Can't say I disagree with any of your picks on this list, except maybe the first since I don't know the movie it's from. That said, love that you included 'Pandorum' in this list. Not the best, but still a solid B sci-fi film.
@@Thurgosh_OG No, I get that. It's just I've never watched that film, or even heard of it, so I'm not personally convinced it belongs on the list. Then again, this isn't my top five list, so I can't really criticize much.
"And the characters realized it, leading to the single most sensible line ever uttered in any horror film." I think that statement alone proves how scary the ship was. Still, fantastic video.
@@anthonykearney608 The second it drags you into the Warp; hide your kids, hide your wife, they're [g]raping xenomorphs in here **sudden screams of alien pain** [Pinhead becomes your guide to the entry level funhouse] Enjoy your stay in the Daemonculaba.
I'd like to put an honorable mention out there for the Borg Cubes, especially as they're originally presented in *Q Who?* They were held back a little by the 1990 TV budget, but they still have an absolutely skin-crawling atmosphere. The ambience, the weird cavernous chambers, the way borg drones just walk around and completely ignore the boarding party until they make a move, the little servo noises as they walk past, it's all so creepy. And then on the outside, the way the cube just hangs there with no clear forward, backward, bridge, or any sort of identifying marks, but you somehow know it's just watching and waiting... ugh, it's perfect.
When I watched TNG first (I was about 10 years old) I had nightmares of the Borg so bad that I stopped watching TNG on TV. I continued to watch Star Trek a few months later, when DS9 was on TV. Happy Halloween! 😂👻
The implications of being absorbed into the collective. It was enough to have an episode dealing with the immediate consequences on Picard's psyche and a movie about the long term consequences.
I'd say the "First Contact" reboot tbat added tbay HR Gieger aesthetic was amazing. Switching out the cyborg vibe to into having nanobots acti g like a systemic cancer metastasizong throughout the entire body was HORRIBLE to contemplate!
i love me some trek and the borg but i have to give the spookiest ship in trek to the glenn especially on rewatch as we see how it was supposed to look (in the discovery) and we see how it actually does look and it gives it this creepy everything is right and wrong at the same time vibe
Personally, the spookiest ship, heck, the scariest ship is the Shadows's spider ships...they are creepy to the extreme, and are one of the few ships that just creep me out whenever they appear on screen.
Bit of a weird honorable mention here but... the TARDIS. Most of the time you never leave the console room, but nearly every time an episode is set solely on the TARDIS itself, you get a sense of how unknowably *vast* it really is. And the fact it can dissolve, assemble and rearrange its rooms means that however carefully you explore it, you'll never actually know just how deep those corridors go.
Then there's the episode where the TARDIS gets taken over and turns hostile, and then you find out just how horrible living in an infinitely large time-bending spaceship can be. Or you get a taste anyway, the episode didn't really get time to focus on that part.
@@shaggycan It's called the Eye of Harmony. In classic Doctor Who, the Eye was on Gallifrey and powered all TARDISes via some sort of connection. It seems that's been changed/retconned.
An honorable mention from my end: the Anubis from The Expanse. The introduction of the protomolecule, the creepy atmosphere, and edge-of-your-seat, slow-burn tension throughout the episodes it appeared in made it one of, if not the, creepiest ships I've seen in science fiction. Of course, having said that, I can't disagree with any of the choices you made. Happy Halloween, nerds! :)
I'm not sure whether or not it's technically a "ship," and it's definitely not in a horror movie - but as a kid, V'ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture really got to me. It was so big, so powerful, and so clearly *alien,* and all the _Enterprise_ crew could do was keep advancing toward and into it, slowly, completely at its mercy, hoping that whatever-it-was didn't suddenly decide to squish them all like itty bitty bugs.
This really should have been a top 10, there are so many spooky ships you left out. The space hulks of 40k, the shadow vessels of Babylon 5 that utilize semi-conscious humans as CPUs in a torturous state for millennia, to the indescribable weirdness of Borg cubes. Quite a few unhonored mentions
For me, the Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey is by FAR the spookiest spaceship. Cold, harsh, calculated, nothing human about the ship; and HAL is fracking terrifying. Also, honorable mention to the Borg Cubes because of their bionic/organic appearance so similar to the Alien hive in Aliens.
That mention of the Ishimura in Dead Space 2 really caps the reason as to why the Ishimura deserves the top spot. While the Ishimura in Dead Space 1 was all sorts of scary already, the Dead Space 2 Ishimura combines nostalgia with the kind of spookiness you get from something that's very clearly under construction, similar to what you get when you say visit trespass a construction site in the dead of night. It doesn't help that the flashbacks remind you that beneath all that renovation are the memories of the horrible things that happened on the Ishimura, further adding to the creepiness factor.
I haven't played either dead space, but the images from Dead Space 2 that were shown creeped me out more. There's just something about plastic sheeting that can be really creepy.
@@rakisuzuki-burke4148 If you like the look of the game then it might be worth holding off on playing it because they are doing a full remaster of the 1st game that should be out in the next couple of years.
Something I need to add about the #1 ship is that, while the actual details of the layout are dictated by what they want the audience to experience, the overall design still gives the impression of a ship that might have been rather nice to serve on. The corridors are open and full of navigation and maintenance labels, the quarters seem comfortable, the medical deck is clean and well-lit, and the oxygen and food facilities double as recreational parks!
The Shadow ships from Babylon 5, is one of my votes and should be mentioned. It's not just the spider shape that creep most people out, but the mystery of first contact. Then the realization they are crewed by living psychics and that they a nearly unstoppable.
certainly has d7 vibes. which is certainly in my top 5 favorite trek ships. it just screams aggression. but then take the layout and make it evil and gothic and you got event horizon.
I think the one reason why the USS Cygnus from The Black Hole doesn't rate higher is because it was a Disney film, and they had to walk a fine line between being creepy and still being family-friendly. Even so, the script had some wonderful touches, like the humanoids having a funeral for one of their fallen comrades or the android gardener with a limp--as Ernest Borgnine's character puts it, "Why create a robot with a limp?" When you find out the reason, it makes Reinhardt that much scarier...
@@stalefurset9444 It wasn't _that_ bad, really. Disney was trying to cash in on Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and all the other sci-fi blockbusters of that era, but they weren't really familiar with science fiction as a genre, so they did the best they could. Yes, the movie could have been better, but it also could have been a lot worse. For what it is, it does hold up pretty well, unlike a lot of other movies.
@@kitirena_koneko Nah, the design of the sets and robots has the same quality as Lost in Space (1965), so pretty bad. Alien was made the same year for half the budget, and the result is still like night and day.
@@stalefurset9444 I have to politely disagree about the sets--they were pretty nice, if a little simplistic in some areas. The Sentry Robots, on the other hand, are kinda cheesy looking, even if Vincent and Maximilian were cool.
I appreciate the inclusion of the Collector cruiser and dead Reaper from Mass Effect. Both are definitely a fantastic kind of creepy and unknown, making you look around at every detail, jump at every movement, cringe at all the horrible things you see there. The Collectors are clearly more physical horror, stacking corpses and melting people alive and all that, but the Reaper is purely psychological. You literally go insane just by being around it, even though it's been dead for so long.
One of the spooky ships I'd have to go with, aside from the already stated ones, is the Destiny from Stargate Universe. The show really gave it a horror vibe in the first season, between the sand creature, the AI system giving people hallucinations, and the fact it was a dark, mysterious rust bucket that is flying so far from Earth. The derelict Ancient ships and some of the Wraith ships in SGA also give off that vibe too. Besides Stargate, the ships from System Shock 2 are creepy AF too.
System Shock 2's Von Braun goes from unsettling to pants-wettingly terrifying in a heartbeat. The horrifying Midwives, those unfortunate hybrids that beg for death while attacking you. Brrr.
0:54 USS Cygnus from "The Black Hole" (1979) 2:18 Elysium from "Pandorum" (2009) 4:10 Event Horizon from "Event Horizon" (1997) 6:26 UCSS Nostromo from "Alien" (1979) 7:35 Collector Vessel from "Mass Effect 2" Game (2010) -Honourable Mention. 8:10 USG Ishimura from "Dead Space" Game (2008)
Shadow ships from Babylon 5 are the spookiest. The screaming sound they make, the mystery surrounding their existence then their near invulnerability, at first. They definitely deserve a strong mention here.
Something else that makes the Collector ship scary is the sound. If you turn the music down, you can hear the ambient noise of the ship. EDI has just told you that everything is powered down and there are no life signs. Why do I hear screaming every so often? Adds to the haunted house atmosphere.
Surprised that the Borg Cube wasn't mentioned. The dark alien interior and the air of inherent menace add wonderfully to the effect of "wrongness" of the Borg and their Collective.
@@axel4196, pity really, the main horror of the Borg, besides their adapting to weapons so you can't even fight them, is when they catch you they turn you into one of them. Techno-zombies if you will.
I was wondering the same thing... huge industrial interiors, mostly empty or occupied by "dormant" alcoves and the occasional drones going about their business completely ignoring everything around them. It really gives a feeling that you don't belong there, that _no one_ should be there.
