‘Dark Star’ crew

Don’t worry : a seven month delay between transmissions is to be expected when you’re this far from Earth and nothing at all to do with procrastination caused by a resin pour. 

Commander Powell suffered near fatal injuries when his chair malfunctioned. He’s been in stasis ever since, but towards the end of the film he’s ‘activated’ by Doolittle to be asked for advice regarding the malfunctioning bomb. During these exchanges he’s shown as a head surrounded by wires gaffa taped to his forehead and polythene that’s obviously meant to be ice. The budget for practical special effects was clearly spent on the alien. 

Whatever stasis technology they’re using isn’t perfect as Commander Powell sometimes loses his train of thought, or goes on tangents (“How are the Dodgers doing?”). 

During the final moments of the film, it’s shown that the ice surrounding Powell has protected him from the destruction of the Dark Star and he’s seen gently spinning off into space still encased in ice.  

So, I needed an unclothed figure in a static stance. For a while I rummaged through my unpainted minis and bits box, but couldn’t find anything suitable. Then when I was poking around on the Hasslefree miniatures website , I remembered that they sold dollies to practice your sculpting, or make your own miniatures. I added a couple to the order hoping that they would work. 

When they arrived, they were a little thin, as you might expect if they’re meant for extra layers of putty, and the Crooked Dice head that I’d pinned to it looked a little large. But it should look OK distorted through some resin. I bulked up the neck with some putty, primed it and painted it with Army Painter Skin Tone paints. 

Initially I thought I’d use epoxy resin. But what would it not stick to? 

Silicone apparently: so I nipped to the garage and tried to make a mould from the stuff you use around baths, using the plastic of a blister pack as a frame. It looked… pretty ropey to be honest, but it might do the job. I did a test pour and left it in the garage for about a week. 

When I found it again, I managed to get it out of the mold without any problems, but it was only vaguely transparent and still sticky. A quick bit of reading suggested that the stickiness could be down to the temperature being too low, or the ratios being incorrect. Now, I’m far too slapdash to measure the resin properly for this small amount and the smell means that I’ll have to let it cure in the garage, which is never warm. Epoxy out,  UV nail resin in. 

Ruminating things over, I realized I could create a smaller mold by using a blank made from lego. Raiding the kids lego drawer I found a suitable collection of bits: I needed something slightly larger than an ‘8 dot’ bit, with a smooth surface. For the mold itself I turned my back on bathroom silicon and realised that I had bought some oyumaru thermoplastic ages ago: surely that would work?

As I was using UV cured resin I chose the colourless rods, dropped them in the a mug of boiling water, waited for about a minute and then fished them out to mould around the lego. 

Giving it 5 or ten minutes to set, I then eased out the lego blank to find that everything worked as expected. Next a test resin pour. I filled the blank about a quarter of the way, then gave a a couple of 20 second exposures to the nail UV light. I went for a couple of smaller bursts as I didn’t want the resin oyumaru to get hot and start to deform. 

I was very pleased with the result, apart from a few air bubbles it was perfect. Far better than the epoxy. 

So I repeated the process , but this time I added the miniature after the initial quarter depth pour. To guard against air bubbles I tried to fill the mold in pour/squeeze from high as possible. 

When it had cured I removed it from the mold, painted the bottom grey (there seems to be some kind of base in the outer space shot) and took some photos. 

Next I need to build Bomb 20. Hopefully this will involve sticking some greebles to an old container toy I have nabbed, and then finding / creating appropriate graphics.

I’ve finally had some time to sit down and paint the crew (so far).

Army painter fanatic for the skin, almost exclusively speed paints for everything else (I highlighted a little more on the bottles and the alien claws).

I had to go back to the film for checking what colour shoes each character has (rather tricky for Talby and Doolittle) and their mission patches are on their chests rather than their arms as that’s where they are on these minis. I’m pretty happy with them at tabletop distance. The alien works really well I think.

I’ve already ordered a figure that I can use for Commander Powell, so there’s a least one more thing to paint once that arrives.

A malevolent presence that runs amok in the service areas of the ship once it escapes captivity, critically damaging important systems or “a damn mindless vegetable that looks like a limp balloon”? You decide. 

Definitely a favourite with a young me, the alien’s interactions with Pinback provide a lot of the more easily accessible comedy in the film. Let’s be fair: it’s subpar slapstick, but it can still make me laugh to this day. 

