‘Dark Star’ crew

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.