Top 5 Space Battles

I love me some space battleage. Words cannot describe. I mean, I like action of any sort, but if there's starships involved, I'm sold. Be it campy or straight up realistic, I'll take all of it. That being said, all space battles are not created equal. The following list has been compiled based on three criteria. Accuracy, entertainment, and boom. These are, of course, the requirements of all action scenes, and you'll likely see them applied to other things in the future. But without further ado...

Star Trek Deep Space 9: Sacrifice of Angels

I'm sure some of you were expecting to see lots of Star Trek on this list, and you certainly won't be disappointed. But from the TV show? Well, one of them. The one that actually had space battles in it. The battle from the episode(s) Sacrifice of Angels is by far the most impressive of them all. There's hundreds of ships visible at its high points, and it's very exciting. Especially when all of the humans have been edited out and it's set as a music video.

There's also plenty of exploding stuff, but of course, it's not very accurate. In fact, I'd say accuracy is probably the biggest problem with space battles as a whole. The Defiant fights her way through an enormous cloud of enemy ships, sacrificing wingmen by the dozen along the way, and why? It's space, for crying out loud. Fly around the stupid alien ships. There's an unimaginably huge expanse of nothing on literally all sides. I don't see what's so hard about this.

Star Trek Nemesis

Yay, more Star Trek! Nemesis get's this spot mostly because it's exciting, and you get to see the ships exchanging a lot of fire. And fly around like you always assumed they could, but never got to see. It also provides a pretty good excuse for why the ships have to get so close to each other to fight. Apparently it's really easy to dodge enemy fire from any kind of distance. If we're honest, it makes no sense that these people don't have guided weaponry. But that's a different discussion.

Moments like this are the only reason you have any faith left in Worf's ability to shoot anything by the end.

It's pretty exciting, too, and hey, I finally get to enjoy a Federation ship ramming something. Why they haven't designed their ships to do that by now, I have no idea. But at least it happens once. And that includes an appreciable amount of boom by way of the Enterprise getting torn in half. So that's nice too.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

It's not as fast paced as the previous two entries, but it more than makes up for that in the accuracy department. Fact is, space battles would in reality be much more like submarine battles than airplane dogfighting. Add to that the fact that this is equal parts tension, tactics, and humor, and you've got a winner.

Pictured: Equal parts tension, tactics, and humor. Seriously.

Also, the addition of a bad guy quoting Shakespeare is always going to class up your fight scenes. Why more movies don't have this, I'll never understand.

Return of the Jedi

Can I get a WHEEEE!!!

Wheeee!!

This movie set the bar for space battles when I was a kid, and it's still among my favorites. It's not terribly accurate, as even a fleet of 1000 ships isn't going to be able to create a sphere that could actually trap the Rebel fleet. Space is big, guys.

"A badly thought out and poorly executed trap, but a trap none the less!"

That aside, it's loads of fun, filled with pacing like you'd see in a Spielberg flick, and good and long. Lots of space battles suffer from not-long-enough-itude, and it's a shame we don't get more of these movies where half the film is ships in space shooting at each other.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Speaking of a film where half the movie is ships in space shooting at each other...

It can only get better from here. Or, worse, since I am an empathetic person.

Speaking of a movie that depicts space battling more accurately than about anything else...

"Wha... are they not operating on a two dimensional plain? Blasphemy!"

Speaking of a movie where the bad guy quotes classical literature and there's an enormous explosion at the end...

Boom.

The Wrath of Khan pretty much sets the bar for all aspects of space battling. It could have used a little more boom, but it had a Khan to make up for that lack. And he more than settled that debt.


Honorable Mention: Stargate Atlantis: Be All My Sins Remember'd

This is almost a dead tie with Sacrifice of Angels above, and it really loses out because it's a little too short. But one thing I really like about this is you get to see the efficacy of the two types of weapons you'd really want in a space battle. You have the Ancient drones, that are powerful individually but most especially in huge swarms. They are small, smart missiles that are very difficult to intercept and that can be guided all the way to their target, making them almost impervious to countermeasures. Then there's the Asgard beam weapon, which is so stinking powerful that it doesn't matter if you deploy countermeasures. It will go right through them and kill you anyways.

Weapons like those make the crap they use in Star Wars and Star Trek look really quite pathetic. To be honest, Star Trek ships would probably beat Star Wars ships, but Stargate would kick everyone's butts. Assuming that the ships involved were Ancient or Asgard (or Human after they got the Asgard beams) and maybe Ori. If you were just looking at the Goa'uld and the Wraith, or the Travelers, they probably wouldn't do as well.

It's entirely possible I spend too much time thinking about this sort of thing.