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Ugliest Sci-Fi Spaceships

Over the decades, there have been countless fictional spaceships committed to celluloid and video. A few memorable ones — the X-wing, the many Enterprises, the Nostromo, etc. — captured our imaginations and inspired generations of sci-fi set designers. Of course, for every badass starfighter, there were dozens of ugly duds. Here are my top few.

Nell from Battle Beyond the Stars [above]
Roger Corman’s 1980 sci-fi film Battle Beyond the Stars doesn’t exactly rank among the classics, but the silliest aspect of the movie is the spaceship that the hero, Shad, pilots. She’s named Nell, and she is very well-endowed indeed.

Klingon D7 and K’tinga Cruisers
The original Klingon battlecruisers were anything but threatening. They looked like flying nuns, and the forward torpedo launcher looked like mouths frozen in a shocked expression. The later Bird of Prey ship that first appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was so much more menacing with its vulture-like.

Ornithopters
The kids in the 1985 flick Explorers had an excuse for their crappy spaceship – they used a junked carnival ride and Radio Shack technology to build it, plus they were freaking kids.  The Atreides Empire in David Lynch’s Dune has come up with a similar vehicle that manages to look even crappier.  It looks like a mini Winnebago.

Y-Wing
I had a Y-Wing when I was a kid, and I always thought it looked like some clunky minivan with dildos for thruster engines. Every kid’s favorite Star Wars fighter was the X-Wing, and we all pretty much assumed all rebel pilots that got stuck with a Y-Wing were pretty bummed.

Drahvin ship from Doctor Who
Granted, part of the charm of the original Doctor Who series was the zero-budget aesthetic and laughably cheap effects, but this Drahvin ship from the Galaxy 4 serial looks like some cheap Chinese rip-off of a Buckminster Fuller dome house. Nothing about it is even remotely sinister. At least it doesn’t look like a dick.

Archangel
The Archangel from Gundam Seed looks like a pair of really fast tap shoes.

Romulan Cabbage Class
In the Star Trek universe, the Romulans have a class of starships called Cabbages. They look like cabbages. With legs.

Tagged: Archangel, Drahvin ship from Doctor Who, Klingon D7 and K'tinga Cruisers, Nell from Battle Beyond the Stars, Ornithopters, Romulan Cabbage Class, Y-Wing