Comments on: In praise of the sci-fi corridor

In praise of the sci-fi corridor

empath — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:01:28 -0800

In praise of the sci-fi corridor -- a geeky look at that staple of sci-fi movie sets - the corridor.

By: six-or-six-thirty

six-or-six-thirty — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:14:15 -0800

This is not something I have ever really consciously thought about, and yet it is awesome and worthy of attention all the same. And that is one of the things that I love MeFi for. Thanks.

By: gemmy

gemmy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:15:41 -0800

Ah, so utilitarian and yet stylish and futuristic. Very cool! (I like the corridors of the Serenity, myself)

By: cashman

cashman — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:26:28 -0800

As do I. I like the way the walls go out. Gives you an open feeling.

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:30:42 -0800

Awesome post, empath. I wish I could favourite it more than once. And gemmy, there used to be a martini bar in my town that we called "The Firefly" because it reminded us of certain sections of Serenity. (it's since been renovated and lost most of its charm)

By: adipocere

adipocere — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:36:22 -0800

The aesthetic had even penetrated into the 1980 cover of one of AskMe's all-time favorite "What did I read as a kid?" sci-fi books, This Time of Darkness. Apologies for the size; it's all I can seem to find.

By: autodidact

autodidact — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:39:36 -0800

This is something I have thought about quite a lot. Some good stuff in there. Would like to see a twin article about the best corridors in FPS games. For my money it's hard to beat Doom 3, and Dead Space.

By: misha

misha — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:46:31 -0800

Seconding six-or-six-thirty's take: I've appreciated the scenery without giving it the lovingly in-depth analysis the author has. Nice post.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:48:17 -0800

Would like to see a twin article about the best corridors in FPS games. Barrels I Have Known And Loved: A Gaming Retrospective coming soon from the good people at wonderchicken industries™

By: zardoz

zardoz — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:50:57 -0800

Very well researched article. Thanks!

By: hippybear

hippybear — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:50:58 -0800

I seem to remember having read a book about the writing and filming of The Trouble With Tribbles wherein the author says that corridor scenes were discouraged for Star Trek because they somehow cost more than the normal sets of rooms.

By: Joe Beese

Joe Beese — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:53:12 -0800

Post of the week. Maybe the month.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:01:57 -0800

So *thats* what was so eerie and familiar about the corridors in the Hoover Dam.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:03:21 -0800

Would like to see a twin article about the best corridors in FPS games. Barrels I Have Known And Loved: A Gaming Retrospective coming soon from the good people at wonderchicken industries™ Boxes.

By: snwod

snwod — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:04:27 -0800

I know the article is talking mostly about movies, but no love for the corridors of Moya from Farscape? Especially those doors that pivot from the middle rather than the sides. :)

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:13:40 -0800

The Importance of Walls in Science Fiction Walls are important to science fiction. There are many examples of walls in science fiction throughout the ages. Without walls, science fiction would not be the same. This is why there are so many walls in science fiction today.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:17:16 -0800

Very cool. Another corridor I'll always remember is the rotating corridor in The 6 Million Dollar Man - Sasquatch episode. (Sasquatch played by Andre the Giant!) Needlessly thorough wiki entry about the episode

By: Cyrano

Cyrano — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:18:00 -0800

I know the article is talking mostly about movies, but no love for the corridors of Moya from Farscape? Maybe it's because I'm rewatching the series right now, but that's the first thing I thought of too.

By: Horace Rumpole

Horace Rumpole — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:18:08 -0800

I'm sad that there's no love for Cube, which is, in a sense, a movie entirely shot in corridors.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:18:22 -0800

The aforementioned corridor

By: robotico

robotico — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:20:26 -0800

Time Tunnel! One season on TV, 1966-67. Each episode began with our hero running through a tunnel. Didn't realize until I checked Wikipedia that it was created & produced by Master of Disaster Irwin Allen.

By: AsYouKnow Bob

AsYouKnow Bob — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:28:01 -0800

OK, that article pretty much pegged my geekometer. Well done.

By: jedicus

jedicus — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:33:50 -0800

Barrels I Have Known And Loved: A Gaming Retrospective There's actually a classic article at Old Man Murray about crates and barrels in video games. The idea is that the first occurrence of a crate or barrel represents the point at which the game designer ran out of ideas and resorted to cliche. To that end they ranked a bunch of games on that scale. A disturbing number of games actually start the player looking at a crate or barrel.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:36:10 -0800

I meant to say crate but went with box cause I couldn't rember the name of Old Man Murray. This is just to say-oh never mind

By: sexyrobot

sexyrobot — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:40:25 -0800

oh yeah...that time tunnel set is amazing...spot-on about curves being expensive, also any set that has to move around (2001, poltergeist)...but i think the most expensive are forest sets (dagobah)...lotta upkeep, and of course, underwater ones...

By: DU

DU — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:40:38 -0800

It seems to me that the fact that "corridors" are an identifiable subfield of SF is indicative of a certain monotony of setting.

By: PhoBWanKenobi

PhoBWanKenobi — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:00:35 -0800

Very awesome. But alas, I suspect that no corridor will ever top the (Mariot Hotel-esque) corridors of the Enterprise-D, my first sci-fi hallway loves.

By: Benway

Benway — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:03:22 -0800

I'm sad that there's no love for Cube, which is, in a sense, a movie entirely shot in corridors. True, but so much more. The entire spectrum of human emotion, based around traps that will kill you only if you are smart enough to defeat them. Cube is a great movie... the sequels, not so much.

By: localroger

localroger — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:05:54 -0800

When I was in high school, my friends and I all agreed that the prototype for all Dr. Who episodes should be The Ventilation Ducts of Womb-World. This appears to be true for all other SF vehicles as well.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:12:29 -0800

Get Smart. Well, OK, it's not science fiction.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:13:49 -0800

It is possible that Cube was based on the Jim Henson film The Cube, which you can view at Google Video. I think it's a single set with no corridors. I've not watched it entirely yet.

By: RobotVoodooPower

RobotVoodooPower — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:13:53 -0800

Fans of the vermislitude-laden scifi corridor should visit the late site of Quark's Bar in the Vegas Hilton. The part of the casino surrounding the bar was all decked out in Star Trek decor, but now it's just really out-of-place since the Trek exhibit passed.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:15:09 -0800

Look, I'm one of the System Shock developers and I just thought of a crazy way to store ammo: in crates! Thanks jedicus, for turning me on to Old Man Murray. Very funny. And this post is awesome!

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:18:27 -0800

What happened to OMM anyway?

By: qvantamon

qvantamon — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:19:54 -0800

Awesome post. And further proof that House is Sci-Fi However, it fails to mention Das Boot (who cares if it's not sci-fi), which I'd say is the ultimate "corridor" movie.

By: happyroach

happyroach — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:29:28 -0800

I've always thought that the Enterprise D needed some potted plants and bellhops, and maybe a few expensive prostitutes hanging around. As for me, I liked the corridors of Babylon 5, especially the doors that were designed to swing down in case of a power outage.

By: butterstick

butterstick — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:32:44 -0800

Oh so we're starting off with the Nostromo. -swoon-

By: butterstick

butterstick — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:43:42 -0800

... and finishing with Aliens. BRA-FUCKING-VO!

By: Zack_Replica

Zack_Replica — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:50:24 -0800

Event Horizon gave good corridor.

By: blenderfish

blenderfish — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:51:07 -0800

What happened to OMM anyway? Erik Wolpaw ended up doing a lot of the writing for Portal. (Which, ironically, features quite a few crates.)

