General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

(T)Raumschiff Surprise – Periode 1

(T)Raumschiff Surprise – Periode 1 is a German science-fiction comedy film directed, co-written, produced by, and starring Michael "Bully" Herbig, released in German cinemas on 22 July 2004.¹ It parodies Star Trek and Star Wars and other science-fiction films, and it was the follow-up to Herbig's western parody Der Schuh des Manitu (2001).² With 9,150,736 admissions recorded by the FFA (as of 2016), it ranks among the most successful German cinema releases.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	(T)Raumschiff Surprise – Periode 1 (spelling variant: (T)Raumschiff Surprise: Periode 1)¹
Release	Premiere 19 July 2004, Mathäser Filmpalast, Munich; general release 22 July 2004; first TV broadcast 5 November 2006 on ProSieben¹
Crew	Director, screenplay (with Alfons Biedermann and Rick Kavanian), and production: Michael Herbig; camera: Stephan Schuh; production company herbX film GmbH; distributor Constantin Film Verleih¹
Format	35 mm, 1:2.35, color, Dolby Digital; 2395 m, 87 min; FSK 6¹
Budget	9 million euros, about a quarter of it for special effects⁴
Admissions	9,150,736 (FFA, as of 2016)³
Main cast	Michael Herbig (Mr. Spuck), Christian Tramitz (Käpt'n Kork), Rick Kavanian (Schrotty, Jens Maul, Dr. Pulle), Anja Kling (Queen Metapha), Til Schweiger (Rock)⁵

Spoilers

Plot

The story is set in the year 2304. Three hundred years earlier, humanity found a UFO that had crash-landed in the Nevada desert and used its scientific guidelines to colonize Mars half a century later.⁶ Now the descendants of the first colonists, led by the wicked Regulator Rogul (Hans-Michael Rehberg) and his disciple Jens Maul (Rick Kavanian), are returning to Earth with an armada of spaceships to subjugate it.⁶

Queen Metapha (Anja Kling) and her government see one remaining option: sending a delegation into the past to destroy the UFO, so that the Martian colonization never happened.⁶ The only Earthlings beyond enemy reach are the crew of the spaceship Surprise: Captain Jürgen Thorsten Kork (Christian Tramitz), First Officer Mr. Spuck (Herbig), and chief engineer Schrotty (Kavanian). The three are busy rehearsing their dance number for the Miss Waikiki pageant and take on the mission only reluctantly.⁶ Because the Surprise cannot land on Earth, the crew orders a space taxi driven by Rock Fertig-Aus (Til Schweiger).² The time travel goes wrong, landing the crew, the Queen, and Rock in the Middle Ages at the court of Duke William the Last (Sky du Mont), before they finally reach 2004 and destroy the UFO.⁷

The character names are wordplay on their models: Kork (cork) on Captain Kirk, Spuck (spit) on Spock, Schrotty (trashy) on Scotty, Jens Maul on Darth Maul, and the ship's doctor Pulle (bottle) on Leonard McCoy's German nickname Pille.⁸ The title itself plays on Raumschiff Enterprise, the German name for Star Trek, and Traumschiff, the German word for dream ship.⁸

Origin and production

The film grew out of the recurring sketch "Unser (T)Raumschiff" from Herbig's television show Bullyparade (1997–2002).⁹ After Der Schuh des Manitu drew 11.7 million German cinema visitors, Herbig let his fans vote on which Bullyparade episode should become his next film; the choices were a Manitu sequel, a Sissi re-staging, "Unser (T)Raumschiff", and "Ein Film, wo keiner mit rechnet". The spaceship sketch won.¹⁰

Secrecy. Herbig wanted to surprise the audience and prevent any information leaking before the release. The first clapperboard fell on 1 April 2003 in Hall 12 of the Bavaria Filmstudios; a 60-person shooting team produced the film over 49 shooting days, running until 17 June 2003 in Munich. The scripts were printed on dark-blue paper that could not be copied, and the sets were guarded around the clock by security specialists.⁴ Press screenings were held only three days before the nationwide release, partly because work on the special effects continued until the last moment.¹¹

Herbig later explained in the magazine NEON how the idea of the gay crew originated: after being made up for a television show by a homosexual make-up artist, he was asked to write an alien sketch with co-writer Alfons Biedermann and suggested, "What if the alien was gay?", then combined the alien with the make-up artist.¹²

Reception and box office

The German Film and Media Rating Board (FBW) awarded the film its rating "wertvoll" (valuable), calling it a successful persiflage of several film genres carried by subversive humor and a technical effort only cinema can provide.¹³ Critics noted the technical quality of the CGI space scenes, which reviewers judged to be at an international level despite the 9-million-euro budget, while describing the film as a rapid sequence of gags supported by only a rudimentary plot; Herbig promised 163 gags in an interview.² The film parodies, among others, Das fünfte Element, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Minority Report, and it also quotes Herbig's own Der Schuh des Manitu by bringing back Sky du Mont's Santa Maria and his gang.²

The film attracted 9,150,736 cinema admissions in Germany according to the FFA (as of 2016); the Highlight Communications annual report gives a total audience of 9.2 million and describes it as breaking one record after another.³^•¹⁴ It did not reach the result of Der Schuh des Manitu, which drew 11.7 million visitors.² On free television, the first broadcast on ProSieben on 5 November 2006 reached an average of 7.05 million viewers, a 19.3 percent market share overall and 34.2 percent among viewers aged 14 to 49.¹⁵

Music and tie-ins

The film score is credited to Ralf Wengenmayr, with Stephan Schuh as cinematographer and Alexander Dittner as editor.⁵ The Space Taxi title song came from Stefan Raab, who also recorded a single for the film together with Herbig, Tramitz, and Kavanian.⁶^•² The FBW jury praised the score and noted that the musical and musical numbers were kept short enough not to slow the story.¹³

A tie-in adventure game, (T)Raumschiff Surprise: Periode 1, was developed by phenomedia publishing gmbh and Sproing Interactive Media GmbH, published by Take-Two Interactive, and released for Windows on 1 July 2004; it received a Moby Score of 6.9. Review copies sent to the press contained only the first two thirds of the game, because the film production company did not want the film's ending leaked.¹⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026