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Prime News delivers timely, accurate news and insights on global events, politics, business, and technology
By Joshua Tyler | Updated
There have been many epic space battles in sci-fi movies and television, but at the end of the day, the best space battles will be determined between the two biggest star franchises: Star Trek and Star Wars. Maybe Babylon 5 would have been in the running with a bigger budget and modern computers. And if you’ve seen the 2004 reboot of Galactic BattlestarYou know how exciting those Viper fights can be.
But in the end, it all comes down to Star Trek versus Star Wars, and their approaches couldn’t be more different. Star Wars space battles are exciting aerial dogfights in which combatants roam the cosmos against a backdrop of stationary megaships battling each other. Star Trek’s space battles are bigger, with cruisers considering tactics and executing moves with maximum efficiency and drama.
Which is better? This channel is on the Starfleet side and we’re about to show you why. These are the best Star Trek space battles.
Star Trek: Generations disappointed fans, and First contact It wastes no time righting that film’s mistakes by opening with a spaceship battle on the big screen. Generations could not be delivered.
With the Enterprise en route, a desperate fleet attempts to stop a Borg cube approaching Earth. The working group is led by Deep Space Nine heroic ship, the Defiant, under the command of everyone’s favorite Klingon, Worf. Despite leading a fleet containing some of Starfleet’s newest battle innovations, Earth’s defenders are completely outmatched and the situation is desperate.
On the brink of destruction, Worf orders Ben to leave. Parks and recreation to take the Defiant at full speed, no doubt reveling in the thought of an honorable death. At the last possible moment, the Enterprise appears out of nowhere to mitigate the Borg cube’s attacks. It’s not just the Enterprise but the new Enterprise E, a ship designed specifically to take down the Borg.
The Borg are old enemies of the Federation, and in every previous encounter, they always have the advantage, and even with this shiny new Sovereign-class Enterprise to fight them, that’s what the audience expects. Instead, the Enterprise smashes the Borg cube, causing the Borg queen to eject herself and embark on a risky time travel scheme, kicking off the film’s story in the broadest way possible.
Hampered by its 1980s television budget, Star Trek: The Next Generation It rarely showed any ship combat on screen. When it did, it was either finished quickly or filmed in a way that avoided the time constraints and difficulty of using physical models.
when the Next generation The team finally got a movie, most thought that would mean we would finally get to see what Enterpise D can do with a big screen budget. But he Star Trek: Generations The script had the Enterprise D foolishly shut down due to a lame technical involving shield frequencies and poor decisions by Riker.
When Journey to the stars: Picard Season 3 showrunner Terry Matalas decided to resurrect the Enterprise D, it was a chance to right that wrong. With modern CGI at his command, Matalas launched the Enterprise D into the battle of its life against a Borg Cube so large it might as well have been the Death Star.
In what was surely no accident, the Enterprise’s path to defeat it ends up looking a lot like the Millennium Falcon’s race against the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. Maybe that’s a little silly in the context of Star Trek, but it’s a lot of fun, and when it happens, everything else in Picard’s third season has been so good that it’s completely deserved.
Star Trek has never done anything like this and probably never will again. It’s one of the most energetic space battle sequences in the franchise.
Everything that happens in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan leads to the Mutara Nebula.
Captain Kirk has been on the brink of defeat and knows it’s his fault. He ruined it. He ignored Saavik’s warnings and let Khan drop him. There are dead people and the crew he left alive is only breathing thanks to luck.
Both the Enterprise and the Reliant are damaged and crippled, but the Enterprise is in worse shape and that means the Reliant has the advantage. The crew of the Enterprise faces a brilliant madman who will stop at nothing until he dies. It’s the perfect setup for the ultimate one-on-one spaceship battle, and remains the gold standard of space battles for many Star Trek fans.
It’s strange to think about now but then The Wrath of KhanStar Trek had never shown audiences a full-fledged spaceship battle. the movie it had no real fights and the original series didn’t have the budget to show much beyond cutting back and forth between blurry ship models floating stationary in space.
