In the mid 22nd century, mankind has reached a point in its technological advancement that enables colonization of the far reaches of the universe.  Armed with artificially intelligent “Thermostellar Triggering Devices”, the scout ship Dark Star and its crew have been in space alone for twenty years on a mission to destroy “unstable planets” which might threaten future colonization of other planets.  The ship’s crew consists of Lt. Doolittle (helmsman, and initially, second-in-command), Sgt. Pinback (bombardier), Cpl. Boiler (navigator), and Talby (target specialist). “Dark Star” Commander Powell was killed during hyperdrive as a result of an electrical short behind his rear seat panel, but remains on board the ship in a state of cryogenic suspension.  The crew performs their jobs in a state of abject boredom, as the tedium of their tasks over 20 years has driven them “around the bend.”  The Dark Star ship itself is in a constant state of deterioration and frequent system malfunctions (for example, a radiation leak which is not repairable, their cargo of intelligent talking bombs lowering from their bomb bay without the command to do so, an explosion destroying their sleeping quarters, the food processing computer repeatedly serving them chicken-flavored liquid meals, and a storage bay “self destructing” destroying the ship’s entire supply of toilet paper), and only the soft-spoken female voice of the ship’s computer for company.

Director John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon wrote the Dark Star screenplay while film students at the University of Southern California.  Six years later, the basic “Beachball with Claws” subplot of the film was reworked from comedy to horror, and became the basis (along with an unpublished story about gremlins aboard a B-17) for the O’Bannon-scripted science fiction horror classic, Alien.