I have to agree with you, AJ Jones. Also the flickering lights, the ever-present danger of either a drone getting towards you or you running into a forcefield ads to that flavor imo.
I was surprised a Borg Cube didn't make it onto the list. What makes it extra eerie is that the drones will ignore you and go around doing their thing. Until they suddenly notice and all stop what they're doing.
Glad to see the Cygnus on this list! It's a great example of Space Gothic. All those vast open spaces, empty, silent and dimly lit; it's like exploring a cathedral. Or a tomb.
So happy to see the Cygnus on here. I adore that ship. I think the only time it's really *spooky* is when they're circling around it with the spotlight for quite a long time, and then suddenly it lights up, and it's just gorgeous. But when we get inside, 'spooky' is replaced by 'unease,' which they manage to maintain right up until the third act. It's just *vast* and so empty and yet well lit that it's a little overwhelming, while still reminiscent of a gothic cathederal, and I'm always a sucker for a scary movie that tries not to cheat by turning the lights off. Much as you mentioned the clean bits of the Nostromo are necessary for making the dingy rest of it scarier, likewise, Dr. Reinhardt's own quarters are much smaller, with human dimensions, and warm touches like wood paneling and oil paintings and so on, in opposition to the big, empty, spooky techno-gothic church outside with zombie monks wandering around. For me, the best part is the shot of the captain finding the crew's quarters, which are all identical, all lack doors, like a monk's cell, all have closets full of uniforms and pictures of families and stuff, and they just stretch on forever.
Oh yeah, 'The Black Hole' is a seriously underrated film and surprisingly dark for a Disney production. Agree 100% with your breakdown. I actually read the novelization before ever seeing the movie, and they both gave a good feeling of just how unsettling that ship was
@@abelq8008 Oh definitely. Both in the book and the movie....moving about this massive ship...yet it's so empty....oh, plenty of robots. Then the weird robe shrouded robots and finding out just who they are and what happened to the crew....creepy
@@MrGoesBoom -It was great seeing this movie as a kid in the movie theater. I read the book first which I got from the scholastic book flyer they gave you in grade school.
Have to add the Derelict from Alien with the Space Jockey, mummified in its chair. Also, the derelict ship graveyard from the Space:1999 episode ‘Dragon’s Domain’ is still terrifying, especially when you dock with one of the ships.
Dragon's Domain was so terrifying when I saw it when it first came out that I deliberately bought the video as an adult to purge the ghost. It was still incredibly effective and one of the finest pieces of science fiction I've seen.
@@NimbleTack Right there with you. Some years back I bought the VHS set of the series and rewatched that episode. While it didn’t scare me as much as it did before, it still gave me a shudder down my spine, even after all those years.
Agree. It's the ship you WANT to explore, except for the fact that disturbing the wrong thing at the wrong time has extremely unpleasant consequences. Ignore Prometheus; the mummified crewmember has been there for so long you don't want to think about it, and is he stuck there post-mortem or are he and the ship one and the same?
Thank you SO MUCH for the shout-out to the USG Ishimura. This game blew my mind when it came out, and still is a masterpiece of making a spaceship a character in and of itself. Deep Space never gets old, and a great part of that is the gritty realism of a working ship caught up in a nightmare. I don't think any game or movie has done it better. I'll never forget playing Deep Space 2, and the moment when the Ishimura is revealed, knowing I'm going to have to go back inside. The anticipation and outright dread of that thought alone, even before you actually went in, says all you need to know.
I would like to put forward the Sprianza from the Priests of Mars series. There are plenty of haunted ship contenders in that series, but given that the ark mechanicus is ostensibly the hero ship and it is basically a giant AI, it gets pretty spooky at times between the unexplored corridors lower down the radiation zones, the Surprise murder robots and at least one eldar boarding party. It's pretty spooky
Not to mention it’s probably got an honest-to-emperor AI controlling it. Plus all the golden age tech hidden away that even the techpriests wouldn’t be able to comprehend.
Even the "normal" imperial ships like transports are already ancient and vast... most of them have at least one species of aliens that crawl in dark corridors. What I find personally terrifying are ships that have been in a warp-related accident at some point.
One that blows most of these out of the water is the TARDIS, which is especially unusual because its the hero ship. But we see in episode's like The Doctor's Wife, when it gets taken over by House, and Journey to the Center of the TARDIS, when it gets mad that one of the salvage crew stole something, that the TARDIS is basically an eldritch abombination that could probably give LOvecraftian entities a run for their money if it ever had enough of saving the universe.
It's always really seemed like a missed opportunity that the Master only ever uses their Tardis as a glorified car battery instead of the setting for an episode. Imagine how much cooler episodes like The Timeless Children or Dark Water would be if they were set in the Master's Tardis weaponised against the Doctor.
@@tTaseric It would be really interesting if the Master didn't canonically lose TARDISs all the time and have to steal new ones, just to get a chance to explore the relationship between them and their ship
More honorable mentions: The alien spaceship(s) found on LV-426 in Ridley Scott's movies Alien (1979) and Prometheus (2012), and the alien (vampire) spaceship in Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce (1985).
I could only think of the Ishimura and the Event Horizon. Im glad the Nostromo got in the list as my Alien mind went blank plus it features the perfect organism
I would suggest an honorable mention: The SDF1 from Robotech when the Terrans were first examining it. Dark, giant corridors and hatchways, an attack by a giant automoton, a 60 foot humanoid skeleton, one member being disected by the ship's active technology and the time dilation.
Those Mass Effect ships you mentioned ALWAYS give me the heebie-jeebies even though I know whats going to happen. The look, the music, it all makes it so damn atmospheric.
No one has mentioned The Black Fortress from Krull. The exterior is an imposing hybrid of mountain and gothic cathedral. The interior is surreal, and it's more like you're inside the Beast's body itself, with the very walls trying to consume you.
@@Dan-bv3mf Haha, you didn't have to scroll down as far as I did (yes, I scrolled the whole way to see if anyone had mentioned it, so I could comment reply).
I know it isn't exactly a ship, per se, but the atmosphere of the Space Hulk Olethros in the game Space Hulk Deathwing is really well designed. Maybe not the spookiest ship because you're a terminator, but the ship and inhabitants, from the perspective of an average human, are terrifying.
I was thinking of this ship. I think a Space Hulk does count as a ship. But (not being a major Warhammer fan but having played the game), it seems to be several ships squashed together in the warp. It is huge, though, and really takes that cathedral theme mentioned in the video to a new height. It feels part ship, and part old cultist castle.
@@thequantumnexus4270 Space hulks are actually considered ships but they vary a lot. Some are single huge abandoned and infested dreadnaughts yet some are a bunch of ships fused into a kind of psudo space station by the warp as the rooms usually somehow connect. Lots of hulks are ships that entered the warp, had a gellar field failure and become lost for centuries because the entire crew is eaten by demons only to randomly leave the warp. They are then chock full of demons to play with.
@@anthonykearney608 Ha - so true. There were areas were my movement was slowed by the piles of severed limbs and gore of the Xenos. But the setting and design was nicely eerie. And if I'd have been there without Space Marine armour, I'd be huddled in a corner shaking. The Warp is basically the same as Event Horizon.
A possible honorable mention is the Ultra probe from the season one episode of "Space:1999", "Dragon's Domain"; although, it is spooky for the alien that invades it, not for the ship, itself.
Great example. Making a virtue of a limitation, the way the creature is able to just materialise from a blast of noise and wind makes it feel like something supernatural that you just can't fight.
The alien ship from the Space:1999 episode 'Dragon's Domain' scared the hell out me as a kid. It's literally floating in a space graveyard with dozens of other ships...the nightmare on board is terrifying.
I was really hoping that the gorgeous Derelict Space Jockey ship from Alien would be on this list too. The design is so overscaled and truly wrong feeling; Giger was a strange man and a genius. But I guess you can't have two ships from the same movie (even if it IS Alien!) on the same list, so gotta go with the Nostromo. Glad to see the mother of all spooky ships on here!
Always got creeped out by the truth and reconciliation. It was unsettling the first time you fight through it then downright terrifying the second time through
Honorable mention from me. The Von Braun and UNN Rickenbacker from System Shock 2. Most scary thing for me was that allot of ppl said something like " i am sorry" before shot and scary friendly droid helpers....
the Elysium reminds a lot of the Laconian ships from The Expanse books with its eerie mixture of natural and man-made elements. It looks more like it was grown rather than built
While I don't disagree, I think he was going for spooky place and not scary monster. Shadow vessels are definitely scary monsters, with full cloaking, devastating "finger-of-god" weapons, and their unique space scream.
At least people die on the ships on this list, when you enter the Shadow ship, you live your eternal nightmares as you become part of the ship, goes mad, or both. Your salvation only comes when the ship gets destroyed.
I think something that should've been touched on for the Event Horizon is the fact that drive and chamber itself also evokes the image of the true appearance of "angels" with strange halos and multiple sets of eyes. Truly unsettling when added to the chapel feel of the crew section.
