Favorite OT starfighter?

Okay, let's get back to basics here. Favorite starfighter from the Original Trilogy... go!

I vacillate back and forth between the Y-wing and Vader's personal TIE Fighter. I'm not thinking in terms of performance or anything like that (anyone who's played the old Rogue Squadron games before knows that a Y-wing, while it can take a bit of a beating, is just way too easy a target) but just in terms of how cool they look.

Back in the day, when Star Wars was first out and circulating photos were essentially limited to what LFL had put out in press kits and what Topps was using in their trading cards, it was the Y-wing and Vader's ship that you really didn't see that often unless you were at the theater watching the movie yet again. So I think that's a big part of where my preference comes from.

But on top of that, I've always loved the fact that the Y-wing, along with just having a cool-looking silhouette, also looked like it perpetually had its hood up, with all of the exposed components and conduits. Plus I always thought their engines had a great sound, with the little wind-in-the-wires element that Ben Burtt added.

Vader's ship, on the other hand, just looks bad-ass. You've got a swarm of TIE Fighters taking on the Rebels over the Death Star, and here comes Vader in this lean, dangerous, souped-up hot rod of a TIE, blasting half the Rebellion's pilots out of the sky without breaking a sweat. That image of Vader's TIE flanked by his two wingmen coming up behind and lining up for the kill shot... a classic cinematic tension builder!

Since I'm putting a poll up here, though, I suppose I'd best come down on one side or the other and make a choice between the two. From a pure design standpoint, I'm going to go with the Y-wing, just by a hair. It's a fantastic-looking ship, and it's got that used, lived-in look that I've always really loved about Star Wars.

 

Voxx, I've always really dug the B-wing design too. Had we gotten to see them in action at all in ROTJ, it might be higher on my list. I still can't believe that after they went to the trouble of designing them and building the models, ILM didn't do more with them other than to show them flying in formation before the Death Star attack.

I've heard that they were having trouble getting the thin forward/aft profile to read against the blue screen and scrapped their planned B-wing battle shots for that reason, but that's never made a lick of sense to me seeing as how they managed to get good shots of them flying in formation, directly away from the camera. I had always hoped that, with all the screwing around with the films that Lucas did later on, they'd add in some B-wing shots to the big final space battle in ROTJ.

 

My Dad and I used to do that too! I was big on old WWII fighter planes at that age, never missed an episode of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (later retitled "Black Sheep Squadron" and collected die-cast fighter planes. That was a big part of what got me about the original Star Wars when it came out. It was an awesome movie (in the true sense of the word - I was in genuine awe of what I was seeing on the screen) and then at the end we get an extended WWII dogfight/bombing run scene with these amazing "planes".

For me, digging on the ships is serious old-school Star Wars fandom going back to the very beginning.

I agree with the point you raise about the Rebel fighters looking a lot more like aircraft as we know them. Let's face it... have any of the efforts to describe how a TIE fighter actually works ever really rung particularly true to you? I mean, as small as a TIE cockpit is, those engines would have to be the size of beer coolers at best. Not exactly the kind of thing you expect to see racing around at high speeds.

That said, I always saw the TIE fighter as being based heavily on the German JU-87 Stuka. Not specifically in design or tactical function (TIEs aren't dive bombers, etc.) but in terms of their psychological effect on the enemy. The TIE is designed to look like a bat or some other creature of the night, while the Stuka is designed to look like a bird of prey. Plus, the sound of the TIEs' engines always reminded me of the air sirens the Stukas had mounted to their landing gear, which produced a mighty impressive shriek when they made their dive bombing runs.