Living Ship - Television Tropes & Idioms

"I'm lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship — a living ship — full of strange alien life forms..."

— John Crichton, Farscape

"Shit," the ship said to itself.

— Philip K. Dick, "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon"

Every space show has a spaceship for its characters. So why not go one step further ahave a spaceship as a character? Whether it's made of Organic Technology, computer circuits or some combination of the two, a Living Ship is by all reasonable definitions alive. Which may lead to problems if you piss it off, or - worse - if it's in heat...

The great thing about both the organic/semi-organic Living Ships and their computerised cousins is that they're a very easy way to make your series seem ultra science-fictiony. If you want to have Earth technology that seems impossibly futuristic, then you've got intelligent circuit-based AI. If you want to go for something more alien, then you can take the Organic Technology route and have corridors that look like great big arteries.

The Living Ship also opens up plenty of story opportunities, both funny and serious - simultaneously. Imagine a show where the biological ship catches a cold and keeps sneezing its occupants into space or the ship's computer AI gets a virus and starts to lose its memory... at any rate, acting as both a character and setting the Living Ship is perhaps the best example of the Fisher King (albeit one where both are literally one), as the environment quite justifiably mimics the ship's mood, health, and situation.

And despite the above problems, this kind of automation actually provides advantages; a ship that can partially or completely operate and maintain itself seriously cuts down on crew requirements (and thus cast size) which in turn cuts down on life support and accomodation requirements, to the point where a crew may be an optional extra. The level of sentience and independence will determine just how much of an advantage this is.

If the ship has a walking, talking, female avatar then it's part of the Spaceship Girl subtrope. Note that, probably because Most Writers Are Male, or else as a legacy of referring to inanimate ocean-going ships as "her" for centuries, Spaceship Girls tend to outnumber Living Ships without avatars.

Most Living Ships are big enough to be Genius Loci. A number are also Space Whales.

Examples

Anime

The Nirvana in Vandread is sentient, but communicates more through feelings than words.
The Juraian spacecraft in Tenchi Muyo are powered by living, semi-sentient trees. The parent of them all is not only fully sentient, but a goddess - and the alter ego of a main character. Also, Ryo-Ohki, who is the cute mascot character that transforms into a Living Ship.
- Ken-Ohki, too!
While not living in a literal sense, the Yamato in Space Battleship Yamato is the main character of the show. It is the ship's fighting spirit that enables their amazing victories.
Similarly, The Merry Go from One Piece is was considered a character. It has been featured on the title page (a spot reserved for the Straw Hat Crew), crew members have caught brief glimpses of a shadowy spirit-like figure fixing it(self), and, at one point, came seemingly out of nowhere to pick the crew up. It even had some last words to say to the crew just before it died.
Lost Universe's Sword Breaker, Kane's ship, is a sentient ship which manifests its AI through a Hard Light holographic avatar, Canal Volfeed.
The Zentradi Mobile Fortresses of Macross are each commanded by an ancient Supreme Commander who is integrally fused to the ship.
The Vaia Ships in Infinite Ryvius are mostly technological, but each has a living Vaia at its core. The Vaia are sentient, though only one is a full-fledged Spaceship Girl.
The titular Blue from Blue Drop. It's entirely mechanical and is (re)made of nanomachine, but it moves and acts like a mechanical whale.
The titular spaceship in Outlaw Star has a sentient onboard AI, but must also be connected to the Spaceship Girl Melfina. Near the end of the series, Hazanko's mind and body fuse with his spaceship, forming partially-biological version of this trope.

Comic Books

Superhero team The Authority have The Carrier - a spaceship that, while being made of metal, is fully sentient. However, it has only once spoken directly to anyone (and then it was only to tell hapless assassin Kev Hawkins what a prick he is).
The Brood of X-Men fame used lobotimized Space Whales for transport, and the surviving ones at liberty were both sentient and not happy at all about the situation.
The shapeshifting Warlock often turned "him"self into a starship to transport the New Mutants around.
Power Pack had a sentient "smartship" called Friday.
The Starjammers' ship has a controlling AI called Waldo.
The Micronauts' Robot Buddy Biotron was at one point rebuilt into a Living Ship-slash-Humongous Mecha called Bioship. Bioship was a cyborg, utilizing Organic Technology in his workings.
Ranx, foe of the Green Lantern Corps, is a vast interstellar, sentient city.