Thank you for having the Event Horizon on the list! I saw this movie in the theater many years ago and it actually made me jump. Getting a scare from a movie is incredibly rare, and I loved it!
I want an honorable mention for the Shadow ships (B5) and the Borg (Star trek). *Shadow ships* You can’t walk around but the shadow ships use psychics (now humans) as a component and just having them around makes them scream in your head. They are powerful, cloak and are so scary biological because they can absorb even fighters into themselves. They use this to bring from fighters into the battle so they even have some valid tactical threat as well l: Until the weakness is found they are terrifying for the characters. *Borg Cube* The fear factor of this species has been a bit diminished by over exposure but think about what they are - machines devouring humanity (consider all sentiments humanity for this paragraph). They are machines that are so powerful that they don’t care about being sleek hulls to slide though space with physics - they don’t care about that and just move as fast as they like. They destroy fleets by cutting them up and rip apart the useful bits of planets because they want the raw materials. If you destroy half of it, it gets better. Inside is a labyrinthine maze of corridors of tech mmaking a person feel like they have entered a the belly of a machine - a literal technological nightmare . The borg drones are people as good as dead. They exist to serve the machines. They are stripped of emotion, Curiosity, and even the will to live. They are zombies of technology humans they have been absorbed by the machine losing everything that makes you human and arguably even the soul. And it is embodied in that ship. And when they see you they tell you your only course of action- “We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own … Resistance is futile. ” -that shiver you feel readings that showing you why they belong on this list.
I was just about to start watching a review for The Sojourn V1 after listening to V3 and then I get a notification for this... You're not spying on me now, are you Spacedock? I love the Sojourn btw, I only hate that I had to wait so long for V3 and now I have to wait again for V4.
An excellent list, but it should have been longer. I would also suggest the Borg Cube from Star Trek, Shadow vessels from Babylon 5. Wraith hive ships from SGA, the Engineer ship from Prometheus and the Mona Lisa from Halo.
Sadly I notice this list stems mostly from the inside of various ships, which makes more sense but wasn't quite what I was expecting. It's no wonder why the Shadow Vessels from Babylon 5 weren't necessarily considered, but while the Shadow Vessels never had an inside, as far as we've seen, they are plenty terrifying in their own psychological way. Babylon 5 was brilliant at this and I just think the Shadow Vessels were a sort of crown-jewel of that cosmic horror effect, the Shadows overall are pleasantly terrifying. Great list all the same.
IMO, Veger (Voyager 6) From Star Trek's first major motion picture. It has all the look and makings of an on coming storm including lightning flashing somewhere within. It began as a simple exploration ship that vanished in 'what was' called a black hole. It returned as a sentient juggernaut determined to return all the data it had obtained to the 'creator' who had died centuries before.
Thanks. Saved me the trouble. The trip along it's hull bores some people but I always found that made it's vastness and mysterious nature very clear. The Jerry Goldsmith score is just the icing on the creepy cake.
Borg Cubes and Wraith Cruisers from SG Atlantis were pretty unnerving. That ME mission made me crap myself the first time I played it lol. Every corner you turned you expected a jumpscare. Phenomenal mission design.
The _"Mona Lisa"_ from the Halo short story of the same name. A derelict freighter found near Installation 04. An escape pod, whose sole occupant is a dying, blood-soaked prison inmate babbling about how he "won't come back". None of the marines sent to investigate the ship are named Sgt. Johnson. What could go wrong?
My Expanse addiction is obligating me to mention the first time we see the Laconian ships in Persepolis Rising. The consistent mention of organic looking asymmetry and bonelike structure and the tone of total defeat felt by the roci crew and the reader made me go, wow, this is a bit of a horror story. The ships lose that feel in later books, but I really enjoyed the sense of terror for that book.
I missed ships that are just spooky as they are. Not because there where spooky things on the ship. Like the first actual hyperdrive interdiction by a thargoid in Elite Dangerous. Or when there suddenly appears a Xenon I in your back in X4. Or the thill one got by exploring the levels in the Decent. Or the massive whale tube from Enterprise, because you could do nothing to prevent it's cause. I would be scared to death in such a situation.
I feel that an Honorable Mention would go to the RAS Prosecutor from Star Wars: Republic Commando. In that game, the mission of the four veteran Clone Commandos of Delta Squad is to investigate the fate of this Republic Assault Ship that had been lost for two weeks and had been discovered so far away from its original mission. As the Deltas investigate, they find butchered and slaughtered clone troopers, heavy damage all over the ship, and inevitably the unsettling revelation of a Trandoshan/Separatist Alliance.
The Nostromo from 1979 movie Alien is my favorite. It's dark and shadowy even before things get bloody. With stuff dripping and things dangling, clanking, and hissing all on its own.
First one that came to my mind was the one from Pandorum. Since it's already in the list, let me mention the abandoned Republic Cruiser from Republic Commando. Great ambience specially at the beginning.
I have some honorable mentions. One of the freakiest of ships for me was a ship from the WarHammer 40,000 Universe, I can't remember the name of it but is was Human ship with an entire complement of space Marines and crew aboard her when she disappeared into the warp and didn't show up again until several hundred years later, old rusted and although still ornate with its neo gothic style as all human WarHammer warships are; she was totally corrupted by the warp and the forces of darkness and it showed not only on the outside but definitely on the inside, and the overall effect is outright spine chilling, the other ship (okay, not just one ship, but a group of ships) I want to mention are the Reaver ships from the movie Serenity. The way those reavers "decorate" their ships, with the uneaten remains of their victims, and knowing just how manically violent and insane their occupants are fills you with a sense of panic and a visceral, instinct driven need to flee makes those ships perhaps the scariest of all. they are much different than the ships you're talking about, which are creepy but appear to be regular ships and only after you board them do you discover you're in for some serious pain and fear, but the Reaver ships inspire that fear and uncontrollable need to flee just by showing up, because it is already known what is inside of them and their reputation precedes them. that is all. Oh BTW I liked your choices very much and I think I have to agree with your choices too, excepting the two more that I mentioned, but for the life of me I cannot remember the name of the Warhammer ship, I want to say that it was in the game with Inquisitor Eisenhorn in it, but I cannot remember correctly if it truly is or if it's from another game.
The Borg don’t get a mention? Every time you see their utilitarian geometric constructs on screen, they’re terrifying. This is especially true in the 2-parter Scorpion. When they first discover the vessel where the Borg have been dismembered and used as building blocks by the Undine. The inside of a Borg cube is terrifying at the best of times, but this was on another level.
So glad the Cygnus made it in. That's been a favorite film of mine for 30 years now. It's slow and it has problems but it has an atmosphere to it that not many films can achieve. It's oppressive. Gothic. And yeah, the Event Horizon is an absolutely gorgeous looking ship that manages to also look extremely unfriendly in every way possible. With the corridors above engineering being shaped like the outline of a coffin even.
40 years for me. I was privileged enough to see it in a cinema (the one we used to have in Downtown Canton, Texas) when I was just a boy, and the murmurs and gasps rolling through the audience as soon as all the lights in the Cygnus suddenly came to life was an experience which I hope I'll never forget. ☺
A personal theory of mine was that Event Horizon and The Black Hole are set in the same universe. The FTL drive developed for Event Horizon was suppressed after the survivors returned, but Reinhardt accidentally stumbled upon it again with the Cygnus. The endings of the two films hit very similar story beats (no spoilers).
@@davidsiepel6774 well given it was the predark age of technology there's no way they could have known about Gellar field. A lesson that would learned in blood.
@@sethgilcrist8088 yeah i feel bad for those poor fuckers who learned the hard way. Still someone had to make it back, or they would never know they needed an "anti demon" shield. Though this is pre Saalnesh so i guess the warp was more stable and less murder and rapey back then
@@davidsiepel6774 who said they made it back alive. It probably took years of work to understand what the insane machine spirit was ranting about after the first few shots came back. That or they finally broke down and sent space Marines on one of the trip. But yes a moment of silence for the poor bastards that got caught in the warp with a downed Gellar field. May the God Emperor have mercy on there souls.
Not nearly spooky enough for this list but the initial stages onboard the ISA Cassandra from Killzone: Shadow Fall kept me on edge a lot more than I expected. Something about the ship’s atmosphere, the biohazard warnings and piles of corpses killed by the bioweapon, the darkness. I half expected a necromorph to pop out at me which kept making me more nervous when it never did.
Okay, my top 5 in order: 1: Shadows 2: Vorlons 3: The Avalon (Brightly lit though she may have been, creepy AF.) 4: Red Dwarf (Great show, but if it weren't for Cat, Rimmer and Kryten, I think Lister would've been creeped out by that ship.) 5: Any Borg ship.
The part where the guy wakes up from hibernation only to be slaughtered by terrifying creatures is really memorable! I remember my Dad and I giving each other the 'holy crap' expression when that happened.
