We weren't too impressed with the longer, somewhat stately trailer for the new Yamato movie back in June. But this new trailer, (which seems to be two trailers stuck together) hits all the right notes — there's some of the same footage of Yamato bursting out of the ice, plus deadly comets and evil snarling people. Derek Wildstar looks at a picture of his fallen captain. And then — space battles! Explosions! Lasers and missiles flying in the void! And finally... yes! The wave motion gun!

It really doesn't take much to make us happy. [Fanboy.com]

I love the bronze, somewhat low-fi interior of the Nautilus. I hesitate to call it "steampunk," but it's definitely original. Any ship where you have to pull a gigantic lever to operate the viewscreen is my kind of ship. I really like the design in this film, and the ideas are pretty nice as well. An unscrupulous billionaire plans to drill into the Earth's crust to find a new unlimited power source (shades of Doctor Who's "Inferno") and some desperate people travel back in time from 2100 to stop him. It would all be perfect, except that the movie throws in an extraneous plot about eco-terrorists in a ploy to pad out the movie's running length. Apart from that, though, it's one of the funnest B-movies I've seen lately, with great use of stock footage for all the military confrontations. [IMDB]

Starblazers. Desslok, leader of the Gamilons, tried to crush the puny humans over and over again, but finally lost his empire. So in season two, he decided to take revenge on the crew of the Yamato, who defeated his ambitions. He finally catches up to them in an episode auspiciously titled "Desslok's Victory," and pounds them with his gunships. Then he surrounds the Yamato with magnetic mines before the humans can fire their famous Wave Motion Gun. And then taunts his adversaries mercilessly. "Go on, take a shot." Ha ha ha ha. (I know it's sacrilege, but I actually prefer this scene in the English dubbed version.)

Battlestar Galactica. It takes less than an episode for things to go south between the Galactica and the newly discovered Battlestar Pegasus. Admiral Cain decides to execute the Chief and Helo, leading to a tense confrontation complete with the whirly cam. Commander Adama shows why you don't mess with Galactica, with his terse "I'm getting my men" speaking volumes. And then the phone comes down, because the space battle is on.

Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. Star Trek pretty much perfected the art of hailing-frequencies bravado, as early as "Balance of Terror"'s Romulan Sub-Commander Tal. "Your ship is surrounded, Captain. You will surrender immediately, or we will destroy you." With Kirk responding, "Save your threats. If you board this ship, I'll blow it up. You'll gain nothing." But Trek's masterpiece of comm-taunting has to be TWoK, where Kirk keeps needling Khan's poor marksmanship, until finally he lures him into a disabling nebula by laughing at his superior intellect. "We tried it once your way, Khan. Are you game for a rematch?" The script says: "Khan's eyes bulge." And they do.

Serenity. This one's a bit different. Chiwetel Ejiofor's Operative is mournful and regretful after he slaughters dozens (maybe hundreds) of innocents to get to Mal. But he still needles Mal via the viewscreen, suggesting that all the carnage is Mal's fault. And he's successful in goading Mal to take rash action — just not maybe the action he was hoping for.

Avengers #94, part of the Kree-Skrull War saga. The Skrull emperor appears on a view screen to warn the Avengers that the Kree warrior, Mar-Vell, is creating the ultimate weapon, an Omni-Wave Projector. And then when the humans don't respond to his threats fast enough, the emperor launches Plan Delta, which sends an all-consuming fireball spiralling towards Earth.

Farscape, "Die Me, Dichotomy." In the second season cliffhanger, Scorpius takes over Crichton's brain via a neural chip, and the mind-controlled Crichton tricks Aeryn into letting him go. She chases after his module in her Prowler, leading to a harsh exchange. Scorpius asks her how the skull fracture is doing, and she threatens to shoot him down. "Make no mistake." Scorpius/John replies: "I believe you'll pull the trigger. I just don't believe - you'll hit anything." And then he goes into a dive. Sadly, this is just a few moments before Aeryn takes her chair-dive into the frozen lake.

Halo 3, "The Crow's Nest" level. The Chief and Johnson reach the Command Center and start making plans to attack Truth's army, but then Truth appears on all screens and says: "You are, all of you, vermin. Cowering in the dirt, thinking...what, I wonder? That you might escape the coming fire? No! Your world will burn until its surface is but glass! And not even your Demon will live to creep, blackened, from its hole to mar the reflection of our passage; the culmination of our Journey. For your destruction is the will of the gods! And I? I AM their instrument!" Okay, so that's not a space battle. But I love that speech.

