Since I usually have little time to do my example entries I chose to keep the actual POVray rendering experimentation low but to fiddle around with some macros to create a shockwave effect (vaguely and possibly incorrectly remembered from the movie).

I set up a macro the give the values of a Bessel function of the first kind (J_0(r) if you're interested) and used this to create concentric discs of a refraction distorting clear material based on the values of the bessel function (all in shockwave.inc).

Aside from that I used lighting based on the position of the actual lights (hidden in the render) and used some emitting media to create the sensor rays. I use the LGEO parts, my own custom colours (not included for practical reasons) and a few custom parts I made (50746/54200, 6592)