| 1 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1382137962015735700 |
| 2 | %% Please do not replace or remove without starting a new thread. |
| 3 | %% |
| 4 | [[quoteright:350:[[Film/StarTrek2009 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/startrek_eldritchstarship_4544.png]]]] |
| 5 | [[caption-width-right:350:One gets the impression the movie's production designers would have rather made a ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' movie instead...]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | ->''"...something astonishing and strange had happened to Volyova’s ship. The ship had remade itself into a festering gothic caricature of what a starship ought to look like... He had heard of ships being infected with the Melding Plague... but he had never heard of a ship becoming so thoroughly perverted as this one while still, so far as he could tell, being able to continue functioning as a ship."'' |
| 8 | -->-- Clavain describing the ''Nostalgia For Infinity'', ''[[Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries Redemption Ark]]'' |
| 9 | |
| 10 | The polar opposite of StandardHumanSpaceship, and alien beyond even the smooth lines and flashy colors of the StandardAlienSpaceship, these are spacecraft, time machines, and/or interdimensional vehicles whose weirdness goes beyond LivingShip into the mobile version of an EldritchLocation. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | The milder form of this usually begins with BiggerOnTheInside or [[DimensionalTraveler dimensionally transcendent]] in some way other than bog-standard FasterThanLightTravel, and it only grows weirder from that point on. May involve BodyHorror or invoke elements of CosmicHorrorStory. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | They might be constructed out of unconventional materials (or powered by them), be [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence connected to higher levels of reality]], or have an exceptionally UnusualUserInterface or [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} an otherworldly interior]] whose AlienGeometries look like they were designed by Creator/MCEscher. There's no guarantee that the crew or the ship itself won't [[MobileMaze change its interiors]] (or even [[TransformingVehicle its exterior]]) from time to time. Frequently they are a GeniusLoci or function as a SettingAsACharacter. These are, in essence, "Starfish" Starships -- ships based on {{Starfish Alien|s}} technology -- whose conceptual design and performance seem to defy the very laws of physics. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | Note that this trope is mostly a matter of function rather than form: even a ship that superficially looks like a FlyingCutlerySpaceship, a Lovecraftian mass of antennae and spikes, can still be physically possible, and thus not necessarily this trope. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | For other Lovecraftian perversions of metallurgy, see MechanicalAbomination, with which this trope is known to overlap. May also overlap with CoolStarship. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | ---- |
| 21 | !!Examples: |
| 22 | |
| 23 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 24 | |
| 25 | [[folder:Anime and Manga]] |
| 26 | * In ''Anime/{{Geneshaft}}'', alien constructs called 'rings' appear in space. From a distance they look like giant golden wedding rings, but this is just a protective barrier of quantum coherent matter. Underneath they are made of a gray material that is like smooth stone, but it 'seems organic' to the astronauts landing on it. |
| 27 | * The Anti-Spirals of ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' utilize very odd kinds of ships, the Mugann. In-universe, their strangeness was due largely to the fact that they didn't have faces, but they were designed quite oddly regardless, being animated in 3D rather than the 2D style of the rest of the show and appearing like artificial EnergyBeings. They also explode into explosive geometric prisms when destroyed. Later, the Anti-Spirals graduate to using spacecraft shaped like hands (Hastagry) and feet (Pada) with human faces on their palms and ankles, with capital ships (Ashtanga) that are one gigantic mass of faces and arms. |
| 28 | * In ''Manga/{{Guyver}}'', it turns out that the relics beneath the various Chronos headquarters are bizarre starships operable by Guyver-unit-wearing pilots. Oh, and their escape pods give the attached Guyver a SuperMode. |
| 29 | * The more advanced starships of the ''Anime/TenchiMuyo'' series are all about this. Juraian ships have cores that are BiggerOnTheInside, and the ships themselves are powered by a tree. Ryo-Ohki, the most feared [[SpacePirate pirate]] ship in the galaxy, is an artificial LivingShip made of crystal with a [[SpikesOfVillainy spiky and sleek]] body. She is also a VoluntaryShapeshifter, capable of turning into a cute cat/rabbit animal or a cute furry young girl. The [[SpacePolice Galaxy Police]] and other powers have more conventionally built, if sleek, spaceships. |
| 30 | * ''Literature/LostUniverse'': The "Lost Ships" are a bunch of ships made of super-advanced LostTechnology -- the BigBad Black Star fits here because of just how ''alien'' it is (with a Take Over The Universe or Kill Everybody Trying A.I. mentality) and the hero's ship "Swordbreaker" is one of these, retrieved by Kane Blueriver's grandma from places unknown and implied to have been modified greatly in order to remove the more "eldritch" parts of it (and even then, a couple of episodes' conflict occurs because of said parts acting up, doing stuff like turning all of the corridors within the ship into an ever-changing maze). |
| 31 | * The Turn X from ''Anime/TurnAGundam'' has a ''very'' unconventional design unlike any other mobile suits in the franchise. It looks humanoid, but with exposed and fragmented look, high heeled and hoof-like foot, and assymmetrical back. And lore wise, the {{Precursors}} ''found'' Turn X and reverse-engineered it, resulting in Turn A. Even the X is thought to express its alien origin. |
| 32 | [[/folder]] |
| 33 | |
| 34 | [[folder:Film — Live-Action]] |
| 35 | * It's no longer flying, but the derelict in ''Film/{{Alien}}'' would qualify. The ship is estimated by the crew of ''Nostromo'' to be [[TimeAbyss thousands of years old]], and looms over the already nightmarish landscape like a vast flying buttress. In sharp contrast to the StandardHumanSpaceship ''Nostromo'', with her utilitarian, industrial lines and almost dieselpunk details, the derelict seems almost organic, with its sweeping, assymetrical shape and apparently biomechanical design, seemingly including bones and other organic structures, to the point that Kane proposes that it may have been grown, not made. That, and the fact that it has been abandoned for those thousands of years, with the mangled, decayed body of the already unnerving 'Space Jockey' who flew it and seems to be a part of it. Most importantly, its deadly cargo of biological weapons in the form of leathery eggs which kicks off the rest of the film. The dark, misty ambience of LV-426 contributes to the effect. Being designed by Creator/HRGiger, one of the premier surrealist artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, also pushes it up to "Eldritch" levels. It also appears in ''Film/{{Prometheus}}''. |
| 36 | * ''Film/BloodMachines'': |
| 37 | ** The Mima was implied to have been [[OrganicTechnology a living creature]] that was just a part of the crew as the voyagers that flew it. After it "dies", the crew enact a funerary ritual in its honor that causes an eclipse-like event that results in the birth of a god-like being. |
| 38 | ** Vascan and Lago's ship shoots down Mima in the beginning is designed not unlike a monster. The deck's visors look like the eyes of an insect, the "arms" of the ship have feelers like a deep-sea creature and when its deck opens, it looks like the maw of a predator, including a set of viper-like fangs. |
| 39 | ** [[spoiler:At the end of the movie, the DerelictGraveyard all merge into a GiantWoman that Corey controls by dancing with a harem of entities.]] |
| 40 | * The bubble-like spacecraft in ''Film/TheFountain'', which contained an island-like structure centered around the roots of a tree. |
| 41 | * The spherical, iPod-like starships used by Garry Shandling's character (and the other humanoid DittoAliens) in ''Film/WhatPlanetAreYouFrom'' The simple, striking design of these small ships perfectly reflected the stagnant, conformist culture on the main character's home planet. |
| 42 | * V'Ger from ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'': an enormous, self-aware machine that literally absorbs ships, space stations, entire planets and even spatial phenomena and stores them inside its complex memory, and is surrounded by an energy cloud that is 2 Astronomical Units across (or [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale 82 AUs]], depending on which version of the movie you watch). |
| 43 | * The "Whale Probe" in ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'': an unmanned, gigantic textured cylinder with a smaller spherical section held in an energy beam. Comes to 23rd Century Earth and sends a communications signal that threatens to destroy Earth's environment until it's finally able to talk to two [[TimeTravel temporally-displaced]] humpback whales. It's implied that an intelligent cetacean species built the Probe. |
| 44 | * ''Film/StarTrek2009'': The ''Narada'', especially when its backstory is explained. It was originally a mining ship, but [[http://why-sci.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/worm1.png looks like it came out of a Lovecraftian story]], with the firepower to match. ExpandedUniverse has explained it was once [[https://66.media.tumblr.com/80a9afaaa3e91ee04729420799ebf969/tumblr_oa2rtjNECr1vzxr0no2_1280.jpg a more humble spacecraft]], but it took on its new horrifying appearance and capabilities after its crew stole reverse-engineered Borg technology. It's also a GeniusLoci because like the reverse-engineered Borg tech and its kinship with V'Ger, it's referenced only in supplementary materials. |
| 45 | * A mild example is the ship from ''Film/FlightOfTheNavigator''. The landing gear consists of a section of the ship that morphs to form a door and steps, as seen [[http://www.geeksofdoom.com/2009/05/26/flight-of-the-navigator-to-get-the-remake-treatment/2009-05-26-flight_of_the_navigator/ here]]. Also, the front of the ship similarly morphs to form a more aerodynamic shape for supersonic flight. |
| 46 | * The eponymous ''Film/EventHorizon'', in its mutated, EldritchAbomination form, ''definitely'' counts. A vessel warped into a tortured consciousness by exposure to a [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace hellish extradimensional realm]]. The interior design of the ship has [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} odd cybergothic architecture]], including an extremely strange "central core" and the "meat grinder corridor" leading to it, as well as numerous spikes and other elements (some of which, like the "meat grinder corridor," are handwaved as being essential to the ship's operation) that combine to make a rather terrifying aesthetic. It's definitely one of the weirdest human-designed ships on this list, even before being [[spoiler: possessed by extradimensional evil]]. It's also one of the closest examples on this list to an ISOStandardHumanSpaceship, despite being simultaneously ''this'' trope. |
| 47 | * ''Film/Dune1984'': The Guild Heighliner, as in the book, is a gigantic mostly hollow FTL-capable starship piloted by spice-mutated psychic Guild Navigators that carries other ships within it for a fee. |
| 48 | ** [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20061228072219/scifi/images/d/d4/Guild_Heighliner.jpg Here]] is the Guild Heighliner from the film. [[http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071006063412/dune/images/7/79/Guild-Heighliner.jpg Here]] is one from the mini-series. The latter has two counter-rotating hulls joined in the middle. |
| 49 | * The 2021's ''Film/{{Dune|2021}}'' adaptation has Heighliners look like long hollow tubes, which may or may not act as portals (the director deliberately revealed as little as possible about how they function). |
| 50 | * ''Film/TenCloverfieldLane'': The [[AmbiguousRobots biomechanical]] alien patrol craft at the end, which acts more like a beast with armor plating than a ship. |
| 51 | * ''Film/Lifeforce1985'': The [[OurVampiresAreDifferent space vampires]]'s spaceship utterly dwarfs the space shuttle that finds it in Halley's Comet's trail, seems to take its design cues from a vampire squid crossed with a freakish plant, and it's implied to be the GreaterScopeVillain who sent the space vampires to Earth to start a ZombieApocalypse so it could feed on humans' [[TitleDrop life force]]. |
| 52 | [[/folder]] |
| 53 | |
| 54 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 55 | * The ''Rorschach'' in ''Literature/{{Blindsight}}'' is described as resembling "an object that embodies the very notion of torture, so wrenched and disfigured... that you can't help but feel the entire structure is in pain." Not only that, but every part of it is absolutely deadly. It gives off powerful magnetic fields that induce horrifying hallucinations and delusions in the people who explore it, as well as high levels of lethal radiation which would kill any human within seconds without a Faraday suit and within hours ''with'' one. It's inhabited by [[StarfishAliens starfish-like]] creatures called "scramblers", which are many times more intelligent than humans, but lack any sort of self-awareness, acting like white blood cells in a human body. Indeed, it's implied that the ''Rorschach'' itself may be alive on some level. |
| 56 | * ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'': Guild Heighliners are gigantic, mostly hollow FTL-capable starship piloted by spice-mutated psychic Guild Navigators that carry other ships within them for a fee. |
| 57 | * In ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'', the [[RecursivePrecursors Precursor]] Star Roads described in ''Literature/TheForerunnerSaga'' are just plain ''bizarre''. They are gigantic, multi-kilometer thick "cables" of neural physics that are practically invincible and form superstructures around planets or even entire star systems. When weaponized, they are capable of superluminal movement in a way even the [[{{Precursors}} Forerunners]] did not understand, can mess up Slipspace and make it unnavigable, and are capable of ripping apart fleets or even entire planets through gravity manipulation. They are also theorized to be capable of physically moving stars if used in the right manner. [[spoiler:All the Star Roads in the Milky Way were annihilated by the Halo Array 100,000 years ago, however, they are known to exist in other galaxies as well...]] |
| 58 | * The [[{{Precursors}} Heechee]] ships in Frederik Pohl's ''Literature/HeecheeSaga'' have FTL technology that baffles human understanding and so can only be sent on pre-programmed journeys. Most of them don't return, and some that do return come back with their crews killed in various horrifying ways. They're also designed for nonhumanoids to operate, meaning that while humans can tolerate living inside one for several weeks or months, it's not very comfortable, and supplies and free space are at a premium. Human explorers found a cache of them on Venus, which led to another cache being discovered on an asteroid called "Gateway". |
| 59 | * Practically a RunningGag in ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''. |
| 60 | ** Any ship with the [[MacGuffin Infinite Improbability Drive]] becomes one of these while it's active. |
| 61 | ** A later book in the series features a ship which runs on "Bistromathics" (i.e. takes advantage of the strange way numbers work on a restaurant bill) and is thus set up like a restaurant, complete with robotic patrons and waiters. |
| 62 | *** More than just the strange way numbers work on the bill, but all numbers in a restaurant. Snap a breadstick in the wrong place and you'll find yourself plummeting into a star. [[http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Bistromathics Read all about the non-absoluteness of numbers in restaurants here]], it's far too long to try and give a simple quote. |
| 63 | * [[StarfishAliens Outsider]] starships in Larry Niven's ''Literature/KnownSpace'' setting are spindly webs of material the size of small cities (in fact, they are the only place where Outsiders are known to live, spending most of their time in interstellar space following ''[[SpaceWhale Starseeds]]'' for reasons they refuse to tell anyone). The ships use an advanced reactionless drive which can accelerate/decelerate to a large fraction of the speed of light in moments without injuring the physically fragile crew (the Outsiders have hyperdrive, and sold the technology to humans, but [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace they refrain from using it themselves]]). The ships have no interior besides a few small rooms that can be pressurized for alien guests; the Outsiders [[BizarreAlienBiology live in the vacuum of space and ''eat'' by placing one end of their body in sunlight and another in shadow to generate thermoelectricity]]. To survive the long trips between stars, Outsider ships have an artificial sun, with the many spires of the ship casting shadows so that the crew can feed. |
| 64 | * ''Adulthood Rites,'' the second book of ''Literature/LilithsBrood'', has several chapters take place aboard the Oankali starship in orbit above post-apocalyptic Earth. The Oankali do not build tools; they grow them. Everything in the ship is alive, with its overall function somewhere between an enormous body with specialized organs and a colony for genetically engineered symbiotic organisms. Communication is handled via sensory tentacles common to all Oankali forms, allowing the ship and all its occupants to directly link their nervous systems together. This also explains how the Oankali's non-hierarchal society works: important decisions are reached via consensus, using their ship's ability to meld all their minds together. |
| 65 | ** It's also worth noting that the ship is in the process of budding into a second ship. The Oankali seen in ''Dawn'' have been deliberately designed to be [[AFormYouAreComfortableWith capable of communicating and interacting with humans]]. In order to avoid stagnation, whenever the Oankali interbreed with another species, they split, with one group absorbing the new genetics and the other remaining unaltered. The unaltered group in the books are called the Ak'jai, and they resemble enormous caterpillars whose sensory tentacles are nested among their legs. Despite these radically different forms (Ak'jai have no organs capable of verbal communication), the Ak'jai can communicate perfectly fine with other Oankali via the ship's neural connection. |
