Oh wow.

[conuly]

Remember I said that I was watching Battlestar Glactica?

Color me impressed. In most if not all scifi "space" shows I've seen, people think like they're still on a planet. Ships always meet nose to nose, right side up. They always fly in flat horizontal lines, never up or down.

We first saw that this was different when people land on the "underside" of a ship, only to fall down into it when they actually break in. But this....

They had a dogfight in space, and they actually moved in space. Spinning, going up and down and diagonally and sideways, shooting from underneath, everything. It's so simple, but it makes a difference. Realism is my god. You have no idea, I watched this and my eyes literally went wide.

I think I'm going to need a new icon.

Comments

[squittycat.livejournal.com]

a common (and lame) explanation by many fans of sci-fi shows (which use relatively plane (get it, plane?) space choreography) is that the gravitational influence of the galactic plane makes it much easier to travel parallel to it. using today's propulsion technology, it doesn't make that much of a difference, but it's possible that futuristic propulsion sacrifices maneuverability in directions that take a ship out-of-plane for the type of speed that makes interstellar travel practical.

as for ships always meeting nose-to-nose, if everyone is travelling parallel to the galactic plane anyway, then there are basically two possible orientations. it is possible that the galactic powers have all agreed on a standard "up" to facilitate docking, etc, or at least that ships preparing to rendezvous agree on an "up" before they meet, and we just never see them adjusting their orientation.