From the beginning, journey to the stars ii Director Nicolas Meyer set out to change the course of Star Trek by creating a film inspired by naval traditions. His original written plan for the final ship battle in the The Wrath of Khan He had it like an old sailboat, fighting with cannons. The Reliant and Enterprise were to remain in open space, exchanging volleys until someone won.
Production designer Joe Jennings pointed out that this was wrong. He thought that spacecraft would confront each other in high-speed passes in open space circumstances.
So, with the help of art director Mike Minor, he came up with the Battle of the Mutara Nebula, a situation in which both ships would be hindered and visibility would be limited. This allowed Meyer to film the final match between Enterprise and Reliant more like an intense underwater battle or a Master and Commander-type sailing chase shrouded in thick fog. The fact that they have achieved this using only physical models, without any CGI, makes it The Wrath of Khan The Battle of Mutara is even more impressive.
The environment is beautiful and visually unique. The strategies involved are interesting but also easy to understand.
Both commanders find themselves in situations where they are asked to put into practice the lessons they should have learned throughout the film, bringing the film’s plot full circle. The battle is decided when Khan fails to adapt, while Kirk learns from his previous mistakes. , follows the advice of his officers and wins. A victory that costs him the life of his best friend.
Winning will only give our heroes more death and war. Losing this conflict means losing everything. That’s the setup for Operation Return, Star Trek’s best space battle.
Happens in season 6 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine at the end of what is also one of the biggest and best story arcs in franchise history. The episode is called “Sacrifice of Angels” and is the last in a series of six interconnected episodes in which all previous episodes ended with “To be continued”.
The battle is named after Captain Benjamin Sisko, Starfleet’s chief strategist. Plan a desperate assault to break through enemy lines and retake Deep Space Nine before the Dominion can clear the way for Gamma Quadrant reinforcements.
The irony of Operation Return is that Sisko’s plan fails. Gul Dukat, commanding the Dominion fleet, sees through every strategic trick, successfully luring the outcompeted Federation fleet into a trap. It is only thanks to an unexpected last-minute reinforcement from the Klingons, who fly out of the sun in formation like Han Solo facing the Death Star or Gandalf arriving at Helm’s Deep, that Sisko survives and breaks through enemy lines. But not until it’s too late.
The desperate futility of all that death and destruction only makes it more shocking. The good guys win in the end, not thanks to Sisko’s battle planning, but only after we witness the most astonishing, explosion-filled, spaceship-shattering conflict in Star Trek.
More than 200 Federation starships and Klingon raptors face off against an even larger enemy fleet comprised of Carsassian and Dominion ships over the course of the episode’s lengthy space battle sequence. It is something that would not have been technologically possible to display on screen in the days of practical motion-controlled models.
Deep space nine began experimenting with using computer-generated effects for its space sequences in season 3. By the time the sixth season arrived in 1997, they had mastered it and were so confident in their abilities that the show decided to do something new with their CGI. technology.
“Sacrifice of Angels” was the first Star Trek episode to exclusively use computer-generated imagery. It was such a huge task that the series hired two independent digital effects companies to collaborate on its completion. Digital Muse created the new ships needed for the Federation side of the battle, while Foundation Imaging created the Dominion Fleet. Digital Muse then put together the first half of the battle while Foundation Imaging animated the second half sequence in which the Defiant breaks into Deep Space Nine.
To ensure a level of tactical realism, the producers of DS9 consulted with military expert Dan Curry and Bradley Thompson, a former pilot, to develop strategies that would be used by struggling fleets.
Cool special effects and exploding spaceships alone don’t make for a great space battle. “Sacrifice of Angels” combined that with the awesomeness the show had been building up for six episodes to create the ultimate payoff for patient fans who had been brought to a boiling point by the mounting tension.
It worked. All of this. 6.4 million viewers tuned in in 1997, when the scene aired. “Sacrifice of Angels” is now considered one of the best Star Trek episodes.
The battle scene was so beloved that when showrunner Ira Steven Behr had to choose a scene from DS9 to remaster in high-resolution HD, he chose this one for the retrospective documentary. What we left behind. is the only one Deep space nine Sequence that has never been remastered and is the best Star Trek space battle.