fajrdrako | Spacefaring ships...

From LJ's Fannish Five: Name your five favorite spaceships.

The first three were easy:

Serenity, the junky-but-beloved Firefly-class starship owned by Captain Mal Reynolds in the TV show Firefly and the movie Serenity. I love that "boat"! Love the scenes of Mal buying her, with Zoe being skeptical ("You paid money for this, sir? On purpose?") and Mal being excited and persuasive.
Mal: Try to see past what she is, and on to what she can be.
Zoe: What's that, sir?
Mal: Freedom, is what.
Zoe: [pointing] I meant, what's that?
Mal: Oh. Yeah, just step around that. I think somethin' must've been livin' in here.
I love Kaylee's love of Serenity and I like the look of the place: their individual cramped quarters, Kaylee with her pretty touches and Jayne with his weaponry; the Tams with their clean, spartan space; Inara's elegance in her shuttle. I like the way Serenity can get them out of trouble or into it. Yup, great ship.
The TARDIS, in Doctor Who. Travels in both space and time. Bigger on the inside than the outside. I love it because I'm convinced it has its own agenda, regardless of what the Doctor wants. I love it that the TARDIS uses desktop themes, and that the swimming pool fell into the library and the Doctor fell into the swimming pool - I do hope the books are all right. I love it that it has a chameleon circuit, working or not. I love it that it doesn't look like a starship, but can go anywhere, and extend its field of breathable air outside itself, and translate almost any language - shall we see what it can make of Darmok? Piece of cake, I'd think.

I love it that Captain Jack Harkness loves the TARDIS as much as the Doctor does, and I believe she loves him back. I love it that he loved to work on her mechanisms. I love it that the Doctor stole the TARDIS, and doesn't know how to drive her as well as he might. I love it that she holds surprises for him, still and always. I love it that the TARDIS noise is because the Doctor keeps the brakes on - according to River Song.

Current favourite TARDIS quote is from Amy Pond: "If you're a Doctor, why does your box say 'police'?"

I am extremely sentimental about the TARDIS key and like to keep track of who has one. My favourite TARDIS scene is the end of "The Forest of Trees", when the Doctor snaps his fingers, and smiles, and walks in.
The EarthHub space carrier Macedon, the hugh spacefaring battleship that fights aliens and pirates, and becomes a refuge for troubled young men in the Karin Lowachee novels Warchild, Burndive and Cagebird. The Macedon is militaristic, and I don't usually like fictional starships run on militaristic principles, but this is a huge exception. I love Captain Cairo Azarcon, who runs it and makes it what it is. I love its (and his) ambiguous loyalties and ambitous goals.

I'm certainly hoping for more novels in that universe, and to learn more of Azarcon's story.

[Those are the easy ones. So I did a lot of thinking about other spaceships, and mostly came up empty. I like the Millennium Falcon, but I don't love it, especially after doing it as a 3-D jigsaw puzzle that bored me. I like the USSC Discovery 1 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but that's mostly just visual thrill, not the same at all. I finally came up with two more:]
The Chula warship used by Captain Jack Harkness in the Doctor Who episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances". It was small to the point of being claustrophobic, but it was very cool: it mixed drinks, it chatted with Captain Jack, it turned invisible on command, and it had teleporation devices.

In the fine tradition of rogue captains, Jack had stolen it from his previous (beautiful) owner. What's not to love?
Ranger Slingship #377 in Space Rangers. The show looks and sounds old-fashioned now, but there were so many things to enjoy about it, including Linda Hunt, and the way Jojo would pilot that ship lying on her stomach.

I'd love to see Space Rangers redone, with better scripts and production values, but the same good characters and sense of adventure.