Wanted: Your opinion - the definite list of Lego Space flagships

mressin

For a MOC incorporating all flagships of Lego Space (not including Star Wars), I'm trying to figure out which sets can actually be considered "flagships". Of course, I have an idea of my own, but I am certainly biased, so I'd like to put the question to my fellow bricksetters:

Which five sets must be included in a definite list of flagships of Lego Space?

Sets from Star Wars are not eligible. Other than that, any theme is allowed.

AFFOL_Shellz_Bellz

Insectoids Arachnid Star Base #6977 gets my vote after just playing with it for the first time last night. I like it because it's so NOT of our world!

dougts

No listing of "definitive" LEGO Space flagships is complete without #497 Galaxy Explorer, which is the original big ship of LEGO Space

Brickarmor

#7644 is the beast in my opinion. Yes, I mean BEAST not best. I love it. I want (but have not built or seen in person) the #6982 Explorien Starship as well.

mressin

Thanks for the comments so far. I don't want to rely on my "feeling" alone when choosing who the most flagship-py spaceships in the Lego Space program are. I would inevitably be biased towards the ships I have childhood memories of, I guess.

My list of flagships would be:
#7644 MX-81 Hypersonic Operations Aircraft (Mars Mission, 2008)
#6982 Explorien Starship (Exploriens, 1996)
#5974 Galactic Enforcer (Space Police 3, 2009)
#497 / #928 Galaxy Explorer (Classic, 1979)
#6979 Interstellar Starfighter (UFO, 1997)
#6980 Galaxy Commander (Classic, 1983)
#6985 Cosmic Fleet Voyager (Classic, 1986)
#6984 Galactic Mediator (Space Police 2, 1992)
#6973 Deep Freeze Defender (Ice Planet, 1993)
#6986 Mission Commander (Space Police, 1989)

(Not necessarily in that order - this is sorted according to set weight.)

However, there are a number of reasons why I am not quite happy because there are a few issues:

Overrepresentation:
Classic Space is a bit overrepresented, with three ships.
The same could be said for Space Police, I assume.

Underrepresentation:
Then, a couple of themes don't feature at all, which are the following:
- M-Tron
- Blacktron/Blacktron 2
- Life on Mars
- Futuron (!!!)
- Spyrius
- Unitron

These have ships, but they usually fall short in size and weight to the ships listed above. Which begs the question: Should the following be considered "flagships" as well? Are they that iconic?

#6969 Celestial Stinger (Insectoids, 1998)
#6956 Stellar Recon Voyager (M-Tron, 1990)
#6954 Renegade (Blacktron, 1987)
#6981 Aerial Intruder (Blacktron 2, 1991)
#7315 Solar Explorer (Life On Mars, 2001)
#6932 Stardefender 200 (Futuron, 1987)
#6939 Saucer Centurion (Spyrius, 1994)
#1789 Star Hawk II (Unitron, 1995)

And once you start including those, the following should probably also i

#6862 Secret Space Voyager (M-Tron, 1991)
#6929 Star Fleet Voyager (Classic, 1981)
#6783 Sonar Transmitting Cruiser (Classic, 1988)

I have no problems with not featuring Alien Conquest, which for me plays in a different corner of Sci Fi. Space Port and City Space could be said not to be Sci Fi at all, so those go as well. In fact, I'm not even sure I would include Life On Mars...

Misrepresentation:
My third issue is that I was hoping that the list of flagships would loosely correlate with the most-wanted list. But they don't! #6954 is more wanted than many "bigger" ships, same goes for #6932. #497 / #928 is not doing well at all, on the other hand, although I do feel it's the mother of all Lego Space flagships (agreed, @dougts). And some sets I didn't even have on the radar: @AFFOL_Shellz_Bellz, is #6977 really a ship? It looked more like a base to me.

Any thoughts?

natro220

Hi, you have a pretty good list going. Personally, I would steer clear of the Mars sets for something like this, but that's just me. My list of 5 "flagships" would look like this:

1) 6986 Mission Commander
2) 6973 Deep Freeze Defender
3) 6982 Explorien Starship
4) 6980 Galaxy Commander
5) 6984 Galactic Mediator

You are correct, 6977 is not a ship, it is a walking bug-like base.

Having said everything I just said though, isn't part of the point of MOC-ing to create something new? Some of the ships listed on your smaller ship list could be fantastic flagships if they were fleshed out a bit - I would imagine 6954 Renegade would be awesome to improve upon.

natro220

Keep in mind though that I don't consider myself unbiased in the least...I grew up in the late '80's, and while I didn't get to have any of these ships personally, I may have developed an unnatural affinity for them getting to drool over them in the pages of Lego catalogs every year.