One of the coolest things about science fiction is the fact that its ultimately judged by how far it pushes the limits of our imagination. It's quite a pure medium in that way: if you fail to elicit "oohs" and "aahs," then your art was unsuccessful. Like a baker's chocolate chip cookies, the enemy's spacecraft is perhaps the single most significant barometer of a sci-fi flick's inventiveness. How indestructible, how injurious, how awe-inspiringly massive can their alien technology be? Here's a list of some enemy spacecraft that have truly wowed us:
7- The Reaver Warship
Joss Whedon's Serenity/Firefly enterprise birthed the baddest baddies, the Reavers. These chemically-deranged former humans rape, eviscerate, peel your flesh, and eventually kill you after the horrors of the preceding have fully sunk in. These are the sketchiest villains in the galaxy, which makes it all the more appropriate that they cart themselves around in a haphazard fleet of stolen warships. And boy are they a doozy: radiation-poisoned, dented and scarred from kamikaze-esque battle maneuvers, and decorated in the limbs and blood of their victims. Geez, Joss--you're almost taking the fun out of it. Here's the climactic 3-sided dogfight between the Reaver armada, the good guys, and the guys who think they're the good guys:
6- The Executor
In The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader spends the entire course of the film chasing Han Solo and Co. in this Super-Star Destroyer. If you're wondering why the Death Star didn't make the cut, it's because it's a space station not a spacecraft. Though that's a technicality, I've always been more impressed by the surliness of this ship. Imagining that it actually moves through space at warp speed is nearly inconceivable (except for the fact that it's all made up, of course). As there are no appreciable space battles in Episode V, The Executor becomes a symbol of intimidation. It casts a bleak shadow on the preceding episode's new hope as the backdrop for psychic asphyxiation and bounty hunter negotiations. Here it is casting a literal shadow over what you thought was the biggest ship in the fleet:
5- The Event Horizon
Hey, did you know Sam Neill covered in bloody scars is about the scariest thing you'll ever see? A well-meaning rescue crew (this is sci-fi horror's counterpart to terrestrial horror's teenage-couple-making-out) investigates a freighter ship that becomes a house of horrors. A sinister gyre (to create gravity, duh), waves of blood, lakes of fire, and chicks with gouged-out eyes populate this immense lonely craft and torment our protagonists. Even without these visions to complicate things, the Event Horizon's interior is sadistic to say the least; the core appears to be affixed with impaling spears, mechanical claws, and other things that seem way too unsafe for an exploration vessel. Below is the film's probably NSFW and kinda scary crescendo with the inevitable baroque evil ship explosion sequence. Sorry for spoilers but, come on...1997?
4- The Borg Cube
@Star_Wars--sorry but this is a spacecraft AND a space station. Able to travel at speeds faster than the Federation's flimsy warp drives, this metallic behemoth (29 cubic km in volume! I love real/fake sci-fi stats) is a battleship and home away from home for the hive-minded Borg Collective. Tractor beams, laser cannons, and even a laser slicing tool (hull breach!) all serve this beast well but on top of that, its defenses are infinitely adaptable to attack. Damn, it's good to be a Borg. It's even better to be a reformed Borg who now knows how to hit back where it hurts:
3- The Ship from Independence Day
ID gets no love at Sci-Fi High; the 90s blockbuster plays the popular jock next to Star Trek's honors student high concepts. Yet the stunning depiction of the alien destroyer crafts that hover ominously over various global hot spots essentially does all the talking for this patriotic action flick. These stoic, indestructible, massive discs that eclipsed major cities are the main characters of the film. Indeed the ships are so epic that they just sit immobile for the first 20 minutes or so of the film. After each ship unleashes a laser cannon whose one shot can level an entire city, they continue to just stay there. This is like a guy who sits at the bar drinking his drink while you get all riled up, effortlessly kicks your ass, and then calmly sits down to finish his drink and hey, look the game's on, let's watch that. Below is a pretty decent montage of battle clips from ID4 with Iron Maiden's "Aces High" as the soundtrack. Ahh, YouTube. Anybody want a beer?
2- Unicron
Not sure how the 1986 animated film version of Transformers manages to be a darker and more realistic film than the 2007 live action version but if you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor. The main adversary in this one is a massive Transformer known as Unicron. As a robot (action figure mode?) he dwarfs any Autobot or Decepticon. When he transforms he takes the shape of a massive planet with a Saturnian ring and two great tusks. Actually he looks like the Death Star with a vagina dentata. Anyway, Unicron's whole raison d'etre is to trap entire planets with his tractor beam and eat them. Here he is doing his thing (that robot crying out at the end breaks my heart every time, no shit):
1- The Narada
Every doubt I had about the quality of the recent Star Trek reboot film was instantly quelled upon witnessing the ludicrously violent bundle of metal shards that constitutes the Romulan mining ship Narada. This has got to be hands-down the gnarliest spacecraft in sci-fi film history; it hurts just to look at it. Production Designer Scott Chambliss took one part Gaudí architecture and two parts exploding metal zeppelin to create a ship that screams "here are the bad guys" while representing a wholly unique visual contribution to the ST universe. It's main weapon? A gazillion-story-long drill that descends from the ship onto a planet's surface to plow towards the core--so brutal. The cherry on top was the ship's debut, busting through a crack in timespace:
