History CoolStarship / LiveActionTV

* Needless to say the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson series ''Series/{{UFO}}'' abounds with them. SST's, tilt-fan aircraft decades before the Osprey [[strike:got off the ground]] crashed, jet-powered seaplanes, [[MilitaryMashupMachine submarine-launched jet fighters]], Lunar Modules piggyback-launched from VTOL carrier aircraft, bug-like Moon Mobiles that travel with an eerie ''[[SoundInSpace wooo]]'' sound [[note]]Any time you hear an eerie sound in a Gerry Anderson series, it's produced by composer Barry Gray on his 'Ondes Martenot' synthesizer[[/note]], Interceptors with a [[NukeEm Big Fucking Nuke]] in the nose. [[http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=MuXIBOqBitg What more could a teenage fanboy ask for?]]

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.

* ''Series/BuckRogersInThe25thCentury'': The Earth Defense Directorate starfighters, the Draconian Hatchet fighters, the ''Belly Bombers'' used in ''Return of the Fighting 69th'', Ardala's ship, and the ''Searcher'' from Season Two as well as Hawk's Talon fighter. ''With real talons''.

** The original Ship of the Imagination piloted by Creator/CarlSagan is capable of taking him--and the viewer--absolutely anywhere in time and space, to view the universe on the macro or micro level. The inside is a comfortable-looking 80's minimalist cockpit, the outside [[EldritchStarship is a luminous dandelion puff]]. There's also an optional viewscreen in the floor where Sagan can demonstrate scientific ideas.
** UsefulNotes/NeilDeGrasseTyson's Ship of the Imagination is a [[ShinyLookingSpaceships Shiny-Looking Spaceship]] with a sleek design and sometimes acts as a mirror to whatever splendors are around it. Like Sagan's, it can go anywhere and anywhen. The big circular viewscreen in the floor is omnipresent, but it always shows the past--the viewscreen in the ceiling, potential futures.

* The USS ''[[Series/TheOrville Orville]]'' from the eponymous series. While hardly unique (there are 3000 ships in the Union fleet, after all), her crew is responsible for a number of feats that belie her size and firepower, using excellent maneuvering and clever tactics to defeat ships several times the size. In addition, the ''Orville'' has a sleek jellyfish-like appearance. She's even better in season 2 after she TookALevelInBadass, with stronger DeflectorShields that help her class-up from FragileSpeedster to a borderline LightningBruiser.

* The Eagles from ''Series/{{Space 1999}}'' also fit, being the best thing about the series apart from Martin Landau. Pretty much all of the spaceship designs (by Brian Johnson and his team, who'd also worked on ''2001'') count. And the show did have a cool season 1 theme tune by Barry Gray.

** Remember the USS ''Constellation''? Blasted into near-scrap by the Doomsday Machine, antimatter exhausted and warp drive a 'pile of scrap', yet it could still fly and fight clumsily once Scotty got his hands on it. Both the television series and the ''TOS'' films repeatedly demonstrated that the ''Constitution''-class simply ''could not be killed.'' Even if something managed to kill every member of its crew, the ships themselves would almost always survive--probably intact enough to be brought back into fighting form within hours. ''Enterprise'' and ''Defiant'' both demonstrated that losing their deflector shields was, at most, a moderate inconvenience for a ''Constitution''; as hostile forces could pound away at their unshielded hulls for entire minutes at a time without damaging them enough to really take them out of a fight. Those ships were arguably the best the Federation ever built.

*** The Excelsior class also had a very long shelf life, with some of those ships seeing action as late as the Dominion War. Though that may have been a case of BreakOutTheMuseumPiece (the Federation sorely lacking for ships at the time), it's still a testament to the ingenuity of Federation engineers (who are essentially [[MemeticBadass memetic badasses]] in-universe, even to the Dominion), that they could recommission 80 year-old starships and regularly send them into the fray.

** The [[http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/D%27Kora_class Ferengi Marauder]] of all things, even Picard considered it a "very impressive design" - good thing they're more interested in commerce than warfare.

** The ''Excelsior'' class. Introduced in the movies as the bigger, cooler Enterprise-like ship, we see them all the time in the TNG-era - and ''that's'' impressive itself. If eighty years later they're still one of the most prominent types of ship, whoever designed it really did something right. Turns out that they can be upgraded to go up against anything more modern designs throw at them, one even holding its own against the Defiant (long story about why they were fighting) for a little while.
*** That ship, the ''Lakota'', was fitted with those powerful Borg and Dominion-killing quantum torpedos that ''Enterprise-E'' and the ''Defiant'' carry. Dialogue makes it clear that if ''Lakota'' used them--at least toward the end of the battle--''Defiant'' probably would have lost.

%%** The basis for the Astro Megaship - Mega Ship / Galaxy Mega from Series/DenjiSentaiMegaranger. Since the series was themed around computers rather than space travel, it was used as an orbital base instead of transport, but still.

--->'''WebSite/SFDebris:''' It's a set of guns strapped to an engine.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'': The 303-class, ''Prometheus''.
** The successor 304-class, ''Apollo'', ''Korolev'', ''Odyssey'', and ''Daedalus'', and now the ''Sun Tzu'' and the ''[[TearJerker General Hammond]]'' (formerly ''Phoenix'').

** Hey, did everyone forgot about the Ori battleships?! Despite being shaped like a toilet seat, their main weapon can one-shot most ships in the known universe and have brutally powerful shields. If you see one heading for you, '''get the fuck out of there or you're DEAD''' if it gets into weapons range.

** Also from ''Enterprise'' the stylish and badass Andorian starship ''[[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ef/f8/4c/eff84c58ca2362f5b015959537c77060.jpg9 Kumari]]''. Being captained by an EnsembleDarkhorse like [[FireForgedFriends Shran]] certainly doesn't hurt.

** Also from ''Enterprise'' the stylish and badass Andorian starship ''[[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/c/cb/Kumari-class_aft.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/340?cb=20141223184329 Kumari]]''. Being captained by an EnsembleDarkhorse like [[FireForgedFriends Shran]] certainly doesn't hurt.

** The ''[[http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:USS_Prometheus,_2374_(fore).jpg Prometheus]]'', an experimental starship seen a couple of times in ''Voyager''. Not only is it a sleek high-tech ship designed to go where bigger ships can't, it can also [[BifurcatedWeapon split]] into [[http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:USS_Prometheus,_multi-vector_assault_mode.jpg three parts]] in order to break stuff.

** And that's just the main Human ships. Most of the supporting cast of races got cool ships, but the [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/5/5f/IKS_Kronos_One.jpg Klingon]] and [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/1/15/IRW_TMet_firing_disruptors.jpg Romulan ships]] were especially badass.

** Especially since, if you go by the [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/0/06/IKS_Rotarran_fires_on_Jem%27Hadar_attack_ship.jpg IKS Rotarran]], (Martok's ship) Dominion War-Era Birds of Prey are pretty much comparable to the USS Defiant.

** The Vulcan High Command ringships from ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''; particularly the [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081008011025/memoryalpha/en/images/5/58/D%27Kyr_type%2C_ventral_particle_beam.jpg ''D'Kyr''-class Combat Cruiser]], but also the ''Surak''-class ships and the larger ''Suurok''-class vessels like ''Sh'raan''.

** The Negh'var. Sadly we don't see too much of it. Most Klingon ships are the TOS ones upgraded to look more not-made-in-the-60s. Then we meet the flashship, an armed-to-the-teeth behemoth. In the MirrorUniverse, it's basically considered a superweapon. And, like the ''Excelsior''-class, its staying power proves that they really had a winner here. One of a kind in the present, but the future-set sequences of both the TNG and Voyager GrandFinale episodes had it as what all Klingon ships look like.

** And for completeness sake, the Vor'cha class. Like the Negh'var, it's sadly underused in favor of the old Birds of Prey, but it was designed with the fact that Klingons and the Federation are allies these days in mind, with as many glowing red strips as TNG-era Federation ships have glowing blue strips. While reminding you of the TOS battle cruiser, it's that much shinier and downright ''sweet'' to look at.

** The ISS ''Charon'', [[TheEmperor Emperor]] Philippa Georgiou's flagship. A cool-looking palace with a giant ring in the middle, with an ''artificial sun'' at the center ([[spoiler:actually a spore reactor]]). She also has plenty of firepower, given the can of whoopass she opens on a planet with a rebel base.

** Also, the ''[[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/7/74/Delta_Flyer_II.jpg Delta Flyer]]'', designed by [[AcePilot Tom Paris]] and [[WrenchWench B'Elanna Torres]] ''specifically'' to be a Cool Starship. (Too bad Tuvok vetoed those retro fins Tom wanted.)