Event Horizon was so spooky all around that they could have set it in a giant beach ball and it would still creep me out. Mass Effect reapers may have ended up suffering really badly from power shrink but man Sovereign was good for two games.
Anyone remember the Guild Heighliner from Lynch‘s Dune? Sure, we didn’t get to see much of it during the movie, but a massive black, shimmering tube with a gate for the smaller ships that looks like a deep black pit, framed with golden ornaments. And especially the area where the navigators ‘work’ …
I think the Von Braun from System Shock 2 is up there too. Between the isolation, the mutated crew, and... something else (not to spoil), it's a pretty creepy setting.
This. System Shock 2 creeped me out more than Dead Space did. If we expand to include space stations, I say Citadel Station from System Shock with an honorabke mention to Sevastopol Station from Alien: Isolation.
The RAS Prosecutor level in Republic Commando is a favorite spooky ship of mine. The game creators did an excellent job spookifying the ship not only through the usual dark, abandoned aesthetic but also seperating you from your squad shortly after you really started working well together. It raised the stakes as you could no longer get revived adding to the fear.
As a fan of Sci fi I am an unapologetic fan of the black hole. Loved it as a kid growing up. I think Maximilian killing Dr Durant is probably the most traumatizing thing about it.
Homeworld: Cataclysm video game. The Beast was a bio-mechanical virus that would dissolve and reduce the crew to gore. On the sides of the ship, you could see the red from the remains. Vessels would be able to talk using those same remains to speak to other ships (essentially zombie ships that would go after you). Plus it could easily spread using various means, giving the sense of death as they try to close in on you.
I feel like Farscape's Rovhu is worth a mention. A ship transporting the criminally insane with a cannibal that breaks free and clones everybody. Of course, once someone's been cloned a few times, mental degradation becomes a factor and they become cannibals themselves. The Pilot on the ship has its arms eaten over and over again as they grow back.
You beat me to this comment by a day. I'd like to remind you, however, that he didn't exactly "clone" his victims. He split them, so tehre were two identical selves. Neither was a clone of the other. This had repercussions in the series afterward for a while, and it was pretty great.
I'd say the Derelict from Alien is even _more_ creepy than the Nostromo, because to quote Cat: _What is it?_ Everything about it gives me the creeps, from the dank, ribcage-like structure to the surrealness of the pilot's seat itself. It's like he's... _Biologically fused_ to the control interface?? Now _that_ is a ship I can call alien.
Id like to nominate the Nostalgia for Infinity from the book Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds. There is something really creepy about a ship that is infected by some unknown contagion which is slowly melding its captain and ship together, turning the ship biological. IIRC there are spaces in that ship filled with bodily fluids and organs.
@@simonfrohlich7766 Conjoiner drives are powered by taking plasma from the big bang with the help of a timetravelling wormhole. That really is a novel way of doing it.
I'd add The Probe from Star Trek 4. It literally shuts down any craft approaching it without a shot fired, can alter an entire planets weather pattern, and for the most part no one actually knows what to do but hunker down and hope a time travel hail mary works.
How can the Shadow ship not be on this list? "It was jet-black. A shade of black so deep, your eye just kind of slides off it. And it shimmered when you looked at it. A spider, big as death and twice as ugly. When it flies past, it's like you hear a scream in your mind." Warren Keffer
I tried to play Dead Space. I _wanted_ to play Dead Space. But following Clarke while he slouched around hunched over like an abused pet made my back hurt. Especially since his life bar was integrated into the spine of his armor. But I have to agree with you. My favorite ship for spookiness will always be the Nostromo, but the Ishimura does it better.
I'd say Tarak Nor from DS9, but that was technically a station, and it was only unsettling when Garak got high on murder juice. Mayhaps, the Leviathan from Destiny 2? The thing was infected by space fungus that can grow inside people, is now controlled by said fungus which is metaphysically linked to the space tetrahedron of doom, as well as the ships master. Not to mention the personally tailored projections of Trauma and internal woes that manifest as phantoms that follow you around and torture you.
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Can't say I disagree with any of your picks on this list, except maybe the first since I don't know the movie it's from.
That said, love that you included 'Pandorum' in this list. Not the best, but still a solid B sci-fi film.
@@palladin1337 He did say the first ship was from the film 'The Black Hole' and as added trivia it was made by disney of all companies.
@@Thurgosh_OG No, I get that. It's just I've never watched that film, or even heard of it, so I'm not personally convinced it belongs on the list.
Then again, this isn't my top five list, so I can't really criticize much.
Oh, my first though was Ishimura and second Nostromo. But do not forget Sevastopol station from Alien: Isolation. My idea from 2006.
What does the term meddling mean when it comes to movies I keep hearing that term and I feel like it doesn't mean what I think it means.
"And the characters realized it, leading to the single most sensible line ever uttered in any horror film." I think that statement alone proves how scary the ship was. Still, fantastic video.
Loved the realistic reaction to the Event Horizon from some of the crew, particularly Smitty... as he says, "I can tell you... this ship is f**ked."
i agree, i would put event horizon as my no 1 on this list
@@anthonykearney608 The second it drags you into the Warp; hide your kids, hide your wife, they're [g]raping xenomorphs in here **sudden screams of alien pain**
[Pinhead becomes your guide to the entry level funhouse]
Enjoy your stay in the Daemonculaba.
Wow. I didn't think Pandorum would get a mention. It's underrated af
This is a good list every film i thought of before watching was on it ...
I'd like to put an honorable mention out there for the Borg Cubes, especially as they're originally presented in *Q Who?*
They were held back a little by the 1990 TV budget, but they still have an absolutely skin-crawling atmosphere. The ambience, the weird cavernous chambers, the way borg drones just walk around and completely ignore the boarding party until they make a move, the little servo noises as they walk past, it's all so creepy. And then on the outside, the way the cube just hangs there with no clear forward, backward, bridge, or any sort of identifying marks, but you somehow know it's just watching and waiting... ugh, it's perfect.
Agreed! Borg Ships are simultaneously simple and approachable but utterly ALIEN; in that sense of the whole ship vining with “YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE”
When I watched TNG first (I was about 10 years old) I had nightmares of the Borg so bad that I stopped watching TNG on TV. I continued to watch Star Trek a few months later, when DS9 was on TV. Happy Halloween! 😂👻
The implications of being absorbed into the collective. It was enough to have an episode dealing with the immediate consequences on Picard's psyche and a movie about the long term consequences.
I'd say the "First Contact" reboot tbat added tbay HR Gieger aesthetic was amazing. Switching out the cyborg vibe to into having nanobots acti g like a systemic cancer
metastasizong throughout the entire body was HORRIBLE to contemplate!
i love me some trek and the borg but i have to give the spookiest ship in trek to the glenn especially on rewatch as we see how it was supposed to look (in the discovery) and we see how it actually does look and it gives it this creepy everything is right and wrong at the same time vibe
Personally, the spookiest ship, heck, the scariest ship is the Shadows's spider ships...they are creepy to the extreme, and are one of the few ships that just creep me out whenever they appear on screen.
And that horrible, nightmare screaming sound they make
Those ships are nightmare fuel.
Yep
@@weldonwin I always thought that scream would make an excellent ring tone.
I agree. This list is not very good if it doesn't even give an Honorable Mention to the Shadow vessels.
Bit of a weird honorable mention here but... the TARDIS.
Most of the time you never leave the console room, but nearly every time an episode is set solely on the TARDIS itself, you get a sense of how unknowably *vast* it really is. And the fact it can dissolve, assemble and rearrange its rooms means that however carefully you explore it, you'll never actually know just how deep those corridors go.
At the very least, we know it had a swimming pool
@@weldonwin We never did learn if it was in the library.
I love the episode when they reveal that the power source is a collapsing star almost frozen in time. So yeah there is a star inside the TARDIS.
Then there's the episode where the TARDIS gets taken over and turns hostile, and then you find out just how horrible living in an infinitely large time-bending spaceship can be. Or you get a taste anyway, the episode didn't really get time to focus on that part.
@@shaggycan It's called the Eye of Harmony. In classic Doctor Who, the Eye was on Gallifrey and powered all TARDISes via some sort of connection. It seems that's been changed/retconned.
An honorable mention from my end: the Anubis from The Expanse. The introduction of the protomolecule, the creepy atmosphere, and edge-of-your-seat, slow-burn tension throughout the episodes it appeared in made it one of, if not the, creepiest ships I've seen in science fiction.
Of course, having said that, I can't disagree with any of the choices you made. Happy Halloween, nerds! :)
Loved it! Too bad we couldn't get an extra season out of Amazon. I'll settle for an RTS or space combat game though.
At the risk of being 'that guy' I think you mean the Anubis. Scopuli was bait for the Canterbury. But it was also spooky too.
It was the Anubis.
@@Curriation Yar. People sometimes get them confused because of the _Scopuli_ spacesuit found on the _Anubis._
Huh, fair enough then
I'm not sure whether or not it's technically a "ship," and it's definitely not in a horror movie - but as a kid, V'ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture really got to me. It was so big, so powerful, and so clearly *alien,* and all the _Enterprise_ crew could do was keep advancing toward and into it, slowly, completely at its mercy, hoping that whatever-it-was didn't suddenly decide to squish them all like itty bitty bugs.
