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Other cool gear
Return of the Jedi speeder bikes – this film sequence is phenomenal featuring some of the most exciting sound design I’ve ever heard. I listen to this on my iPod when I’m travelling around London and it just gets my blood pumping.
ROTJ Biker Scouts. I still want to be a biker scout and have daydreams about hammering around Endor on a speeder bike and capturing Leia.
Bruce Dern plays poker with a drone
in Silent Running
The Drones in Silent Running. Some of the most charismatic faceless plastic boxes ever to hit the screen. Truly remarkable how much you ended up caring about these little robots.
Pulse rifle from Aliens. Shit yeah.
Deckard’s blaster from Blade Runner. Again, always on my desk.
Original New Hope Stormtrooper helmet. Again, always on my desk. At least until my biker scout helmet turns up.
Worst: Nell, the ship flown by John Boy Walton in Battle Beyond The Stars. I always hated the look of this stupid slug looking thing. It has no practical reason for being this shape and it just stinks of somebody trying to do something different for different’s sake. No.
Re-designed Red Dwarf. The original was so gorgeous I just wish they’d left it alone. I know the reason for this was outlined in the story but I really didn’t need to see it all long like that. It made me sad.
Trade Federation Droid Fighters from The Phantom Menace. This annoyed me for the same reason the cylon raiders from the new BSG annoyed me. Just don’t give a vehicle an actual face, it looks stupid and far less imposing as a weapon.
UFO Interceptors from UFO. The producers of this show missed a trick rejecting the original design by Mike Trim which was loads better than the one they went with.
The hover scooters from Thunderbirds – these always annoyed me. There was no visual clues whatsoever to show how they worked and even as a little kid this sort of lack of visual explanation on fantasy technology used to really put me off. They just floated around like little magic silver chairs with handlebars. Really let the side down compared to all the other cool tech and vehicles in there…
Minority Report finger touch-screens. As if you could do a day’s work like this. It’s basically a fancy interface for browsing photo galleries. ®
For more of Gavin’s fascinating opinions on all things science-fictional be sure to visit his blog http://www.gavinrothery.com/my-blog/ or follow him on Twitter @gavrov
COMMENTS
Thunderbirds hover scooters - "no visual clues whatsoever to show how they worked"
Well, except when you could see the occasional string....
B5 ships are among the best ever!
Babylon5: The first TV series to use CGI for everything that was not a physical set with actors.
It may have only been a few years before Voyager, but computers were improving at an incredibal rate and B5 was on a fraction of the budget.
The Starfury was just so practical looking.
The Vorlon organic living ships, plus the Shadow vesals designed to just look nasty.
The earth destroyers though very much like the ship from Alians you saw a lot more of them in B5, and the spinning center sections for fake gravity.
The WhiteStars and other Mimbari ships were all excelent, though the WhiteStars always made me think a plicked chicken for some reasn. The hugh crusers that looked like giant Angel Fish were something special.
Also the idea behind the PPG (hand gun) was also excelent: fire a plasma bolt that can burn flesh but was very unlikely to puncture the hull. You don't want a lead slug thrower inside a space ship!
Dude! What about the Liberator from Blake's Seven?
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/334/c/e/blakes_7_liberator_by_taranis69-d33xw75.jpg
/Seriously/ :)
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