By: Iridic

Iridic — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:53:57 -0800

"What do you think, what do you think that surface looks like to you, that hallway?" "Carpet." "It is. I'm just saying it, more in terms of what - in the reality of the motion picture it looks like. What do you think: it's a spaceship, what kind of surface might he be running on?" "I dunno. Space Floor?" -Modern Romance

By: wallstreet1929

wallstreet1929 — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:54:22 -0800

This is great. An architect would a corridor a "transitional space," noting that it is neither the entry, nor the terminus, and thus somewhat minor and only intended to facilitate movement from point A to point B, and perhaps become supportive of reaching Point B in some heroic or significant manner. But this focus on "corridor," a real subset, illustrates the possibilities. Somehow, airports should be this interesting. It is like the garage--ignored, therefore pregnant with possibility.

By: adamdschneider

adamdschneider — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:59:06 -0800

Event Horizon gave good corridor. Fuck that ship.

By: lundman

lundman — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:03:01 -0800

Very nice, and I must admit it made me realise I like corridors :) A worthy mention of the WORST corridors, must go to Star Crystal which featured tunnels you had to crawl through.

By: thecaddy

thecaddy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:04:32 -0800

Somehow, airports should be this interesting. It is like the garage--ignored, therefore pregnant with possibility. I've just spent the last half hour trying (and failing!) to find photos of my favorite real-life sci-fi corridor--the main passage of Grand Central North. Two or three blocks long, with something like a 2:1 width-to-height ratio, and a slight curve like it's the bottom deck of a rotating space station. (I've thought way too much about this--thought about using it as a cheap set for a cheap sci-fi movie myself). I also think that the LIRR departure space of Penn Station is a fairly accurate rendition of what the first colony on Mars would look like, 10 or 20 years in. So I might be just a little bit weird.

By: needled

needled — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:16:54 -0800

My favorite real-life sci-fi corridors are the Washington, DC, Metro stations.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:38:59 -0800

This is nice, and the eclecticism is a nice change from sci-fi picture-blogs... with one notable exception. When talking about this corridor from Soderberg's serviceable remake of Tarkovsky's classic Solaris, he might have noted that it's pretty much an exact copy of the corridor in the original, which (one might note) actually predates every single film on there except 2001: A Space Odyssey, since it came out in 1972. In fact, I've always felt like the special effects and settings in Solaris are sort of the Soviet answer to 2001; the sets kinda have that particular Soviet feel. I like 2001 a lot, but I still think Solaris is a lot more more fun to look at. (Seriously, stare at this for a while; what the hell is going on there?) Of course, Tarkovsky could still do better. Sci fi corridor? Sci fi corridor.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:43:09 -0800

Soderberg's Solaris corridor | Tarkovsky's Solaris corridor

By: Netzapper

Netzapper — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:00:52 -0800

I'd never heard of Old Man Murray. It was quite funny. It would have been better if I didn't have to spend five minutes writing a new greasemonkey script to change black backgrounds to grey.

By: stargell

stargell — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:09:02 -0800

Dammit, iridic, I spent the last hour looking for that clip. I got nuthin' else except that the younger guy on the sound console is Albert Brooks's brother, Cliff.

By: signal

signal — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:16:10 -0800

Awesome post. More, please.

By: dammitjim

dammitjim — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:18:38 -0800

Barrels I Have Known And Loved: A Gaming Retrospective coming soon from the good people at wonderchicken industries™ You mean this?

By: empath

empath — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:47:59 -0800

Erik Wolpaw ended up doing a lot of the writing for Portal. (Which, ironically, features quite a few crates. I'd go so far as to say that Portal made the final statement on crate usage in video games. In fact, Portal was to "Crates in Videogames" as Watchmen was to "Superheroes in Comics". (Also, the other half of OMM also works for Valve--mostly on Left 4 Dead stuff now).

By: uni verse

uni verse — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:24:23 -0800

needled: awesome corridor, thoroughly overdone, but real life, in other words, perfect for SCI-FI.

