CT Secrets of the Rebel Blockade Runner Tantive IV unveiled

Mod edit. Please see post #103 in this thread for images/photos.

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^ I don't know how you guys feel about it but the more I look at the room just behind the main passageway bulkhead door, the more I get the vibe that it looks like some kind of airlock (good news is perhaps that I think we have a hot candidate for a 'former' airlock that's absent on the actual VFX model).

Now, I think it's time to address the last big elephant in the room before I get to the actual film sets (ANH, ROTS and RO) and finally to the interior layout and - of course - accurate and onscreen compatible deck plans. That 'elephant' is - of course - the in-universe size of the Tantive IV.


How long is the Rebel Blockade Runner Tantive IV? 75, 127 or 150 meters?

Another enigmatic issue is the actual size or length of Princess Leia’s ship. To get a grasp on the issue, I think it’s imperative to understand its design evolution, first.

Actually, it’s a misconception that the Tantive IV was born overnight the moment Solo’s original “Pirate starship” was abandoned in favor of the new Millennium Falcon design. As a matter of fact, Leia’s “Rebel spacefighter” began as what’s inarguably a copy of the USS Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey but evolved into the “Pirate starship” with its characteristic cone-shaped [Millennium Falcon] cockpit.

According to the 3rdStar Wars draft from August 1975, the droids escaped the ship with a lifepod, the Rebel (that would become Captain Antilles) was killed by Vader in the “cockpit corridor” and Leia was brought to Vader sitting in a “cabin”, but all these events took place aboard the much smaller “Pirate starship” aka “Rebel spacefighter”. Interestingly, at this stage Solo’s “Pirate starship” (built by him but owned by Jabba) is described as a “long Rube Goldburg-pieced together contraption, which can only be loosely called a spaceship” and has an “entry ramp”. It’s later identified by the Cloud City Alderaan as a “Corellian gypsy vessel” that’s missing “escape” pods “four, seven and oh-three” (almost the same as the final Tantive IV VFX model - two of the remaining lifepods were later used to land on Yavin IV in this Star Wars version).

Curiously, the original Ralph McQuarrie pre-production paintings clearly depict Solo’s ship in the “Pirate starship” configuration, but so did a Joe Johnston sketch for Leia’s “Rebel Blockade Runner”! It’s rather obvious that this particular design was a candidate for both Leia’s “Rebel Spacefighter” (that would become the Tantive IV) and Solo’s “Pirate Starship” (that would become the Millennium Falcon):



It’s not before the 4th draft from January 1976 that the Millennium Falcon is described close to its final appearance: “Resting in the middle of the huge hole [Docking Bay 94] is a large, round, beat-up, pieced together hunk of junk that could only loosely be called a starship.” Therefore, around this time, the “Pirate starship” had finally become the exclusive basic design for Leia’s Tantive IV, but her ship still wasn’t considerably bigger than the original Pirate starship, at first:



The Blockade Runner had now received a different command or cockpit module (the enigmatic hammerhead), a different radar dish (to remove the last remaining allusion to the USS Discovery?) and, last but not least, lifepods protruding from the bottom part of the midship section (most likely after somebody in the production remarked that it would do the two droids no good if the original topside pods would shoot straight into the ceiling of the Star Destroyer’s main bay…).

This interim version of the Rebel Blockade Runner (probably early 1976) could also explain why the lifepod lander module (!) prop brought to the Tunisian desert for the Tatooine scenes filmed there only had a diameter of approx. 1.5 meters / 5 feet. With such a lifepod diameter the overall length of the Rebel Blockade Runner would have only been 75 meters / 246 feet.



Most likely after George Lucas had persuaded the executives at 20th Century Fox to provide him with the extra budget to add an extra main hallway film set to the already existing “Pirate starship” corridor set (the “sub hallway” set where Leia hid and the droids embarked into the life pod), he required a Rebel Blockade Runner larger than just 75 meters to accommodate all the corridor variations and turns that were filmed for the opening scenes of Star Wars.

The hammerhead bow underwent cosmetic surgery, a detailed cockpit was created, and in order for everyone involved in the production to understand the premise change / revised scale of the Blockade Runner, a pilot figure was placed inside the cockpit (but got lost prior to filming ROTJ):



Thanks to the new Star Wars Chronicles book from Japan, we finally get a good look at the original pilot figure the model makers put there (in addition to the well documented cockpit door frame) and ultimately a better idea of the ship’s size the model makers wanted to convey. Unfortunately, the original front view is rather distorted in perspective; fortunately I found a better (less distorted because taken from a distance) front view image in my archive, isolated the cockpit segment and matched it with this optimal front view to arrive at accurate results:



On the positive side we are able to establish a minimal length of the Tantive IV of 120 meters, but the accurate length ultimately depends on the pilot’s unknown body height (Bail Organa’s actor Jimmy Smits is 1.9 m tall, yet we don’t know whether by Alderaanian standards he’s considered to be very tall or tiny). In contrast the cockpit’s door frame suggests a ship’s length of 155.3 meters, assuming it’s the same kind of standard bulkhead door (according to Rogue One it is).

Now, a length of approximately 150 meters for a Corellian Corvette like the Tantive IV doesn’t come as a revelation but rather qualifies as “old news” as that’s the length figure provided in West End Games’ 1990 Rebel Alliance Sourcebook. However, the deck plans of the ship in that book don’t remotely suggest that they arrived at this figure based on any kind of research (neither the main hallway with its L-turn or the pentagonal hub shows up on any deck plan), and considering that they provided a length figure of “300 m” for the Rebel ‘Nebulon’ cruiser, my overall impression has always been that these figures were simply conjectural, but as the proverb has it even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn.

There is, of course, another object that could help us arriving at an accurate length figure for the Tantive IV – the VFX model of the lifepod (“escape pod” appears to be Imperial lingo). If we were wondering how you’d get inside the Tantive IV the same applies for the lifepod, although I think there is a simple explanation: Lorne Peterson once referred to that particular VFX model as a “three day wonder” but it seems he didn’t add pencil lines to frame the actual access hatch because it would not have been seen on screen anyway. So I sat down, analyzed the images and believe I finally found the hatch and added those missing frame lines (notice that the pads surrounding the access side match the gangway shape of Admiral Raddus’ Profundity rather well and apparently hint some intergalactic standard gangway that facilitates the rescue of lifepod passengers when picked up by a spaceship with such a gangway):



As we can see even at a lifepod diameter of almost 3 meters / 10 feet (ship’s overall length 148.8 m) the hatch is rather narrow (the perspective is somewhat distorted here, too). Other lifepod images clearly reveal that at a lifepod diameter of 3 meters, the hatch would only be 53 centimeters / 21 inches wide. While a humanoid could get inside sideways with ease, an astro-droid like R2-D2 has a body diameter of a little over 46 cm / 18” without the ‘legs’. At 136.6 meters the lifepod’s diameter would be 2.71 m and the pod’s access hatch would be 47 cm wide, therefore 136.6 meters is the absolute and minimal length of the Tantive IV that would have enabled Artoo to somehow get sideways into the lifepod and leave the ship together with C-3PO.

