Billy Lehner’s Doomsday Machine
“They say there’s no devil, Jim…BUT THERE IS. Right of hell…I SAW IT!” Commander Decker, Star Trek TV show, THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE.
Decker was fixated on this unknown, self-sustaining, destructive planet killer enough to destroy his Starship, the U.S.S. Constellation, and his crew and almost repeated his destructive mistake with the Enterprise and her crew. I was also fixated with the Planet Killer when I saw the unassembled, mysterious and unknown resin model selling on Ebay. I had to have it!
The Doomsday Machine (DM) kit was released by Anubis Productions in 1992. The 9″ long completed two piece DM body was sculpted by Dave Barkovitz. That is all I know about this resin model. I bid at Ebay, my maximum bid of $41 and got it for $26 plus $5 shipping. The auction included the DM and a little starship that could be configured for either the USS Enterprise or, the option I used, the unlucky and eventually destroyed USS Constellation.
When I got the model in a re-sealable plastic bag with no instructions I knew I was on my own to figure out how to make this model. It was a simple enough model with only five pieces to work with.
My diorama represents the finals seconds of the TV shows dramatic ending of the U.S.S. Constellation as the Planet Killer “absorbs” the starship. Of course the Planet Killer did not know that Captain Kirk set up the “Connie” to explode once the starship went into the DM.
The model was a straight-forward build with the exception that I hollowed out the center of the model, installed a high intensity yellow led light and two flashing led belly-button lights. The leds were all set up as a series electrical connection and used one 100-ohm, ¼-watt resistor to drop the voltage of my 4.5-volt transformer. The interior of the DM was tight. The series lighting circuit was cheaper and took up far less room than three individual circuits.
The back of the lighting core was lined with reflective aluminum and the yellow led was faced rearward to disperse the light. The exterior body was wrapped with aluminum foil and stuck on the DM body with rubber cement. The foil wrap gave the DM a more angular shape.
When I painted the exterior part of the core I used yellow and red watercolor paints mixed with Future Floor Wax so the lighting in the interior core would reflect through the translucent resin. I only added the core painting part so that if the DM were ever unlit then it would have some kind of color to it.
The exterior colors were a combination of Testors Metallic Black, Insignia Blue, French Blue, Sky Blue and Header White. The colors were overlapped many times to create layers of colors. The colors were softened with lacquer thinner washes. Then many coats of Future Floor Wax were put on to increase the depth of the paint. Finally a coat of Testors Dull Coat paint was used to cut the reflections. The interior walls were a combination of yellow, orange and fluorescent red.
The Constellation was beaten up with an Xacto blade, airbrushed gray then blue and black in the damage areas.
I used a display stand from the AMT/ERTL Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise Flight Display model just because the stand was sitting in my junk box. The wiring for the lights were hidden by cutting down the length of one of the support stalks, inserting the wires and resealing the stalk with Parafilm masking film. When the stalks were painted no one could tell the wires are there.
OK, maybe it wasn’t a straight-forward model build. But with all the options I added to the model people do stare at it…a lot!
Billy Lehner
