Model – Star Trek Planet Killer

My friend Ken recently bought two models of the Planet Killer from “The Doomsday Machine” episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. We both loved the episode when we were kids, so it was fun to find a model for the gigantic, planet-destroying antagonist.

It required no assembly at all, so we decided to get creative with the painting. Ken did an excellent job achieving a weathered effect on his, but I opted to go in a different direction. The models lacked the lumpy look of the “wind sock dipped in concrete” machine from the show, so I thought it might be fun to imagine what it looked like when it was first built many millennia ago. Though it was constructed by some unknown alien society, I wanted it to have a more familiar, 21st century Earth military appearance. So I started with a basic Army green, which worked well.

Though I thought briefly about trying to build a light into the inside, that would have required so much time and effort that it would have taken away from the just-for-some-summer-fun nature of the project. So I used paint to recreate the machine’s glowing interior as best I could.

But from there I admit I was at a loss. I wanted to add some more details, but the main issue was the scale. Without a starship next to it for reference, it’s hard to see what size it should be (if you haven’t seen the episode, the Memory Alpha entry has a photo that provides some scale reference). So I had to be careful not to paint or apply anything that would make it look like it was the size of an airplane. Or worse, the size of an ice cream cone.

Thus the first thing I tried proved to be a serious step in the wrong direction:

I had a sticker sheet left over from the V2 model I painted earlier this year, so I thought I’d try one on the side of the Planet Killer just to see how it looked. As clever as the concept was – nuclear weapon allegory decorated with proto-ICBM markings – it just didn’t work. Numbers and letters painted on something huge don’t violate the laws of physics; reference the decks of aircraft carriers for that. But for something alien with no obvious size reference, the brain makes it into something way smaller.

Plus the sticker sucked. It wasn’t even a decal, just a self-adhesive stick-on with the edges of the clear plastic clearly visible. Fortunately that also meant that it wasn’t hard to remove.

I opted to go with silver rings around the “joints” and some black around the mouth to simulate smoke. Even airbrushing would have violated the keep-it-simple principle, so I used a fine detail paintbrush for it.

Thus it proved to be exactly what we were after: something quick and easy with ties to fun childhood memories.