Other than that we do, of course, have the VFX composite shot with the Millennium Falcon passing a Rebel Blockade Runner in the space battle of ROTJ and a VFX composite shot showing several Alliance ships from below:



A Rebel Blockade Runner with a length of approximately 410 meters would be three times the size the original ANH model makers suggested the Tantive IV to have. However, although the shot of capital Alliance ships from below isn’t too reliable (because we don’t know the vertical distance between those ships in the shot, i.e. the Rebel transport ‘fire ship’ on the right must be closer to the camera than the one on the left), it clearly conveys the idea of a Rebel Blockade Runner much shorter than a Rebel ‘Nebulon’ cruiser.

Thus the ‘starboard fly-by’ is apparently a VFX composition error; storyboards from an unused sequence in ROTJ seem to suggest that this might be the case because the vessel length conveyed there is rather compatible with a figure of 150 meters or less:



Size examination summary:

• The ANH model makers suggested the Tantive IV to have a length between 120 meters (cockpit pilot figure 1.8 m tall) and/or 155 meters (cockpit door frame)
• In order for R2-D2 to be able to get into a lifepod, its diameter has to be at least 2.71 m which settles 136.6 meters as the minimal length for the Tantive IV
• Even at 148.8 (or 150 meters) it’s rather difficult to accomodate the L-turn of the cockpit corridor suggested by Rogue One inside the hammerhead (and even more so an access / airlock corridor at the stern)

I think it’s fair to say that a length of approximately 150 meters constitutes an optimal compromise and ultimately the accurate in-universe length of the Tantive IV, add to this it’s been a well-known figure for many years (and drafting the deck plans I eventually realized that a Tantive IV at 148.8 meters solves more problems than one at only 136.6 meters).

 

I'll be working on some ship genealogy. I'd love to come up with a decent stratigraphy. You should check out:

and

From: https://kitbashed.com/blog/a-complete-history-of-the-millennium-falcon

 

Hernalt

Great finds, I wasn't aware that they were apparently that serious about this derivative 2001-ish design for the "Rebel spacefighter", add to this that already the main interior hallway was to have deliberate allusions to 2001 (I'd like to think that George Lucas told everybody involved that that was the kind of production value they were going for, but some probably took this way too literal).

That's actually a great transition to the next part, here we go:

The Rebel Blockade Runner set(s) – or how George Lucas conned 20th Century Fox into buying him an extra film set

By the end of June 1976 the last scenes of principal (live-action) photography that needed to be filmed for Star Wars (A New Hope) were the opening scenes (!) aboard Princess Leia’s starship

One night, George Lucas toured the previously unused film set of the “Pirate starship” with production designer John Barry on Stage 9 and later stated: "Sometimes we tried to re-dress a set and use it again. But I looked at it about a week or so before shooting, and I said 'I can't possibly shoot the sequence on this set.' The original set was the little alleyway with the Princess and the robots. That was all we had. And I just realized I couldn't shoot a battle, five pages of dialogue, and all these people running around, and have it all take place in one little hallway. So I said, 'John, you have to build another big hallway next to this little hallway' - and that created a whole big ruckus with Fox and everybody, because it cost a lot more money. ... So John built a new white set. I was very concerned that the opening, the first interior of the film, be spectacular and look opulent, and not just be a set re-dress. We had a lot of problems with that but eventually John, who was a genius, did it." John Barry: "The door blows down and in comes Darth Vader - black against a white hallway!"

That’s the official report published in J.W. Rinzler’s The Making of Star Wars, but truth to be told, I don’t believe that George Lucas was ever serious about just using the Pirate Starship film set for Leia’s Rebel Blockade Runner (I’m confident he toured Stage 9 with Barry to see how they could add the yet to come and to be built new hallway set to the existing Pirate starship film set).

Already the 1975 Tavoularis storyboards featured big, rectangular corridors aboard the “Rebel spacefighter” whose design John Barry refined in his own storyboards (annotated “2001-ish”) which ultimately Ralph McQuarrie adopted in his early pre-production artwork from early 1975:



It depicts a scene from the second Star Wars draft from January 1975: “This is LORD DARTH VADER, right hand to the MASTER OF THE SITH. … Deak (Starkiller) makes a sudden lunge at the huge warrior but is checked by a lightning movement of the SITH. A second masterful slash-stroke by Deak is again blocked by his evil opponent. They stand motionless for a few moments, with laser swords locked in mid-air, creating a low buzzing sound. Another of the Jedi’s blows is blocked, then countered. Deak stumbles back against a wall.”

What’s really interesting here (“astonishing” would be more like it), is that the hallway background setting matches the film set almost exactly as it would be finally build – and that already in early 1975 (!), yet that set didn’t exist by the time most of the live-action footage had been shot in mid-1976.

So here we are, in the eleventh hour George Lucas meets 20th Century Fox executives to tell them that he needs a new film set to be able to shoot the pivotal opening scenes of Star Wars. Inarguably, the Fox execs understood that the film needed a great opening (especially to protect all the investment they had made into the film thus far) but understandably felt to have been taken in by George Lucas, who should have (of course) known from the beginning that he’d be needing this particular film set (supposedly there was a lot of yelling during that particular meeting). Ultimately George got his Rebel Blockade Runner hallway film set and as an extra bonus and extension of it the left-overs of the “Pirate starship”:



In hindsight however, it rather looks like a scheme or “Pirate starship maneuver” George Lucas concocted to get two film sets he would not have gotten under normal circumstances, i.e. to deliberately shoot the scenes in a film set (he already knew in 1975 what it should look like) last to be able to coerce Fox into providing the extra budget for it should he have run out of money by mid-1976 (which is exactly what happened).

 

From 5:33 to 5:39 there is a scene where they removed the entry point door and added a second dogleg in its place, and a tiny bit of opposite wall, to give the impression of yet another corridor, that had two contiguous ~45 degree doglegs for a total turn of ~90 degrees. The set blue print gives clearance to the studio interior wall of about ~4 feet, and that is pretty sensible with the footage. One can now visualize the entire studio volume, and orientation, that surrounds the interior of the lit set.

Here is 2001: A Space Odyssey Aries, for comparison of angles surrounding the cockpit window.

 

^ The parallels are rather hard to ignore, IMHO. I think it illustrates, again, the beauty of George Lucas' success formula for Star Wars, i.e. to create as many allusions to history, real life and renowned SciFi accomplishments (like 2001) to create a familiar feel for audiences to help the suspension of disbelief.

 

I. Oops, I see you caught the second dogleg with Note B.


II. In the interests of public searchability, here is a quotation linking Lucas, BR and 2001: A Space Odyssey, from Making of page 214:

(THX-1138 was 1971, and 2001: A Space Odyssey was 1968, but Lucas' Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB was 1967. I cannot determine how much of the white saturated future sensibility Lucas may have gotten from Space Odyssey for his THX 1138 interiors.)

