The Tie Fighter Sound

So I’ve been wondering this ever since I was a kid. When I was a kid we used to get the old Lost In Space episodes every month from Columbia House on VHS (along with Gilligan’s Island and Star Trek TNG). We came across the episode The Keeper, a two-parter. In part 2 there’s a giant alien spider with a shrill howl. Later I watched Star Wars for the first time and instantly recognized the sound from the Tie Fighters. Is it indeed the same sound or is it not?

Here’s the episode. The sound effect is clearly audible at 42:17. (you’ll have to play it at 1.5x the speed)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdwkZI8gk3o?t=42m18s

If it’s not the same sound effect, it damn well’s a perfect match.

suspiciouscoffee said:

Lots of things got away with reusing Star Wars sounds. Nearly every episode of the original Transformers cartoon has one Star Wars sound or another IIRC.

This was years before Star Wars. Lost In Space came out in 1965. You may notice from the show’s footage that it’s black and white. So it’s the other way around. Kind of like the Wilhelm scream.

Last few seconds of this clip from Cool Runnings…

https://youtu.be/QVrcnyn5ZZ4

I love the fact that Star Wars has immortalized some of these old obscure sound effects, that would otherwise have faded from distant memory ages ago, basically forever now.

According to Wookiepedia it has:

• Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens (First Order stormtrooper hit by an explosion aboard the Finalizer, as Finn and Poe Dameron attempt to escape in a TIE fighter)

It was also in TLJ but I don’t want to give away spoilers.

Honestly I saw it in a bunch of other movies before I saw Star Wars. I always thought of it as a “oh they’re using that sound library” thing rather than a very public homage intentional “yep! we used that sound again!” type of thing. Actually, wasn’t it a meme for zombie horror movies before it was “discovered” in Star Wars? I think the community discovering it contributed to it exploding more than anything. Now it’s become a meme. But it never used to be like that in the public consciousness. At least I never thought so. Its inclusion in TFA and TLJ has become as expectant as hearing the line “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this”. It’s even in The Clone Wars. It is going too far now. It’s kind of ruined because everyone discovered it. I liked it better when it was just something slipped in.

Yeah, I’m aware of all the sound sources, Wilhelm included. But to be fair, all those sounds they DID engineer specifically for Star Wars pretty much became a sound library. I’ve heard those sounds in countless video games (not just Star Wars) since.

Something very similar to the classic TIE-fighter sound effect can be heard in the title sequence for “THE TOXIC AVENGER” (1984).

Well, I’m sure Lost In Space “stole” it from whatever library every other show and movie around the time that used it contained it. 😃

I thought the origin of the Tie Fighter scream had already been clearly established:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBBwXAPNLr0