History Main / EldritchStarship

** Under "Starfish" ships, we have 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]].]]

* 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.

* The more advanced starships of the ''Anime/TenchiMuyo'' series are all about this. Juryan 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, looks like a series of [[SpikesOfVillainy crystal spikes]] and is 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.

* The more advanced starships of the ''Anime/TenchiMuyo'' series are all about this. Juryan 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, looks like a series of [[SpikesOfVillainy crystal spikes]] turns 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.

* Genesis Rising features all organic ships.

* The [[spoiler:Daystar]] in ''Videogame/Jak3Wastelander''. [[spoiler:The personal ship of [[EldritchAbomination Dark Makers]], it is fated to bring the end of the world should it reach the surface of the planet. Considering its cargo includes Terraformers, it is most likely true.]]

* ''Film/{{Dune}}'': In the 1984 adaptation, 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.

* The Anti-Spirals of ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' utilize very odd kinds of ships. 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 {{Energy Being}}s. They also explode into voxels when destroyed. Later, the Anti-Spirals graduate to using spacecraft shaped like hands and feet with human faces on their palms and ankles, with capital ships that are one gigantic mass of faces and arms.

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 and possibly into AlienGeometries or a mobile version of the EldritchLocation.

They might be constructed from unconventional materials, powered by unconventional power sources, be [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence dimensionally transcendent]], or have an UnusualUserInterface. [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} Their interiors may even look like they were designed by M. C. Escher]]. 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 StarfishAlien technology -- whose conceptual design and performance seem to defy the very laws of physics.

* 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 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.

** ''Series/StarTrekPicard'': The synths on Coppelius fly giant flowers called Orchids which attach to enemy vessels and drain them of power, then let them fall out of orbit and crash to the planet's surface.

* ''Film/StarTrek2009'': The ''Narada'' provides the trope image, and it's more obvious 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.

* 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.

** The ''Freespace'' fan-made expansion ''VideoGame/BluePlanet'', specifically ''War in Heaven'', ups the Eldritch factor for the Shivans. It's hard to describe ''what'' they are, exactly. Something like the physical extensions of an "algorithm" naturally emergent from the mathematics of spacetime, 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, in reflection of the very nature of the Shivans themselves:

** The ''Freespace'' fan-made expansion ''VideoGame/BluePlanet'', specifically ''War in Heaven'', ups the Eldritch factor for the Shivans. It's hard to describe ''what'' they are, exactly. Something like the physical extensions of an algorithm embedded in the fabric of the universe, 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, adapting against the tactics and strategies their enemies use against them. 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, in reflection of the very nature of the Shivans themselves:

* ''Film/StarTrek2009'': The Narada, made more obvious 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 looking ship]], but took on its new horrifying appearance and capabilities after its crew stole reverse-engineered Borg technology. It's also a GeniusLoci, though this, like the reverse-engineered Borg tech and its kinship with V'Ger, is referenced only in supplementary materials.

* Various ''Franchise/StarTrek'' series:
** The Edo "God" orbiting Rubicun III in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E7Justice Justice]]" appeared like a strange, ghostly space-station that was only partially materialized in normal space, and was always referred to as a dimensionally transcendent entity. At one point it sent a probe or scout (its exact nature uncertain) which resembled a ball of light that shook the entire ''Enterprise'' when it "spoke."
** Q's energy grid from the [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E1EncounterAtFarpoint pilot episode]], which folds up into a warp-capable energy sphere for the purpose of chasing the ''Enterprise''.
** The Tarellian Plague Ship from "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E10Haven Haven]]": It looks like a conventional ''Franchise/StarTrek'' 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.
** In its [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E16QWho 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 (though 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.
*** 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. Though 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 individual function, similar to a tree.
** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': 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.

** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': The crew encountered a "photonic lattice" in one episode which was theorized to be the equivalent of a spacecraft for photonic life forms.
** 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.
** Time travel pods discovered by the ''NX-01'' crew in ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' were bigger on the inside than on the outside.
** 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/StarTrek'' 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 episode in which this ship appeared focused on some of the details of First Contact usually ignored by ''Franchise/StarTrek'', 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. The result was a spaceship with a suitably alien environment quite unlike the ISO Standard Rubber Forehead Spaceships usually favored by the series.
*** They also, apparently, 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.
** In ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', the Thasians' ship in "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E2CharlieX Charlie X]]" 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.
** 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.
** Balok's starship ''Fesarius'' from "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E10TheCorbomiteManeuver The Corbomite Maneuver]]" was 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.
** The Planet Killer from "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine The Doomsday Machine]]"; 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.