This really should have been a top 10, there are so many spooky ships you left out. The space hulks of 40k, the shadow vessels of Babylon 5 that utilize semi-conscious humans as CPUs in a torturous state for millennia, to the indescribable weirdness of Borg cubes. Quite a few unhonored mentions
I second you with the Borg Cubes.
An entire horror series could be set just in a derelict (dormant? WAITING?!) borg cube.
To be fair, the Event Horizon is basically a space hulk on easy mode...
any 40k Imperium Ship, the Chapel Look is ominous
Personally, I'm of the opinion that if this list doesn't include the Shadow vessels it's just wrong.
Xeelee Sequence
For me, the Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey is by FAR the spookiest spaceship. Cold, harsh, calculated, nothing human about the ship; and HAL is fracking terrifying.
Also, honorable mention to the Borg Cubes because of their bionic/organic appearance so similar to the Alien hive in Aliens.
it is not the ship, it is HAL that is creepy as hell .....
I'll second the Discovery One, since the film 2010 does well to portray it as a "ghost ship".
That mention of the Ishimura in Dead Space 2 really caps the reason as to why the Ishimura deserves the top spot. While the Ishimura in Dead Space 1 was all sorts of scary already, the Dead Space 2 Ishimura combines nostalgia with the kind of spookiness you get from something that's very clearly under construction, similar to what you get when you say visit trespass a construction site in the dead of night. It doesn't help that the flashbacks remind you that beneath all that renovation are the memories of the horrible things that happened on the Ishimura, further adding to the creepiness factor.
I haven't played either dead space, but the images from Dead Space 2 that were shown creeped me out more. There's just something about plastic sheeting that can be really creepy.
@@rakisuzuki-burke4148 If you like the look of the game then it might be worth holding off on playing it because they are doing a full remaster of the 1st game that should be out in the next couple of years.
Not having any mention of the von Braun and Rickenbacker proves that neither you nor Hoojiwana have played System Shock 2, and that's a damn shame.
@@kadendusk Actually Dead Space Remake comes out in January 27 2023.
When I saw the Ishimura in Dead Space 2 the first time, I literally threw my controller and said, "Fuck no!"
Something I need to add about the #1 ship is that, while the actual details of the layout are dictated by what they want the audience to experience, the overall design still gives the impression of a ship that might have been rather nice to serve on. The corridors are open and full of navigation and maintenance labels, the quarters seem comfortable, the medical deck is clean and well-lit, and the oxygen and food facilities double as recreational parks!
Almost as nice as the prey space station.
just a shame about the blood and monsters ruiningn it eh? LoL
The Shadow ships from Babylon 5, is one of my votes and should be mentioned. It's not just the spider shape that creep most people out, but the mystery of first contact. Then the realization they are crewed by living psychics and that they a nearly unstoppable.
The Dark Aster from Guardians of the Galaxy and the Reever ships from Firefly/ Serenity always creeped me out.
If the Event Horizon isn’t on this list then I will be annoyed.
Oh yeah it made it! Movie had me trippin for days!
The Event Horizon should be all 10 ships on this this of 5 spookiest ships.
I agree, it came back from the inmaterium possessed by a warp deamon
THIS. I haven't even seen the video yet - the thumbnail came up on my feed - and the 'Event Horizon' was the FIRST thing that came to mind...
I though the same, but I was pretty sure it would be there, and I'm glad it was.
I loved Event Horizon. Made me uncomfortable the entire time and I never felt like there was any hope or escape.
that's why even now, 14 years later, people still LOVE dead space 1 and 2 (spiritual successor to EH).
I watched EH just yesterday. Along with the Ring, Hellraiser, and Alien, its one of the Halloween traditions 😁
A cautionary tale why Gellar Fields are a need if you want to travel through the warp.
@@Spartan135 unless you're an Orc 🤣🤣
certainly has d7 vibes. which is certainly in my top 5 favorite trek ships. it just screams aggression. but then take the layout and make it evil and gothic and you got event horizon.
I think the one reason why the USS Cygnus from The Black Hole doesn't rate higher is because it was a Disney film, and they had to walk a fine line between being creepy and still being family-friendly. Even so, the script had some wonderful touches, like the humanoids having a funeral for one of their fallen comrades or the android gardener with a limp--as Ernest Borgnine's character puts it, "Why create a robot with a limp?" When you find out the reason, it makes Reinhardt that much scarier...
They had 3x the budget of Star Wars (1977), but it still looks like a student film.
@@stalefurset9444 It wasn't _that_ bad, really. Disney was trying to cash in on Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and all the other sci-fi blockbusters of that era, but they weren't really familiar with science fiction as a genre, so they did the best they could. Yes, the movie could have been better, but it also could have been a lot worse. For what it is, it does hold up pretty well, unlike a lot of other movies.
@@kitirena_koneko Nah, the design of the sets and robots has the same quality as Lost in Space (1965), so pretty bad. Alien was made the same year for half the budget, and the result is still like night and day.
@@stalefurset9444 I have to politely disagree about the sets--they were pretty nice, if a little simplistic in some areas. The Sentry Robots, on the other hand, are kinda cheesy looking, even if Vincent and Maximilian were cool.
Finally the Cygnus gets mentioned.
Though a full episode about this one would be appreciated.
Nostromo was a spooky ship even without the alien on the prowl. It has such a claustrophobic feel to it.
I appreciate the inclusion of the Collector cruiser and dead Reaper from Mass Effect. Both are definitely a fantastic kind of creepy and unknown, making you look around at every detail, jump at every movement, cringe at all the horrible things you see there. The Collectors are clearly more physical horror, stacking corpses and melting people alive and all that, but the Reaper is purely psychological. You literally go insane just by being around it, even though it's been dead for so long.
dead reaper for introducing my second fav character in ME universe (first being garrus); legion.
One of the spooky ships I'd have to go with, aside from the already stated ones, is the Destiny from Stargate Universe. The show really gave it a horror vibe in the first season, between the sand creature, the AI system giving people hallucinations, and the fact it was a dark, mysterious rust bucket that is flying so far from Earth. The derelict Ancient ships and some of the Wraith ships in SGA also give off that vibe too.
Besides Stargate, the ships from System Shock 2 are creepy AF too.
Everything about SS2 is creepy AF. Such brilliant audio design, and so very unsettling!
System Shock 2's Von Braun goes from unsettling to pants-wettingly terrifying in a heartbeat.
The horrifying Midwives, those unfortunate hybrids that beg for death while attacking you. Brrr.
@@HQbaracuda so sad we'll never see how it ends. (Although the script outline, is available)
0:54 USS Cygnus from "The Black Hole" (1979)
2:18 Elysium from "Pandorum" (2009)
4:10 Event Horizon from "Event Horizon" (1997)
6:26 UCSS Nostromo from "Alien" (1979)
7:35 Collector Vessel from "Mass Effect 2" Game (2010) -Honourable Mention.
8:10 USG Ishimura from "Dead Space" Game (2008)
thank you!
HERO !!!!!
😗
No Mona Lisa prison ship from Halo: Mona Lisa
Shadow ships from Babylon 5 are the spookiest. The screaming sound they make, the mystery surrounding their existence then their near invulnerability, at first. They definitely deserve a strong mention here.
Indeed. The Shivan ships from Freespace are similar in that regard, though they aren't quite as creepy.
Shadow vessels from B5 are hands down the scariest!
Something else that makes the Collector ship scary is the sound. If you turn the music down, you can hear the ambient noise of the ship. EDI has just told you that everything is powered down and there are no life signs. Why do I hear screaming every so often? Adds to the haunted house atmosphere.
Surprised that the Borg Cube wasn't mentioned. The dark alien interior and the air of inherent menace add wonderfully to the effect of "wrongness" of the Borg and their Collective.
It seemed fairly spooky, but loss of individuality from cybernetic conversion wasn't gory or scary enough apparently.
@@axel4196, pity really, the main horror of the Borg, besides their adapting to weapons so you can't even fight them, is when they catch you they turn you into one of them. Techno-zombies if you will.
I was wondering the same thing... huge industrial interiors, mostly empty or occupied by "dormant" alcoves and the occasional drones going about their business completely ignoring everything around them. It really gives a feeling that you don't belong there, that _no one_ should be there.
I have to agree with you, AJ Jones. Also the flickering lights, the ever-present danger of either a drone getting towards you or you running into a forcefield ads to that flavor imo.
I was surprised a Borg Cube didn't make it onto the list. What makes it extra eerie is that the drones will ignore you and go around doing their thing. Until they suddenly notice and all stop what they're doing.
I absolutely loved The Black Hole as a child. Still love that intro music, and for its time holy crap.
Glad to see the Cygnus on this list! It's a great example of Space Gothic. All those vast open spaces, empty, silent and dimly lit; it's like exploring a cathedral. Or a tomb.
