A survey ship for Darth Tiffany
When Darth Tiffany became a good guy, I had to build her a non-warship. So I built her this little survey ship, which survived for almost two weeks before the bears started to make grumbling noises about wanting to rip it apart so they could use the lego pieces for other ships, so I had to take a quick photographic survey before the siren song of the breakers yard became too compelling.
This ship is built around 4 special lego pieces [curved plates from the Lego Ogel Underwater Base set] joined to a rectangular box cabin, with lots and lots of antennae and rocket nozzles sticking out to make it look a little bit less boxy. I put roof tiles onto the top of the ship to make a streamlined fairing that I could pretend to retract the top antennae when they aren't in use (we don't have enough antiroof tiles to put a similar keel on the bottom of the ship, so I faked it by putting a couple of streamlined tiles in front.)
The canopy is another custom piece, and it's not even a lego one; the bears occasionally get megabloks lego clones from their grandparents, and even though most of those blocks aren't even close to being compatable with the real lego gear, this canopy (from some stupid war kit) does fit without much hammering and sawing. If you pull it off, you can see that one of the skeleton guys is sitting in the cockpit flying the ship.
Once you've pried the roof off (I used smooth-topped tiles so that this isn't a difficult job; one of the traditionally annoying things about legos that I remember from my childhood was that I couldn't build takeapart items and have them look like they were assembled correctly when put together. The smooth-topped tiles fix that pony) you can see a couple more skeleton guys in the command room in front. Yes, the stereo system is important when you're exploring the universe; you can't fit a full-sized orchestra into a tiny little survey ship, and there's no point in being a Dark Lord of the Sith when you can't have the appropriate music on demand.
The mysterious handles scattered here and there on the walls are so the crew can have something to hang onto if they aren't belted into a chair or bed when the take-hold alarm goes off. Even in a world with St*r W*rs magic gravity (a more realistic spaceship would have UP be towards the front of the ship), acceleration pushes people towards the back of the ship, and if you're just walking around when the ship gets up and moves you're going to end up smashed against a bulkhead or innocent bystander.
The two things out on the folded-out wings are what you think they are; survey ships aren't warships, but the St*r W*rs universe has more pirates per square parsec than the south china sea. And if you've got a pair of energy weapons, you can also use them to blast interesting asteroids so you can see what they're made out of.
The back view of the ship isn't very interesting; 4 rocket nozzles for sublight maneuvering, a foldable warp grid, and a couple of robots. Robots, since they don't require a breathable atmosphere, are very handy if you need to do repairs on your spaceship when there's no air around it.
You need to pretend that the bottom of the spaceship is streamlined. The landing gear (such as it is) are 2x4 lego hinge pieces with a brace made of a pair of 1x2 blocks on top of a 1x2 hinge. It's not very realistic, but it does fold flat to help with the illusion that the ship is streamlined.
The main room of the spaceship has a table and a tiny galley; the back end of the spaceship is divided into an engine room and a (huge, for a ship; it's 4 x 11 and it's got a single bed!) captain's quarters.