* In the movie ''Film/{{Explorers}}'', the kids build a spaceship based around a force field bubble, similar to the above.

** Hive Tomb Ships, floating mausoleums for the thralls inside. They can manifest just about anywhere, even indoors, thanks to their MagiTech warp drives.

** ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' reveals that the Reapers are constructed from the processed bodies of ''millions'' of sentient beings, with each Reaper being created from a different species.

** The ''Freespace'' fan-made expansion ''VideoGame/BluePlanet'', specifically ''War in Heaven'', ups the Eldritch factor for the Shivans. Those spacecraft are biomechanical -- the appendages of some sort of galactic "immune system" designed to combat existential threats -- and their crews amount to fully-functioning ''ecosystems'' whose behaviors somehow drive ship systems. They're infinitely mutable: their strategies are initially random, but fighting them teaches them your strengths and weaknesses, and they'll evolve to take advantage of what they've learned. It's an inefficient strategy in the short run, but the Shivans are eternal.
-->To use a metaphor from an old story... the Shivans are the Joker, or an entire Hive of Jokers, enacting madness in every direction - wasteful locally, but globally impossible to counter, for any adaptation to one strategy simply renders the defender vulnerable to the next...

For other Lovecraftian perversions of metallurgy, see MechanicalAbomination, with which this trope is known to overlap. May overlap with FlyingCutlerySpaceship.

The polar opposite of StandardHumanSpaceship, these are spacecraft, time machines, and/or interdimensional vehicles whose weirdness goes beyond LivingShip and possibly into AlienGeometries or a mobile version of the EldritchLocation.

They might be constructed from unconventional materials, powered by unconventional power sources, be [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence dimensionally transcendent]], or have an UnusualUserInterface. [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} Their interiors may even look like they were designed by M. C. Escher]]. There's no guarantee that the crew or the ship itself won't change its interiors (or even its exterior) from time to time. Frequently they are a GeniusLoci or function as a SettingAsACharacter. They are always surreal in some way that a typical spaceship in fiction just isn't.

The trope has three major variations (with a ''lot'' of overlap), but beyond these three archetypes there is much, much variety:

* "Starfish" Spaceship — as in StarfishAlien, only for technology. These are spacecraft whose very conceptual design, let alone its performance, seems to defy the laws of physics both in-universe and in RealLife.

* "Changeling" Spaceship — spacecraft that is physically possible, but transforms radically (not just extendable wings and the like). The interior, exterior, or both could transform.

* "Lobster" Spaceship — spacecraft that is physically possible, and probably has engines, a bridge, etc., but much of the ship seems to be a Lovecraftian mass of antennae, spines, blades, metallic tentacles and other parts of uncertain function.

For other Lovecraftian perversions of metallurgy, see MechanicalAbomination, with which this trope is known to overlap.

* [[http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070410023604/starwars/images/b/b2/Ravager.jpg The Ravager]] in KOTOR II. It's essentially a falling apart corpse of a ship held together only by the Dark Side powers of [[HumanoidAbomination Darth Nihilius]].

* "Starfish" Spaceship - as in StarfishAlien, only for technology. These are spacecraft whose very conceptual design, let alone its performance, seems to defy the laws of physics both in-universe and in RealLife.

* "Changeling" Spaceship - spacecraft that is physically possible, but transforms radically (not just extendable wings and the like). The interior, exterior, or both could transform.

* "Lobster" Spaceship - spacecraft that is physically possible, and probably has engines, a bridge, etc., but much of the ship seems to be a Lovecraftian mass of antennae, spines, blades, metallic tentacles and other parts of uncertain function.

[[folder:Film]]

** 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 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.

** 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.

** 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.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* The spherical, iPod-like starships used by Garry Shandling's character (and the other humanoid DittoAliens) in ''WhatPlanetAreYouFrom?'' The simple, striking design of these small ships perfectly reflected the stagnant, conformist culture on the main character's home planet.