular culture in film and television. And science fiction in the visual mediums was on the verge of thinking small. Space adventure remained popular, but it wasn’t very ambitious in visual and conceptual terms. Star Trek would return, but would never really be what it once was. And in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s space adventure would get a couple of good turns (Star Trek – The Motion Picture, Alien and Aliens) even while it also got silly and conceptually cheap. And the signpost for much of what followed was Star Wars.
Star Wars showed you could do space adventure without brains. Just make it up as you go and give it a techy look. Unlike Matt Jefferies thinking his way through starship design (albeit with artistic license) the production crew of Star Wars came up with some interesting shapes and then just plastered them with plentiful amounts of various model kit parts then finished it off with some paint. The result was interesting in itself: unusual looking vehicles with something of an industrial hardware look, something like unrecognizable machine parts mated with an offshore oil rig and then scaled to spaceship size. In fairness it was a conceptually quick and rather resourceful way to come up with interesting spacecraft designs. Not surprisingly success breeds imitation and the success of the Star Wars films pretty much guaranteed that this method for designing sci-fi hardware would be copied by most everyone for a very long time to come. Indeed the Star Wars approach to hardware design is still with us and still prevalent. And generations of viewers have come of age convinced that there is no other way to depict a credible looking piece of far future hardware.
Except that there exist convincing examples that challenge this perception.
Over the years I’ve seen numerous SF book covers that have depicted very dramatic looking spacecraft that do not follow the Star Wars approach, particularly from artists like John Berkey, Vincent di Fate and Bob Eggleton. And perhaps the best film example is the refit U.S.S. Enterprise in Star Trek – The Motion Picture from 1979. Although differing in overall detail the refit Enterprise is conceptually similar to the original TV design in that it offers us an exotic and streamlined looking starship where advanced science and technology is conveyed through shape and how the vehicle is seen to operate. The design itself also subliminally conveys a sense of the future society that envisioned, designed, constructed and manned the vessel and perhaps how they see themselves and what they seek to communicate of themselves.
This idea is not new or an alien one because we see evidence of it all around us every day. All we invent is a reflection of aspects of how we see ourselves and what we wish to communicate, consciously or not. Why else would something as utterly mundane as eating utensils often exhibit artistic designs on the handles? Automobiles are far more than just vehicles of convenience. Why does fashion exist? Even things supposedly totally functional such as naval ships and jet aircraft can have aesthetic appeal.
And so if a far future society can master the science of FTL starflight, gravity and antigravity manipulation, teleportation and far more then who is to say they cannot have progressed to the point where something as massive as an interstellar starship can have aesthetic considerations incorporated into its design?
When people suggest that designs like the original Enterprise cannot look futuristic anymore I’m inclined to think they’re exhibiting a narrow perspective. Matt Jefferies’ design was constrained by the limitations of 1960s television f/x resources and not by concept. The distinction is in how you depict it.
After Star Trek few to no one (to my knowledge) have ever really attempted to forgo the Star Wars approach to SF hardware design in film and television. The sheer predominance of the Star Wars look leads me to suspect that presently few can envision it being done any other way.
In fairness even the later Star Wars films had a couple of exceptions: the royal yachts were sleek looking and evoked the '50s era sci-fi. But the most recent departure from the industrial look hasn't been live-action but 3D animation: the recent Pixar film Wall-E. The starship Axiom of the film looks like it could have jumped right off a John Berkey or Vincent di Fate SF painting. And while I'm discouraged with the redesign of the Enterprise in the forthcoming Trek XI it doesn't appear to be slavishly adherent to the industrial aesthetic.
There is something of a distinction between the approaches to hardware design of Star Trek and Star Wars. Earlier Star Trek tried to convey a sense of credibility that sprang partly from the show's overall effort to make the stories and situations dramatic and credible. They were trying to challenge accepted conventions and perceptions. Star Wars design reflects the much more arbitrary approach to storytelling and science fiction in general where a sense credibility isn't a priority.
The industrial aesthetic can be appropriate in context, such as the Alien films, but it seems to have become something of a shortcut rather than trying to be more ambitious and distinct.
Just a thought.
Last edited:
How long did it take you to think of and write this?
) ships in science fiction. That coupled with it based in modern Earth with our people doing the fighting makes it one of the successful sci-fi series next to Trek and Wars.
