Author: Rob

No, not the Microsoft version, and you’d like to hope that the systems on board the Enterprise and the like are not based on an underpinning that’s liable to blue-screen on you halfway through a transporter cycle, or need to download an important security update before you can fire those photon torpedoes.

Windows in SF tend towards the panoramic. They are great floor to window room-width panes, around which your crew can gather to goggle in wonder at each new wonder they encounter on their impossible mission to the gates of forever. More recent iterations of The Big Window have embedded graphics. Just in case you weren’t sure about the exact designation of the Klingon Warbirds moving into battle configuration in front of you, handy pop-up windows, scrolling text boxes and spinning wire-frame models tell you more than you needed to know.

In reality, of course, the sort of panoramic window that you’d see on the bridge of the Enterprise or the command deck of an Imperial Destroyer could never happen. That much glass, under atmospheric pressure on the inside and the constant risk of micrometeorite impact from the outside, would be far too dangerous to install. On the International Space Station and the Shuttle, windows are tiny, quadruple-glazed portholes of thick crystal. You want a peek outside? That’s what video cameras are for.

Which is why most “windows” in SF are actually really big projectors. They have zoom functions. They can hook into communication circuits, so that looming close-up of the approaching enemy warlord demanding your immediate surrender and the handover of fifty of your most fragrant ensigns can be really threatening. You can even show that things have gone really badly wrong by having the screen just show that fuzzy analogue static that is somehow still a signifier of lost signal even after ten years of fizz-free digital telly.

I’m a fan of The Big Window in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, which started this whole SF decor riff in the first place. That window is a way for the crew to have a look at the approaching sun in all it’s fearful magnificence, and it’s tunable to filter out all but 3% of the light. This, for once, does just seem to be a portal, albeit one with some really smart sunblock. But it fulfills all of the rules I outlined earlier – it’s a Really Big Window, probably twenty feet square, and at one point the whole crew do gather around it to gawp in wonderment at Mercury passing across the surface of the sun. It’s a lovely moment, and sums up for me the important thing about SF set design. It should always be there to help the story along. Let’s face it, that bit of the film wouldn’t have had the emotional impact if the crew of the Icarus II had been crowded around a foot-square porthole.

One word you should never hear in an SF movie? “Budge up a bit, let me have a look.”

The humble chair. A little spot designed for rest and relaxation, right? An item of furniture for you to take the weight off your feet, to switch off a bit.
Not in SF, it isn’t. In our favourite genre, the chair becomes a place of action.

Consider The Captain’s Chair in Star Trek. In The Original Series, it is a slab-sided, poorly padded lump of alloy on a swivel. Kirk spends a minuscule amount of time on it, and for the most part he perches on the edge of the seat cushion. Mainly because if he tried sitting back the rotten thing would dig a hole in his lower back. It wasn’t surprising he couldn’t wait to get out of it. It seemed to be a focal point for James T. to bark at Scotty through the communicator whilst leering at leggy ensigns.

It’s interesting to note that The Captain’s Chair becomes more comfortable the less outwardly aggressive it’s occupant. In the later seasons of Star Trek – The Next Generation, The Chair is better described as The Recliner. I swear, the thing has a footstool. I’m also certain there are opening shots in some of the later episodes where Picard can be spotted having a sneaky snooze.

SF chairs are not static objects. They do things. They move about. They are multi-purpose. They are dramatic objects. They are not designed for settling into with a mug of cocoa and a thick paperback.

A lot of them are on gimbals or tracks and whizz backwards and forwards with exciting whines and buzzes. They frequently incorporate communication devices, video equipment or in some cases, something more destructive.

Let’s do the Star Wars thing. I’m thinking specifically of the gun emplacements on the Millenium Falcon. These are fantastic. They’re ceiling-mounted. They have headsets, cool video screens and OH DID I MENTION THE GUNS?? I wanted one of these so badly when I was a kid. Oh, who am I kidding? I want one now.

Clearly I’m not alone. The gun emplacement bit in The End Of Time, the last Tennant Doctor Who episode, is a clear homage to the Falcon gunfight. Behind the scenes footage shows Bernard Cribbins having a whale of a time behind the sights of the lasers. I want to see the out-takes where he goes “pewpewpew” and makes exploding noises through his cheeks.

To confuse matters even further, let’s look to The Matrix. The gateways to the virtual world on the Nebuchennezar are accessed through couch-mounted plugs and circuits. You take a seat to dial into the Matrix. Let me just reiterate that. In the Matrix, chairs can be doors.

In Iain M. Bank’s Use Of Weapons the chair becomes something more potent. I would argue that the events of the book revolve around the sourcing of materials and construction of a simple white chair. This might seem a bit of a strange thing to say when talking about a novel that chronicles the adventures of an interplanetary mercenary. And it’s a difficult thing to properly talk about without ruining the big wallop at the end of the story. I recommend reading the book, but if you must, there’s a spoiler below.

The chair is made out of the bones of the main character’s sister, complete with a cushion fashioned from her skin. Iain Banks’ SF is not cheerful. Although it is somewhat chairful. Sorry.

After all that, I need a sit down. Someone send me over an armchair…

You thought I was kidding, didn’t you?

image courtesy of John Eaves. Check out his chunk of posts on Ron Cobb here.

Let’s consider the humble doorway, and how it has become a character in and of itself in SF. In every other genre I can think of, they are simple objects. They open. They close, occasionally with a slam. In a prison context, they are symbols of incarceration, although to be frank characters tend to talk about the walls more, and they are the object that will have the graffiti and the gate-bar scratches, counting off the days until freedom comes.

SF doors are infinitely more complex. They are desperately over-engineered for the job at hand. And at the same time they barely fulfil the essential design requisites that you and I would consider the door would need. They rarely have handles, for example. You have to punch a code or say a password or, memorably in Jeunet’s Alien:Resurrection, huff your cheesy breath into a detector.

And that’s before the darn things will even open for you. Then you get the best efforts of a team of props men as they slide back on tracks or drop through the floor or iris open like a lens. In Star Trek: DS9 the doors were built like cogs, and they rolled out of the way in a way that was far too complex for the end result. Lights will frequently blink and flash. In Peter Hyam’s Outland, they had useful red or green fluorescents to let you know if they were locked or not.

And then of course, they always make noise. Helpful bleeps and chimes to let you know that they’re about to do that fancy three-way split. The hiss of hydraulics. The unzipping sound that accompanied Captain Kirk as he marched down the corridors of the Enterprise (those corridors were always too fancy for my liking, although I’ve always had a thing for the Jeffries Tube). And I have to mention the doors on the Heart Of Gold in the Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, that were programmed to take pleasure in opening and closing, and did so with an almost orgasmic sigh.

Of course, there are always exceptions. The doors in the reboot of Battlestar Galactica are heavy, unwieldy things, but at least they have a handle and they are pulled open and closed. However, as they’re all designed to isolate an area in the event of a leak, they still have valves and wheels and an excess of handles and cranks. Opening a door still takes up a disproportionate amount of screen time and effort.

I’ve not really talked about the more esoteric kind of SF door yet. The Stargates, for one, have devolved over the years from being a 2001-esque gateway across galactic space, complete with warp effects and the wailings of a heavenly choir, to the kind of thing that O’Neill and crew hop through when they fancy a walk in the Canadian woods. Then we have the organic portals of the living craft of Lexx and Farscape. These worry me. I’m not sure a door should drip and ooze. Or to that point, just vanish on you just at the point when you need them the most.

But of course, my all-time favourite SF door? Well, there’s no contest, really.

And don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same with a door that did that. I want one for my garage.