Making of page 236 has two shots of:
1. The rebel star ship with large respective cockpit, facing camera, and upper escape pods only, no lower visible, and rectangular radar
2. The rebel star ship, facing away, with a twin gun battery in the aft dorsal mount where the radar would/should go (which to me bears a topographical radar echo of a B-29 upper rear turret)
Here is the images' accompanying quotation linking Lucas, BR and fish:

III. You say "Pirate starship film set views" in the bottom elevation. Was the pentagon the engineering section of the original pirate starship set? I am imagining Han Solo standing in there like that's his ship, and it doesn't feel like his style. The vertical round door grids look like the kind that shows up in ESB Cloud City with Luke.


If/As the pentagon was part of the original set, I am struck by how uncentered in stage space the center of mass of the original set was. The pentagon, which is not something you want to take down and move, is curiously distant from the left and top stage wall, since the pseudopodia of corridors that branch out from the entire set, which can be taken down and moved, are extended to such and such points that they give the appearance of the entire set being centered in the stage. But the expensive parts are not centered.



The price Lucas paid for his lack of vision is then that he had to
1. Trim back the upper left corridor from the pentagon
2. Trim back the upper right corridor from the pentagon
3. Trim back corridor C, a life pod doorway (which I assume would be a port life pod)
4. Trim back the existing set nearest to the entry point door in order to enable a long linear stretch of new white corridor, and not connect to that corridor


 

At 6:09/15:08 in Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, there is a white corridor that can indicate that Lucas was fully on board with a cultural shorthand of depicting the future with a clinical white furnishing / dressing / lighting scheme.

The guts of the BR contrasted against the white corridor, now that I have watched Electronic Labyrinth, reminds me of Logan's Run (released June 23,1976), another exponent of this sensibility.


Illustrated Man (1969):

 

Most certainly I just love this 1970's Colani style, it has such a beauiful futuristic vibe.

Let's just say I'm certain that the pentagon was in the engineering section of the original Pirate starship set, because that's the only place where the exterior hull could have accomodated it, acording to McQuarrie's paintings featured in post # 1 of this thread. However, I don't believe that the extensions would have been part of it. I just think we are looking at a rather innovative design by John Barry, i.e. the pentagon could have been used as a 'camera platform' from where to shoot five different locations almost simultaneously (one of these would be the original "cockpit corridor" we saw in ANH with the arriving stormtroopers)...when the ship grew in size to become the Tantive IV, the extensions became a part of the in-universe pentagonal hub (which IMHO and curiously never changed position, i.e. it was part of the stern power section of the original Pirate starship - and stayed there even after it had become Princess Leia's starship Tantive IV...)

Note that the vertical round door grids ('Corellian structural support rings') are a design you'll also find aboard the Millennium Falcon, you can see these in the 'open' sections of the Falcon corridors connecting to the main hold area.


The Tantive IV interior locations – find your way around inside Leia’s ship

Now that we have access to the original film set blueprints and almost perfect top and side view images of the original Rebel Blockade Runner VFX model (thanks to the Japanese Star Wars Chronicles book from 2016, featuring black & white ILM archive shots of various VFX models taken from a considerable distance to reduce distortions in perspective) it has become possible to create deck plans which accurately match the film sets within the ‘in-universe’ dimensions (148.8 meters overall length) of the exterior VFX model.

But first, let’s have a look at some previous attempts to feature the interiors of the Tantive IV:



On the top left we have one (of several) deck plan drawings from the WEG Rebel Alliance Sourcebook (the previous page there featured the “150 m” length figure) which IMHO (unfortunately) speaks for itself and requires no further attention.

In contrast, Hans Jenssen’s beautiful cross-section drawing from 1998 is light years ahead of that ragged deck plan design from WEG and obviously aims for optimal accuracy, although there are a couple of issues. Jenssen’s cross-section drawing features the main hallway film set (correctly, IMHO) as a main passageway that runs near the cylindrical main hull’s central axis.

My own, not too dissimilar, early deck plan draft is on the top right, obviously attempting to rationalize the L-turn angles as extensions into the midship section’s ‘wings’. However, this approach used up toomuch space on the main deck that still has to accommodate the top of the lifepod launch tubes, not to mention that the apparent jet airliner allusions which come with the Tantive IV would rather feature corridors contained within the main hull. Robert Brown criticized it as “a ship full of corridors”, and I found it rather hard to disagree.



And, of course, there is this beautiful schematic in blue and green (obviously inspired by Jenssen’s cross-section painting), which moves me to tears because it’s clear, clean and looks professional, but ultimately isn’t useful as a deck plan to find our way around as it’s highlighting (unseen) conjectural locations.

Yet, it features Leia’s landspeeder (mentioned in the radio drama) parked in that bay suggested by Revenge of the Sith for the Tantive III (no space there aboard the Tantive IV, though) and the bottom cylinder in the reactor or “power section” to be some kind of elevator that allow access to the ship once it has landed (another ROTS suggestion, documented by a sketch in The Art of ROTS).

Of course, on the original Pirate starship that wasn’t a personnel elevator (interestingly Ralph McQuarrie put an array of four sensor dishes there which the model makers changed into what are apparently maneuvering thrusters), but as that ship grew to become the Tantive IV the original boarding hatch concept (i.e. with a boarding ramp just several feet above ground) was no longer feasible, IMHO. The midship keel doesn’t feature any structures that actively suggest some kind of extendable round personnel elevator (otherwise the midship elevator Jenssen suggested would have been a candidate), but what ultimately sold me the idea (too) was the fact that the fly-by scene of the Millennium Falcon and various fighters below a Rebel Blockade Runner in ROTJ (which is missing its maneuvering thrusters) reveals a revised kind of bottom cylinder, which features ring segments that appear to be part of an extendable, telescopic mechanism:



Now, none of these observations have gotten us any closer to accurate Tantive IV deck plans, but where do we start?

I felt that a good starting point would be to look at two film set locations where there seems to be a general consensus about their interior placement aboard the Tantive IV - and the first one would be the “sub hallway” (screenplay) or “companionway” (radio drama) where Leia inserted the Death Star plans into R2-D2.
It must be at a location wide enough to accommodate two parallel corridors (i.e. “hallway” and “companionway”; only in the main hull behind the hammerhead’s ‘neck’ would there be enough space for both of them) and one that enables Artoo and Threepio to a) take the shortest route to the port side “lifepod bay” (earlier screenplay designation) and that b) with a minimal chance of running into Stormtroopers. We know they took off with lifepod # 5 becauseafter their pod has been jettisoned, we can see that the pod launch tube is empty: Yes, the model makers actually went through the hassle of readying the Tantive IV for filming when it is taken inside the Devastator’s main bay (pod is still there) and again for another shot with that pod missing - so much for the claim that they didn’t pay too much attention to continuity during the making of ANH!
Therefore Brian Daley (radio drama) concluded correctly that the place Leia was hiding was somewhere to the port side stern (“portside companionway aft”), Dr. David West Reynolds and/or talented artist Hans Jenssen concurred and put it there in the 1998 cross-section painting of the Tantive IV.

