Friday Five: Sweet Alien Ships

Visit GateWorld every Friday for a new installment of the Friday Five, a countdown of our favorite episodes, characters, technology and more from 15 years of Stargate history! Use trackbacks to post your own Friday Five for this week’s topic on your blog, or post a comment below to let us know how your picks compare.

This Week: Sweet Alien Ships

Nothing says “sci-fi” (… or is it “syfy” now?) like a kick-ass space ship design. Science fiction is full of these iconic shapes set against a glimmering star field — the Enterprise, the White Star, Serenity, the Millennium Falcon. And Stargate certainly has its share of cool ships. With all due props to Earth’s Daedalus-class and F-302 ship designs, in this week’s Friday Five we’re counting down our favorite alien ship designs.

Seen In: “Camelot”

Nicknamed the “toilet bowl” by fans for its open, flushy design, this advanced Ori vessel packs a powerful punch. It is highly advanced technology, given by the ascended Ori to their mortal followers. That glowy orb in the middle is a power source (a fusion reaction, or some sort of portable singularity?), powering among other things a super-powerful cutting beam. You don’t want to run into one of these in a dark alley … unless you are ready to convert to the wisdom that is Origin.

Though it’s been mocked by a few fans, we actually like this ship design because it is different. Instead of menacingly angular, it is soft and round. Either the Ori wanted to look non-threatening, or they knew that with a giant space gun you can get away with flying around in a toilet bowl.

Seen In: “Deadman Switch”

Though made to be purely functional, the Goa’uld cargo ship has a sleek, understated elegance about it. It also has a place in our hearts, since SG-1 used them so much in Seasons Three, Four and Five (before Earth started making its own ships). But don’t plan to take it into battle … the Tel’tak has no weapons, no shields, and only occasionally a working cloaking device. It’s meant for hauling cargo (and for secret SG-1 / Tok’ra ops), not holding the line against Heru’ur.

“Jolinar’s Memories,” “The Serpent’s Venom,” “Fail Safe” … We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: We miss Goa’uld cargo ships.

Seen In: “Rising”

Now if you want angular, this is as pointy and threatening as it gets! The aptly-named Dart is the Wraith’s one-man fighter craft. It has decent weapons, but its main function is culling. Pilots do a low, rapid fly-over of your village and activate a transporter beam that functions as a sort of fishing net. Everything it passes over is demolecularized and stored inside the Dart’s computer, to be rematerialized only later … when the Wraith is back on his hive ship and has the munchies.

The Dart is fast, deadly, and with that organic-sounding hum to its engines, damn intimidating.

Seen In: “Nemesis”

As one of the more technologically advanced species in the Stargate universe, the Asgard have gone through several ship designs. One of the best is the Beliskner class — the ship that Supreme Commander Thor was flying around when we first met him. Its design is reminiscent of the hammer from Norse mythology. The Asgard were (sometimes) something of a galactic peacekeeper, and their sophisticated technology — weapons, shields, and transporter beams that can grab a person off the surface of a planet, or demolecularize entire warships (as seen in “Thor’s Chariot”) — helped them do it.

The Asgard mothership runs on four neutrino ion generators, in case you were wondering.

Seen In: “Within the Serpent’s Grasp”

They say you never forget your first … invasion of the planet. The Ha’tak-class mothership was the cornerstone of the System Lord arsenal for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. And it was no more menacing than when Apophis brought two of them into orbit to attack Earth directly. This ship design is visually striking, thanks to the Egyptian pyramid theme it has going on (perfect for landing on top of pyramids, which we all know were actually built as landing platforms). The design is also distinctively Stargate.

The Ha’tak has energy shields and also packs a powerful punch, firing huge blasts of energy at enemy vessels or bombarding the surface of a planet from space. But it does have its weaknesses, including the inability to cloak, an ugly dashboard … and being commanded by snake-heads whose attitude tends to get them blown up.

NEXT WEEK ON THE FIVE: Teal’c’s Best Jokes. Blog about your five favorite lines next Friday, and trackback to our post!