** The ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Defiant]]'', a cramped, blocky, compact ship designed to ''[[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/e/ee/USS_Defiant%2C_First_Contact.jpg break stuff]]''. It's what you'd get if you took a Galaxy-class starship, stripped off everything not necessary for killing, and then stuffed it all in an armored box and added even more guns for good measure. It's Sisko's own design, when the loss of his wife at Wolf 359 had put him in the best frame of mind to design warships: ''furious''. As a result, it is designed explicitly to kill Borg, a task that coincidentally makes it good at killing many other things, most of them several times its size. Starfleet officially describes it as an "escort vessel", one can only assume while doing air quotes specifically to stress that this is a bald-faced lie. Described in the DVD commentary as "on a five-year mission to ''kick ass''."

** Let's add the ''[[http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/a/a9/Akira_class%2C_overview.jpg Akira]]''-class (functionally Star Trek's version of TheBattlestar), ''[[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/c/c2/USS_Farragut%2C_Generations.jpg Nebula]]''-class (Compact version of the ''Galaxy''-class yet just as powerful, and with the weapon's pod even moreso), the ''[[http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/e/e7/Galaxy_class_aft.jpg Galaxy]]''-class itself (especially the War Refit versions), the ''[[http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/2/2c/USS_Enterprise_%28NCC-1701%29%2C_remastered.jpg Constitution]]''-class (AKA, the ORIGINAL Enterprise, and especially the [[http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/d/df/USS_Enterprise-A_quarter.jpg refit and movie versions]]), and many more...

** Season 2 has Chancellor L'Rell introduce the iconic D7 battlecruiser to the Klingon Houses. It's the first Klingon warship in the series not to be associated with a particular House and only bear the crest of the Empire, hence the less ornate design.
** We also see a Section 31 stealth ship with variable nacelle configuration. It may not have a cloaking device, but it's stealthy enough to avoid detection and allow operatives to get close to Qo'noS.

* The ''Vulture'' from "Series/{{Salvage 1}}." Built in a 1979 scrap yard from parts including a gasoline truck, a cement mixer and some old tires, the ''Millennium Falcon'' ain't got nothing on this baby when it comes to being a miraculously functional "piece of junk." It took its crew of a junkman, a former astronaut, and a propulsion expert all the way to the Moon and back to salvage NASA's collectibles.

** The Lost ''City'' of [[Series/StargateAtlantis Atlantis!]]
** ''Series/StargateUniverse'' takes place entirely on an Ancient CoolShip. This is one of those ships that despite being old and run-down it almost makes it even cooler.
** The ''Destiny'' is doubly-cool, just from how it refuels: by ''flying though stars!''

** The USS ''[[https://eipl.org/Comic_Con/Images/startrek2.jpg Discovery]]'' from the [[Series/StarTrekDiscovery eponymous series]]. A research ship specially designed around the experimental spore drive, which can teleport it great distances (the ''Discovery''[='s=] sister ship used to routinely make 90-light-year jumps in about a second). Because EverythingsBetterWithSpinning, before it makes a jump, the saucer section's outer ring spins clockwise, then the inner ring begins to spin counterclockwise, then the ''whole thing flips'' while reality bends to snap it light-years away in an instant. With the Federation-Klingon War going on, the ''Discovery'' is the most important ship in the fleet, even beating out the ''Enterprise'', which is still on its original five-year mission under Pike. Being able to make instantaneous jumps with pinpoint accuracy can help turn the tide of war, such as when the ''Discovery'' [[spoiler:performs a GunshipRescue of a key mining colony]] or [[spoiler:initiates a TeleportSpam in order to harass the Klingon flagship and get a 3D image of it while cloaked]].

** The Earth Alliance's ''[[http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Explorer_class_ship Explorer]]''-class ships. These are the ships that are the vanguard of Earth's influence, and while they might not be very pretty, they're [[MileLongShip huge]], they're often the first Earth ships to enter new star systems (the ''Cortez'' was even stated to have been on a [[Series/StarTrek five year mission]]), and they can build jumpgates!

* The USS ''[[Series/TheOrville Orville]]'' from the eponymous series. While hardly unique (there are 3000 ships in the Union fleet, after all), her crew is responsible for a number of feats that belie her size and firepower, using excellent maneuvering and clever tactics to defeat ships several times the size. In addition, the ''Orville'' has a sleek jellyfish-like appearance.