Film

In Event Horizon, the title spaceship went To Hell And Back and had become a Cosmic Horror
The strangely twisted-looking terraforming monoliths from the Epoch film and its sequel act completely autonomously and seeem to be so advanced that they can change shape, resurrect the dead, and change between matter and energy forms with ease. It is theorized that they may have started life on Earth, controlling its cycles of extinction and recovery.
Although it doesn't outright say it, some scenes from the second and third Pirates Of The Caribbean suggest this of the Flying Dutchman... Part of the ship, part of the crew, indeed.
HAL, while not the ship but its controlling computer in 2001.

Literature

In Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space trilogy, The Captain becomes one with the Nostalgia for Infinity
Robin Hobb's "Liveship Traders" trilogy unsurprisingly has many living ships with sentient, talking, humanoid figureheads.
Poul Anderson's "Trader Team" stories center on the crew of the ship Muddlin' Through, largely run by the ship computer, Muddlehead.
Iain M Banks's Look To Windward features Behemothaurs, giant flying creatures which double as airships for the creatures living on their backs.
- Almost all the ships in Iain M Banks' Culture novels are built around a near-omniscient AI, but non-organic.
Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence novels contain a race of spacegoing, whale-like starships called the Spline, who intentionally modified themselves to be able to survive in space.
At the end of David Brin's Heaven's Reach many Jijoan colonists are taken to explore distant galaxies aboard a hydrogen-based Living Ship.
The Star Wars Expanded Universe introduced a new group of aliens called the Yuuzhan Vong during a five year book saga. This race organically grows everything, from clothes to communication devices to sewage disposal systems to weapons. Organic spaceships were inevitable.
- There's also Zonama Sekot, a Genius Loci planet that combines organic matter and technology to create living ships. It's known as the Rogue Planet because it also did this to itself.
  - Turns out this is the Vong's homeworld, which ran away from them when they got nasty. Seriously.
  - Not quite. Zonama Sekot is actually the child of their homeworld. Not that it matters much to either party but...
- Many human ships have intelligent, sentient droid brains -as- the ship. See Dash Rendar.
In Peter F. Hamilton's "Night's Dawn Trilogy," there are both spaceships (Voidhawks and Blackhawks) and habitats (that can be tens of kilometres long) that are alive and sentient, based on "bitek".
- In addition, the Commonwealth Saga features a pacifistic alien ship that lets aliens and humans alike live in giant crystals that it grows on itself depending on how it feels. Hell, it even has it's own border controls.
In Harry Harrison's "Eden" trilogy the Yilané have a civilization built entirely on genetics and selective breeding, and use gigantic genetically modified icythyosaurs for trans-Atlantic shipping.
In the Wild Cards universe, the Takisians use and breed sentient (or semi-sentient) ships. Dr. Tachyon's ship - which he named "Baby" - regenerates its "ghost drive gland" over a period of years or decades, after he burned it out trying to go real fast.
- Another organic transport in Wild Cards is the Joker Charon, a living bubble of protoplasm who brings would-be visitors to the Rox across the sea floor.
The Tanu and Firvulag in Julian May's Saga Of The Exiles novels arrived from another galaxy via a starship that was a huge living organism which used its own psychic powers to travel via hyperspace.
The gene-trading, three-gendered aliens in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series have spaceships that are more or less plants that can be communicated with. Their seeds are planted on planets where they gradually take over the entire surface before launching off as independent spaceships.
Done in both the "bioship" and "sentient ship" variants in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos - The Consul's "singleship" is piloted by an AI (and lacks obvious manual controls), while the Templar create living "Treeships", gargantuan trees fitted with star drives. The treeships, note, are made inhabitable by force fields created by weird space creatures that may or may not be sentient themselves.
The novel Genesis Quest and its sequel Second Genesis had ships made from giant spacegoing trees which caught comets in their roots for water and nutrients, and used reflective outer leaves as solar sails.
In Anne McCaffrey's Ship books, we have borderline cases between this and Spaceship Girls; Brainships and Brainstations, which have human beings at their cores, controlling all of the ship or station's functions. The ships themselves are mechanical, however.
Memory Prime, a Star Trek novel, introduced the concept that every once in a while, a starship's computer would gain sentience. The mind would thus be moved to the huge computers at, well, Memory Prime, to help support the Federation.
The Martians in In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling are masters of organic technology. Their landships and airships are both grown from living tissue, though they are not sentient. The landships have backup "engines" that are essentially a kind of land-based squid.
In David Weber's Path of the Fury, the protagonist steals a Cool Ship that can only be run by an AI that imprints on and merges with the mind of its pilot; she winds up with Megarea, a smart-mouthed and unusually independent version of same.
While we never meet it, a ship in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy is depressed into suicide by Marvin the Robot, killing those depending on its life support in the process.
Though not organic, the massive spaceship Mother from K.A. Applegate's Remnants series is sentient. Unfortunately, after having been abandoned by her creators for centuries, she's also kind of insane.
Neal Asher provides examples of both in books set in his Polity series. Polity war ships are commanded by AI's and one of the older ships also has a human captain who is wired directly into the ship and in a sense is the ship. Jain tech is a much more organic thing and can grow living ships.
Subverted in George R R Martin's 'Tuf Voyaging', where the biological warship Tuf 'inherits' as the last surviving member of a freelance salvage team is specifically NOT sentient, though it could have been made so; there is mention of other Earth warships with AI installed mutinying and/or fighting each other.
Comes up one in Discworld, where a ship has proved 'alive' enough to have an actual post-death existence.
Captain Demos' ship The Slive from The Codex Alera is one giant wood fury; as such, Demos is able to manipulate it to give himself an advantage in nearly any fight that occurs on it.