| 66 | * ''[[Literature/TheSpaceTrilogy Perelandra]]'' by Creator/CSLewis begins with Ransom entering a silver coffin powered by a god which envelops him and flies to Venus. The experience is so strange that it affects his views on sex, food, and [[Literature/BookOfRevelation the Resurrection of the Dead]] just based on the indescribable colors he sees. He's almost relieved when the coffin melts off him and he's dropped into something as concrete as the land-oceans of [[UsefulNotes/{{Venus}} Perelandra]]. |
| 67 | * Rama and her sister-ships, from ''Literature/RendezvousWithRama'' and its sequels, were giant hollow cylinders with alien technology and entire transplanted ecologies of StarfishAliens inside, with several sentient species as well as biomechanical servitor robots manufactured within a city-like structure on an island within an artificial, ring-shaped (due to the artificial gravity inside the enormous cylindrical structure) sea. |
| 68 | * The ''Nostalgia For Infinity'' in the ''Literature/RevelationSpace'' series invokes this -- at the start of the series it's a fairly standard, if [[UsedFuture heavily run down]], ISOStandardHumanSpaceship. After the events of ''Revelation Space'', when the Captain begins to [[spoiler: [[TheVirus meld]] with [[LivingShip the ship]]]], it turns into a nightmarish monstrosity reminiscent of a Creator/HRGiger painting, with large masses of crystals and goop seeping out of the hull and entire decks flooded with the ''stuff'' that [[spoiler: makes up the Captain]]. One character, upon first seeing it, notes how disturbing it is. |
| 69 | ** The transformation continues to progress in the third and fourth books and by the final one the Captain has enough control over the interior to destroy a group of hostile boarders in increasingly gruesome ways. |
| 70 | * ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'': |
| 71 | ** In the William Shatner "[[Literature/StarTrekShatnerverse Shatnerverse]]" ''Franchise/StarTrek'' novel "The Return," Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher explore a Borg hypercube (tesseract) space station that is dimensionally transcendent. |
| 72 | ** Also from the ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'', there are the [[http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Cosmozoan Cosmozoa]], fully living, sometimes sentient space-dwelling creatures such as the [[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Crystalline_Entity crystalline entity]], and various other SpaceWhale-like lifeforms, like the species of "Mother" and "Junior" from "Galaxy's Child", and at least two species of LivingShip, both capable (though to different degrees) of shapeshifting in order to rearrange their internal structure (and in the case of the Farpoint Entity, its external structure as well) to resemble spacecraft rather than their natural [[http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Star-jellies Jellyfish-like form]]. The other LivingShip example, Gomtuu, was basically a SpaceWhale-like sentient entity that could alter its interior for different forms of life. Though structurally they are largely conventional, some, perhaps most notably the "[[http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Star-jellies star jellies]]", have remarkable shapeshifting abilities, changing external shape and "growing" corridors, control rooms, and other facilities as the need arises. |
| 73 | ** An early TNG novel, ''The Children of Hamlin'', featured living alien ships that were comprised entirely liquid-filled bubbles. |
| 74 | ** The Borg Supercube in ''Literature/StarTrekBeforeDishonor'' could be considered this. The novel makes the claim that all Borg ships are sentient, but only exercise it when left for prolonged times without a crew. This cube ends up acting under its own will and invents a new form of assimilation, absorption. It just collides with whatever is in its way and disintegrates it at a molecular level integrating its mass into its own; it even does this to Pluto. It even attempts to take on AlienGeometries after being infected with the End Game virus developed in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. |
| 75 | * Thanks to reality warping technologies, all spaceships are a ''little'' weird in the ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series. Even those species that don't care for the technology need to employ a means of defense. Those who enjoy the technology get ''really'' weird. Everything is, at the core, the same design. However, everybody has their own variants, depending on their design philosophy and most especially their liking for probability technology. Some species' ships are pretty much ISO Standard. Others, like the maniac Tandu, have ships that are "Lobster Spaceship"-style bizarre spidery things, and probably have their hull alloys or even their [[ChaosArchitecture configuration]] altered all the time due to the all the ill-shielded probability tech in their drives and weapons. |
| 76 | * In ''Literature/DeathOrGlory'', the [[{{Precursor}} Departed]] ship looks like a massive crystalline spearhead, that dwarfs any of the largest ships of TheAlliance races. When the aliens finally get inside, they discover that the ship is controlled using an UnusualUserInterface that looks like spacesuits built inside cabinets. When opened, the "spacesuits" look like they're filled with organic guts rather than circuits. They also learn that [[spoiler:the "biosuits" are calibrated for the human nervous system, so they abduct the entire population of the Volga mining colony in order to use them to fly the ship]]. The ship is incredibly powerful and can casually blow up planets (sometimes by accident) and wipe out entire armadas. Later on, [[spoiler:the main character, whom the ship selects as its captain, learns that the ship is more like a force of nature, a white blood cell of sorts created by the universe itself in order to stop conflicts that get far too destructive to the very fabric of space. But near the end of the book he learns the awful truth that the ship is a LotusEaterMachine, a parasite that feeds on its crew while giving them the blissful experience of joining with the ship and each other via the biosuits. The crew quickly become slaves to the ship and, after a few years, will simply be absorbed. The ship will go dormant until someone else falls into the same trap millennia later]]. |
| 77 | * In ''Literature/StarCarrier'' books, it's the human fighters that fit this trope the most. Thanks to their nanotech hull, they're able to change shape at will. For example, their standard acceleration form looks like a sperm cell, while the combat form is more swept forward. They also have a winged atmospheric form. Their weapons come out of the hull when needed, and the hull simply parts instead of having gunports. Subsequent books, set 20 years later, have more advanced designs that no longer have weapons simply hidden inside the hull. This version of the hull forms weapons on demand and reabsorbs them afterwards. In addition, if the fighter's AI senses an incoming attack that may hit the pilot, it can shift the entire cockpit inside the hull to allow the shot to pass harmlessly. The fighters are controlled by a sophisticated AI that links with the nanotech inside the pilot. The AI does pretty much all the flying and fighting, with the pilot providing overall control, since no human is fast enough to keep up with the speeds involved in space combat. The UnusualUserInterface involves the pilot seeing an "in-head" display of the battlescape and gives commands to the AI by "thought-clicking" targets and virtual buttons. No physical movement required. |
| 78 | [[/folder]] |
| 79 | |
| 80 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 81 | * ''Series/BabylonFive'': |
| 82 | ** All the ships of the First Ones are millions of years ahead of the ships of the younger races. They are so advanced that the younger races can't even begin to understand the technology that went into building them. |
| 83 | ** Shadow ships are alive, [[spoiler:and require a sentient being to be integrated as their central processor]]. They constantly scream into the minds of their foes, and "phase" into hyperspace instead of opening a portal like other ships. The effect looks much like a cloaking device, but is in fact their method of FTL travel. |
| 84 | ** Vorlon ships are sentient and at least partly organic, and have a symbiotic relationship with their operators. When [[spoiler: Kosh]] dies, his ship is stated to be "mourning", and flies itself into the Epsilon system's sun as its final act. |
| 85 | ** The [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l9_M3jYn25I/SOwYuVnD_HI/AAAAAAAACzk/_E32mrESJnw/s1600/first+one+attack.JPG ships of]] [[http://b5thoughts.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/vlcsnap-304185.png the First Ones]] were mostly just [[http://www.notentirelystable.com/screenshots/B5%20Season%204/first%20ones%20cool%20ride.PNG very advanced looking spacecraft]], and some or most of them may have been {{Living Ship}}s, but one was stated in supplementary materials to have been ''[[http://www.isnnews.net/hyperspace/first/first-2_lg1.jpg the core of an Earth-like planet, mined out and re-engineered for interplanetary travel]]'', with smaller, unattached segments orbiting in a ring-like field of artificial gravity. |
