SPOILER DISCUSSION

1.It is hilarious that when the crew finds themselves facing down the prospect of death by explosion, their first instinct is to ask the cryogenically suspended, deceased Commander Powell; advice comes from the specter of death brought to life.

2.Pinback’s confrontation with the alien perfectly encapsulates the problems associated with communicative gridlock. The alien represents the only life form the crew has met in their tour of destruction, but they seem to treat the creature with disdain; this antagonism appears to be mutual, as the alien seems to want nothing to do with the crew either.

Pinback’s attempts at feeding and giving the creature a treat backfire and he’s forced to engage in battle. He almost gets killed by it but ultimately prevails. Thus, vitality is extinguished in favor of a destructive nothingness. The party’s inability to communicate to one another terminates in one of them being absolutely annihilated.

3.On another note entirely, it’s interesting to see how O’Bannon establishes the early framework for Alien, the film he’s more famously known for writing the screen-play to. Both films showcase a small crew in an enclosed space, a captured life-form, and a chase to get said life-form back. By changing the mood from slapstick to horror, both in the tone of the narrative and in the design of the creature, he’s able to get a completely different effect between the films. Obviously, Alien features a host of other differences compared with Dark Star, but the seeds for its story are sown here.

4.The ending nicely brings the phenomenological loop to a close. The bomb realizes only it can grant itself any authority upon which to act and so seeks to fulfill its purpose as best it can, destroying itself in the process. The bomb has only been taught one option and embraces it wholeheartedly without thinking about other possibilities.

Yet, both Talby and Doolittle embrace their own respective purposes in more creative fashions. The former becomes a part of the Phoenix asteroid, his previously stated goal, and goes on to roam the universe forever. His existence is now purely indexed to phenomena. Meanwhile, Doolittle embraces his identity as a surfer and burns in the atmosphere as a shooting star; his last tie to an identity is affirmed in a burning blaze of glory. Thus, the film seems to posture that in light of phenomenological uncertainty one can affirm oneself in the world around them in a destructive or emphatic affirmation.

The use of the song “Benson, Arizona” at both the film’s start and end signify this choice. It first plays after the crew accomplishes their initial explosion and plays a second time as Talby and Doolittle float off to their respective fates.