The Worst Deaths for Ships in Sci-Fi

[Eternal_Freedom]

As a companio to my other thread asking about the best deaths, what are the worst? The accidents, the mistakes, the losses that are in vain?

Personally I'd pick the SGverse Prometheus which gets killed because they wait too long.

Or the USS Odyssey of DS9 fame. Or the Yamato. Both sucked

But again, what are the worst and most pointless losses?

[Crazedwraith]

USAF BC-303 Prometheus. Killed solely so they can introduce a shiny new BC 304 in the next episode.

[Isolder74]

NCC-1701D Star Trek Generations.

Come on that was so lame!

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'd forgotten the E-D. Wow, the Galaxy class really sucks for shitty deaths. I wonder how Galaxy, Challenger and Venture last so long. Oh, wait, because they background ships.

Also on a Stargate theme, I'd say the alt-future Phoenix, which gets ambushed by three Hives and Carter decides on a kamikaze, even though the shields are still up wtf?

And the Korolev. That was just said. I liked Col. Chekov. Ol' Sergei must be spinning in his urn

[Eternal_Freedom]

From nBSG: the Galactica herself. After all she does, after all the lives she saves, the colonials spit on her efforts to save their civilisation, abandon her and send her into the sun

[TOSDOC]

Worst: The bird of prey from Generations. Seriously, how lame do you have to be to reuse that same exact special effect from the very last movie you just did?

Most Pointless: Talyn from Farscape. Although his death was tragic and still served a purpose, I was sorry to see he never realized his full potential. It would have been great to see him keep growing and still a part of the storyline.

[Captain Seafort]

The E-D in Cause and Effect. Yes, the complaints have been done to death. It still doesn't make it any better.

[Mayabird]

From nBSG: the Galactica herself. After all she does, after all the lives she saves, the colonials spit on her efforts to save their civilisation, abandon her and send her into the sun

Galactica was already basically dead. She was broken and generally unrepairable, having held together just long enough to reach the promised land. She couldn't land anyway and the best they could've done with her was tear her apart as scrap. For her, burning up in the sun was like an old warrior's funeral, with the boat set on fire in the water, only in space and she's also the ship. I could live with that. Not to mention that very last mission of hers, at the colony before that very last jump...it was a good way to go out, one last brave fight for the old girl. It doesn't compare in the least to the huge waste that was the destruction of the Prometheus.

Now the rest of the ragtag fleet, especially those ships that definitely could land...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Fair point. I put it up more because the humans decide to give up their civilisation, which as I said spits on all Galactica's efforts to save them. It's not so much the death itself but the circumstances and reasons surrounding it.

It doesn't compare in the least to the huge waste that was the destruction of the Prometheus.

I think you meant Pegasus, unless you're referring to the SG Prometheus

[Mayabird]

No, I mean Stargate. As Crazedwraith mentioned, it was a completely pointless destruction of a ship that we had emotional attachment to...all so they could whip out the new shiny one next episode. If they had several episodes in the middle where they didn't have a ship, or had to borrow Daedalus until the new one was rush-completed, or the new one went to the Russians as per their previous deal so they had to do international politics to get around for interplanetary politics, or any other number of things that wouldn't suck, I could have accepted it as a tragic shitty destruction and fuck the fucking Orii. Instead, it was just yet another symptom of the writers being unable to cope with or admit to the fact that their space adventure series had turned into a space opera and they would have to deal with that.

[CaptJodan]

Also on a Stargate theme, I'd say the alt-future Phoenix, which gets ambushed by three Hives and Carter decides on a kamikaze, even though the shields are still up wtf?

If you recall, the ship's hyperdrive was overloading. The ship was going to go boom at any moment regardless of whether the shields were up or not. Besides the stupidity of staying on board the ship while everyone else got off, there was nothing she could do to save the ship. And it was SGA's little nBSG Pegasus moment, taking out 3 hives with the ship's death. It's maybe not the best death, but given the odds it was pretty respectable.

And the Korolev. That was just said. I liked Col. Chekov. Ol' Sergei must be spinning in his urn

An annoying thing about Stargate was that only the US could really have most of the technology. Russians have a DHD? Fine, SG-1 destroys it, keeping their gate from ever superseding the US's. The US loses their gate? Russians hand over the original. Russia finally gets its own 304, and it dies in the same episode. The Chinese get their first 304, and it is abandoned (basically dead) off screen, once again leaving Earth with the only working ships.