So happy to see the Cygnus on here. I adore that ship. I think the only time it's really *spooky* is when they're circling around it with the spotlight for quite a long time, and then suddenly it lights up, and it's just gorgeous. But when we get inside, 'spooky' is replaced by 'unease,' which they manage to maintain right up until the third act.
It's just *vast* and so empty and yet well lit that it's a little overwhelming, while still reminiscent of a gothic cathederal, and I'm always a sucker for a scary movie that tries not to cheat by turning the lights off.
Much as you mentioned the clean bits of the Nostromo are necessary for making the dingy rest of it scarier, likewise, Dr. Reinhardt's own quarters are much smaller, with human dimensions, and warm touches like wood paneling and oil paintings and so on, in opposition to the big, empty, spooky techno-gothic church outside with zombie monks wandering around.
For me, the best part is the shot of the captain finding the crew's quarters, which are all identical, all lack doors, like a monk's cell, all have closets full of uniforms and pictures of families and stuff, and they just stretch on forever.
There's a great deep dive on its production on the channel Good Bad Flicks.
Oh yeah, 'The Black Hole' is a seriously underrated film and surprisingly dark for a Disney production. Agree 100% with your breakdown. I actually read the novelization before ever seeing the movie, and they both gave a good feeling of just how unsettling that ship was
The androids cum zombies are very spooky to me. And one shot of a girder hitting one on the head in the finale is especially disturbing to me.
@@abelq8008 Oh definitely. Both in the book and the movie....moving about this massive ship...yet it's so empty....oh, plenty of robots. Then the weird robe shrouded robots and finding out just who they are and what happened to the crew....creepy
@@MrGoesBoom -It was great seeing this movie as a kid in the movie theater. I read the book first which I got from the scholastic book flyer they gave you in grade school.
Have to add the Derelict from Alien with the Space Jockey, mummified in its chair. Also, the derelict ship graveyard from the Space:1999 episode ‘Dragon’s Domain’ is still terrifying, especially when you dock with one of the ships.
Dragon's Domain was so terrifying when I saw it when it first came out that I deliberately bought the video as an adult to purge the ghost. It was still incredibly effective and one of the finest pieces of science fiction I've seen.
@@NimbleTack Right there with you. Some years back I bought the VHS set of the series and rewatched that episode. While it didn’t scare me as much as it did before, it still gave me a shudder down my spine, even after all those years.
Agree. It's the ship you WANT to explore, except for the fact that disturbing the wrong thing at the wrong time has extremely unpleasant consequences. Ignore Prometheus; the mummified crewmember has been there for so long you don't want to think about it, and is he stuck there post-mortem or are he and the ship one and the same?
As a 10 year-old home alone, I was not prepared for the horrors of Dragon's Domain.
Thank you SO MUCH for the shout-out to the USG Ishimura. This game blew my mind when it came out, and still is a masterpiece of making a spaceship a character in and of itself. Deep Space never gets old, and a great part of that is the gritty realism of a working ship caught up in a nightmare. I don't think any game or movie has done it better. I'll never forget playing Deep Space 2, and the moment when the Ishimura is revealed, knowing I'm going to have to go back inside. The anticipation and outright dread of that thought alone, even before you actually went in, says all you need to know.
The ship in Lifeforce which is used for a limited amount of time definitely has a sinister inside and outer appearance
good call. The Vampire ship. I bet very few people remember that. Def spooky AF
I thought that was going to be #1 when they showed Patrick Stewart right before it.
The Black Hole: the only Disney movie to give me nightmares as a kid.
& Maximilian is very cool.
Awesome intro theme tho
Thank you. As someone else on UA-cam said, it's a damned cathedral in space, hanging off to the side of a doorway to Hell...
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with kids turning into giant blueberries, etc. did that for me.
@@SkiRiverRun Agreed. Those Oompa Loompas are terrifying. The singing just makes them even creepier.
I would like to put forward the Sprianza from the Priests of Mars series. There are plenty of haunted ship contenders in that series, but given that the ark mechanicus is ostensibly the hero ship and it is basically a giant AI, it gets pretty spooky at times between the unexplored corridors lower down the radiation zones, the Surprise murder robots and at least one eldar boarding party. It's pretty spooky
The fact that a Scitari and an Angry Marine more or less copy a fight scene from Princess Bride made my day.
Not to mention it’s probably got an honest-to-emperor AI controlling it. Plus all the golden age tech hidden away that even the techpriests wouldn’t be able to comprehend.
My days most favourite book series I have ever read !!
McNeil knows his stuff
Even the "normal" imperial ships like transports are already ancient and vast... most of them have at least one species of aliens that crawl in dark corridors. What I find personally terrifying are ships that have been in a warp-related accident at some point.
One that blows most of these out of the water is the TARDIS, which is especially unusual because its the hero ship. But we see in episode's like The Doctor's Wife, when it gets taken over by House, and Journey to the Center of the TARDIS, when it gets mad that one of the salvage crew stole something, that the TARDIS is basically an eldritch abombination that could probably give LOvecraftian entities a run for their money if it ever had enough of saving the universe.
Thats an interesting pick!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
It's always really seemed like a missed opportunity that the Master only ever uses their Tardis as a glorified car battery instead of the setting for an episode.
Imagine how much cooler episodes like The Timeless Children or Dark Water would be if they were set in the Master's Tardis weaponised against the Doctor.
@@tTaseric It would be really interesting if the Master didn't canonically lose TARDISs all the time and have to steal new ones, just to get a chance to explore the relationship between them and their ship
More honorable mentions: The alien spaceship(s) found on LV-426 in Ridley Scott's movies Alien (1979) and Prometheus (2012), and the alien (vampire) spaceship in Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce (1985).
I could only think of the Ishimura and the Event Horizon. Im glad the Nostromo got in the list as my Alien mind went blank plus it features the perfect organism
" I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies." - Ash, science officer of the Nostromo
I would suggest an honorable mention: The SDF1 from Robotech when the Terrans were first examining it. Dark, giant corridors and hatchways, an attack by a giant automoton, a 60 foot humanoid skeleton, one member being disected by the ship's active technology and the time dilation.
The collector ship from Mass Effect 2 is the spookiest for me, and a big part of that is the eerie music when you first enter the ship.
Really good list.
My sixth, would probably be a two-for-one: The Von Braun and the UNN Rickenbacker from System Shock 2.
They deserve far higher than sixth place!
Agreed! and there are few more chilling moments in sci-fi video games than when SHODAN reveals herself to the player as the ship's real AI.
Those Mass Effect ships you mentioned ALWAYS give me the heebie-jeebies even though I know whats going to happen. The look, the music, it all makes it so damn atmospheric.
No one has mentioned The Black Fortress from Krull. The exterior is an imposing hybrid of mountain and gothic cathedral. The interior is surreal, and it's more like you're inside the Beast's body itself, with the very walls trying to consume you.
Nice one!
I often forget that Krull is sci-fi as well as old school fantasy.
I was literally thinking this when i saw your comment.
@@Dan-bv3mf Haha, you didn't have to scroll down as far as I did (yes, I scrolled the whole way to see if anyone had mentioned it, so I could comment reply).
I know it isn't exactly a ship, per se, but the atmosphere of the Space Hulk Olethros in the game Space Hulk Deathwing is really well designed. Maybe not the spookiest ship because you're a terminator, but the ship and inhabitants, from the perspective of an average human, are terrifying.
I was thinking of this ship. I think a Space Hulk does count as a ship. But (not being a major Warhammer fan but having played the game), it seems to be several ships squashed together in the warp.
It is huge, though, and really takes that cathedral theme mentioned in the video to a new height. It feels part ship, and part old cultist castle.
@@thequantumnexus4270 Space hulks are actually considered ships but they vary a lot. Some are single huge abandoned and infested dreadnaughts yet some are a bunch of ships fused into a kind of psudo space station by the warp as the rooms usually somehow connect. Lots of hulks are ships that entered the warp, had a gellar field failure and become lost for centuries because the entire crew is eaten by demons only to randomly leave the warp. They are then chock full of demons to play with.
the thing about space hulk is that your not stuck in there with the xenos. the xenos are stuck in there with you. lol
@@anthonykearney608 Ha - so true. There were areas were my movement was slowed by the piles of severed limbs and gore of the Xenos.
But the setting and design was nicely eerie. And if I'd have been there without Space Marine armour, I'd be huddled in a corner shaking. The Warp is basically the same as Event Horizon.
A possible honorable mention is the Ultra probe from the season one episode of "Space:1999", "Dragon's Domain"; although, it is spooky for the alien that invades it, not for the ship, itself.
Ahh, the Ultra Probe. Good choice! Scared me senseless as a kid.
Good call
Great example. Making a virtue of a limitation, the way the creature is able to just materialise from a blast of noise and wind makes it feel like something supernatural that you just can't fight.
The alien ship from the Space:1999 episode 'Dragon's Domain' scared the hell out me as a kid. It's literally floating in a space graveyard with dozens of other ships...the nightmare on board is terrifying.