| 86 | ** In the B5 movie ''[[Film/BabylonFiveThirdspace Thirdspace]]'', the smaller fighters of the Thirdspace aliens look like {{Living Ship}}s similar to the ones used by the Vorlons, but their larger cruisers, glimpsed just before the interdimensional portal to Thirdspace was closed, were made up of separate parts that floated in what looked like artificial gravity fields around a big glowing ball of light. |
| 87 | ** The ''Liandra'' from ''Legend of the Rangers'' was apparently haunted by its former crew and had a dubious history of inexplicably disappearing. Its weapons interface was a holographic chamber where the gunner floated in zero gravity surrounded by a view of the battle, with the gunner taking on the perspective of the ship and using martial arts kicks and punches to symbolically fire the ship's energy weapons. This might be the weirdest targeting system ever seen on a fictional spaceship. |
| 88 | * ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'': |
| 89 | ** Cylon Basestars in the reimagined series are not straight examples of this trope (a Basestar is a LivingShip), but are perceived as such by humanoid Cylons who project over their environment as they operate the ships' UnusualUserInterface, the datastream, or when walking through its corridors: because of their "Projection" ability, every Cylon sees the ship as what he or she wants it to look like, or wherever he or she feels most comfortable or at peace. For example, Threes project a cathedral-like environment (according to sources regarding a deleted scene), whereas Sixes project a forest. Doral's project a night club, of all things. One can only imagine how bizarre Cavil's or Simon's would be, or how creepily Leoben envisions ''his'' environment. |
| 90 | *** The Hybrid's abstract perspective and surreal utterances push the Cylon Basestars that they control purely into this territory. These organic computers, which literally "are" the Basestar, ramble about quantum physics, philosophy and religion between verbalizing systems checks and protocols. They even experience something like an orgasm when they perform an FTL jump, and their verbalizations have been shown to be prophetic. Some Cylons, especially the Leobens (the Twos), believe the Hybrids have seen the face of God. Sam Anders, suffering from brain damage and connected by life support to the crippled ''Galactica'' also served as a hybrid-like being. |
| 91 | ** The Ship of Lights from the [[Series/BattlestarGalactica1978 original series]] was another dimensionally transcendent craft shaped like a giant flying city that moved faster than anything the colonials flew, and sent out "ball-of-glowing-light" probes similar to other examples on this list, which had a habit of emitting a loud noise (presumably over radio channels) which humans couldn't tolerate, and also a habit of making Viper pilots disappear on patrol. Inside it resembled a techno-heaven, full of ascended beings, draped entirely in white. |
| 92 | * Creator/CarlSagan's minimalistic, surreal "Ship of the Imagination" from ''Series/CosmosAPersonalVoyage'', with its CrystalSpiresAndTogas and EverythingIsAnIPodInTheFuture aesthetic. On the inside it's white and looks normal, just minimalistic, with a chair and a viewscreen and a control panel. On the outside it's a three-dimensional lens flare. UsefulNotes/NeilDeGrasseTyson's ship from the reboot is a more plausible {{Shiny Looking Spaceship|s}}. |
| 93 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 94 | ** The TARDIS, being a shapeshifting living sentient timeship (internally, anyway, the pilot can change "desktop skins", but the external appearance of the Doctor's TARDIS is permanently [[ShapeshifterModeLock stuck]] in its current form as the blue callbox); it is also dimensionally transcendent, being {{bigger on the inside}} than on the outside. Other TARDIS ships and TARDIS-like vehicles from the various series and movies count as well. |
| 95 | *** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E3TheEdgeOfDestruction "The Edge of Destruction"]] there is an UnbuiltTrope in how unsettling it can be living inside the TARDIS. It was this story that introduced the idea the TARDIS is alive. |
| 96 | *** In the [[MilestoneCelebration 40th anniversary]] audio story [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho050Zagreus "Zagreus"]], the TARDIS is infected with Anti-Time and goes insane at the Doctor. |
| 97 | ** The Void Ship from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E12ArmyOfGhosts "Army of Ghosts"]] is a multidimensional vessel that resembles a solid gold sphere, but weighs nothing, radiates no heat, etc., until it folds open to reveal its occupants, and also causes a feeling of disquiet in anyone who sees it. It is said to be a ship designed to explore the void between the universes; it is also thought by the Doctor to be impossible. It is never stated who built the Void Ship ([[spoiler:the current occupants were Time War-era Daleks]]), but it even gives the TARDIS a run for its money in the "conceptually weird" category. |
| 98 | * ''Series/EarthFinalConflict'' had some weird ones... |
| 99 | ** The Kimera research vessel encountered in the 2nd season was a highly unusual spacecraft, designed as a labyrinthine laboratory to test the higher reasoning abilities of other species. Its obstacle-course like interior design included pits of fluid that contained predatory creatures as well as other seemingly nonsensical additions to a spaceship. |
| 100 | ** Taelon vessels were generally of the slightly more conventional LivingShip category, but the Taelon mothership was certainly unusual, extremely powerful, and mysterious, with a mind of its own and occasionally its own, separate motivations. It was capable of assimilating humans into its systems by turning them into augmented protectors, something it did without the knowledge of its Taelon owners. |
| 101 | *** The shuttle even has an UnusualUserInterface based on gestures and holography. To fire the shuttle's weapons, one makes a motion rather like drawing and releasing an arrow from a bow. In the pilot, it was stated that Lili Marquette designed the interface for human pilots. |
| 102 | * ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' loves this trope, in addition to its famous use of a LivingShip, Moya, as the main setting: |
| 103 | ** An extradimensional alien research vessel in the episode "[[Recap/FarscapeS02E10MyThreeCrichtons My Three Crichtons]]" resembled an energy globe that expanded into a solid (well, solid-appearing) glowing green sphere with hints of alien movement inside. It "studied" Crichton by extracting his DNA and growing primitive and hyper-evolved versions of him. |
| 104 | ** The Lukythian Protector ship from "[[Recap/FarscapeS04E05Promises Promises]]" is actually a fairly small ship with a very unusual interior design, but it projects a massive holographic image to fool other ships. |
| 105 | ** The [[Recap/FarscapeS03E03SelfInflictedWoundsCouldaWouldaShoulda Pathfi]][[Recap/FarscapeS03E04SelfInflictedWoundsWaitForTheWheel nders]]' ship appeared to dematerialize and rematerialize while traveling through wormholes- hence the reason why it ended up accidentally fusing with Moya. Quite apart from the fact that the exterior of the ship resembled a giant corkscrew made up of white capsules, what we saw of its interior was very stark and minimalistic, with the walls and engines made up of seemingly random clusters of diagonal-facing pillars. It had unusual capabilities related to its Phaztillon generator, such as turning members of its crew invisible (though this exposed them to fatal radiation), and the entire ship was also a giant computer for recording wormhole data. |
| 106 | ** Biomechanoid Leviathan technology in general, given that [[LivingShip Living Ships]] like Moya can not only contract diseases, but even become pregnant. Moya even had SteamPunk elements such as Pilot's controls and the air cycling room. She also had two means of FTL: Hetch Drive, which is basically warp speed, plus Starburst, a defense mechanism where the ship entered an interdimensional rift and rode an energy wave to a random destination. The series featured other members of her species of {{Living Ship}}s, one of which had gone senile, another was diseased, and yet another had gone insane. |
| 107 | ** A Prowler piloted by Aeryn once appeared to fade away, ghost-like, as she said goodbye to John. It's not clear whether this was actually the (never before seen) effect of a Prowler's FTL drive, or an abstract effect meant to emphasize John's sense of loss and isolation (he was highly emotional, the scene was portrayed as a flashback, plus he was ''really'' high). If it was the former, it was quite unlike the usual depictions of FasterThanLightTravel in science fiction. Notably, ships in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' usually just accelerate to FTL, unless they're traveling through a wormhole, or the ship is a Leviathan using Starburst. |