The Korolev might have made for some interesting story possibilities, but no, it had to be destroyed.

[Cecelia5578]

In the grand scheme of things Prometheus's death was pointless, but Ethon was a pretty good ep anyways. Other than the stupidity of their little discussion about Daniel at the beginning (which, granted was a large amount of stupid) it was one of the more enjoyable ship deaths in sci fi.

[Metahive]

On a tangent here, what I find marvellous is that the people of Tegalus could whip together such an advanced piece of technology in a few months just because the Ori gave them the plans, considering the Tegalians were technologially not much farther (or even more backwards) than Earth and probably also didn't have the necessary industrial infrastructure or any sort of experience in orbital construction. But it's less marvellous than the medieval society in the Ori galaxy building an entire fleet of advanced spaceships within a year.

As for bad spaceship deaths, I bring up the mighty Executor getting felled by a puny A-Wing. Yeah, I know, Ackbar ordered all ships to conentrate fire on her, but still, what a lame way for Vader's flagship to go.

[DaveJB]

The destruction of the original Defiant in DS9. Not so much in the episode it happened in itself, as that was quite well handled and set up a dangerous new threat in the Breen. However, the subsequent episodes utterly failed to follow up on this threat, only having the Breen stand around and spew electronic jabber in the direction of the Female Changeling, and the introduction of the replacement Defiant in the second-last episode felt extremely lazy.

[Metahive]

Utterly failed to follow up? I think that in itself was acknowledged and handled just fine by forcing the Klingons to fight alone for a while. What was more infuriating IMHO was the ease in which the threat of the new weapon was neutralized just by stealing and analyzing it within a few weeks or days at best. The downside of all technobabble weapons introducted to Trek.

[Stofsk]

The best part about that (or worst I guess) is that they ran way over budget before the end of the show, so a lot of the battles in the final episode were reused stock footage. Which is hilarious because that means (from a canon literalist point of view ) that the USS Sao Paulo had its registry numbers changed as well as its name to match those of the Defiant.

If you're going to kill off the hero ship, do it right. Otherwise it's just pointless.

[Thanas]

I think you meant Pegasus, unless you're referring to the SG Prometheus

I can't see how Pegasus can possibly be listed in this one. She went down fighting valiantly against superior odds, saving the entire fleet through her actions. And even in death, she took an enemy with her.

[Crazedwraith]

Wasn't the fleet more or less away by the time Pegasus intervened? Really all Apollo did was trade his fully functional top of the line Battlestar for a shitty ancient, mostly destroyed one.

[Omeganian]

What about these two enormous spherical ships, destroyed by a few tiny vessels almost exlusively thanks to the commanders' blunders?

[Themightytom]

I would like to submit the Ajax from Flash Gordon... because it was destroyed by winged hawk men in a cloud.

Listed in order of ignominy

My first is not a spaceship but can we count the original Seaquest... which died literally, to plug a hole?

The Grissom for "Standing by for evasive" While Krugh's gunner shot a torpedo up its butt.

ALL of those Valkyrie class battlestars in BSG: The Plan.
Apparently the "Main fight shaping up near Picon" was in fact just a lengthy demolition. Bonus fail for the communications "Should we fore?" "No hold" "Frak you I'm going to start firi..." Splat.

Also the squadron of fighters in the miniseries that got to sit there and watch missiles fly at them.

The Churchhill, in Babylon 5 for dying a heroic and fiery death so that Sheridan could preserve the secret of Epsilon 4 which he never used again.

The Enterprise 1701, because Kirk could have killed Christopher Loyd's crew a dozen other ways, increasing the gravity, setting the transporter beam on wide beam dispersion when they beamed in, overloading a phaser on the bridge, which would have forced them to use auxiliary controls but whatever, even if it was off drifting aimlessly out of orbit. away Kirk still could have taken the same steps to rescue Spock.

Stargate was never kind to its ships, but lets not forge the Aurora of Stargate Atlantis that lasted one episode and died via fiat. or the traveler one, that died offscreen via exploding stargate accident.

The Starship Titanic from Doctor Who
Just... ouch.

And I would like to second Omegian's submission of the Death Stars.

