Space Warfare in Fiction - Television and Film

Television and Film

Early television productions such as Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949) were severely constrained by the available special effects technology, and effect sequences were typically difficult to set up. This, combined with the fact that early shows were often live productions, meant that space action sequences were usually short and simple.

Production techniques improved throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and most programming moved to pre-recorded productions. This allowed more complex effects to be used, and increased the ability of producers to show action sequences such as space warfare. Star Trek is from this period. While the future presented in the original Star Trek series was not one of open warfare, the machinery of war was ever present, and was used in many episodes. Ships carried missiles armed with antimatter warheads, known as "photon torpedos", and deflector shields for defense. Battles were shown on screen, but the expense and difficulty of advanced special effects meant that most battles were short and involved few craft. The costs of special effects dropped dramatically over the years, but remained high enough that larger battles showed relatively few ships firing and/or being hit. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1995) used computer graphics developed in part by Industrial Light & Magic, and could show battles between numerous classes of ships using tactics developed by military strategists.

George Lucas' 1977 film Star Wars broke new ground in its depiction of space warfare. Advances in technology, combined with the film's comparatively high budget, allowed Lucas to create long, complex space action sequences. The battle sequences were modeled after World War II-era dogfighting from films such as The Dam Busters, and were a major milestone in fictional space combat.

A number of more ambitious films and television series soon followed, including ABC's Battlestar Galactica (1978). Battlestar Galactica used expensive effects influenced by those of Lucas' film and followed his lead in concentrating on battles between starfighters. It, and contemporary shows such as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, set new standards in television space battles. The series primarily used laser-type energy weapons in defense and offence on battleships, although analogues to ballistic weaponry are present in several episodes. The 2003 "re-imagining" of Battlestar Galactica uses more conventional weaponry, such as guns and missiles mounted on the primary capital ships and starfighters, and use pure Newtonian physics to achieve a more realistic representation of how space warfare would actually appear.

James Cameron's and Gale Anne Hurd's Aliens, the 1986 sequel to the 1979 film Alien, used Starship Troopers as the basis for its futuristic military. The movie involves a small unit of the United States Colonial Marine Corps who provide emergency response to a planetary colony in 2179. The film showed futuristic twists on many modern types of military vehicle and gear, including a dropship, 10x25mm caseless "Pulse" M41A1 rifles, flamethrowers and machine guns, and realistic body armor and tactical equipment.

The 1993 television series Babylon 5 chronicled a turbulent time in galactic politics, which involved several inter-species wars. Political and humanitarian aspects were explored, such as atrocities against civilian populations, and telepathy was used as a weapon. The series made an attempt to faithfully depict the physics of combat in a vacuum, instead of using motion modelled on aeroplanes within our atmosphere.

The 1995 American TV series Space: Above and Beyond centered around the "Wildcards", a group of marines in the 2060s who serve as both infantry and fighter pilots. The show attempted to depict technology that was near-future, but based on research. It also explored the alienation of deep space warfare, the horrors of loss and survival on the battefield, the bonds that form in combat, and a fight against an enemy of which they knew little. Space: Above and Beyond differs from many other military science fiction works in that its soldiers use weapons that fire bullets, and fight in space suits in alien environments.

The British TV Series Doctor Who, has numerous instances of this. Frontier in Space, set in 2540, mentions a war between Earth and Draconia, fought 20 years earlier. This story involves renegade Time Lord the Master trying to start another war on behalf of the Daleks, who plan to conquer the Galaxy. The Time War is a major plot point in the revived series, during which the Time Lords, the species of the Doctor (Doctor Who), fought the Daleks. This war seems to have ended with the destruction of the Time Lord planet Gallifrey, which the Doctor did hoping the Daleks would also be destroyed.