Galaxy Quest. Jason and Sarris have many great confrontations over the viewscreen, including the first one, where Jason thinks Sarris is just acting, and the second one, where Jason calls Sarris stupid and ugly because he thinks the sound is off. But the best, by far, is the final jaw-dropping confrontation. Sarris reminds Jason that he's a General, who's seen war and death that Jason can't imagine, and Sarris won't blink no matter what. (This scene is lengthier in the original script, actually.) But Jason retorts that it doesn't take a great actor to recognize a bad one, and Sarris is sweating. And then we get to the classic exchange, "You fool. What you fail to realize is that without your armor my ship will tear through yours like tissue paper." To which Jason responds: "Yeah. Well what you fail to realize is... I'm dragging mines."

Babylon 5, "Between The Darkness And The Light. We're totally embarrassed that we missed this crucial showdown between Earthforce and Susan Ivanova, and super grateful that commenters Michael and BcBeBop pointed it out to us. I am going to start calling myself "the right hand of vengeance" and "the boot up your ass" in the same breath now:

Doctor Who, "Bad Wolf." Another one we're embarrassed we missed originally. Thanks to commenter AspiringExpatriate for pointing it out! I love how Christopher Eccleston's Doctor is just like, "No." As if it's not even worth arguing. It mirrors his awesome "No" in "The Long Game" when The Editor asks that long-winded philosophical question about whether a slave is still a slave if he doesn't know he's a a slave. I have to admit, every time I watch this scene I wonder why the Daleks don't just say, "Okay then," and exterminate Rose right then and there.

So what classic space talk-downs did we miss? Feel free to let us know in the comments, but only in the most trash-talking, mouth-running, space-taunting way possible. You fools! We're laughing at your superior intellects.

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The Vulture, from Salvage 1. Andy Griffith is "a junkman with a dream," in this ABC TV movie that became a series. He decides to build a spaceship from junk and fly it to the moon, so he can reposess all the crap that NASA left up there and sell it back to NASA (or someone else) for a profit. He enlists the aid of a retired astronaut and an "explosive" fuel expert, and together they pull off the impossible. Is it legal, someone asks him. "I don't know!" he replies cheerfully. Here's another clip:

The Yamato, from Starblazers. The Earth is being devastated by radiation bombs from the evil Gamilons (or Gamilas in Japanese). The Earth's space fleet is ruined and outclassed. There's only one hope left: travel to Iscandar and get a miracle cure from a glowy princess. But there's no spaceship to make the journey. So the surviving humans find the ruined World War II Japanese battleship Yamato, and retrofit her into a spaceship. For years, I wondered why the Yamato looks so boat-like. Then I re-watched some of the DVDs and found out why.

The Thunder Road, from Explorers. Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix and some other guy learn how to build a device that creates a space-worthy bubble, from their dreams. Using this for protection, they build a spaceship out of an old Tilt-A-Whirl amusement-ride seat, washing machine windows, a spare tire, old TV sets, and a "proceed with caution" sign. Then they actually fly their home-made contraption up into space and meet up with aliens, led by Robert Picardo, the holographic doctor from Star Trek: Voyager. (Thanks to Sherilyn for the tip!)

The 747, from Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers by Harry Harrison. Possibly the silliest book by Harrison, who also wrote the Stainless Steel Rat and Bill The Galactic Hero books. In this parody of golden age science fiction, three guys and a girl are playing around with a home-made particle accelerator. They put some cheese in the accelerator's target area and create a new element, cheddite. It has the ability to move people immense distances across space, so Chuck, Jerry, Sally and John turn an old 747 jet into a spaceship and fly across the galaxy. They find themselves having to save the galaxy from an evil race known as the Loathesome Lortonoi. (Thanks to Alan for the suggestion.)

The Barnyard ship, from The Astronaut Farmer. Billy Bob Thornton gave up on being an astronaut to go home to his farm, so he decides to build his own rocket in a barn and fly it into space. He doesn't really build it out of junk, however, so I'm not sure if it belongs in this listing.

The Madball ship, from Madballs. This is a cartoon tying in with a gross-out candy from the 1980s. On a planet where everybody is a ball with arms and legs, the evil Badballs want to ban rock'n'roll. The bastards. So the Madballs build their own spaceship out of parts they find by dumpster-diving (they literally find the final crucial piece in a trash can.) And then they fly to Earth, where they can have all the rock'n'roll adventures they want, and never be heard from again.

Rickety Rocket. A group of stereotyped black teenagers create their own spaceship out of garbage they find, and they use it to solve mysteries. It looks just like Speed Buggy and has a similar origin. The cartoon aired as part of the Plastic Man Comedy-Adventure Show. Typical storyline: A robot art critic in a top hat (classy!) is stealing priceless objects and shrinking them using a matter transformer. But he turns out not to be a robot after all (boring!).