[Stofsk]

Wasn't the fleet more or less away by the time Pegasus intervened?

I think there were ships that were still getting up off the ground and moving, but if you have to rationalise it, perhaps Pegasus' jump drives were knocked out and because Lee only brought along a skeleton crew they didn't have enough damage control guys fixing things before they had to bug out or die.

Really all Apollo did was trade his fully functional top of the line Battlestar for a shitty ancient, mostly destroyed one.

I totally agree but the name of the show isn't Battlestar Pegasus, it's Battlestar Galactica. So... yeah.

[Skylon]

The best part about that (or worst I guess) is that they ran way over budget before the end of the show, so a lot of the battles in the final episode were reused stock footage. Which is hilarious because that means (from a canon literalist point of view ) that the USS Sao Paulo had its registry numbers changed as well as its name to match those of the Defiant.

If you're going to kill off the hero ship, do it right. Otherwise it's just pointless.[/quote]

RDM apparently wanted to call it Defiant-A. I'm glad that didn't make it to screen, because in the Trek universe I like to think the Enterprise is the only ship to get that honor.

I also find it amusing that the dedication plaque on the Defiant II's bridge still said USS Sau Paulo....so they had time to chance the hull numbers but not a plaque on the bridge?

ALL of those Valkyrie class battlestars in BSG: The Plan.
Apparently the "Main fight shaping up near Picon" was in fact just a lengthy demolition. Bonus fail for the communications "Should we fore?" "No hold" "Frak you I'm going to start firi..." Splat.

Also the squadron of fighters in the miniseries that got to sit there and watch missiles fly at them.

Um....what were they supposed to do? They were nailed by the Cylon uber-hax. Presumably the fight that occurred over Picon (I remember the dialogue as Virgon) was with ships partially, or maybe totally unaffected by the virus.

The Churchhill, in Babylon 5 for dying a heroic and fiery death so that Sheridan could preserve the secret of Epsilon 4 which he never used again.

It did play a pretty big roll later in the season for the "War Without End" two-parter. Sadly, I get the impression that was the end of JMS' plans for Epsilon 3.

The Enterprise 1701, because Kirk could have killed Christopher Loyd's crew a dozen other ways, increasing the gravity, setting the transporter beam on wide beam dispersion when they beamed in, overloading a phaser on the bridge, which would have forced them to use auxiliary controls but whatever, even if it was off drifting aimlessly out of orbit. away Kirk still could have taken the same steps to rescue Spock.

And what do you think Kruge would have done if he found out his boarding party was turned into transporter mush, blown up, etc? He'd have said "fuck it" and blown 1701 to hell and back, killing Kirk and company. Enterprise was a dead stick, they needed to kill as much of Kruge's crew as possible and get off it.

[Metahive]

The Churchhill, in Babylon 5 for dying a heroic and fiery death so that Sheridan could preserve the secret of Epsilon 4 which he never used again.

Huh? The Churchill went kamikaze to prevent Babylon 5 from falling into the hands of the Clark loyalists in Severed Dreams. The alien installation on Epsilon 3 was briefly discussed in the episode as a possibility to strike the loyalists back but they decided against it.

[Themightytom]

The Churchhill, in Babylon 5 for dying a heroic and fiery death so that Sheridan could preserve the secret of Epsilon 4 which he never used again.

Huh? The Churchill went kamikaze to prevent Babylon 5 from falling into the hands of the Clark loyalists in Severed Dreams. The alien installation on Epsilon 3 was briefly discussed in the episode as a possibility to strike the loyalists back but they decided against it.

It did play a pretty big roll later in the season for the "War Without End" two-parter. Sadly, I get the impression that was the end of JMS' plans for Epsilon 3.

Whoops Epsilon 3.
So Sheridan let a crew of friendly's get killed in order to keep Epsilon 3's missile spam a secret so that he could not use it later.

[Metahive]

Have you actually watched the episode lately? The Churchill only decides to ram the Roanoke after she's already been reduced to an unsalvagable wreck. The captain of the Churchill consciously declines when asked to bail out by the CO of the Alexander. Sheridan had no hand in this.

EDIT:

And that had also nothing to do with keeping the installation on Epsilon 3 a secret, that was already blown when it made itself known back in the first season. The battle was fought to avoid getting shot for sedition.