The general consensus looks even clearer for another particular location, because it was hinted by the screenplay, then adopted by Alan Dean Foster (ANH novelization) and Brian Daley (radio drama), and finally by the Rogue One filmmakers.
It’s of course the Vader-Antilles scene supposedly taking place in the “cockpit corridor” which inarguably suggested that the pentagonal hub we saw in that ANH scene would be close to or near the cockpit (the original Pirate starship “cockpit corridor” was used by the arriving and reporting stormtroopers in ANH).
That location was first mentioned in the 2nd Star Wars draft from January 1975 aboard the “Rebel spacefighter” (with a long cylindrical main hull and a bow cockpit) and within the context of that draft “Deak and two Aquillian rangers back into a sealed corridor at the far end of the passageway” (i.e. the bow of the ship with the cockpit).
In the 3rd draft from August 1975 the “cockpit corridor” had become the location where “Darth Vader, the black knight, takes a short restraining pole from one of the guards and brutally jabs a captured rebel officer in the chest”.
In the 4th draft from January 1976 Vader kills a Rebel officer whose last words are “only the commander knows…” et cetera.
Of course, both Foster and Daley felt obliged to respect the screenplay they were working with, hence Foster put the pentagonal hub into the “galactic cruiser’s control center” and Daley close to the “bridge” of the Tantive IV, although I’d like to think Daley felt rather uncomfortable in doing so, because in his version Antilles ultimately proposes Leia to go to the droid labor pool near the stern of the ship to find the droids there, which is however the direction from which the stormtroopers are advancing towards the bridge (or cockpit) in his radio drama!

Because of that, it has become a popular belief (myth would be more appropriate) that Vader and his stormtroopers boarded the Tantive IV somewhere in the aft section and then fought their way forward to the hammerhead section and the cockpit, but is there ANY good reason or explanation for them do to so?

Let’s have a look at the first scenes in ANH and in particular at Vader and Captain Antilles:
Darth Vader is having a bad day, on one hand because he couldn’t prevent the theft of the Death Star plans, on the other because he just now realizes that Senator Organa is a traitor and a part of the Rebel Alliance, and he didn’t stop her before. Now he is impatient, has no time to loose and wants to contain the damage ASAP, i.e. make certain the Death Star plans are not (again) re-transmitted (Commander Praji later allays such fears, confirming that “no transmissions were made”) and that any physical copies are secured. Therefore, one would expect him to breach the ship somewhere close to the hammerhead section to get right away to the computer and/or communications room (and to take control of all vital ship’s systems). He is not in the mood for games, but fighting Princess Leia’s defenders in a time-consuming attempt to get to the hammerhead section (which would give the Rebels more time to get rid of any incriminating evidence) starting from the aft would qualify as exactly that.
Neither would the “they came from behind” theory suggest that Captain Antilles was a competent colonel and leader. If the police came storming into your house, but you do know that you’ve got nothing to hide, would you put yourself deliberately in the police’s and harm’s way? Antilles knows that there is no incriminating evidence in the Tantive IV’s computer, so the competent thing to do would inarguably be to clear the hammerhead section (so that the Imperial intruders can verify that there is nothing there they can use) and put your men in the adjacent section (to slow the intruders down if necessary, to buy the Princess enough time to do whatever she thinks is best), hoping that a lethal confrontation can nevertheless be avoided and perhaps some kind of truce be negotiated.

In a nutshell: The “they came from behind” Tantive IV boarding scenario doesn’t make any sense, it makes both Vader and Antilles look like incompetent fools. But if you don’t believe it, don’t take my word for it and see what George Lucas (or somebody authorized by him at Lucasfilm) actually did:

The last “cockpit corridor” reference for the Vader-Antilles scene comes from the final screenplay (revised 4th draft) from March 1976. That’s also the version that featured Luke as “Blue Five”.
Now, The Art of Star Wars in 1979 was to contain the screenplay of the film, but Lucas(film) felt compelled to fix a variety of bugs and present a polished or fine-tuned version of the screenplay, usually referred to as the “public version”. Luke and the others had now become pilots of the “Red Squad(ron)”, Jabba is being described for the first time as a “slug-like creature” and the Vader-Antilles scene now only took place in a “corridor”, i.e. the “cockpit” allusions from the previous screenplays had been deliberately deleted!

In simpler words: The Vader-Antilles scene now took place in another part of the ship, but definitely not near the cockpit or the corridor leading to it.

Apparently, neither Foster or Daley ever learned about this premise change, but a look into the public version of the ANH screenplay by the RO filmmakers (or their consultants) – and Jenssen’s cross-section drawing of the Tantive IV (who seriously cares or wonders whether the structure of the Star Destroyers in RO was compatible to the one featured in Incredible Cross-Sections?...) could have helped to stop propagating a myth that Lucas(film) himself had practically declared dead, buried and obsolete already by 1979!

That still doesn’t answer where the stormtroopers pulverized the bulkhead door and breached the corridor, which Leia’s defenders intended to hold. However, the screenplay is rather clear about the function of this corridor referring to it as “main hallway” (film set designation) and “main passageway” (screenplay designation). Given the shape of the Tantive IV a “main passageway” would most likely be a corridor that runs along next to or near the central axis of the ship.

Now that we can safely assume that Vader and his stormtroopers rather boarded the ship starting somewhere near its hammerhead section, we’d just have to be clear whether they got into the port or starboard side hatch of the hammerhead (illustrated post # 1) or cut an opening of their own choice. The apparent speed with which the Tantive IV was taken inside the Devastator’s main bay, followed almost instantly by the pulverization of the main passageway’s bulkhead door (protecting the hammerhead from the rest of the ship in case of sudden decompression) would suggest an exterior hull location very close to the main passageway and on the starboard side. Altogether, there are four hints supporting the “skybridge” approach (“spacebridge” would inarguably be more appropriate) on the Tantive IV’s starboard neck side:
● The personnel hatch just behind the hammerhead in Joe Johnston’s earlier ‘Rebel Blockade Runner’ sketch (with the “Pirate starship” configuration, post # 51), now either covered by armor plating (on the actual VFX model) or the ship’s position in the film (i.e. it’s supposed to be there on the starboard side we do not see, but doesn’t exist on the VFX model) as a
● real life allusion to a jet airliner (which also features a cylindrical main body) with the main boarding hatch usually just behind the cockpit (and a cargo bay hatch on the lower side…).
● The metaphor of the Tantive IV as an animal whose throat is cut just below the head.
● The possible ANH intention to feature the starboard mandible of that main bay ceiling contraption as a chute to deliver stormtroopers to the starboard side of the Tantive IV’s neck area in quick succession.