| 108 | * ''Series/{{Fringe}}'': [[TearJerker In]] "[[Recap/FringeS02E18WhiteTulip White Tulip]]", [[OurTimeTravelIsDifferent Alister Peck built a time machine which included a Faraday Cage as part of its design...]] [[BodyHorror into his]] [[{{Cyborg}} own flesh]]. |
| 109 | * The Zarn's spaceship from ''Series/LandOfTheLost1974'' resembled an invisible shape like a dirigible (or a tennis shoe) covered in a grid of white lights. Inside is similar, with long, dark featureless void-like halls and rooms. Its pilot, the Zarn, also looks similar, being invisible except for a grid of bright lights shaped like a humanoid. Whether this means the ship is made out of the same basic material as its pilot or whether the similarity is only superficial is not clear. |
| 110 | * ''Series/MissionGenesis'', the Sci-Fi original series based on the novel series ''Literature/DeepwaterBlack'', featured two examples: |
| 111 | ** The first is the alien ship that attacks ''Deepwater'' in the pilot episode and shows up in various other episodes. It is a radially symmetrical, green and black object that looks more like an abstract metal sculpture than a spaceship. Its occupants, if there are any, never show up, and their motivations are just as mysterious. |
| 112 | ** The other one is the small asymmetrical, oddly-shaped slab that grows to massive proportions and attempts to experiment on the ship and crew in "The Siege". Whatever it was that boarded and assaulted the ''Deepwater'' looked like a vaguely humanoid figure cloaked in a radiant energy field, and was impervious to laser weapons fire. It's not clear if this was what the aliens actually looked like, if this was some specialized probe or containment suit used in alien environments. This "probe" was notable for apparently changing its shape as it rotated. |
| 113 | * The Seeker's weird semi-invisible ship from ''Series/OdysseyFive''. Seen from the outside, it looks like a shimmering semi-invisible distortion. The interior is a WhiteVoidRoom. Its pilot is a [[TranshumanAliens synthetic life form from a post-singularity civilization]]. |
| 114 | * An episode of ''Series/RedDwarf'' called ''Holo Ship'', had just that: an entire ship and crew made of holograms. |
| 115 | * ''Series/SpaceAboveAndBeyond'': The Chig bomber was alive, and probably sentient. The Wildcards had to learn how to pilot it using an organic control interface, working together in the same way that a team of alien pilots would to fly the small warship. Chig cruisers and destroyers resemble large abstract polygonal structures with hexagonal patterns on their surfaces. Their smaller fighters were also similar, but more {{Starfighter}}-like. |
| 116 | * ''Franchise/StarTrek'' |
| 117 | ** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': |
| 118 | *** In an example of an EvolvingTrope, the original ''Starship Enterprise'' was an unprecedented design when it first debuted, being neither a FlyingSaucer nor a RetroRocket, as most spaceships in fiction had been up until that point. It also makes no sense from an engineering standpoint, but that is true of most spaceships in anything but diamond-hard sci-fi. |
| 119 | *** "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E2CharlieX Charlie X]]": The Thasians' ship resembles a nebulous mobile cloud of glowing green gas (in the original version); in the Remastered episode, it is similar looking, but with some kind of lighted tubes inside the gas cloud. The Thasians themselves are noncorporeal aliens who appeared to the ''Enterprise'' crew as floating, ghostly green humanoid heads. |
| 120 | *** "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E10TheCorbomiteManeuver The Corbomite Maneuver]]": Balok's starship ''Fesarius'' is a gigantic starship the size of a small moon, composed of a sphere made up of smaller spheres of various sizes and colors. At least one part of this ship could break off as a smaller command vessel. It's possible that the ship was composed entirely of smaller vessels to the aforementioned one, clustered together and sharing power. |
| 121 | *** "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine The Doomsday Machine]]": The Planet Killer is a giant, robotic, planet-consuming starship; it eats planets for fuel, is armored with solid neutronium and fires a pure anti-proton beam. It looks like an enormous metallic cone with a burning maw where it pulls in the rubble of planets it destroys with its weapon. |
| 122 | ** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': |
| 123 | *** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E1EncounterAtFarpoint Encounter at Farpoint]]": Q's energy grid, which folds up into a warp-capable energy sphere for the purpose of chasing the ''Enterprise''. |
| 124 | *** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E7Justice Justice]]": The Edo "God" orbiting Rubicun III appears like a strange, ghostly collection of floating parts that's only partially materialized in normal space, and is referred to as a dimensionally transcendent entity. At one point it sends a probe or scout (its exact nature is left unclear) which resembles a ball of light that shakes the entire ''Enterprise'' when it "speaks". |
| 125 | *** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E10Haven Haven]]": The Tarellian Plague Ship looks like a conventional ''Trek'' guest spaceship of the week, except that in its middle is a ring filled by a giant marble-like glowing ball of energy that is actually the ship's power source contained in a force field. |
| 126 | *** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E16QWho Q Who]]": In its first appearance, the Borg Cube is definitely one of these. It is said to be completely decentralized with no distinct command areas or engineering section. When scanned, they don't even register as possessing weapons (although this is untrue, they are quite well-armed). And when their crew of drones is all linked, the cube functions with something like a will, and sensors can't pick up the drones' individual life signs. The Borg Alcove is an UnusualUserInterface. |
| 127 | *** Later Cubes and other Borg ships in ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'' and ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' display a more centralized internal appearance and distribution of functions, with talk of "central plexes" and other terms that contradicted the ships' original on-screen depiction. Whether this is a RetCon or an in-universe example of ScienceMarchesOn is unclear. Although even with the retcon/in-universe marching on, the Borg cubes ''still'' look really weird from the in-universe perspective, with nothing even ''resembling'' the relatively rounded shapes and nacelles of "normal" ships. And they still seam to be highly decentralized even if they have areas with specific functions, similar to a tree. |
| 128 | ** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': |
| 129 | *** Founders, or at least Laas (a "lost" Changeling like Odo, who grew up among an obscure humanoid race), can shapeshift into living starships capable of warp speeds. |
| 130 | *** Breen Warships sport a rather imposing and very distinctive asymmetrical design that readily sets them apart from the more conventional starships in the setting. |
| 131 | ** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': |
| 132 | *** The crew encountered a "photonic lattice" in one episode which was theorized to be the equivalent of a spacecraft for photonic life forms. |
| 133 | *** Another ''Voyager'' episode featured a species called the Swarm, who were humanoid but with a StarfishLanguage that proved extremely difficult to translate. They were very mysterious, and got their name from the ships they used- swarms of thousands of tiny, networked shuttle-sized vessels that worked together to drain energy from ships that invaded their space. Each little ship looked like a cross between a trilobite and a Horseshoe crab. |
| 134 | ** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': |
| 135 | *** Time travel pods discovered by the ''NX-01'' crew in were bigger on the inside than on the outside. WordOfGod is that Paramount contacted BBC, suggesting a possible {{crossover}} with ''Series/DoctorWho''. When BBC flatly refused, they decided to implement a part of the concept of a TARDIS but without risking a lawsuit. |
| 136 | *** The Xyrillians piloted an ambiguous case of a LivingShip (it looked organic but it was never made clear if the exterior was bio-engineered or just designed to look that way), however, its interior was... something else, of a surreal quality never seen before in a Franchise/TrekVerse spaceship. It had grass-covered floors, food growing from the walls, and the ship was filled with aquarium-like chambers containing edible aquatic creatures. The aliens don't appear to consume water and don't really know what it is. When they synthesize some for Trip, they get the temperature wrong and give him a bowl full of ice cubes. The episode focused on some of the details of First Contact usually ignored by the franchise, and featured a human character having to adjust to a slightly different atmosphere and pressure than he was used to while he worked aboard the alien ship to help the aliens fix their warp drive. To emphasize the alien nature of the environment, the lighting and camera angles used to film the interior were also quite unusual. |