By: Sidhedevil

Sidhedevil — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:37:35 -0800

"It is. I'm just saying it, more in terms of what - in the reality of the motion picture it looks like. What do you think: it's a spaceship, what kind of surface might he be running on?" "I dunno. Space Floor?" "I told you it was too slow." "Too SLOW? He's screaming!"

By: cazoo

cazoo — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:22:20 -0800

My OCD is so bad that all I can do is look at those corridors and think how hard it would be to mop them. And then all that stuff in the walls, those tubes and those electrical looking things...Gah! What a nightmare. How am I suppose to clean that?

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:15:31 -0800

Whoever designed my Alma Mater's hospital clearly was deep into dystopian sci-fi, corridors included. (Yes, it really looks like "Red Dwarf" inside and out, only creepier.)

By: TheophileEscargot

TheophileEscargot — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:34:08 -0800

There's only one thing to do now... run up and down lots of corridors!

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:30:57 -0800

Yeah even though it was on films (and awesome) I was missing an aside on Dr Who... On one of the commentaries I listened to recently Peter Davison even takes time out to give an in depth analysis of his corridor acting.

By: jonesor

jonesor — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:24:51 -0800

London's underground system always gives me a "sci-fi" feeling. Especially Westminster, which must be the coolest piece of public transport architecture in the world.

By: Kikkoman

Kikkoman — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:44:44 -0800

The corridors in System Shock 2 have always struck a chord with me.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:55:47 -0800

London's underground system always gives me a "sci-fi" feeling. I remember visiting Southwark Tube Station soon after it was done up... has a very science fictional feeling too.

By: doobiedoo

doobiedoo — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:33:53 -0800

this is really only a subset of sci fi corridors, that being, corridors in space, what about the matrix reloaded corridor? or the corridors of tron? also it seems like once you get out of space and back onto land corridors stop being infrastructural pipes making utilitarian connections and start being chthonic carvings/growths of varying ornateness (alien, dune), with the exceptions of wormholes which often look like gaping cosmic vaginas of space-time. the labyrinthe or maze is of course the ur corridor, and marks the climactic fate of all sci fi corridors, tracking the descent from civilised, manageable traffic (modernist planning) to anarchic pandemonium (primordial chaos) and the greatest thing about the london underground is that it can do both at any given time of the day.

By: doobiedoo

doobiedoo — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:49:24 -0800

also, aren't all 2D sidescrollers essentially one HUGE ass corridor?

By: hippybear

hippybear — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:30:34 -0800

Nah. Mario goes outside and into different buildings.

By: empath

empath — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:04:13 -0800

I'm continually surprised by which of my posts will get large numbers of favorites. I thought maybe 5 or 6 at the most for this.

By: vanar sena

vanar sena — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:12:56 -0800

Sir you failed to get one from me, because this post is about corridors and not toilets. In the future, humans and other creatures appear to never have to take a piss. The entire list of sci fi toilets I can recall are: 1) The three seashells 2) ... nope that's it. In particular, one wonders how toilets were arranged on ships with a mixture of humanoid and non-humanoid crews. Are they all unispecies? One can only begin to imagine the misunderstandings, not to mention the cleaning issues.

By: localroger

localroger — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 06:29:48 -0800

vanar sena, it's too bad the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton is no longer there. The toilets in the Trek themed casino were the main attraction.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 09:27:55 -0800

The entire list of sci fi toilets I can recall are: 1) The three seashells 2) ... nope that's it. 2001.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:03:49 -0800

9 science fiction toilets.

By: vanar sena

vanar sena — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:54:40 -0800

Wow... a veritable gaggle of shitters. Thanks Pronoiac. 2001 Didn't come to mind, but you're right. Is there anything that movie didn't have? Speaking of ROUs though; I dimly recall an explanation of facilities in one of the Culture novels but I can't recall which book it was.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:32:40 -0800

Speaking of ROUs "Rodents of unusual size? I don't believe they exist!"