Would You Buy A Second-Hand X-Wing From This Man?

Over at UGO.com Robert Hoffman published a list of 100 greatest cinematic spaceships which has been troubling the blogosphere for a few days. I took the io9 challenge and tried to predict the top 10. Suffice it to say I was not at all surprised by the number 1 entry, and in addition, I correctly predicted that Discovery, Enterprise the Close Encounters mothership and of course Serenity would make the top ten. It was inevitable that Star Wars and Star Trek would be prominent in this list - and I applaud Hoffman's attempt to stop them from dominating altogether.

The nostalgia is strong with this one: E.T.'s spaceship and the X-Wing (both just missing out on the top 10) but also further down the list were Max from Flight of the Navigator, the unexpected yellow spaceship from Life Of Brian, and a certain Interstellar Circus Tent. Recent films with iconic spaceships such as District 9 also get a mention.

Not iconic enough?

I was, however, surprised to see that the Nostromo and Sulaco only clocked in at 36 and 44, and there are also some interesting omissions: although it's only had two cinema outings plus one TV movie appearance, surely the TARDIS ranks somewhere in the top 100. Also I thought the Martian Flying Machines (complete with string) deserved more of a place than many of the entrants, as did Jane Fonda's inexplicably carpeted interstellar RV from Barbarella. Possibly the Flying Machines were excluded on a technicality as they were aircraft rather than spacecraft.