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• The Wave Motion Gun: In the future world of Starblazers, an old battleship called the Argo (the Yamato in Japan) has been retrofitted as a spaceship, complete with a massive gun mounted inside the prow of the ship called The Wave Motion Gun. It fires a massive blast of laser energy out the front, and was frequently used by the crew to battle foes when they were outmatched. However, it took forever to power the damn thing up, and required flipping a lot of switches and turning a lot of wheels. So, it wasn't exactly something that you could whip out and use at a moment's notice.
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• Princess Ardala's Orbital Super Shotgun: Princess Ardala was about the vampiest villain to roam space in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and she wanted to get Buck in her bed more than anything. In the episode "Escape From Wedded Bliss" she sends a giant mega-cannon to orbit the Earth, and threatens to blow up New Chicago if buck won't marry her. It's impervious to fire from starfighters, and can take out entire cities with one blast. Me-ow.
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• The Genesis Device: Captain Kirk and crew had to deal with a very pissed-off Ricardo Montalban in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He wanted to get his hands on The Genesis Device, which could transform dead planets into thriving gardens of eden. It just happened to have been developed by one of Kirk's ex-girlfriends, and his bastard child. Khan eventually blows it up while trying to kill Kirk, but only succeeds in turning a nebula into a pretty planet that later falls apart and brings Spock back to life. Not bad for a plastic torpedo.
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• Lexx the Spaceship: Lexx was both the name of the show, and a sentient ship that looked like a dragonfly without wings, and it could destroy entire planets and then eat the debris for lunch. If it didn't get to chow down on planetary body for long periods of time it would get pretty cranky. So, they let him destroy and eat fairly often on the show, mostly because the whole firing of the planet-pulverizing weapon was so dramatic and ate up a lot of the show's special effects budget, so they tried to get the most bang for their buck.
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• Ming the Merciless: The ultimate nemesis in Flash Gordon was always the fu-manchued Ming the Merciless, until he got caucasianized in the recent remake on the Sci Fi Channel. Give us back the old Ming who was armed with Death Rays, Zotranillium Missiles, and even deadly finger rings that could wreak havoc on his favorite target, Earth. Nothing says superweapon like a campy actor with all-powerful evil jewelry.
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• The Jump Start the Sun Themonuclear Payload: In Danny Boyle's woefully underrated movie Sunshine that came out this past summer, scientists were on a months-long journey to the sun in order to deliver a massive nuclear payload that was supposed to help reignite our dying sun. It was the size of the Superdome, and made up of ominous black cubes. It it was powerful enough to get the sun going again, just imagine what it could do in the wrong hands.
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• The Death Star: Probably the coolest and most-remembered superweapon in all of science fiction, the Death Star from Star Wars could fly around the galaxy, blow up planets, house an entire fleet of fights and an army. It also probably had some pretty decent recreational facilities as well. While Luke Skywalker blew up the first one, like any good government the Empire decided to build a second one, but it didn't fare so well either. Here's a thought Empire: instead of calling it "The Death Star," why not label it Children's Hospital Good Ship Lollipop? At least that would throw those damn rebels off the trail.
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More than a few people have been alarmed since the comet flared up and can now be seen by the naked eye in your own backyard. Plus scientists still have no idea why the eruption occurred, and they don't even know what's in the middle of the thing. So you can be sure there's someone out there telling everyone it's an alien spaceship, and who's to say it isn't? Hopefully this doesn't mean the earth will be surrendering to the Comet Empire any time soon.

As far as Holmes colliding with us, unless you were planning to hitch a ride on the back of this thing, you don't have anything to worry about. Holmes orbits the Sun at 200 million miles out, which is a shade past our own 93 million mile orbit. Besides, if this thing was going to come anywhere near us you know that NASA has Bruce Willis programmed into their speed dial.

Incredible Comet Bigger Than The Sun [SPACE.com]

Famous names: Leiji Matsumoto, Billy West, Toshio Matsuda, Noburo Ishigura

Crunchy goodness: 2

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: A couple of 1990s sequels, including Yamato 2520. Plus a live-action U.S. remake has been rumored for years.

Elevator pitch: It's Yellow Submarine — in space!

The shit: Desslok, the evil ruler of the Gamilons, is the sexiest villain in the universe, bar none. For one thing, he's bright blue with orange hair. In his finest moment, he surrounds the Yamato with space mines and then dares its captain to fire the Yamato's super-powerful wave-motion gun. "I've been most anxious to see what this great weapon of yours can do," he purrs in his creamy alto tones. "So fire the gun!"

Starblazers/ Yamato Wave Motion Web Page