That one got me as a kid as well.
I'm in my 60s and the first terrifying spaceship that I remember was from the film 'It, The Terror From Beyond Space. '
The engineer ships in Alien and Prometheus are even spookier. Giant alien ships filled with mystery and of creepy alien design.
And the uncomfortable organic aspect to it, plus HR Giger incorporating sexual imagery into everything he designs to make you even more uncomfortable
shit ships from shit movies. enjoy, kids
And tripping hazards good lord osha would annihilate them
One's a Space Jockey ship the other is an Engineer vessel.
Engineers are not Jockeys. I care not what Scott says.
I was really hoping that the gorgeous Derelict Space Jockey ship from Alien would be on this list too. The design is so overscaled and truly wrong feeling; Giger was a strange man and a genius.
But I guess you can't have two ships from the same movie (even if it IS Alien!) on the same list, so gotta go with the Nostromo. Glad to see the mother of all spooky ships on here!
Always got creeped out by the truth and reconciliation. It was unsettling the first time you fight through it then downright terrifying the second time through
Honorable mention from me. The Von Braun and UNN Rickenbacker from System Shock 2. Most scary thing for me was that allot of ppl said something like " i am sorry" before shot and scary friendly droid helpers....
the Elysium reminds a lot of the Laconian ships from The Expanse books with its eerie mixture of natural and man-made elements. It looks more like it was grown rather than built
Nothing in space is scarier than the Shadow ships from Babylon 5.
This, Absolutely This.
While I don't disagree, I think he was going for spooky place and not scary monster. Shadow vessels are definitely scary monsters, with full cloaking, devastating "finger-of-god" weapons, and their unique space scream.
At least people die on the ships on this list, when you enter the Shadow ship, you live your eternal nightmares as you become part of the ship, goes mad, or both. Your salvation only comes when the ship gets destroyed.
I think something that should've been touched on for the Event Horizon is the fact that drive and chamber itself also evokes the image of the true appearance of "angels" with strange halos and multiple sets of eyes. Truly unsettling when added to the chapel feel of the crew section.
Shadow ships from B5 and wraith hives from SGA
Thank you for having the Event Horizon on the list! I saw this movie in the theater many years ago and it actually made me jump. Getting a scare from a movie is incredibly rare, and I loved it!
Event Horizon is the kind of movie that needs to be seen in a theater. I'm glad I saw it as a first run
I want an honorable mention for the Shadow ships (B5) and the Borg (Star trek).
*Shadow ships*
You can’t walk around but the shadow ships use psychics (now humans) as a component and just having them around makes them scream in your head. They are powerful, cloak and are so scary biological because they can absorb even fighters into themselves. They use this to bring from fighters into the battle so they even have some valid tactical threat as well l: Until the weakness is found they are terrifying for the characters.
*Borg Cube*
The fear factor of this species has been a bit diminished by over exposure but think about what they are - machines devouring humanity (consider all sentiments humanity for this paragraph). They are machines that are so powerful that they don’t care about being sleek hulls to slide though space with physics - they don’t care about that and just move as fast as they like. They destroy fleets by cutting them up and rip apart the useful bits of planets because they want the raw materials. If you destroy half of it, it gets better. Inside is a labyrinthine maze of corridors of tech mmaking a person feel like they have entered a the belly of a machine - a literal technological nightmare . The borg drones are people as good as dead. They exist to serve the machines. They are stripped of emotion, Curiosity, and even the will to live. They are zombies of technology humans they have been absorbed by the machine losing everything that makes you human and arguably even the soul. And it is embodied in that ship. And when they see you they tell you your only course of action- “We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own … Resistance is futile. ” -that shiver you feel readings that showing you why they belong on this list.
I was just about to start watching a review for The Sojourn V1 after listening to V3 and then I get a notification for this... You're not spying on me now, are you Spacedock?
I love the Sojourn btw, I only hate that I had to wait so long for V3 and now I have to wait again for V4.
An excellent list, but it should have been longer. I would also suggest the Borg Cube from Star Trek, Shadow vessels from Babylon 5. Wraith hive ships from SGA, the Engineer ship from Prometheus and the Mona Lisa from Halo.
Sadly I notice this list stems mostly from the inside of various ships, which makes more sense but wasn't quite what I was expecting. It's no wonder why the Shadow Vessels from Babylon 5 weren't necessarily considered, but while the Shadow Vessels never had an inside, as far as we've seen, they are plenty terrifying in their own psychological way. Babylon 5 was brilliant at this and I just think the Shadow Vessels were a sort of crown-jewel of that cosmic horror effect, the Shadows overall are pleasantly terrifying. Great list all the same.
Battlecrabs DO have an interior and it was shown in one episode...along with the hapless occupant plugged into the machine.
IMO, Veger (Voyager 6) From Star Trek's first major motion picture. It has all the look and makings of an on coming storm including lightning flashing somewhere within. It began as a simple exploration ship that vanished in 'what was' called a black hole. It returned as a sentient juggernaut determined to return all the data it had obtained to the 'creator' who had died centuries before.
Thanks. Saved me the trouble. The trip along it's hull bores some people but I always found that made it's vastness and mysterious nature very clear. The Jerry Goldsmith score is just the icing on the creepy cake.
Borg Cubes and Wraith Cruisers from SG Atlantis were pretty unnerving. That ME mission made me crap myself the first time I played it lol. Every corner you turned you expected a jumpscare. Phenomenal mission design.
My favorite is the Homeworld Cataclysm Beast. That whole game was nuts off the scale fun and spooky for an RTS game.
The _"Mona Lisa"_ from the Halo short story of the same name. A derelict freighter found near Installation 04. An escape pod, whose sole occupant is a dying, blood-soaked prison inmate babbling about how he "won't come back". None of the marines sent to investigate the ship are named Sgt. Johnson.
What could go wrong?
Oh, I was looking for this one. The animation of that short story gave me nightmares when I first watched it.
Thank dude, the Cygnus is awesome, we should have more ships that are just large and open, most ships in scifi look like a small room inside
My Expanse addiction is obligating me to mention the first time we see the Laconian ships in Persepolis Rising. The consistent mention of organic looking asymmetry and bonelike structure and the tone of total defeat felt by the roci crew and the reader made me go, wow, this is a bit of a horror story. The ships lose that feel in later books, but I really enjoyed the sense of terror for that book.
As some one who's listening to Tiamat's Wrath right now, very much yes. The end of Persepolis Rising was A LOT.
I missed ships that are just spooky as they are. Not because there where spooky things on the ship. Like the first actual hyperdrive interdiction by a thargoid in Elite Dangerous. Or when there suddenly appears a Xenon I in your back in X4. Or the thill one got by exploring the levels in the Decent. Or the massive whale tube from Enterprise, because you could do nothing to prevent it's cause. I would be scared to death in such a situation.
This list looks a lot like mine! I'd have included the first Reaver ship from the Firefly pilot. The dread its presence in space instills is chilling.
I feel that an Honorable Mention would go to the RAS Prosecutor from Star Wars: Republic Commando.
In that game, the mission of the four veteran Clone Commandos of Delta Squad is to investigate the fate of this Republic Assault Ship that had been lost for two weeks and had been discovered so far away from its original mission.
As the Deltas investigate, they find butchered and slaughtered clone troopers, heavy damage all over the ship, and inevitably the unsettling revelation of a Trandoshan/Separatist Alliance.
The Nostromo from 1979 movie Alien is my favorite. It's dark and shadowy even before things get bloody. With stuff dripping and things dangling, clanking, and hissing all on its own.
First one that came to my mind was the one from Pandorum. Since it's already in the list, let me mention the abandoned Republic Cruiser from Republic Commando. Great ambience specially at the beginning.
I have some honorable mentions. One of the freakiest of ships for me was a ship from the WarHammer 40,000 Universe, I can't remember the name of it but is was Human ship with an entire complement of space Marines and crew aboard her when she disappeared into the warp and didn't show up again until several hundred years later, old rusted and although still ornate with its neo gothic style as all human WarHammer warships are; she was totally corrupted by the warp and the forces of darkness and it showed not only on the outside but definitely on the inside, and the overall effect is outright spine chilling, the other ship (okay, not just one ship, but a group of ships) I want to mention are the Reaver ships from the movie Serenity. The way those reavers "decorate" their ships, with the uneaten remains of their victims, and knowing just how manically violent and insane their occupants are fills you with a sense of panic and a visceral, instinct driven need to flee makes those ships perhaps the scariest of all. they are much different than the ships you're talking about, which are creepy but appear to be regular ships and only after you board them do you discover you're in for some serious pain and fear, but the Reaver ships inspire that fear and uncontrollable need to flee just by showing up, because it is already known what is inside of them and their reputation precedes them. that is all. Oh BTW I liked your choices very much and I think I have to agree with your choices too, excepting the two more that I mentioned, but for the life of me I cannot remember the name of the Warhammer ship, I want to say that it was in the game with Inquisitor Eisenhorn in it, but I cannot remember correctly if it truly is or if it's from another game.