| 137 | ** ''Series/StarTrekPicard'': |
| 138 | *** The synths on Coppelius remotely control giant flowers called Orchids which attach themselves to enemy vessels and drain them of power, then let them fall out of orbit and crash to the planet's surface. |
| 139 | *** And the Borg cube is back to this trope with a vengeance. The outer appearance of the "Relic" cube is faithful to its [=TNG=] and Voyager representation but the inside is shown to be capable of reconfiguring itself on-demand which looks gloriously creepy thanks to modern visual effects. |
| 140 | * ''Series/{{Threshold}}'': Fourth-dimensional probes programmed to bioform humans into a new type of alien with a triple-helix genetic structure. |
| 141 | [[/folder]] |
| 142 | |
| 143 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 144 | * ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': |
| 145 | ** The insides of many Chaos ships, especially ones that are possessed by Daemons, tend to have AlienGeometries and other disturbing things (bleeding walls, shadows moving in unnatural ways, etc). |
| 146 | ** Jokaero-made vessels tend to resemble polyhedral, open-frame lattices of metal that move as a result of their shape directly interacting with galaxy-spanning currents of energy that only the jokaero seem able to perceive. Their jokaero crews steer them by making physical alterations to the vessel's shape. |
| 147 | ** ''TabletopGame/RogueTrader'': |
| 148 | *** One of the ship upgrades is the Tenebro Maze, which turns the interior of the ship into a complex maze of hidden trap doors and secret passages, which not only hinders any would-be boarders, but also makes targeting specific systems of the ship very difficult as the components aren't where they should be in a typical ship. |
| 149 | *** There's an extinct Chaos-worshipping Xeno race known as Yu'vath, whose ships were/are (although the Yu'vah themselves are dead, their drone-ships are still occasionally encountered) made out of dark crystals held together by beams of energy and powered by gravity sails. |
| 150 | *** The titular ship of the adventure ''The Soul Reaver'' is powered by the souls of the dead and a murdered Dark Eldar lord is raised as a vengeful spectre there. |
| 151 | ** Space Hulks are technically "ships" in the sense that they can still move and are used as transport by several factions but as Warp-created fusions of numerous ships of varying origin and design they are certainly Eldritch. Normally they hold Orks, daemons of Chaos, worshipers of Chaos, Chaos Space Marines, Tyranids, Genestealers, Tyranids and Genestealers, and anyone forced to go in there to clear it out/find whatever Archeotech is left/can't go anywhere else. Some Hulks are so massive that they even have their own gravity and atmosphere. |
| 152 | * The alternate "Heaven's Reach" setting in ''Shards of the TabletopGame/{{Exalted}} Dream'' has the ghost ship ''Lost Corona'', originally designed to investigate a Tomb-Star - basically a cross between a black hole and a portal to the netherworld. The results resembled ''Film/EventHorizon'', with the ship becoming alive and ''hungry''. It's full of ghosts, and feeds on a mixture of fear and wreckage. |
| 153 | * ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' 4th Edition provides rules of creating ''undead spaceships'' by means of techno-magic. Such a ship looks and registers on scanners as a crippled wreck, but its engines magically provide acceleration with unlimited fuel (though no faster than this ship could go when it was "alive"). The systems aboard the ship malfunction creepily: the radio distorts voices to sound like from the grave, the life support has a mind of its own and turns off when you least expect it, and anyone foolish enough to use the auto-doc is tortured, flayed and ultimately zombified by the malevolent robotic limbs. Not to mention that the ship usually obeys the necromancer who created it, and the necromancer can activate any of these vile tricks at will. It is not specified whether PercussiveMaintenance can [[ReviveKillsZombie destroy these ships]] or not. |
| 154 | [[/folder]] |
| 155 | |
| 156 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 157 | * The Access Ark from ''VideoGame/KirbyPlanetRobobot'' is a gigantic sphere [[PlanetSpaceship the size of a planet]], and it serves as the [[MegaCorp corporate headquarters]] for the [[PlanetLooters Haltmann Works Company]]. At first, it seems like that's all there is to it, but when Kirby [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon infiltrates the Ark]] in the final sequence of the game, he'll find [[spoiler:a bizarre, [[AmazingTechnicolorBattlefield colorful]] virtual reality that's [[BossRush infested with minibosses]] and plays some rather [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg3UIyAJPzA creepy music]] in the background]]. Come the FinalBattle against [[spoiler:[[AIIsACrapshoot Star Dream]], the Access Ark's mother computer]], it turns out that [[spoiler:beyond merely "eldritch", the Access Ark is actually the repurposed body of a ''[[DeusEstMachina Galactic Nova]]'', the clockwork comets from ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar'' with enough power to [[MakeAWish grant any wish]].]] |
| 158 | * In ''VideoGame/VegaStrike'', Rlaan ships all look like eerie [[http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/cpg/displayimage.php?album=11&pid=1197 tailless fish]] with [[http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/cpg/displayimage.php?album=3&pid=55 big fins]]. They differ mostly in sizes, [[http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/cpg/displayimage.php?album=3&pid=60 stretching]] more along some or other axis and [[http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/cpg/displayimage.php?album=3&pid=61 external equipment]]. The reasons for this design are that OrganicTechnology defines Rlaan construction and aesthetics, even in cases where their technology isn't 100% organic (generally only hermetic and high-power parts are made of metals, so although their ships contain organic components, they are not technically {{Living Ship}}s). The choices they make with regard to technology are reflective their [[StarfishAliens "Starfish-y" psychology]] and sensory-motor system. The colors are "off" because their vision is different from that of humans, and they use gravitics instead of thrusters. They don't vary their design approach much because it works for them and they have very conservative mindsets. |
| 159 | * In ''Videogame/{{The Dig|1995}}'' there's one of these [[spoiler: as it turns out, it's the asteroid itself. Once it's activated the asteroid procedes to turn into a translucent dodecahedron]] that transports our heroes to the location were we spend the rest of the game |
| 160 | ** It also vanishes when it arrives. Not in the novelization, though. |
| 161 | * The [[EldritchAbomination Nomad]] ships in ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'' are apparently organically grown, with lots of curving spines and smooth flowing shapes, semitransparent and glowing blue. [[http://freelancer.wikia.com/wiki/File:Nomadfighter.png This]] is a good picture of one of their fighters. |
| 162 | * The ships of Sansha's Nation in ''VideoGame/EveOnline'' are specifically designed to evoke this, using bizarre shapes and [[SpikesOfDoom lots of spiky structures]]. The decription of the "Phantasm," a craft the player can pilot, specifically mentions that the weird geometries of the ship show preternatural understanding of physics and starship design. |
| 163 | * The [[NightmarishFactory Star Forge]] in ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' is this in spades. On top of its infinite production capabilities, it also feeds on the dark side impulses of its user, first corrupting its [[AbusivePrecursors Rakata]] creators and then Darth Revan and Darth Malak after they found it on the orders of the Sith Emperor Vitiate. It doesn't help that the station is partially sentient as a result of its feeding. Its capacity for corruption was so strong that Revan chose to limit his/her contact with the station to prevent it from driving him/her insane. |
| 164 | * The [[http://www.rarecandies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/SotS2-Suulka_Feeding.png Suul'ka]] ships are finally shown in ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars II'' and look like enormous (dwarfing anything the other races have) {{Space Whale}}s with tentacles that can smash and ''eat'' starships. They're also more advanced than anything the others have. It turns out that the starships are [[spoiler:containment suits for the enormous and crazy Liir Elders who chose to live in space instead of dying from the SquareCubeLaw]]. |
| 165 | * Grineer Warships in ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'' have a bizarre exterior aesthetic - part whale, part insect, part crustacean, part submarine. The interior is made of bulging designs and organic colors clashing with cramped submarine-like sensibilities. However, in reality they're still just as mundane, albeit freaky-looking as the Grineer themselves. For really ''eldritch'' spaceships, look no further than the Sentients, whose Murex troop ships are like floating biomechanical cathedrals, and infiltrating one is like entering its own pocket dimension. |