That would constitute a real starting point from where to develop other areas of the Rebel Blockade Runner as we progress along with the two droids through the ship. However, there is no set of written rules for “accurate (i.e. onscreen-compatible) deck plan drafting of famous Science Fiction and Fantasy vessels” but over at the Trek BBS message board several people (including this author) agreed to the following methodology (which IMHO is equally applicable for other SciFi or Fantasy franchises):
1. Even though we may know what the film sets did look like, it’s first and foremost the actual onscreen depictions and how these are edited together that constitute the true appearance of a particular section of a particular vessel
2. Unless character dialogue bridges film edits (i.e. starts in one scene and continues uninterrupted into the next), there may be areas and elapsed time in-between that we didn’t see onscreen
3. Proportion modifications of known film sets are supportable should film set dimensions not be compatible with established exterior proportions, it’s mandatory to examine the filmmakers’ most likely intentions in such cases (e.g. Millennium Falcon)
4. Deck plans should look convincing and believable to average readers, i.e. if possible they should look how a real-life architect or engineer might have designed the interiors
5. Deck plans should be compatible with believable character movement

While # 3 isn’t an issue for the Tantive IV as seen in ANH (as a matter of fact it’s probably the only fantastic vehicle with a length of less than 500 meters that’s the proverbial exception from the ‘rule’), the way George Lucas edited the opening scenes of ANH is nothing short of a mess. Perhaps a deliberate decision by the filmmaker to convey a sense of chaos through erratic editing, there is plenty of footage that doesn’t belong into certain scenes, and often it’s difficult to determine whether footage was flopped / mirror-inverted to simulate a new corridor section or just to simulate a previous setup (we’d already seen) as a “new” situation:



And last but not least, the challenge for the deck plan drafter is inevitably to make several assumptions about the motivations of the characters why they move onscreen the way they do, as he doesn’t really have an official ‘blueprint’. The more palatable and believable those assumptions are, the bigger the probability that the deck plan drafter gets it right in his attempt to recreate ‘accurate’ deck plans that can qualify from an ‘in-universe’ point of view to be correct or even ‘authentic’. Of course, there may be different approaches, but I believe that ultimately the draft that answers the most questions is probably the one closest to the truth in the best tradition of Occam’s razor.



So without further ado, we’ll look at the Tantive IV’s deck plans next Thursday, when she celebrates her 40th Birthday…

 

I. The following image shows the arrangement of panels on the BR ventral side immediately surrounding the Pirate Ship era starboard hatch. Lucas expressly exploited this confusion for the ROTJ shot, linked above, where fighters fly under a BR. This gives the BR a decorous asymmetry inherited from the PS stage. I think the continued existence of this asymmetry, signifying a large portal, even in ROTJ-era BRs, should figure into the counsels of whatever floor plan works best.

Spoiler

II. Good catch on the horizontally mirrored footage from the corridor shootouts. I was blissfully unaware of that while doing frame by frame. Just for turnabout, here is the same trick being used by Lucas to create a greater sense of space inside the Hoth command center. The geometry of the implication is incorrect, but that does not injure the scene. Notice the sweep of Leia's hair.

Spoiler

III. I am intrigued by the emergency maneuver immediately after the de-select of the existing Pirate Ship model. Here are additional shots of the emergency maneuver BR, with the original Pirate Ship human-size "figure under cannon for scale". They certainly were loathe to re-imagine this long ship as a vessel vastly greater than indicated by this WW2-type cockpit canopy. They may have tried out the look of having two turrets on top in each of the cylinders. That would have severed nearly all the (peace-time, cis-lunar) 2001: A Space Odyssey connections, leaving an echo of a (war-time) B-29. (I omit discussing McQuarrie's very early assignment for the PS of a B-52 cockpit, and early associations of the PS with the B-17 due to Lucas using footage from Howard Hawks' very good film, "Air Force" (1943).)





IV. On the topic of when the Millennium Falcon got its name, the Internet is rife with imprecise time resolution. On Joe Johnston's response to the kitbash blog, he states,

From: https://www.facebook.com/JoeJohnstonSketchbook/posts/852331911579599
It should be a quick IQ test to derive the manner in which Lucas gave a begrudging tribute to the wily unforeseen adversary, an iteration of an object 'time-bird', that cost him and ILM so much. If the hypothetical "you" increments 1999 by 1 and increments the first letter of that bird by one, the result "you" get is 2000 and a bird starting with “F”. Retaining the object 'time-bird', the options "you" are first going to come up with if you blink are 2000 Figbird, 2000 Finch, 2000 Flamingo, 2000 French Hen, 2000 Friar Bird. For whatever reasons, which probably sounded good at the time, Lucas did not take advantage of these combinations. He went back the dictionary to see if he had missed any birds starting with “F”.

A second fixing reference, which is not essential after the first but is highly coincident, is another association of object, 'time-bird'. The Buick Skyhawk was released in 1975 and Buick began using a hawk in its logo. The Buick Century was produced 1936–1942, 1954–1958, 1973–2005. Buick used a trishield logo until, and after, this brief period in the latter seventies when it was replaced by a hawk. So Lucas would have been exposed to commercials advertising a time period (Century) model produced by a maker that advertised itself with a bird (Hawk), for the equivalent of a ‘Hawk Century’ or 'Century Hawk'.

From: http://cartype.com/pages/2614/buick

 

"A ship full of corridors" is a problem a lot of attempts at deck plans run into. I've had trouble with it myself working on plans for Star Trek ships, with the added problem of ships full of turbolifts. It can be particularly bad with smaller ships where, as you're finding, there's a lot of sometimes-contradictory information and things that run into empty space.

 

Hernalt

It never ceases to amaze me what kind of fantastic and rare mages you find on the worldwide web, looks like you are somehow using better searchwords than I do, because I was desperately looking for some of the images you posted (I immediately copied and pasted these into my archive ).



^ Note that this must be an early stage, the four bottom life pod launch tubes on each side don't exist, yet.

I. The following image shows the arrangement of panels on the BR ventral side immediately surrounding the Pirate Ship era starboard hatch. Lucas expressly exploited this confusion for the ROTJ shot, linked above, where fighters fly under a BR. This gives the BR a decorous asymmetry inherited from the PS stage. I think the continued existence of this asymmetry, signifying a large portal, even in ROTJ-era BRs, should figure into the counsels of whatever floor plan works best.



That vertical panel next to / left of the original Pirate starship boarding hatch on the lower starboard side (now apparently a cargo hatch) probably puts a 'stop' to the lower starboard solar fin, that would have otherwise inhibited the range how much you could actually lower the boarding hatch, so I think there is a practical reason for that otherwise odd panel left of that hatch. Somebody else (who doesn't want to be mentioned) insisted that this hatch will reflect in the upcoming deck plans - which of course it will.

II. Good catch on the horizontally mirrored footage from the corridor shootouts. I was blissfully unaware of that while doing frame by frame

Trying to determine how long this simulated passageway would have been, it strangely turned out that its proportions and length match the new passageway built for Rogue One (of course with the exception of the cockpit door in the RO hallway set, that didn't exist on the original ANH film set).

IV. ... It should be a quick IQ test to derive the manner in which Lucas gave a begrudging tribute to the wily unforeseen adversary, an iteration of an object 'time-bird', that cost him and ILM so much. If the hypothetical "you" increments 1999 by 1 and increments the first letter of that bird by one, the result "you" get is 2000 and a bird starting with “F”. Retaining the object 'time-bird', the options "you" are first going to come up with if you blink are 2000 Figbird, 2000 Finch, 2000 Flamingo, 2000 French Hen, 2000 Friar Bird. For whatever reasons, which probably sounded good at the time, Lucas did not take advantage of these combinations. He went back the dictionary to see if he had missed any birds starting with “F”.



