A kid builds his own spaceship. He ends up visiting a old human space admiral who probably was dying. He is told that he's some sort of prince and that if he heads into space hidden squadrons will come out and rally under his banner.
The admiral tells him about a warship that was hidden after a war and he hands the boy/teenanger command codes to access and take control of the ship. He steals a component from the local warlords for the ship he built on the ground. He escape in his ship and flies to the warship the admiral told him about.
Finding the ship in disrepair he calls on some aliens who are known as the best engineers in the galaxy, to come in and help to repair the ship. The hidden locations of these ship squadrons that were supposed to come to aid are destroyed by a mysterious force.
He takes the ship somewhere where he ends up needing the ship weapons, but when tries to fire them, he finds out that the weapons aren't working and have been purposely disabled or removed.
He travels to the aliens' home planet and learns that they disabled the ship's weapons on purpose. He also learns that they have a evil scheme to force all the galaxy's minds into a single brain or being.
The warlord and his ships show up and cause a distraction. They vow to stop the aliens and escape back to the warship.
They might have teleported or used some portal to get down to the planet. I can't remember there being robots. They use plasma and laser weapons. I remember vaguely that neutrinos or tachyons were collected by the warship to achieve FTL, using sails that needing recharging.
- watched around 1995-1999
- Colour
- English
- I would guess a US production, but it could be British or Canadian or even some other country production.
- Film, watched on tv
- Possibly ITV/Scifi channel in the UK
- Kid was probably more of a teenanger, young adult
- Space Admiral
- The warlord vessels had a lived-in look but the warship they end up on is sterile and futuristic, as are the aliens, their ships, and their homeworld.
It's annoying that I'm not one for remembering the names of actors or characters, even though I can remember what I think is a lot of plot details of the film.
I have ruled out Explorers and Space Camp. I have also checked a few lists compiled of science fiction films and tv shows out there and none matches what I remember.