Science Fiction Film Weapons

[Max Schreck]

Æon's Dart Gun

Beginning with the third season, Æon had switched to a strangely designed dart gun of some sort; Peter Chung, the creator of the show, sarcastically commented that a gun was all right as long as it didn't fire real bullets, referring to MTV's ban on too graphic violence in the show. This ban also resulted in any semblance of blood was redacted out of the show, a quite jarring difference from the two previous seasons that had featured monumental piles of corpses, and a warehouse so filled with blood that you could practically drown in it.

The gun in question was a dart, or if you will, needle pistol. It is never disclosed how it fires, but unlike the FUG-1 machine pistol it did not expel any shell casings; it did however have a muzzle flash. This has led me to conclude that it fired caseless needles, rather than being a Gauss weapon. A calibre is never disclosed, so I have just guessed. It was also relatively silent, so it probably has an integral silencer in the barrel.

TL9 Caseless Dart Pistol: FUG-2, 3.5mm
Damage: 3d+2 pi- Acc 2 Range: 200/2,200 Weight: 1.6/0.2 RoF: 3 Shots: 40+1 (3) ST 8 Bulk -1 Rcl 2 Cost 870 LC 3

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Max Schreck

The gun in question was a dart, or if you will, needle pistol. It is never disclosed how it fires, but unlike the FUG-1 machine pistol it did not expel any shell casings; it did however have a muzzle flash. This has led me to conclude that it fired caseless needles, rather than being a Gauss weapon. A calibre is never disclosed, so I have just guessed. It was also relatively silent, so it probably has an integral silencer in the barrel.

Modern railguns produce a muzzle flash from the plasma arc they strike across the rails. I expect this would be quite loud, however.

Luke

[Max Schreck]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Modern railguns produce a muzzle flash from the plasma arc they strike across the rails. I expect this would be quite loud, however.

Luke

I would imagine that a pistol-sized electromagnetic gun would be a coilgun, rather than a railgun. I don't know if a coilgun would produce the muzzle flash you describe, however. I know little of electromagnetic weapons other than what I've read in SF.

Max

[Max Schreck]

Okay, one more from the zany, surreal universe of Æon Flux.

Trevor's Golden Gun
Trevor Goodchild, Æon's arch-nemesis and occasional lover, did a "Man with the Golden Gun" trick in the "A Last Time for Everything" episode. Trevor's golden cigarette case could transform into a gun through some memory metal and folding weapon technology. No details are ever given about the gun, but the muzzle diametre looks tiny, so I am guessing that it is a very small calibre weapon. Muzzle flash and smoke comes from the gun, when it is fired, so it is most likely a caseless weapon like Æon's dart gun from which smoke also issues, as I have just seen, so we can finally conclude that the dart gun is also a chemical slugthrower.

Trevor's cigarette case pistol, 3.5mm CL
Damage: 3d pi- Acc 1 Range: 180/2,000 Weight: 1.2/0.1 RoF: 3 Shots: 10+1 (3) ST: 7 Bulk: -1 Rcl: 2 Cost: 1000 LC: 2

Can be disguised as a cigarette case when not in use.

[DanHoward]

My favourite fictional weapon was the razor sharp magnetic disc in Dark Angel. It would richochet around slicing up anyone in the way and was supposedly attracted to the "magnetic field of a human being".

[Ultraviolet]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

My favourite fictional weapon was the razor sharp magnetic disc in Dark Angel. It would richochet around slicing up anyone in the way and was supposedly attracted to the "magnetic field of a human being".

Oh please! Isn't this just a high-tech idiot proof version of Xena's Chamrak??? :)
Now there's a weapon that demands skill from the user. Sometimes it's sharp enough to cut ropes and such or almost cleave enemies. Other times it can hit people in the face and simply knocj them out... :)
Sorry, I couldn't resist!

[Max Schreck]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

My favourite fictional weapon was the razor sharp magnetic disc in Dark Angel. It would richochet around slicing up anyone in the way and was supposedly attracted to the "magnetic field of a human being".

