'Dark Star' crew
Lieutenant Doolittle
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.
Doolittle tuning his instrument.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.
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