Just a fun render to do. I composited the glow effect in the back with basic 3ds Max volumetric effects, and then the streams of energy were done with simple "ribbon" meshes with some creative use of falloff and gradient maps.
A low view render
Here you can see the top
And the back
Serenity / Firefly
3D model of Serenity from the movie. I did this a while back and I'm currently working on a new version. This was done way back so I used Mental Ray.