I was contemplating making a green stuff ball for the body of the alien, but I suddenly noticed a ball bearing that I had on my painting tray. I have no idea where it came from, nor why I kept it, but it’s happily more or less the correct scale for the alien. I added a couple of spider legs from the Wargames Atlantic classic fantasy kit, and although they don’t match the clawed, webbed feet of the alien in the film, I think it’s a suitable replacement. 

Talby spends most of the film sitting in the ship’s observation dome taking in the wonders of the Universe. He occasionally talks to the rest of the crew over the ship’s comms (when he’s not been muted for being a perceived annoyance). Talby may seem distant and is definitely uninterested in the day to day in fighting on in the ship, but he’s the one who takes note of the problems in the ship’s communication laser and actually attempts to fix it. This unfortunately backfires as he’s in an airlock when it’s vented and ends up drifting away from the ship. I can’t think of anything to add to the figure to make it distinctly ‘Talby’, although he is wearing a grey jumpsuit, rather than a brown one. 

The leader of the crew since the radiation leak killed Commander Powell. I say killed, it’s heavily implied he’s dead through most of the film, but he’s actually in some kind of stasis because of his injuries. Hmm… I  suppose that he is still part of the crew so I’ll have to consider how to make him. 

You could argue that Doolittle is the root cause of the malaise affecting the whole crew. After the bomb run that opens the film, all he’s interested in is finding something else to blow up. The wonder of an undiscovered star or the possibility of finding intelligent alien life create no response from him, and when poor old Pinback tries to cheer him up with a rubber chicken he explodes in a rage and storms out of the crew’s quarters. However we then see another side to his personality: he retreats to a private space where he’s created a musical instrument from bottles filled with water.

After playing this he’s calmer and goes to talk to the fourth member of the crew, Talby, bringing him breakfast trying to convince him to leave the observation dome to join the rest of the crew. During this chat we find out that the crew have been on their mission for 20 years (but have only aged 3 years) and that Doolittle used to be a surfer, which is what he misses most about Earth. 

What to add to my mini to distill a bit of this back story? An empty bottle seemed most apt to me. 

Boiler is often seen trimming his immaculate mustache in the film, but he’s also clearly a nihilist. In the crew’s quarters he keeps himself amused by playing the game where you lay your hand on a table then stab at the gaps in turn with a knife. What’s that called anyway? (‘The knife game’ according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_game )

During the long run to the next star, while Pinback relaxes by sunbathing, Boiler decides to do some target practice with a laser rifle and the lid of the heating unit. This also foreshadows his solution to the main problem in the film: shoot out the connection pins. 

So, I simply gave the model a suitable sci-fi gun from my bits box and it became ‘Boiler’ 

Sergeant Pinback is my favourite character of the film. He provides most of the comic relief in the film. He’s constantly whining, tries to improve moral with pitiful joke shop props, he has an epic battle with the ship’s alien and he reveals in his vlog that he was a cleaner who took the real Pinback’s place just prior to the mission beginning. 

Googly eyes are a must. Fortunately one of the heads had spectacles. I scoured eBay for tiny, tiny springs and found this. That’s the googly part sorted.

Now where to find the eyes? I considered making them from milliput, but then I remembered that my basing mix has them in abundance. I made it myself after opening a used water filter cartridge: I liked the shape of the top and used it to make a piece of scatter terrain. I added some tiny pebbles to the filter mix inside and use that as my basing material. 

Next we need a squeaky mouse, which was supplied by the Frostgrave Wizards sprue. Finally I made a broom from a pitchfork from a Renedra set (“ramshackle barn” I think) and some brush bristles.
So the final model is primed and ready to paint.

I’ve had this idea in my notebook for a while, but as this summer seems to have been ‘retro sci-fi summer’ with releases from (off the top of my head) Crooked Dice, Artisan Design and Westfalia that all have a 1970s aesthetic I thought it was time to get the ball rolling with this.

I’ve had the ‘Valley Forge Crew’ set of miniatures for a good while, I bought them from Ainsty Castings but I see that they’re also available from Forlorn Hope now.

Now, I do love ‘Silent Running’, so I’ll have to get myself another set to paint up without messing with them first. ‘Dark Star’ unbelievably doesn’t have it’s own miniatures line, so I’ll have to make do and kitbash.

 The most obvious thing that’s ‘wrong’ with the Valley Forge Crew is their heads : the crew of the Dark Star are far more hirsute. Luckily I spotted that Crooked Dice have a number of heads that have better suited hairstyles, so I bought a bunch of them.

In the end only one of those heads could be used without modification, so I broke out the green stuff and added a bit of a fringe here and a beard there. I’m going to have to add some extra bits and pieces to each miniature. I’ll do a separate post for each.