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Programmable biological workers make it so much easier to set up a colony world, because you can reconfigure them as your colony develops.
Of course, if something goes wrong on the way there, the ship’s systems might find themselves trying to repair a starship with a worker build who think the telegraph is a pretty neat idea, …
When the colony ship fell out of orbit, it set the bio-workers to “Mental Evolution” mode, in the hope that this would compensate for the lack of central guidance. Years later, the remains of the ship are found, and the walls start taking to them …
Using bio-workers to raise the first generation of humans from the gene-banks is a fine solution to the problem of long spaceflights, but there will come a moment when the kids find out that their guardians really ARE robots …
Calling it an organic starship is over-simplifying things; It’s more of a space going coral reef, an ecosystem with a community on board, some of whom may be an integral part of the internal process.
How does the community react when the ‘ship’ suddenly changes course?
Or when the ship scoops up an entirely non-organic spacecraft, determines that it’s not edible, and dumps it out into the habitable areas?
If someone’s built a tomb which doesn’t rely on clever traps, and instead just flat-out tries to kill you, is it maybe worth considering that they had a really good reason to do so?
Episode One Hundred And Twenty Three – Tomb Temperature
50 Nautical Terms and Sailing Phrases That Have Enriched Our Language (Owlcation)
A Canticle For Liebowitz (Walter M. Miller Jr.)
Killjoys in the care of Lucy
Passengers – aboard the Avalon
Heart Of Gold – (The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy)
Starship Titanic
WALL·E with the ship, Axiom
Executor-class Star Dreadnought
Stargate Universe
System Shock 2 with the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker
Sid Meier’s Civilization (game series)
Ascension (tv miniseries)
Goosebumps (R. L. Stine book series)
The Twilight Zone
Kids On Bikes (rpg)
The Midwich Cuckoos (John Wyndham)
The Famous Five (Enid Blyton book series)
Expedition To The Barrier Peaks (D&D Module)
Saga (Brian K. Vaughan comic)
Event Horizon (movie)
28 Days Later
Flotsam: Adrift Among The Stars (rpg kickstart)
Nile Red (youtube channel)
Questionable Content (webcomic)
I’ve always thought the distinction between a spaceship an a starship is obvious: a starship is a kind of spaceship that travels between the stars. Then again, I’ve seen tons of people describe stories that take place entirely within our solar system as “intergalactic adventures,” so what do I know?
For purposes of the question of what starship I’d like to travel on, I’m guessing the TARDIS is a cheat. Barring the whole “stuck in the middle of an interstellar war” thing, I think living on an entire town in space like Superdimensional Fortress Macross might be a fun way to explore the galaxy.
A starship full of living components doesn’t necessarily have to have a scientific explanation. What if every object on the ship is inhabited by a (helpful?) spirit? Maybe it’s a faerie starship, or maybe hyperspace is magical, or maybe it’s just a starship made by magic instead of science.
I couldn’t quite get this thought up to the level of even a proto-concept for a game in response to last episode, but “Tomb Temperature” made me think of living and undead roommates fighting over the thermostat in their apartment.
As inferred, the spaceship / starship thing was a haphazard observation of the conceptual lumping together of such things in science fiction. It’s only odd as many other things are generally handled rather more precisely. Maybe our groovy sky chariots have been grandfathered in, or their value has been to provide the backdrops and plot devices devices for far-flung stories.
A fae forest travelling the stars is a pretty amazing idea. Is that where they all went, when the magic left the world?
Squabbling living / undead flatmates appeals too. It’s very “What We Do in the Shadows” and that already gives me flashbacks to my first 5 years living away from home