| 166 | * In ''VideoGame/GenesisRising'', pretty much all ship designs except for the Cy-Breed are this in one way or another. Humans use {{Living Ship}}s with LegoGenetics, the Defiance stole human tech to make their own ships, the Cold Ones make their shiny transparent ships with ice and the Lapis carve their ships out of space asteroids. |
| 167 | * [[LivingShip Reapers]] in the ''Franchise/MassEffect'' trilogy. They are far, far more advanced than the ships of the Citadel races, such as not needing any fuel, or their [=FTL=] drives not suffering from the same restrictions as Citadel ships. Their shapes are reminiscent of cuttlefish; large mass of claw-like appentages on their underside function as both legs on planets and as mounting points for their {{Wave Motion Gun}}s. |
| 168 | ** They also have the ability to effect MoreThanMindControl on other sentient beings near them, or foolish enough to go aboard them for extended periods of time. This even applies to disabled Reapers, [[spoiler: as even a dead god may dream.]] |
| 169 | ** ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' reveals that the Reapers are constructed from the [[ArtisticLicenseBiology processed bodies]] of ''millions'' of sentient beings, with each Reaper being created from a different species. |
| 170 | ** While functioning more like regular starships in most respects, the Collector cruiser and home base appear to be made of random clusters of asteroids being held together by a metal frame and a giant engine stuck to it, and contain a giant beehive inside their cavelike interiors. |
| 171 | * [[http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070410023604/starwars/images/b/b2/Ravager.jpg The Ravager]] in ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords''. It's essentially a falling apart corpse of a ship held together only by the Dark Side powers of [[HumanoidAbomination Darth Nihilius]]. |
| 172 | * Shivan ships in ''VideoGame/FreeSpace'' tend to take the "Lobster Ship" route, much moreso in the second game. The ''SD Lucifer'' itself bears a rather close resemblance to a giant space lobster, in fact. |
| 173 | ** The ''Freespace'' fan-made expansion ''VideoGame/BluePlanet'', specifically ''War in Heaven'', ups the Eldritch factor for the Shivans. They're something like the physical extensions of an "algorithm" naturally emergent from the structure of spacetime[[labelnote:*]]think about prime numbers, which exist because their existence is the inevitable result of numbers being numbers and mathematics being mathematics[[/labelnote]], serving as a solution to dangerously warlike civilizations who [[OmnicidalManiac threaten the diversity of intelligent life in the universe]], i.e. destroy ''them'' before they destroy ''everything''. Their [[StandardSciFiFleet ships]] are infinitely mutable: attacking with random designs, weapons, and strategies, remembering and propagating successful permutations, and ultimately adapting themselves into the perfect weapon against the enemy they face, however long that might take -- as a natural function of the universe, the Shivans are as eternal as gravity or magnetism. Their "crews" are a myriad of creatures engaged in bizarre, periodic outbursts of violence which somehow act as a neural network that drives the ship as a whole. |
| 174 | * The ''[[Videogame/{{X}} X-Universe]]'''s [[BeePeople Kha'ak]] capital ships have a whirling mass of tentacles/arms/spires for a prow, a thorax-like engine section, and no apparent thrusters, turrets, or windows anywhere. Their fighters are all [[SinisterGeometry combinations of dodecahedrons]] which warp into known space in huge, [[CombiningMecha interconnected clusters of ships]] which break up and swarm anything that approaches. [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon]] capital ships are a bit more orthodox with their visible engines and turrets, but everything else about them is odd; they have no bridges as they're ran by computers, and their hulls are made of massive segments of [[RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver black metal twinkling with blood red lights]] that are haphazardly connected with thin sections, and across the entire hull, hundred meter tall spires jut out ready to impale fighter craft. |
| 175 | * [[http://www.alcyonecodesmith.com/enb/graphics/vrix1.jpg V'rix spaceships]] from ''VideoGame/EarthAndBeyond'' may have been this; it's really a toss up. They tended to drop organic type components and the game did make liberal use of SpaceWhale, but we did know there were [[http://www.earthandbeyond.ca/submission/serve-id=10596.jpg humanoid V'rix]]. Weather they were actually in the ships as pilots or if the ships were living vessels (maybe even another form of the humanoids) is another question entirely. Design documents released after the servers were shut down did reveal that neither the ships nor the humanoid form were the true form of The V'rix, but rather a form chosen to play on human's deepest fears; and their technology was a perversion of human tech. Oh, and there was 1 V'rix vessel that proved they could change their form becoming more powerful by incorporating human DNA. |
| 176 | * The Pfhor ships in the ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' series fit into the "Lobster" category, being mostly made of OrganicTechnology including pulsating walls and vats of strange green or pink damaging goo of unknown purpose, and occasionally exhibiting AlienGeometries. |
| 177 | * The Krynn ship at the end of ''VideoGame/TheJourneymanProject 2: Buried In Time'', also fits into the "Lobster" category. It's filled with water or some other aqueous fluid due to the creatures there requiring that habitat, and they travel throughout it via tunnels that squish and warp in peristaltic motion to push them along. It's also devoid of visible light, as the Krynn only see in Klegmar Radiation. |
| 178 | * One of the sample ship aesthetics in ''VideoGame/SpaceEmpires 4'' consists of a collection of disconnected bubbles. |
| 179 | * In ''VideoGame/GalacticCivilizations'', it is possible to create some very strange ship appearances given enough time in the design menu. One famous LetsPlay of it, after a few particularly bad turns, sat down for a while in the best possible mood to design new ships (namely, furious), and came up with a spike-encrusted hell-crab battleship that was too large to easily fit on the design screen, a process that took half an hour and didn't actually help. |
| 180 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'': |
| 181 | ** The Avian, Molluscoid, Fungoid, and Arthropoid ships fall under the "Lobster" category. Avian ships are sleek with pointed edges and spikes, Arthropoid ships are harsh, rough-looking brownish floating hives, Fungoid ships are sinister-looking, smooth black things with bright highlights, and Molluscoid ships get smooth, squid shapes and tentacle-like decorations, but all four are still pretty recognizable as spaceships. |
| 182 | ** Under "Starfish" ships, we have the gigantic, asymmetrical, and crystaline [[SiliconBasedLife lithoid]] ships, as well as end game crisis ships: [[spoiler:the SinisterGeometry of the [[AIIsACrapshoot Machine Consciousness]], the {{Living Ship}}s of the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Prethyon Scourge]], and utterly bizarre transparent energy-ships of the [[EnergyBeings Extradimensional Invaders]].]] |
| 183 | ** If a civilization opts to Become the Crisis, they gain access to the most eldritch ship design of all: the Star Eater. It's an enormous, black, [[SinisterGeometry perfect cube]] glowing with purplish light from inside. As its name suggests, it can [[StarKilling cause any star to instantly collapse into a black hole]], annihilating everything else in the stellar system. Also, they're made ''entirely'' of dark matter, an exotic substance that can only be extracted from black holes. These Star Eaters are key to the Crisis Civilization's ultimate goal: [[spoiler:collapsing enough stars into massive quantities of dark matter to fuel the Aetherophasic Engine, which will annihilate the entire galaxy if completed]]. |
| 184 | * Oryx's Dreadnaught from ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}''. Aside from being a borderline PlanetSpaceship, its [[AllThereInTheManual backstory]] reveals that its hull is a single scrimshawed segment of a sort-of dead [[EldritchAbomination Worm God]], and its interior is filled by Oryx's [[PocketDimension throneworld]], which he's forcibly everted into normal space. Furthermore, it moves in physics-violating ways, emits a boatload of particles related to dark matter (correlating to its [[RealityWarper reality-warping abilities]]), and induces a BrownNote reaction in anyone trying to analyze it telepathically. Since Oryx himself is a major HumanoidAbomination, the ship fits him. |
| 185 | ** Hive Tomb Ships, floating mausoleums for the thralls inside. They can manifest just about anywhere, even indoors, thanks to their {{Magitek}} warp drives. |
| 186 | * The ships in ''VideoGame/StarControl'' are in general, rather normal but a few examples qualify as 'Lobster'. Mycon Podships are rounded things with {{BFG}} that shoots homing Plasmoids. Spathi Eluders may use standard fare technology, but they are shaped like a molecular model. And to top it all off, there's the Sa-Matra, a Precursor battleship which is downright ''eldritch'', in contrast with their more standard fare Flagship. |
