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Tak's Ship
TakRunner.transparent
Name Tak's Ship
Type Irken Technology
Use(s) Various
First Appearance Tak: The Hideous New Girl
Users Tak (formerly)
Dib Membrane (current owner)
Gaz Membrane (The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever & Enter the Florpus only)
Voice Actor(s) Olivia d’Abo Tak A.I (Currently)
Andy Berman Dib A.I (Dibship Rising)


Tak's Ship, or the "Tak Runner", is a ship that Tak built out of a crashed Spittle Runner, one of many ships in the Irken Armada.

Description[]

It's presumed that Tak built it while trapped on Planet Dirt, and promptly used it to escape her duty as a janitorial drone. Tak's craft is highly customized, decorated with her personal insignia and painted red.

Because it was originally a Spittle Runner, it was sometimes referred to as the "Tak Runner". However, it's simply referred to on-screen as "Tak's ship", or even just "Ship".

Tak ship 1

Tak's ship.

Tak also downloaded her own personality into it, which caused problems for Dib when he tried to repair it.

Tak's Ship is more advanced than any other known Irken vehicle, and it can create excellent holographic disguises, better than any Invader's disguise seen on the show.

Tak's ship is controlled by a joy-stick that sometimes doesn't appear.

Dibship 9

The ship thinking that it is Dib.

At the end of "Tak: The Hideous New Girl", Tak had to eject herself out of her failing ship after an outer space dogfight with Zim. It crashed into Dib's backyard, and he immediately began repairs in the hopes that he would get it to fly once more.

In "Backseat Drivers From Beyond the Stars", Dib used the ship's computer to decipher data stolen from Zim's computers with a spy bug. Ironically, Zim ended up using that spy bug to control the ship and throw Dib out, reactivating Tak's downloaded personality in the process.

Later, Dib downloaded his personality into it in "Dibship Rising", and the ship demonstrated an ability to transform itself and even change its color. However, it deleted its own personality, leaving it without any personality at all. Zim also attempted to control the ship in this episode in order to revert it back to Irken service.

Dib with Tak runner

Dib with the ship, trying to repair it.

Aside from the computer, it also possesses "tentacles" and two pointed arm-like appendages that allow it to "walk" rather than fly, which it did before being able to fly again. However, Gaz got it to fly right before the climax of "The Most Horrible X-mas Ever"

TaksShipDibGreen

Dib shows his father Tak's ship in the garage.

In Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, Tak's ship is shown to still be in Dib's possession, now with his name painted over its Irken emblem and its AI having reverted to Tak's personality.

Due to this, it refuses to let Dib work on it to fix it; however, when Dib and Gaz point out that letting them fix it and use it to rescue their father from Moo-Ping 10 would hurt Zim, whom it hates more than them, it agrees. It then flies to Moo-Ping 10, creating a diversion for them to find Membrane, and later breaking them all out of a jail cell.

Upon the return to Earth, the ship has difficulty flying through the debris field surrounding the planet and allows Gaz to pilot it in order to improve their chances. Despite this, the ship is damaged and ends up crashing, depositing the Membranes at Zim's location in the process.

Invader Zim (comic series)[]

Dib getting Tak Ship

Tak's ship as it appears in Issue 1.

Tak's ship reappears in the Invader Zim comic book series, briefly at the end of Issue 1 and fully in Issue 2. In the comics, the ship is now blue, with the Irken emblem partially scratched off on both sides (though in later issues, the emblem is not scratched). It's revealed that Tak's downloaded personality has somehow returned, despite being overridden on the TV series

In Issue 2, Dib uses Tak's ship to chase Zim through space before he could find the Xliactian Historian, who knew where the Gargantis Array was.

In Issue 12, Dib uses Tak's ship to try and stop Zim's latest plan, involving Flamin' Hot Cheezos in space. Dib chased him around the sun at scary fast speed, catapulting them both into a future where Emperor Zim rules the Earth. Dib laters uses it to take himself, Zim, and GIR back to the present.

At the end of Issue 24, Dib followed Zim to Cyberflox using Tak's ship, only to be told by GIR that he just missed him. This frustrates Dib, who decides to go home. While it doesn't directly appear in Issue 39, the ship is mentioned by the SON Unit as being the most advanced piece of technology on Earth.

In Issue 42, Dib is using the ship to chase Zim in space, until they crash on Plim, due to the field surrounding the planet shorting out its electronics; throughout this and the following issue, it can be seen stuck in the side of a hive building it crashed into. Presumably, Dib fixes it up after the field is taken down and uses it to leave the planet.

In Issue 46, the ship mocks Dib's trauma over nearly being eaten by the Car-Nivore by pointing out how Zim is too stupid to ever succeed, and if a real Invader were ever present on Earth he'd be doomed. Then it picks up an Irken distress signal coming from Pandora's Quadrangle, and only agrees to take Dib to investigate it in hopes that the Irken sending it will destroy him.

Later, when the ship and Zim's Voot Runner are being sucked into the tear in reality in the Quadrangle, it calls out Dib on the stupidity of chasing Zim into such a dangerous situation. When they then crash on the planet inside the tear, the ship is damaged so badly that it's no longer responsive to Dib.

With Dib caught up in the events of the story arc, the ship wouldn't be seen again until the end of Issue 49, when Zim and Dib are returned to their reality and dumped into the ocean with their ships.

The ship briefly appears in The Dookie Loop Horror during one of Dib's attempts to break the time loop, when Dib uses it to fly GIR into the sun so that he can't break the time poop container. Presumably, it is also how Dib keeps getting to Zim's space station throughout the loop.

Facts of Doom[]

  • While Tak, Dib, and Gaz have all flown the ship, Zim is the only one who hasn't been seen flying it, but instead used its tentacles to move around.
  • In both the comic continuity and Enter the Florpus, the ship's AI has reverted to Tak's mind, despite Dib having overridden it with his own in "Dibship Rising". It's likely that this is because Dib never actually erased Tak's personality from the ship, but simply replaced it with his own until the Dibship erased itself and Tak's personality took over once more.
  • For unknown reasons, Tak's Ship has an obsession with butts, which became a running gag in Enter the Florpus, to Dib's confusion.
  • In a podcast to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show's series premiere, Jhonen Vasquez answered questions by fans and said that in Enter the Florpus, Tak's presence was felt the moment the Ship appeared and that when the Ship heard about Moo-Ping 10, it's excited because it knows Tak is imprisoned there and the explosion we saw in the movie was the Ship freeing Tak. We were meant to see her shadow at that point, but due to an animation error that was not possible.
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