Live Action TV

The TARDIS from Doctor Who appears to be technological, but at least some of it is "grown". And it certainly has sentience, though it cannot speak and only occasionally directly affects a story of its own volition.
In the BBC Scifi series Blake's 7, the starship Liberator is fully sentient but entirely mechanical. In the recent audiobook remake/reboot of the series, the ship is at least partly biological and considerably more sinister, attempting to assimilate the crew into itself and being rather predatory in its attempts to survive.
The spaceship Lexx from, well, Lexx, is entirely (and often gruesomely) biological. It can speak directly to its crew, and its hobbies include blowing up planets. Strangely enough, it even reproduces at the end of the series, spawning a smaller light-white version of itself when it dies...of old age.
Moya and Talyn of Farscape are living biological ships who communicate through their bonded pilots.
- It's had a few other minor character/ships as well. It creates a unique sense of dread when the character/ship line gets pushed either way, such as riding on a ship as it's dying of old age, or dealing with Ax Crazy people eating the ship's meat. Body Horror by proxy, perhaps?
The AI of the spaceship Red Dwarf is represented by Holly, a floating head on a black background that appears on monitors all over the ship. Originally it took the form of a bald, middle-aged man, but switched to a blonde woman before turning back again.
The spaceship Heart Of Gold in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy are maintained by Eddie, a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation computer with a sickeningly cheerful and optimistic programmed personality. Other equally unlikable computers have been installed to run other functions on the ship as well, right down to automated doors run by programs that live for the chance to open and close for someone. At one point Zaphod discovered that Eddie had an emergency backup personality - unfortunately, it was worse.
- And don't forget Marvin!
The Christa from Space Cases.
Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Tin Man". (Not to be confused with the Tin Man.)
- Or, for that matter, the book Tin Woodman on which the episode was based.
- In the last season episode "Emergence" the Enterprise became living for an episode, just to give life to another creature.
On Star Trek Voyager, Species 8472 used living ships that were so powerful, the Borg themselves needed Voyager's help to defeat them.
Both the Vorlons and the Shadows on Babylon 5 used ships which were alive to some extent, though exactly what extent was never made clear.
- As a matter of fact, it was. Shadow ships were simbiotic and required a specifically prepared and hardwired pilot to merge with them. Vorlon ships were at least semi-sentient - they could sing, they were customized to be loyal to their captain, they grieved over his death and would fall into rage if he was attacked. Both kinds of ships could regnerate and the Volrlon ship was shown to protrude appendages from it's surface.
Played with in the final episode of Firefly when River tricks the bounty hunter Jubal Early into believing that Serenity, the ship which is constantly anthropomorphised throughout the series, is actually alive, and that she has become a part of it.
The Cylons of the 2004 re-launch of Battlestar Galactica, despite their mechanical natures, use biotechnology in virtually all of their spacecraft; fightercraft-sized Raiders are autonomous biomechanical constructs (likened in dialog to trained attack dogs), while the larger basestars are at least partly organic and are controlled by a humanoid cyborg.
- By the end of the series, Galactica itself becomes one of these. When Boomer blows out a huge section of the hull due to an ill-timed jump, the rogue Cylons volunteer some of their biotechnological material to patch the empty spaces. At the same time, a brain-damaged Anders is set up as the ship's Hybrid.
The Commonwealth vessels from the series Andromeda, while not biological, have highly advanced sapient AI and android avatars that look completely human. They are capable of feeling emotion and their captains and crews generally treat them like living beings. Like any sapient mind, they can go insane if subjected to horrific experiences or abandonment.
- One of the best episode of the series deals with High Guard ships treated as prisoners of war by the Uber mensch that overthrew the Commonwealth. By the end of the episode the organic characters recognize that, because of the extreme loyalty and bravery they A Is have shown, the ships should be treated as persons not just objects. One of the A Is becomes captain of well, himself. Also there's a funny scene,in another episode, where the titular ship is arguing with herself and herself(the avatar with a hologram and an onscreen version of herself), and one of the characters remarks doesn't that make you crazy, to which she replays: "Not if you're a warship."

Tabletop Games

The Tyranids of Warhammer 40000 are a completely biological race. Everything is some kind of animal, including huge living space ships. The Eldar ships combine elements of this and the ghost ship, with the implanted spirits of the dead giving the ship its own personality.
The Weatherlight of Magic The Gathering's Rath cycle.
The Spelljammer setting features a legendary Living Ship known as... well, "the Spelljammer". It also spawns little cute Smalljammers — unarmed, but very agile living boats. Then there are Esthetics — symbiotic ships of Reigar. Borderline cases are Tick — a Neogi life-draining powered vehicle designed to be used as a "saddle" for something big... and people just living on the backs of kindori.
Bruce Heard wrote a series of Dragon Magazine articles, "Voyage of the Princess Ark", in which the titular Alphatian vessel explores the world of Mystara. Although initially a non-sentient sailing ship enchanted to fly, the Princess Ark eventually fused with a powerful sphinx-like extraplanar entity, acquiring a new layout, the capacity for self-direction and self-defense, and a quirky personality.
The Pentapods of the Traveller spin-off 2300 AD have living starships which they engineered for —and from— their own species thousands of years ago.
The Progenitor faction of the Technocracy in Mage: The Ascension built a living spaceship called the Vivo. Many of them find it hilarious to refer to going somewhere in vivo. If you get this joke, you've spent too long in a lab.