That sounds like a wild and rather unorthodox theory, but that's the kind I do love (no progress without such theories). From a 1999 "E"agle to a 2000 (Millennium) "F"alcon...sounds to good to be just a coincidence.

slybrarian wrote

It can be particularly bad with smaller ships where, as you're finding, there's a lot of sometimes-contradictory information and things that run into empty space.

Like The Original Series' Galileo 7 shuttlecraft?

Yes, it's a rather typical Hollywood problem but as a matter of fact it goes back all the way to the 19th Century and could almost be referred to as a "classic". When you take a closer look at the original illustrations of Captain Nemo's Nautilus in Jules Vernes' 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea novel, you'll notice depictions of interiors that can't possibly fit inside. One of my reasons to attempt deck plans of the Tantive IV was that in her particular and rather exceptional case, the ANH (!) film sets do fit inside rather well.

Without spoiling to much (have to embellish the drawings and showcase the extensions of the lifepod launch tubes the next - ouch - three days) I can already say that ANH actually provides us with a quick tour through almost the entire ship (i.e. main and lower deck) - we start from the bow and move to the stern on the main deck, next to the pentagonal hub where Vader strangulated Antilles (in the power section below the radar or com-scan dish) there is probably a circular staircase that leads down to the lower deck (and extends further to the bottom, surrounding the bottom elevator 'cylinder') from where the scenes take us back to the bow where Vader and his lieutenant ultimately arrive near the hammerhead's port side communications room where Commander Praji delivers his report.

Stay tuned...

 

Bazinga'd

Thank you! I collect various kinds of rare CT images and books since 1978 (so I guess I head a good headstart) and started to write articles for international fanzines at an early age (which of course require images to illustrate the topics I write about). Thanks to the internet and the (often, not always) online images this has gotten a whole lot (!) easier and makes article writing much more fun, than back in those early days. And given the articles I'm writing nowadays it seems imperative to me to follow the rule of "Show, don't tell" - in a rather literal sense, though.

 

Looking forward to your deckplans, Lt. Hija!

 

Bazinga'd

You're being too kind, thank you. Given my general infatuation with cross-section drawings and model kits (there were several interesting ones in the 1970's) and deck plans since I was a kid, I always wanted to see such materials for fictional spaceships, especially those from Star Wars. And rather than to lament about the attempts to others, I realized the only solution is - as often in life - to do it yourself. The fun and rewarding aspect about article writing and deck plan drafting (at least in my case) is that during in-depth examinations I often discover details I wasn't previously aware of.

However, because of several last minute problems concerning the deck plan drafts (e.g. the pentagonal hub film set we see behind Artoo and Threepio just before they cross the "fire exchange" corridor - compare last visualization in post # 53, top right image - would be on the port side and coincidentally (?) right above the lifepod they will eventually use, but it can't have the real life film set dimensions because a) the midship ceiling is too low there but b) the hub probably aligns with the center of the launch tube top protruding slightly from the lower deck) I'm not able to illustrate these today, add to this some unscheduled real life work interfered. Anyway...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TANTIVE IV!

You are a lovely, beautiful lady and even after 40 years your age doesn't show.

 

Here is another clue that asks for a process of elimination.

From: https://kitbashed.com/blog/a-complete-history-of-the-millennium-falcon

This clue is attractive because it has a fixing referent in Han Solo. The "Mxxxxxxx Falcon" is already there in verbal shape. The problem for whoever considers this clue is to construct a George Lucas who feels compelled to change Han Solo's ship from the Pirate Ship model to a completely new model that looks as little like Space: 1999 Eagle as possible, while also not recognizing, or cogitating, on the manner in which Space: 1999 already borrows from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (so much so that MGM sued to prevent use of the title, "Space: 1999", http://io9.gizmodo.com/351283/stanley-kubricks-crazy-space-lawsuit), which Lucas is already being influenced by in 1975. To conclude that Lucas decided on "Millennium Falcon" based on "Maltese Falcon" requires that Lucas be oblivious to the simple sequence, 1999, 2000, 2001. This requires Lucas to not think about the elephant that has been implicated in the crisis of *not being seen as being an imitator. (Prior to this crisis, could he have named the Pirate Ship the "Millennium Falcon"? Why would he have chosen "Millennium"?) (Consider the timeline at bottom.) (I'm not touching Casablanca as I haven't seen either Bogart in twenty years.)

The first episode of Space: 1999 was broadcast to the U.S. market at large on September 5, 1975. Joe Johnston has two concept drawings of the escape pod that have the word "Obsolete" and the date "9/26/75". You can immediately see what changed structurally (retractable landing legs), and why (scale size), with the escape pod. (Be mindful that the Pirate Ship model's version of the dorsal escape pods have three thrusters on top, whereas the Newly-BR's understood NASA-like dorsal escape pod was changed to the Final-BR's ventral escape pod with two thrusters on top of the now separable upper stage.) This is evidence that the commit date to abandon the small-scale ex-Pirate Ship-now-Leia Ship for the large-scale ex-Pirate Ship-now-Leia Ship occurs no later than September 26, 1975. And that means the commit date to abandon the Pirate Ship as Han Solo's ship (and thereby need to generate a totally new ship) occurs no later than September 26, 1975. That time range gives possibility for Lucas to have seen/learned/heard about four separate episodes of Space: 1999. The degree of saturation is significant. George Lucas and Gary Kurtz visited Bray Studios, England, in January 1976, where the visual effects for Space: 1999 were being filmed, to expressly recruit Brian Johnson, director for special effects for Space: 1999, and the one who had designed the Space: 1999 Eagle AKA Eagle Transporter (basic model). He had designed it from a combination of (by specific mention) 2001: A Space Odyssey Moon Bus and the topography of insects, and (by general commentary) extant NASA space craft of that period (starting in 1965 and going to 1975, from Apollo Lunar Modules to Pioneer I and II to Viking lander). Defensible influences include Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds' (1964-1966) Thunderbird 2, and, the Sikorsky Skycrane (1962). {Also, Apollo 11 LM was designated "Eagle" ("The Eagle has landed"), and Apollo 15 LM was "Falcon".}

The problem for someone who thinks about this is to construct a George Lucas who is oblivious to the sequence 1999, 2000, 2001, and is also oblivious to the fact that the person he tried to recruit in 1976, and who he did successfully recruit for ESB, had designed THE ship, that had a certain avian designation, that precipitated a cascade of very expensive reactions. (Could he have now named the hamburger "Millennium Falcon" based solely on Maltese Falcon, while holding himself uninfluenced by the word or concept, 'eagle'?)

I am not myself sold yet on one additional possibility of influence, that the "freighter" capability of the reimagined Han Solo ship was influenced to a small degree by the Space: 1999 Eagle Transporter being able to transport large modules. Take the following references to "freighter" as over-determined. Possibly a stretch, imo. But: Joe Johnston says the MF is a 'hot-rod plain and simple', and doesn't want to 'reveal its function', whereas Lucas wrote the script. Lucas' words trump Johnston's profiles.

