The Admiral, the Captain and the Office Kilrathi animatronic heads had to be distinctly different from the others, as they would not be wearing helmets like the others. They also had high collars. Another thing we added was retractable claws to the gloves for the fighting sequences. Other things that hadn’t been discussed in the U.K were the fact that they wanted to shoot the Kilrathi in the head, the chest and even wanted to blow some of them up. So there was a lot of stuff we had to work out while we were there. In the climax of the film, the Kilrathi ship’s bridge is blown up. The Floor FX team sent a fireball from the bridge down a corridor on the ship. In this scene you see several Kilrathi, who are running towards the bridge, getting blown apart. So, the stunt personnel were wearing the costumes, which presented another problem, as the glass fiber bodysuits would not have been soft to land on! So, we had to chop bits of the suits away so that they could wear them and land safely. Some of the Kilrathi stunts had to be rigged with bullet hits. As with a lot of things in the film industry they didn’t shoot the Kilrathi looking brilliant at the beginning and being blown apart at the end of the shoot - it was done when they could schedule it in on set. Inevitably, the firs suits we made were virtually destroyed by the third day, and we had another four weeks to go, so we were frantically repairing them. There weren’t really any other surprises, but it was a challenge working things out in Luxembourg.
SF&F: Did you have to build any special suits or panels specifically for pyrotechnicians to utilise, which would produce the desired effect - say - in a shoot-out?
Nik: We took the moulds with us to Luxembourg, so we could produce pieces that we could cut-pre-arranged holes in, which would then be rigged with pyros, blood bags and bits of guts. Green blood, of course! Finally, they would be covered with a thin layer of plaster and painted to blend in with the rest of the armor.