| 187 | ** In ''Origins'', most ships are likewise fairly normal, but two stand out. The [[OctopoidAliens Mu'Kay]] Grasper looks like a giant squid with metal tentacles. In fact, its primary attack is to grab onto the enemy ship and squeeze it, dealing damage. Its secondary attack is to expel an ink cloud that damages any enemy that enters it. The [[TheVirus Pinthi]] Contagion looks like a chunk of space rock with some sickly green masses growing on it. |
| 188 | * In ''VideoGame/InfiniteSpace'' [[spoiler:The Phage]] encountered at the endgame are possibly from the [[EldritchLocation the Flux]] and are also possibly alive. They are more of the "lobster" category. The smaller ships are black, sleek, and appear to be adorned with sculptures resembling tomb effigies. The carrier type ships are massive, likewise black, and in a bizarre, almost organic shape. The [[spoiler:final boss is a massive tower-ship with sharp angles.]] |
| 189 | * The [[spoiler:Daystar]] in ''Videogame/Jak3Wastelander''. [[spoiler:The personal ship of [[EldritchAbomination Dark Makers]]. On the outside, it looks like a giant bacteria with flagella. The interior is mostly MeatMoss mixed with metal. The legends say it will bring the end of the world should it reach the surface, and considering that its cargo includes multiple Terra Formers and just one of these things is considered as a major problem, they likely aren't kidding.]] |
| 190 | * In ''Videogame/FateGrandOrder'', the fifth Lostbelt storyline reveals that the Greek Pantheon are actually alien starships who arrived on Earth and ended up being worshiped as Gods by humans, interacting with them via [[AFormYouAreComfortableWith humanoid avatars]]. In "Proper Human History", their starship bodies were eventually destroyed by another alien entity [[spoiler:who would eventually become Altera]], but in their unique Lostbelt (timelines that have severely diverged from the main one and resulted in human progress being halted) Zeus managed to defeat said entity and the Pantheons proceeded to further upgrade their starship bodies. The Progenitorial Chaos is revealed to be their creator as a massive sentient DysonSphere that sent them to Earth to harvest the planet, [[spoiler: and when the protagonists kill off Zeus who was meant to lead this directive, it simply tears open a dimensional wormhole to start absorbing every possible physical and abstract resource on Earth to fuel their fleet. It takes UsefulNotes/MiyamotoMusashi sacrificing herself to slice its link with Earth to stop its wanton destruction. Notably, unlike the Olympians, Chaos doesn't even perceive that there are people living there who would be killed from its actions because of how insignificant they are in comparison to its being and only attacks Ares out of reflex.]] |
| 191 | * ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' has a number of ships that are based on the ''Narada''. First are the Tal Shiar Adapted Battlecruiser and the Tal Shiar Adapted Destroyer with the Adapted Battlecruiser resembling the ''Narada'' and the Adapted Destroyer having the ''Narada''[='s=] iconic torpedoes. There's also the Legendary ''Scimitar'', which has a unique skin which turns it into one of these. As well, the Assimilated Borg Technology and the Omega Adapted Borg set can transform your ship into one of these as well -- the Assimilated Module adds nodes across your ship, the Shield Array gives your ship a sickly green hue, the Subtranswarp Engines add attachments to your Impulse Engines and Warp Nacelles and the Assimilated Deflector Array turns your Deflector Dish into a spiky instrument. |
| 192 | * ''VideoGame/{{Starsector}}'' has a number of them: |
| 193 | ** The least eldritch is the Radiant-class battlecruiser, which is only this because it defies the in-universe physics by being able to phase-skim as a battleship, a feat the game notes should render it into an "infinity of curiously whorled short-lived child-dimensions" |
| 194 | ** Guardian-class droneships, which appear to have been produced by a damaged nanoforge chip, [[spoiler:although the Omega might have had something to do with it as well,]] with a bizarrely bug-like appearance and being described as having malevolently-angled glacises and illogical tangles of conduit. |
| 195 | ** [[spoiler:Project Ziggurrat, a one-of-a-kind capital phase ship beyond the technology of even the pre-collapse Domain. It was designed to be crewed and yet when you find it there's no indication it ever had one, despite being fully operational and hostile. It spews out EMP-inducing glowing motes that only seem to slightly exist in our reality, and to top it off when you fight it its officer portrait is completely unique, appearing as a glowing face.]] |
| 196 | ** [[spoiler:Tesseracts, the ships piloted by Omega-class AI cores. They have completely unique and unbuildable weaponry, they're shaped like a mish-mash of sharp-edged triangles, and when they're destroyed they break down into smaller ships with weaponry adapted to whatever destroyed them, which repeats until they're fighter-sized. The lore implies this continues down to the molecular level, leaving only fractal slag.]] |
| 197 | [[/folder]] |
| 198 | |
| 199 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 200 | * The Cone Ship in ''WebComic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob'' is just a [[https://bobadventures.thecomicseries.com/comics/756 giant, featureless white cone]] -- but inside it's a [[https://bobadventures.thecomicseries.com/comics/781/ seemingly infinite flat white plane.]] And if you manage to get off the plane, you see the ship's [[https://bobadventures.thecomicseries.com/comics/825/ true interior,]] a swirling mass of AlienGeometries weirdness. |
| 201 | * [[EldritchAbomination Pa'anuri]] starships in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' are planet-sized constructions that are roughly spherical, but full of quite large gaps (as in, continent-sized). Just one is able to nearly destroy a solar system by going directly after the orbit of its primary gas giant. It's eventually revealed that these are made from the destroyed {{Planet Spaceship}}s of {{Precursor}} races, and are designed as a way around the Pa'anuri weakness to teraporting: they revive the dead Pa'anuri pilot when they arrive in the target system. [[spoiler:However, they're not eldritch enough that they can't be hijacked...]] |
| 202 | [[/folder]] |
| 203 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 204 | * ''Website/OrionsArm'' features some curious artifacts. |
| 205 | ** [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/480a48b000f5b Black Angels]] are probably the strangest ship in the universe. These fully sentient vessels look like a black sphere surrounded by a enormous cloud of particles. The cloud can shapeshift to form weapons or even arms. The function of the sphere is known only to the [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49cfe7a37b5b3 Archai]]. |
| 206 | ** [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/493e974094949 Void Ships]], which appear as a distortion of the background. This is due to their propulsion system, and they may look like ordinary ships when fully powered down, for all anyone but the [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49cfe7a37b5b3 Archai]] know. |
| 207 | ** [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4b1645da51e3d Linelayer]] vessels are massive craft that move wormhole endpoints. Many seem to consist of multiple sections that don't seem to be connected to each other, yet they move as one. |
| 208 | ** The [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45cd3240ea58a MPA]]'s [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/467b32ffab277 Leviathan Class Dreadnought]], which morphs from a thin cylinder into an ovoid. |
| 209 | * The superhappy ship from ''Three Worlds Collide'', described as a "fractal of ugliness" that can survive a nova unprotected. [[spoiler:In one of the two endings, the ships are reconfigured to appeal to human and baby-eater aesthetics, as part of the superhappies' compromise agreement.]] |
| 210 | [[/folder]] |
| 211 | |
| 212 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 213 | * ''WesternAnimation/ShadowRaiders'' the spaceships used by the Beasts are made entirely of null matter. |
| 214 | * ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'': The ancient Pod Ship that the USS Enterprise encounters in the first episode. An expanded universe novel even specifically refers to this ship in mention as an "eldritch" ship. |
| 215 | * ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'': The Umbaran starfighters seen in "[[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS4E8TheGeneral The General]]" are very different from the airplane-like configurations of typical fighters, consisting of a loose, open framework and of a pilot seat that sits exposed to the elements when the ship is inactive and, on activation, becomes enveloped in a free-floating energy sphere whose controls manifest as holograms on its internal surface. |
| 216 | [[/folder]] |
| 217 |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext Main / EldritchStarship
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load