The Borg don’t get a mention?
Every time you see their utilitarian geometric constructs on screen, they’re terrifying.
This is especially true in the 2-parter Scorpion. When they first discover the vessel where the Borg have been dismembered and used as building blocks by the Undine.
The inside of a Borg cube is terrifying at the best of times, but this was on another level.
So glad the Cygnus made it in. That's been a favorite film of mine for 30 years now. It's slow and it has problems but it has an atmosphere to it that not many films can achieve. It's oppressive. Gothic. And yeah, the Event Horizon is an absolutely gorgeous looking ship that manages to also look extremely unfriendly in every way possible. With the corridors above engineering being shaped like the outline of a coffin even.
40 years for me. I was privileged enough to see it in a cinema (the one we used to have in Downtown Canton, Texas) when I was just a boy, and the murmurs and gasps rolling through the audience as soon as all the lights in the Cygnus suddenly came to life was an experience which I hope I'll never forget. ☺
A personal theory of mine was that Event Horizon and The Black Hole are set in the same universe. The FTL drive developed for Event Horizon was suppressed after the survivors returned, but Reinhardt accidentally stumbled upon it again with the Cygnus. The endings of the two films hit very similar story beats (no spoilers).
I'm more a fan of the it was the first warp drive of Warhammer 40k.
The shop came back tainted by the warp
@@sethgilcrist8088 that what happens when you dont turn your Gellar field on!
@@davidsiepel6774 well given it was the predark age of technology there's no way they could have known about Gellar field. A lesson that would learned in blood.
@@sethgilcrist8088 yeah i feel bad for those poor fuckers who learned the hard way. Still someone had to make it back, or they would never know they needed an "anti demon" shield. Though this is pre Saalnesh so i guess the warp was more stable and less murder and rapey back then
@@davidsiepel6774 who said they made it back alive. It probably took years of work to understand what the insane machine spirit was ranting about after the first few shots came back. That or they finally broke down and sent space Marines on one of the trip.
But yes a moment of silence for the poor bastards that got caught in the warp with a downed Gellar field.
May the God Emperor have mercy on there souls.
We need to have an Event Horizon video, but about the ship itself.
oooooooooooh yes, i second that!
Ditto!
Love the Cygnus. It's like a gothic stained glass cathedral just hanging there over the abyss. I had a poster of it when I was a kid.
Not nearly spooky enough for this list but the initial stages onboard the ISA Cassandra from Killzone: Shadow Fall kept me on edge a lot more than I expected. Something about the ship’s atmosphere, the biohazard warnings and piles of corpses killed by the bioweapon, the darkness. I half expected a necromorph to pop out at me which kept making me more nervous when it never did.
Okay, my top 5 in order: 1: Shadows 2: Vorlons 3: The Avalon (Brightly lit though she may have been, creepy AF.) 4: Red Dwarf (Great show, but if it weren't for Cat, Rimmer and Kryten, I think Lister would've been creeped out by that ship.) 5: Any Borg ship.
i thought the wraith hive ships from stargate atlantis knowing what happens in those hive always added a sense of horror to it for me,
Pandorum was SUCH a good movie. I feel it's unfairly underrated.
The part where the guy wakes up from hibernation only to be slaughtered by terrifying creatures is really memorable! I remember my Dad and I giving each other the 'holy crap' expression when that happened.
Too bad the Von Braun from System Shock 2 did not make this list. I really loved the horror/ thriller atmosphere of that ship
The Prosecutor from Republic Commandos. The first part of that mission scared me a lot as a kid.
Shadow ships from Babylon 5.
Event Horizon was so spooky all around that they could have set it in a giant beach ball and it would still creep me out.
Mass Effect reapers may have ended up suffering really badly from power shrink but man Sovereign was good for two games.
YES YES YOU DID IT! ISHUMIRA FROM DS2 WAS ONE OF MY WORST EXPERIENCES I HAD IN MY LIFE!
High praise for a horrow game lmao
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Anyone remember the Guild Heighliner from Lynch‘s Dune?
Sure, we didn’t get to see much of it during the movie, but a massive black, shimmering tube with a gate for the smaller ships that looks like a deep black pit, framed with golden ornaments.
And especially the area where the navigators ‘work’ …
I think the Von Braun from System Shock 2 is up there too. Between the isolation, the mutated crew, and... something else (not to spoil), it's a pretty creepy setting.
And the reveal of that 'something else' really ups the terror for the rest of the game, too! It's such a classic and effective 'ohshit!' moment.
This. System Shock 2 creeped me out more than Dead Space did.
If we expand to include space stations, I say Citadel Station from System Shock with an honorabke mention to Sevastopol Station from Alien: Isolation.
The RAS Prosecutor level in Republic Commando is a favorite spooky ship of mine. The game creators did an excellent job spookifying the ship not only through the usual dark, abandoned aesthetic but also seperating you from your squad shortly after you really started working well together. It raised the stakes as you could no longer get revived adding to the fear.
This makes me wish we got that canceled Yuuzahn Vong arc in the Clone Wars.
As a fan of Sci fi I am an unapologetic fan of the black hole. Loved it as a kid growing up. I think Maximilian killing Dr Durant is probably the most traumatizing thing about it.
When Max's spinning blades tear through the book and you see Durant's expression they didn't even need to show the gore. Nasty!
From Star Trek ENT: The Seleya & Vaankara
From Farscape: The Zelbinion
Homeworld: Cataclysm video game. The Beast was a bio-mechanical virus that would dissolve and reduce the crew to gore. On the sides of the ship, you could see the red from the remains. Vessels would be able to talk using those same remains to speak to other ships (essentially zombie ships that would go after you). Plus it could easily spread using various means, giving the sense of death as they try to close in on you.
I feel like Farscape's Rovhu is worth a mention. A ship transporting the criminally insane with a cannibal that breaks free and clones everybody. Of course, once someone's been cloned a few times, mental degradation becomes a factor and they become cannibals themselves. The Pilot on the ship has its arms eaten over and over again as they grow back.
You beat me to this comment by a day. I'd like to remind you, however, that he didn't exactly "clone" his victims. He split them, so tehre were two identical selves. Neither was a clone of the other. This had repercussions in the series afterward for a while, and it was pretty great.
@@adamsmall5598 The two were clones of each other, so the terminology stands.
The Mona Lisa from Halo Evolutions continues to live with me as best spooky ship
By the God-Emperor Event Horizon IS a prequel to 40K and there's nothing anyone can say to change my mind.
Early forays into warp travel before discovering the absolute necessity of the Geller field.
I won't.... I'm right there with you! 😁👍🏽
@@johnbeck1978Good one! You hit that right on the head!
I'd say the Derelict from Alien is even _more_ creepy than the Nostromo, because to quote Cat:
_What is it?_
Everything about it gives me the creeps, from the dank, ribcage-like structure to the surrealness of the pilot's seat itself.
It's like he's... _Biologically fused_ to the control interface?? Now _that_ is a ship I can call alien.
But what is it?
Id like to nominate the Nostalgia for Infinity from the book Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds.
There is something really creepy about a ship that is infected by some unknown contagion which is slowly melding its captain and ship together, turning the ship biological.
IIRC there are spaces in that ship filled with bodily fluids and organs.
Damn, you beat me to it
And the power source used to power those ships' engines is... creative.
@@CantankerousDave It's been a while, but isn't it just a standard conjoiner drive?
@@simonfrohlich7766 Conjoiner drives are powered by taking plasma from the big bang with the help of a timetravelling wormhole.
That really is a novel way of doing it.
@@RaDeus87 And the computer that controls it is unsettling too. (Read "Weather")
I'd add The Probe from Star Trek 4. It literally shuts down any craft approaching it without a shot fired, can alter an entire planets weather pattern, and for the most part no one actually knows what to do but hunker down and hope a time travel hail mary works.
1. Any Reaver ship from FIREFLY 2. The Borg ship from Star Trek Voyager: Scorpion part 1
How can the Shadow ship not be on this list? "It was jet-black. A shade of black so deep, your eye just kind of slides off it. And it shimmered when you looked at it. A spider, big as death and twice as ugly. When it flies past, it's like you hear a scream in your mind." Warren Keffer
I tried to play Dead Space. I _wanted_ to play Dead Space. But following Clarke while he slouched around hunched over like an abused pet made my back hurt. Especially since his life bar was integrated into the spine of his armor.
But I have to agree with you. My favorite ship for spookiness will always be the Nostromo, but the Ishimura does it better.
I'd say Tarak Nor from DS9, but that was technically a station, and it was only unsettling when Garak got high on murder juice.
Mayhaps, the Leviathan from Destiny 2? The thing was infected by space fungus that can grow inside people, is now controlled by said fungus which is metaphysically linked to the space tetrahedron of doom, as well as the ships master.
Not to mention the personally tailored projections of Trauma and internal woes that manifest as phantoms that follow you around and torture you.
I've been playing Outer wilds echoes of the eye and the stranger and the mystery surrounding it is absolutely very spooky.
Great addition! 👏