Then by all means, stat it up! This thread isn't just for me; it could be nice to have a whole collection of weapons from science fiction cinema, and considering that I've maybe seen 1% of SF films out there, I don't know all of them. Let's hear it.

Originally Posted by Ultraviolet

Oh please! Isn't this just a high-tech idiot proof version of Xena's Chamrak??? :)
Now there's a weapon that demands skill from the user. Sometimes it's sharp enough to cut ropes and such or almost cleave enemies. Other times it can hit people in the face and simply knocj them out... :)
Sorry, I couldn't resist!

Tru dat about Xena! On another note, I hadn't intended this thread to be for Hard SF or even semi-plausible SF exclusively, so any bizarre superscience weapons people can dig up from films are welcome too.

Max

[Janos Dracwlya]

Originally Posted by Max Schreck

Next up, we have some weapons from the MTV animated series, Æon Flux.

Monican Folding Machine Pistol

TL9 Folding Machine Pistol: FUG-1, 9×19mm
[

I could be mis-remembering - I didn't watch Aeon Flux very much and it's been a long time anyway - but I seem to recall being struck by the fact that the empty cartridge casings seemed to be bottle-necked, like the 7.62x25mm round used in the original Mauser C-96, the TT-30/33 Tokarev and CZ-52. But, like I said, I could be wrong.

On the Blade Runner gun, since I had read the book (back in 1983, I think), and the book described it as a .38 magnum, I modelled it as a semi-automatic firing what was basically a rimless .357 magnum round. One of the players in my 1986-87 Star Frontiers game was really into the movie - even named his character Nolan Gaff - and wanted one of the guns as a sidearm. It wasn't in the rules for the game, so I let him spend some money for a custom-built gun. It think I had it hold ten rounds.

[Max Schreck]

Originally Posted by Janos Dracwlya

I could be mis-remembering - I didn't watch Aeon Flux very much and it's been a long time anyway - but I seem to recall being struck by the fact that the empty cartridge casings seemed to be bottle-necked, like the 7.62x25mm round used in the original Mauser C-96, the TT-30/33 Tokarev and CZ-52. But, like I said, I could be wrong.

I don't think you are wrong about the bottle-neck, but it's hard to tell, when the cartridges come spewing out like that. However, in "Deviant Devices of Æon Flux", she states that the "FUG-1 fires the standard 9mm round", whatever "standard" means in this connection. As Æon Flux takes place far into the future and maybe not even on Earth, it is difficult to tell, but I took standard to mean the most well-known 9mm cartridge ever, the 9×19mm Parabellum. I guess we can't expect animators to know that the 9mm isn't bottle-necked.

Originally Posted by Janos Dracwlya

On the Blade Runner gun, since I had read the book (back in 1983, I think), and the book described it as a .38 magnum, I modelled it as a semi-automatic firing what was basically a rimless .357 magnum round.

Yeah, I chose to disregard the book, as the thread was for SF films, and in the book he mainly uses a "laser tube", and uses a .38 as back-up, as I also stated in the first post. The reason I chose .45 as the calibre was that the film prop is based on a .44 CA Bulldog, and I wanted the calibre to correspond somewhat to the muzzle size we see in the film. It is not canon, but in the computer game Blade Runner, a character states to the protagonist: "Is that a .45 blaster in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
So I went with .45, but as you can see I included two other versions of the gun, as no one can agree what it is. I chose to make it a revolver instead of a semi-automatic, as there is no magazine well on the gun anywhere, and because, again, the gun prop is based on a .44 Bulldog revolver. But considering Ridley Scott originally intended it to be a black hole ray gun, I suppose we can't extrapolate anything from the gun's appearance.

Cheers,

Max

[AmesJainchill]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

My favourite fictional weapon was the razor sharp magnetic disc in Dark Angel. It would richochet around slicing up anyone in the way and was supposedly attracted to the "magnetic field of a human being".

Aww, they just ripped that off from I Come In Peace.

Edit: Wait, I thought you meant this Dark Angel. Ooops.