** The USS ''[[https://eipl.org/Comic_Con/Images/startrek2.jpg Discovery]]'' from the [[Series/StarTrekDiscovery eponymous series]]. A research ship specially designed around the experimental spore drive, which can teleport it great distances (the ''Discovery''[='s=] sister ship used to routinely make 90-light-year jumps in about a second). With the Federation-Klingon War going on, the ''Discovery'' is the most important ship in the fleet, even beating out the ''Enterprise'', which is still on its original five-year mission under Pike. Being able to make instantaneous jumps with pinpoint accuracy can help turn the tide of war, such as when the ''Discovery'' [[spoiler:performs a GunshipRescue of a key mining colony]] or [[spoiler:initiates a TeleportSpam in order to harass the Klingon flagship and get a 3D image of it while cloaked]]. For that matter, the ''Ship of the Dead'' (AKA the ''[[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/8/89/The_Sarcophagus.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20171115014700&path-prefix=en Sarcophagus]]''), a unique Klingon ship with its hull lined with coffins of fallen warriors and the first ever Klingon cloaking device. It belongs to a rogue Klingon house, before being appropriated by General Kol as his flagship [[spoiler:and then destroyed by the ''Discovery'']].

** The ISS ''Charon'', [[TheEmperor Emperor]] Philippa Georgiou's flagship. A cool-looking palace with a giant ring in the middle, with an ''artificial sun'' at the center. She also has plenty of firepower, given the can of whoopass she opens on a planet with a rebel base.

** The USS ''[[https://eipl.org/Comic_Con/Images/startrek2.jpg Discovery]]'' from the [[Series/StarTrekDiscovery eponymous series]]. A research ship specially designed around the experimental spore drive, which can teleport it great distances (the ''Discovery''[='s=] sister ship used to routinely make 90-light-year jumps in about a second). With the Federation-Klingon War going on, the ''Discovery'' is the most important ship in the fleet, even beating out the ''Enterprise'', which is fighting somewhere on the front lines. Being able to make instantaneous jumps with pinpoint accuracy can help turn the tide of war, such as when the ''Discovery'' [[spoiler:performs a GunshipRescue of a key mining colony]] or [[spoiler:initiates a TeleportSpam in order to harass the Klingon flagship and get a 3D image of it while cloaked]]. For that matter, the ''Ship of the Dead'' (AKA the ''[[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/8/89/The_Sarcophagus.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20171115014700&path-prefix=en Sarcophagus]]''), a unique Klingon ship with its hull lined with coffins of fallen warriors and the first ever Klingon cloaking device. It belongs to a rogue Klingon house, before being appropriated by General Kol as his flagship [[spoiler:and then destroyed by the ''Discovery'']].

** The USS ''Discovery'' from the [[Series/StarTrekDiscovery eponymous series]]. A research ship specially designed around the experimental spore drive, which can teleport it great distances (the ''Discovery''[='s=] sister ship used to routinely make 90-light-year jumps in about a second). With the Federation-Klingon War going on, the ''Discovery'' is the most important ship in the fleet, even beating out the ''Enterprise'', which is fighting somewhere on the front lines. Being able to make instantaneous jumps with pinpoint accuracy can help turn the tide of war, such as when the ''Discovery'' [[spoiler:performs a GunshipRescue of a key mining colony]] or [[spoiler:initiates a TeleportSpam in order to harass the Klingon flagship and get a 3D image of it while cloaked]]. For that matter, the ''Ship of the Dead'' (AKA the ''Sarcophagus''), a unique Klingon ship with its hull lined with coffins of fallen warriors and the first ever Klingon cloaking device. It belongs to a rogue Klingon house, before being appropriated by General Kol as his flagship [[spoiler:and then destroyed by the ''Discovery'']].

* Subversion: the new ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'', BS-75, survived the Cylon attack to become the focus of its series because it was old, obsolete, and ''less'' cool than the rest of the fleet, without being actually junky. (Though by virtue of achievement ''Galactica'' is still really, really cool, with many a-CrowningMomentOfAwesome.)

** And now we have the "new" ''Constitution''-class from the rebooted ''Film/StarTrek'', which despite being over a hundred years "obsolete", still managed to damage the ''Narada'' (which was also augmented by reverse engineered Borg technology) to a considerable extent [[spoiler:though it was being sucked into a black hole at the time]]. Apparently the permanently altered timeline made the class even better.

** There's also the beautiful ''[[http://images.wikia.com/tardis/images/a/aa/Byz.png Byzantium]]'' from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E4TheTimeOfAngels "The Time of Angels" (pre-crash, of course). It has ''[[RuleOfCool cyborg trees]]'' on board to generate oxygen! Freaking ''cool!''