Video Games

The Mothership from the series Homeworld is the ultimate example, since it's actually a Kharakid Scientist, Karan Sjet, who is embedded in the core. She developed the technology to conect a human brain to the Mothership, according to the manual, and she refused it's usage on any other person save herself. During gameplay it's her voice who represents the entire ship, along with another character, "The Commander of Fleet Intelligence." It's her image that appears when the mothership is talking. Finally, it's the only named character that appears in all 3 games of the series.
- As far as I can recall, in Homeworld Cataclysm the Mothership is only mentioned a couple of times in conversation. Instead we have the Beast. An entity that takes control of biological and mechanical entities/systems, fusing them together into living ships.
In Mass Effect, the Sovereign, an enormous dreadnought of unknown origin, is initially thought to be just a ship (though an unimaginably powerful one). It later turns out that it is actually a sentient entity, harbinger of the mysterious Reapers, who return every 50,000 years to eradicate all spacefaring civilizations in the Galaxy.
- Sentient, but aggressively non-biological.
  - What Measure Is Alive? The Reapers are definitely living creatures, even though they aren't organic.
- Also found is the Leviathan of Dis, a biological ship found by the salarians, and apparently stolen by the batarians.
The Combine's gunships and dropships in Half Life 2 are organic, vaguely crustacean-like ships.
- There is a very good change they're other enslaved aliens, in the same way the Combine turn humans into their ground troops
In Halo the AI of the transport ship Master Chief was on went and downloaded itself into the Chief's systems. It was represented as a snarky female Brain Upload of her designer.
- Cortana doesn't really count; she's more of a non-organic pilot as she was an independant AI before being installed in the Autumn, and doesn't identify with it particularly strongly.
In Sexy Parodius, Vic Viper and Lord British seem to be sentient beings, rather than mere ships with pilots in them. Of course, this being Parodius, this is played up for comedy.
In Star Fox Assault, Pigma is assimilated into one.
In Phantasy Star Online Ep. 1 and 2, the Ruins area. Especially on the last level.
Musashi: Samurai Legend has the Anthedon, a large ~~space~~ sky whale carrying the city of Antheum on its back.
The mantis of Conquest Frontier Wars appear to grow, everything. Ships, platforms, space stations..
The world ship from Prey is part technology, part living tissue, with something that used to be human(probably) as the brain.
In Ace Combat: Electrosphere you turn out to be one.
The alien ships in UFO Aftermath are revealed at some point of the game to be living things.
Metroid Prime 3 is one of the few games to mention how an intelligent computer can benefit a normally crew-run ship; Olympus-class battleships with an Aurora Unit have cut down on the crew requirements, leaving room for more weapon systems.

Webcomics

In Schlock Mercenary, all starships have AIs, as no organic being can handle the massively complex calculations required.
In Zap, the Excelsior is sentient, chooses its own captain, and is also apparently having an affair with Robot.
The eponymous ship in The Starship Destiny has an A.I. named Eddie, a reference to the one from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
The Savage Chicken, in Freefall.
Sebastian from Beyond Reality is the A.I. for a dimension traveling flying pirate ship.

WebOriginal

Orions Arm has a lot of these, to the point where the only polities that don't have them are virulent human supremacists. The most intelligent ones are non-biological due to the prevailing attitude that meat can only get you past the second Singularity or so.

Western Animation

A number of Transformers have been used as taxis by their teammates enough to qualify. Astrotrain comes to mind, as does Skyfire. As Transforming Mecha, it's pretty easy for them to be both characters and vehicles.
- Heck, almost any Transformer with a usable vehicle mode has aspects of the Living Ship, as they're sentient robots that double as modes of transportation.
- Decepticon second-in-command Cyclonus in Transformers Generation One was occasionally flown by his leader Galvatron.
- This is almost lampshaded in the original 1986 movie, where the Junkions ride on each other. When a pair of Junkions crashes, they switch: the rider becomes the bike and vice versa.
- The downsides are pointed out in the 2007 movie, when Bumblebee seemingly dumps his passengers because of an insult. "Now you've pissed him off! That car is sensitive."
- Tidal Wave from Transformers Armada fits this to a "T", as he transforms into an aircraft carrier. He's so big that, in the video game, you don't realize until you're facing off against him at the end of his level that he was the level.
- And don't forget Unicron, who transforms into a planet that eats other planets.
- And Primus in Transformers Cybertron, the Transformer god who is also the planet Cybertron itself.
- Omega Supreme in Transformers Animated also counts, revealed at the end of Season Two to be the Autobot's repair ship.
Arthur from Starchaser: The Legend of Orin.
The space ship in Tripping the Rift was both sentient and afraid of wide open spaces...
In the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket", the Planet Express Ship gets a new AI, which quickly falls in love with Bender.
Tehrig in Spartakus And The Sun Beneath The Sea.
The Hoog in The Brothers Flub is addressed by the title characters as a living being. It even has a tongue-like bay door.

Other

Separate people on Deviant Art have drawn personifications of the space shuttle orbiters and the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Rovers. And they all looked AWESOME.