Spoiler

1975-08-01 Third Draft (“THE STAR WARS” From The Adventures of Luke Starkiller) contains liberal use of “pirate” and “pirate starship” and no uses of “millennium”, “falcon”, or “freighter”.
{1975-08-23 U.S. Premier of Space: 1999 First Episode “Breakaway” on KJH Los Angeles. First remotely possible occasion for Southern California Lucas to have seen Brian Johnson’s design, “Eagle Transporter”.}
1975-09-04 Regular U.S. release of Space: 1999 First Episode “Breakaway”. First logical occasion for Lucas to have seen Brian Johnson’s design, “Eagle Transporter”.
1975-09-25 Space: 1999 Fourth Episode “War Games”. First occasion for Lucas to have seen Brian Johnson’s Eagle-like design, “Hawk”.
1975-10-16 Space: 1999 Seventh Episode "Alpha Child". First occasion for Lucas to see Space: 1999 using a ship that looks extremely like the 2001: A Space Odyssey Discovery.
1976-01-01 Fourth Draft (Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the “Journal of the Whills”) contains liberal use of “PIRATE STARSHIP”, four mentions of “freighter”, and no mentions of “Millennium” or “Falcon”.
1976-01-26 Production of the second series of Space: 1999 began.
1976-02-19 Space: 1999 Twenty-fourth (and last) Episode “The Last Enemy”.
1976-03-15 Revised Fourth Draft (The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the “Journal of the Whills”) contains two instances of “Millennium Falcon”, including, “I’m Han Solo, Captain of the Millennium Falcon”. Four uses of “Freighter”, two in reference to the Pirate Starship.
{1979-nn-nn Sanitized “1976-01-15” Public Fourth Draft (Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, from the Journal of the Whills, As published in The Art of Star Wars, Ballantine 1979) contains innumerable uses of “MILLENNIUM FALCON” in shooting locations, “I’m Han Solo, Captain of the Millennium Falcon”, and several references to the Millennium Falcon using “the pirate ship”. Four uses of “Freighter”, two in reference to the Millennium Falcon.}

Interviews:
http://blog.tvstoreonline.com/2014/08/2001-space-odyssey-interview-series.html
https://dutchgirlinlondon.com/2014/08/24/interview-brian-johnson-hollywood-sfx-legend/
http://www.originalprop.com/blog/20...on-special-effects-artist-special-to-the-opb/
http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/crguide/vcsbj2014.html
http://www.davidsissonmodels.co.uk/brian johnson.htm
https://archive.org/stream/TV_Sci-Fi_Monthly_03_1976_UK/TV_Sci-Fi_Monthly_03_1976_UK_djvu.txt
Timeline: http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/pguide/up03.html

 

Typo. Not Pioneer 1 and 2.
1973-12-03 Pioneer 10 had first flyby of Jupiter
1974-09-01 Pioneer 11 closer flyby of Jupiter
The insectoid, gangly, truss-work topography of period NASA spacecraft is now conserved, with respect to Brian Johnson's quotations. Pioneer 1 and 2 rather evoke Imperial probe droids, which I was not looking for.

 

I rattled off "Southern California Lucas" without checking why. The reason why increases the number of individuals who may have intercepted the August 8, 1975 Los Angeles premier of Space: 1999.

From: https://www.wired.com/2015/05/inside-ilm/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Light_&_Magic

Sense of place at ILM, Van Nuys: http://sanfernandovalleyblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/bttf-series-6-industrial-light-magic.html
Goings on at ILM, Van Nuys in early 1976, by Dave Barry:

Further context from Dave Barry: https://lapsedtime.com/films/5757-2/

That is provided to form an opinion of how swiftly or fluidly news of a competing image or conception might move through ILM in middle to late 1975. Presumably many of these ILM employees lived in LA and picked up LA stations, and/or knew LA residents who might report to them a recent premier of a British sci-fi space show.

 

^ PURE GOLD!

The childhood days of ILM, that's really a great video document (although I was longing to see this supposed incident, i.e. George Lucas returning from the UK shoot and seeing the guys in Van Nuys smash a fridge - hmm...was that perhaps the inspiration for an Indiana Jones movie?)

Now, we do apparently know that in August 1975 the Falcon was still the "pirate starship" but had changed to a "round" spaceship by January 1976 (yet with no name). Personally I do believe that the "Maltese Falcon" had to do a lot with the final name, because the characters in the film somewhat remind me of SW characters later interacting with Solo. Sam Spade (Bogey) = Solo disarms both clumsy Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) and clumsy Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook, jr.) = Greedo but meets with their fat boss Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) = Jabba (i.e. the original one, played by Declan Mulholland).

From what I recently read somewhere, the folks in the UK supposedly told Lucas that his pirate starship looked a lot like a Space 1999 Eagle but I wouldn't bet on it. I rather like to believe that the guys at ILM watched Gerry Anderson's series to see how the TV guys were doing VFX, compelling them to do something much more sophisticated (fortunately - when I first heard that Brian Johnson would be responsible to supervise the VFX for ESB I thought "Seriously, a VFX guy from Space 1999"?) and - indeed - noted some similarities between the pirate starship and the Eagle design.

(Just watched the other day the Bond film Moonraker and it was rather obvious that Derek Meddings' VFX still had that Space 1999 quality - they even used the Moonbase Alpha desktop lamps aboard the space station...)

 

I’ll have to watch Maltese Falcon. I got a strong vibe of Han Solo when watching Flying Tigers (1942, with John Wayne) with the braggadocio character of Woody Jason (John Carroll) joining the American Volunteer Group in China immediately before Pearl Harbor, who was 'only in it for the money', and cost lives by not being a team player. The calculated effect was to instill in the viewer a spirit of teamwork and sacrifice (…and purchase war bonds) (…and associate the Battle Hymn of the Republic, written from the first letter as an abolitionist march, with the United States’ moral imperative to free those enslaved by the nouveau not-American empire, where the not-nouveau American empire had interests).


Spoiler

From: http://www.historynet.com/american-volunteer-group-claire-l-chennault-and-the-flying-tigers.htm

Here are set resemblances that one has to choose to assert are purely coincidental in order to construct a George Lucas that is entirely oblivious to the string “2001” and the string “1999” (since the hamburger would not exist without it).

Spoiler

Aries longitudinal tan padding motif around corridor bulkheads. Bridge access is vertical from camera level.




MF longitudinal tan padding motif around corridor bulkheads. Dorsal turret access is vertical from camera level.




Aries latitudinal motif along walls. Motif on seats.



MF latitudinal motif along the corridor walls. Motif on seats.




Discovery interior white padding motif. An additional reference for comparison between the outline of the Aries or Discovery cockpit window and BR cockpit window. The BR's two conic sections can perfectly intersect a sphere. So either conic section retains the bomber origins of the Pirate Ship's cockpit, while both together bridge over to an approximation of a round (prolate) space-age pressurized volume, while not being the bald sphere of either Discovery or Aries. I do not yet understand references that the hammerhead is inspired by a fish head, but that may come in time.

