Don Trumbull That father and son were working together on the movie was not a case of nepotism , but rather one of coincidence ; Donald was working for Apogee , Inc . at the time , the company that was brought in during the early days of March 1979 by Douglas to alleviate the work pressure on his own company , Future General Corporation ( FGC ) , resulting from that movie ' s February 1979 . Career outside " Star Trek " . Hailing from the Mid - West , Don Trumbull moved in the 1930s to Hollywood to work as a VFX technician in the motion picture industry . Prior to the mid - 1950s , it was neither customary to mention effects vendors nor its employees in the end - credit roll of a motion picture production . The extent of Trumbull ' s motion picture contributions for the 1930s period is therefore hard to ascertain , yet it is known that he has worked as an uncredited special effects rigger on the 1939 classic fantasy movie " The Wizard of Oz " . Having an engineering background , his skills were a highly sought after commodity when World War II broke out , and he started to work for the aviation industry , where he focused his talents on engineering hydraulics , pneumatics and special tooling , and pioneered the development of the mixing and application of epoxy sealants for aircraft and automobiles , earning 19 patents . Upon war ' s end he has remained in the employment of the aviation and automotive industries . Approaching retirement age in 1971 , he was asked by his son to help out with the design and construction of the endearing Huey . Louis and Dewey robots on the 1972 cult science fiction movie " Silent Running " , for which his father constructed the articulated robot arms . Until then , son Douglas had not even been aware of his father ' s prior Hollywood career as he recalled in 2011 , " " He had a tremendous influence on me , although when he was first in the movie business as a young man working on The Wizard of Oz and some other movies , I was just a twinkle in his eye , I didn ’ t know anything about that at the time . By the time I was conscious he was already out of the movie business and in the aircraft industry . My relationship with him throughout my life as a young man was that he was an engineer and inventor . I always hung about where he worked at home and I was surrounded by his machine tools , lathes , mills , drill presses , pedal saws and welding machines . So I grew up surrounded by technology . " " Donald Trumbull stayed on in the motion picture industry , joining Industrial Light & Magic in the mid 1970s , helping out former co - worker on " Silent Running " , John Dykstra – and a former protégé of Douglas Trumbull and referred by him to George Lucas for " Star Wars " – , with the engineering and mechanical aspects of his advanced computerized filming rigg for the filming of studio model s , utilized to great effect for the first , 1977 , " Star Wars " film . A hugely influential piece of cinematographic equipment , it became the very foundation of modern , which he elaborated upon when he subsequently helped out his son and his company FGC again for the 1977 classic science fiction movie " Close Encounters of the Third Kind " . The following year Don Trumbull rejoined Dykstra to work on , what was to become , the pilot episode of the original " Battlestar Galactica " science fiction series in 1978 . During that production , Dykstra founded his own company , Apogee , Inc . , and invited the elder Trumbull to become full partner , which he accepted , only to find himself working again with his son one year later on the company ' s subsequent project , " The Motion Picture " . Trumbull senior has remained in the employment of Apogee for the rest of his working life , having worked on such movies as " Firefox " ( 1982 ) , " Lifeforce " ( 1985 , featuring Patrick Stewart ) , " Spaceballs " ( 1987 ) with the 1991 movie " Rock - A - Doodle " as his last recorded credit , all of which in some sort of VFX engineering function . While his son has become the more famous member of those in the family working in the motion picture industry , the contributions of the elder Trumbull in his second Hollywood career – which , being on the technical side , habitually has remained somewhat in the shadows – has not gone unnoticed with the The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who awarded him with two technical Academy Award s in 1988 ( citing , " For the design and development of the " Blue Max " high - power , blue - flux projector for traveling matte composite photography . " ) and in 1999 ( citing , " For advancing the state - of - the - art of real - time motion - control , as exemplified in the Gazelle and Zebra camera dolly systems . " ) respectively , incidentally tying him with his more famous son in Academy Awards actually won . Trumbull passed away in 2004 from natural causes in the home of one of his daughters , having been preceded in death by his wife of fifty years , Carroll Roy , the year previously and being survived by five children , of which Douglas was the only son , eighteen grandchildren and ten great - grandchildren .