Science fiction film - kid builds spaceship, gets alien help to repair warship

Question

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.

Answer 1

The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy (1998)

The movie opens in the living room of a very luxurious house. A man named Heenoc Xian (John Pyper-Ferguson), is reading his book when his concentration suddenly drifts away and he reminisces about his life in chronological order, from being a pilot during his Academy years, to a freedom fighter, and to eventually, a warlord. He recalls the latter with irony as he narrates the tale of those particular events of his life. It begins on the planet Caliban 5, ruled by none other than Warlord Heenoc Xian. A young man named Justin Thorpe (John Corbett), a petty thief who carves out a living for himself by trading items he obtained through stealing and salvaging, comes home one night to his battered, run-down house as he is greeted by his kid sister, Nova (J. Madison Wright), a precocious pre-teen. Their parents are revealed to be dead, and they are all that remains of their family. Their lives have a routine and their evenings usually end with Nova teaching Thorpe to read a chapter of a book each night. The two siblings have learnt to make the most of the situation and are content. However, one day, Thorpe returns from his morning routine and discovers that Nova has disappeared. Knowing his sister would never run away from home, Thorpe comes to the conclusion that she had been kidnapped, but does not know who the kidnapper is and why she was taken.

Frantic and desperate, Thorpe turns to Warlord Xian for help. Despite his ominous title, Xian is not entirely a warmonger, considering his heroic past; he listens to his people and is sympathetic towards them, and has provided a reasonable amount of order and security in a chaotic world, despite the fact that some of the people under his rule have expressed a degree of ungratefulness and resentment towards him. He listens to Thorpe's grievance, and while he feels for him, he cannot help him because he does not have enough possessions to trade for Xian's services. With that, Thorpe leaves in anger but is suddenly met by Nova's best friend Maggi Sorenson (Elisabeth Harnois), a cute and cynical teenager who happens to be the granddaughter of General Lars Sorenson (played by veteran Australian actor Rod Taylor), a man who was a former soldier of the now extinct Galactic Republic. Maggi introduces her grandfather to Thorpe. Sorenson knows what Thorpe wants and offers to help him by searching for Nova using his starship, the Osiris. However, he informs Thorpe that he must help him first by applying his thieving skills to steal precious jewels from the Warlord Xian's treasure chest, so that he can pay someone to fix his ship. Thorpe and Maggi are nearly caught by the Warlord's henchmen, but they subdue them and eventually succeed in obtaining the goods from the treasure chest.

Which can be viewed here,

Love the Osiris design.