History Main / SpaceShipGirl

Throughout history, many countries have always referred to ships and other seafaring vessels as "she." This even applies to ships named after men (e.g., the USS ''Ronald Reagan''). These traditions continued with [[TheSkyIsAnOcean the development of aircraft]], and the metaphor (in fiction at least) has also been extended to space travel.

* ''Manga/ArpeggioOfBlueSteel'' does this with actual naval ships, though the technology in said ships rivals that of most spaceships which would feature this trope. Interestingly, when one of the human characters actually inquires about why all of the ships feature female avatars the mental model he's talking to states that humans have always referred to ships as "female", [[HandWave so logically they would be represented that way]]. See the Real Life entry for further details.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* As mentioned in the introduction, the British, Americans, and other English-speaking nations have for hundreds of years referred to their ships as a "she." More to the point, during the [[WoodenShipsAndIronMen Age of Sail]] it was not uncommon at all for sailors and captains to view their ships as living members of the crew, with distinct personalities--providing a historical foundation for this trope. Naval historians like Ian W. Toll have related accounts where captains would carry on conversations with their ships. One such captain was reputed to have said that "a ship can do everything but talk, and sometimes she can do even that."
** The tradition of extending personification to aircraft is more visible with actual air''ships'' than it is air''planes''--the United States Navy, for example, used to have two airships that acted as {{Airborne Aircraft Carrier}}s, the USS ''Akron'' and ''Macon''. Both were treated as if they were naval ships, right down to referring to them as female.
* Other cultures have different traditions when it comes to giving ships a gender, if they do. Some consider ships male instead of female, while others have even more specific guidelines.
** Among Russians, the rule is to "use the pronoun (adjective, past tense form) that is grammatically correct." Therefore, the ship's gender can vary according to way the ship is referred. For example, the missile cruiser ''Moskva'' is considered female, but is male if referred to as a cruiser. The Oscar-class submersible cruiser ''Tomsk'' is male, but female if called a submarine. The research vessel ''Vityaz'' is male, but is neuter if referred to as a vessel.
** The German Kriegsmarine averts this trope with the battleship Bismarck. Admiral Erich Raeder insisted the Bismarck be designated as a 'male' vessel at all times. Doesn't stop modern Germans from (incorrectly) referring to that ship as a "she" every time it is mentioned (unless they're history buffs, of course).
** In Italy, a ship's gender is considered male if it belongs to the military navy and female if it is, instead, a civil ship
* Many commercial and military systems (such as GPS devices or collision/altitude alarms aboard aircraft) are female voiced--which will likely result in female avatars and [=AI=]s when technology reaches that point. [[JustifiedTrope It's not simply for aesthetic reasons]], either: research by the United States Air Force has demonstrated that a female voice is easier to hear and understand under high stress situations (such as air combat).
** Later research has been contradictory on this point, however--one study claims that a CreepyMonotone may have a better chance of recognition and understanding than a female voice.
** Other research has claimed that female voices feel "safer" to listeners, but that this may be because HAL from ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' and other evil AI having soured the general public on male voiced computers through PopCulturalOsmosis.
** Since ScienceMarchesOn, there is now a new consensus on the reason that a female voice sounds "safer", and that is due to us being used to female voices because of the long time spent in the womb. Tests on babies have somewhat reliably confirmed that they react with more brain activity to the voice of their mother than they do to their father's (or any other men, and about two thirds of unrelated women) and this trait never disappears.
** Concerning aircraft alarm systems, these are sometimes nicknamed "Bitching Betty" by pilots in North America (or "Barking Bob" if the system is male voiced).
[[/folder]]

* In JimButcher's CinderSpires, Captain Grimm's ship ''Predator'' is revealed to be at least semi-sentient, though only once awakened by an Etherealist.

* In ''Literature/AncillaryJustice'', main character "Breq" is technically One Esk Nineteen, a MeatPuppet soldier carrying the last fragment of the consciousness of the starship ''Justice of Toren''. Note that Breq may not actually be an example of this trope because she lives in a society that does not distinguish between sexes and uses the female pronoun for everyone by default -- her actual gender remains unrevealed.

** The series began with ''The Ship Who Sang'', with female protagonist Helva.
** ''The Ship Who Searched'', co-written with Creator/MercedesLackey, [[spoiler:featured a brainship who financed the creation of a remote-operated android accessory so she could be her human partner's... [[{{Robosexual}} partner]]]].

** The episode ''The Doctor's Wife'' all but confirms that the TARDIS is indeed sentient and female. (Guess who his "wife" is.) The 'soul' of the TARDIS in the body of a human gets to actually walk around (and it is as CrazyAwesome as you'd expect.)

* Starwalker (aka Starry) in ''Website/{{Starwalker}}''. She uses a holographic avatar of [[spoiler: the woman she used to be. AI ships are common in the story but she's unusual in having a personality.]]

Throughout history, English-speaking countries have always referred to ships and other seafaring vessels as "she." This even applies to ships named after men (e.g., the USS ''Ronald Reagan''). These traditions continued with [[TheSkyIsAnOcean the development of aircraft]], and the metaphor (in fiction at least) has also been extended to space travel.

** In Series X, the crew members install a new ship's AI for Red Dwarf named Pree, whose avatar is a pretty young woman with facial tattoos. Unfortunately she's programmed to anticipate and immediately enact the senior officer's decisions, which happens to be Rimmer.

** "Alice" in the episode of the same name. To a [[ClingyJealousGirl very]] [[StalkerWithACrush uncomfortable]] [[AxCrazy extent]].

** "Alice" in. To a [[ClingyJealousGirl very]] [[StalkerWithACrush uncomfortable]] [[AxCrazy extent]].

* There was an episode of the ''Buck Rogers'' where Col. Deering had to deal with an onboard computer in a criminal's ship with a bitchy female personality, eventually Wilma dealt with the problem by physically tearing out the CPU.

* Holly, the AI interface aboard the ''Series/RedDwarf'', starts off as male but undergoes a virtual-sex change (as part of an [[TheNthDoctor Nth Doctor shift]]) between the second and third series. She disappears after series five along with the ship itself, and the male Holly returns at the end of series seven (twofold! The ship is actually a nanite recreation of the ship and its crew from a time before the accident, so its Holly serves Captain Hollister and has no relationship with the Boys from the 'Dwarf. The version of Holly on the watch Lister found, on the other hand, knows them but is suffering from 'computer senility' and is a bit less useful than Holly of old.

* In an episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', an "upgrade" to the ''Enterprise'''s computer causes it to start talking flirtatiously and calling the captain "Dear". Kirk said that the folks the repairs had been outsourced to thought the computer needed a personality, "so they gave it one." Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration and Series/StarTrekVoyager both had female voices for the ships computer- logical, since they were voiced by Gene Roddenberry's wife. The ships were never completely sentient, with a possible exception in TNG "Emergence".

** Captain Kirk once bemoaned the fact that although the ''Enterprise'' wasn't a woman, it [[CargoShip took the place of one in his life]]: "Now I know why it's called 'she'."
*** In the TOS episode "Elaan of Troyius" the women of the planet Elas have tears that make every man the tears touch fall madly in love with them. Kirk is infected, but okay by the end of the episode. Spock explains what happened: "The antidote to a woman of Elas, Doctor, is a starship. The Enterprise infected the captain long before the Dohlman did."
** "Alice" in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. To a [[ClingyJealousGirl very]] [[StalkerWithACrush uncomfortable]] [[AxCrazy extent]].
*** There was a similar episode where B'Elanna had to persuade a rogue Interplanetary Missile Girl that it was [[ColonyDrop targeting a noncombatant world]]. It wasn't just any girl, either - she'd reprogrammed it herself, and given it her own voice (the old voice was a Cardassian male which annoyed her).
* In ''Series/{{Firefly}}'', River says she has merged with ''Serenity''. [[spoiler:This is subverted when it turns out to have been a ploy to get the crew out of a rather dire situation.]]

* In ''Series/DoctorWho'', the Doctor has always called the TARDIS "she" and insisted to companions that she is sentient; the new series in particular has gone full-tilt into Doctor/TARDIS {{RoboShip}}ping.

* In the Buffyverse fanfic ''FanFic/Ship of the Line: An Unquenchable Fire'', A cataclysmic version of the Halloween reality-shifting event creates a perfect, functional duplicate of the Executor, Darth Vader's enormous flagship from The Empire Strikes Back, hovering several thousand kilometers directly over Sunnydale. When Buffy (whose personality has been altered by her costume to be an amalgamation of herself and Vader) finds herself aboard the ship and entirely alone, she finds a way to load her dead sister's personality matrix into the ship's computers. This results in the full destructive power of an Imperial Super-Dreadnought resting in the holographic hands of an eleven-year-old girl. Earth's military quickly regrets lobbing a pair of nuclear devices at the 'invading' starship.

* A variation of this was done in {{Vandread}} with the character of Bart. Though he just [[{{Synchronization}} synchronizes]] with ''Nirvana'', not ''becomes'' her.

* Titania from StarshipTitanic, who's sorry about the parrot, really she is. Her creator, Leovinus, is seriously in love with her.

* ''Manga/OutlawStar'': Melfina, who seems at first to be a shy teenage girl, is soon revealed to be the living navigation system for a very advanced starship. The rest of the ship's functions, however, are controlled by Gilliam II, the ship's male computer system.

* Post-BrainUploading, Samus' former CO Adam in ''MetroidFusion'' is another spaceship guy, although it takes a little while for her to [[SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay realise]] that it's actually him. Made a little awkward by the later revelation in ''VideoGame/MetroidOtherM'' that he was something of a father figure to her when he was alive; now she has a ship for a dad.

* SARA from {{Toonami}} controls the Absolution.

* ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'' and the titular starship, with her holographic and robotic avatars: Rommie, the ship's AI given an android body. The ship's AI also looks like Rommie, though the two became separate characters to a degree. Most of the High Guard ships of her class seen in the series had female avatars (with the explanation being that humans and a number of other species prefer female avatars), though we have had several on-screen examples of male [=AIs=], usually portrayed by someone who appeared on ''Series/StargateSG1'' or ''HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'' (interestingly, they also tend to be the ones who end up being avatars of more than one ship, either because the AI switches ships or because a new AI is given a deceased AI's appearance).

* EveOnline gives us AURA, the universal AI that acts as the (feminine) voice for your ship. Or rather, every ship, regardless of who is flying it. It's a bit disconcerting to have any ship from a harmless shuttle to a fleet-destroying Titan talk to you in the same calm, female voice.

* SARA from {{Toonami}} controls the Absolution, or at least she did until they both [[BrotherChuck inexplicably disappeared]].
** As of April 27, 2013, [[TheBusCameBack She made her triumphant return!]]
* Only tangentially related, but too funny not to mention: Captain Star of ''WesternAnimation/CaptainStar'' insists that his ship the ''Boiling Hell'' is a he.