 

One error of the unflawless film, 2001: A Space Odyssey; one error of mine.

Spoiler

From: http://www.moviemistakes.com/film8/pageall



A "conic section" is the ellipse at the end of a "conical frustum". The "conic sections" at both ends of the hammerhead perfectly intersect an (enclosing) sphere. The two "conical frustums" form an approximation of a space-age pressurized volume.

 

^ TBPH and despite being a die-hard fan of 2001, too, I shamefully admit that I had forgotten that the cockpit door of the USS Discovery (wider at the bottom than the top) was apparently the blueprint for the original pirate starship cockpit door (briefly seen behind the reporting stormtroopers, top image left)...



...whose shape was equally adopted for the Falcon cockpit door:



Using the occasion here's a quick heads-up: I'm making good progress towards the final Tantive IV deck plans. However, I had to realize that in order to get a centered main (deck) passageway inside the neck (connecting the hammerhead and the midship section), accomodate the droid labor pool next to Leia's hiding place and to reduce the necessary amount of shrinking the Rogue One corridors to fit inside, the Tantive IV minimum overall length would have to be approx. 155 meters.

That would also be the size suggested by the cockpit door (compare post # 51), which remained in the VFX model's cockpit after the pilot figure got lost, and would yield a life pod diameter of approx. 3.1 meters / 10 feet - so that we can safely assume that the seating area in the Falcon's main hold area is actually something Solo cannibalized from a 'Corellian' (first class) life pod ("first class" because Solo's seating area features segment dividers that weren't there in the first seating area production drawings):



(CGI rendering of Falcon main hold area courtesy of Stinson Lenz)

 

Neat! Are you saying the original set at Elstree stopped at that wall at a trapezoidal door, and then the set that we call the MF cockpit (with the trapezoid door) was on a separate stage, but was called the Pirate Ship cockpit? I can see how Lucas could have thought it was simply unworkable to try to have the entire Pirate Ship interior on that stage. But that raises the question of what the original Pirate Ship cockpit had built behind it for footage where the sliding door was open. It should logically have been that same corridor going back. Or, was the cockpit simply not built until after the commit date to abandon the Pirate Ship Set for use by Han Solo?

The trapezoidal door was definitely contagious.

Spoiler

Eagle cockpit door. Here he was not too concerned to be seen imitating a lesser, because a better had obviously done the same thing.


Discovery cockpit door.

Discovery cross section. Shows the possibility of influences that the Blockade Runner may have felt.


That door motif is the inversion of a normal human profile. Here the film was advancing an element of pure design that possessed no obvious necessity. It certainly separates living (inverted coffin form) from dead ((sleeping in) coffin form).

In #67, I said

Because of the next piece of evidence, I can back track from that firm claim and say it is evidence for a theory that X. Or, I can explain why it is that there is no obvious logical reason for Joe Johnston to have abandoned the single-stage dorsal-orientation landing-leg escape pod design, on September 26, 1975, without an overpowering reason. What I do know is that doing that will require a very long post that tracks a timeline through the changes to the Newly-BR. So I’ll just say for now, the Joe Johnston concept artwork dated September 26, 1975 is ‘evidence for a theory that’, not ‘that’, Lucas’ commit date to deselect the Pirate Ship was no later than September 26, 1975. Or, it is possible that John Barry did not get a memo, or did not act on the force of the memo, and forged ahead with the plan of record. It is ‘only a drawing’, inexpensive. It is a cheaper work to manufacture than the time it required Joe Johnston to detach three fantasy RCS thrusters from each of four dorsal escape pods, add the dorsal post-escape pod turrets, then add four ventral smaller scale escape pods (which in Joe Johnston art each have two fantasy RCS thrusters, but which on the prop at the Tunisia shooting location had (non-fantasy) four, that apparently broke off...).


John Barry, Pirate Ship, November, 1975.


Rinzler Making of, page 212-214. John Barry, Interior (“Kit”? Typo crossed out?) Same. (I think he started the word “same” in lower case then crossed it out to write “Same” capitalized.) I’m quite sure that this date is for 1975, not 1976, by comparing other John Barry “1975’s” from his Tatooine sketches. I can try to demonstrate that if anyone wants. The thing that is right away interesting is the split at the end of this corridor. Does that indicate awareness of needing to use the pentagon?


John Barry, Alternate Interior, 1976. Trying a different wall aesthetic. Reincorporates the engineering area bulkhead design from the Pirate Ship. Because I assign the preceding art to 1975, it seems to me that the preceding 1975 art which says “Same” had a predecessor, to be same to, that is not available to the Internet right now. Whereas an “alternate” view date 1976 allows that he was trying out a wall design (on the right) that did not satisfy, and did not proceed. It IS, however, a motif that appears in the ESB SD bridges, and I hand that off…


John Barry, “Interior Imperial Ship”, 1976. Very little difference to the final set. Hard to avoid seeing the thoughts of the designer, “2001-ish”.

From: http://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/star-wars/245709/star-wars-10-unsung-heroes-behind-a-new-hope

After attempting to parse John Barry influences from Ralph McQuarrie influences, I see that a pretty large post would be needed to trace the influence by image from McQuarrie through Alex Tavoularis through to Barry. In his "Laser duel" dated February 14-15, 1975 (Rinzler Making of, page 37), McQuarrie used three distinct elements: a wall lined with shallow fuse box panels, an air duct with clear vertical vents that actually say "I am an air duct", and quarter circle crown molding.

Rinzler says on page 35 that Alex Tavoularis was hired "mid-February 1975 to draw out storyboards of the opening sequence to help calculate the costs of those special effects shots." Rinzler Storyboards p11 has Tavoularis versions of the Rebel Ship that are Discovery-like and consistent with the very earliest Colin Cantwell (who had worked on 2001) drawing of the Rebel Ship which was the 2001: A Space Odyssey version of Discovery plus two extra bulbs on stalks behind the round cockpit. So, a working chassis for the Rebel Ship. The Tavoularis Discovery-Rebel-Ship lasts up until the end of Storyboards page 13. Starting on page 14, Rinzler shows Tavoularis storyboards that show a Rebel Ship that has now been de-Discovery-ized by giving it a conic cockpit and a large rectangular block right behind the cockpit, which makes comprehensible the extensive grid of wide corridors that accommodate a large battle. Perhaps this change only signifies that Cantwell's model became available for use on storyboards. (Tavoularis' version is not an obviously flattened hexagon, and his version of the conical cockpit is not Cantwell's.)

On Rinzler Storyboards Page 15 the Tavoularis top image shows Tavoularis' adaptation of the McQuarrie motif, now an air duct that curves 90 degrees out of the wall and goes up into the ceiling, as well as the (90 degree) round crown molding, at both ceiling and floor level. Tavoularis' air duct, that has no vents, says "I am a conventional air duct you might see in a conventional building and I am not venting my contents into this volume but some other volume".

Now bring in John Barry, under pressure to build a set that gives Lucas more room. He reviews the extant artwork and marries the motifs from McQuarrie and Tavoularis. The air ducts do not announce themselves as air ducts but continue on as a wall structural motif that surrounds the space, best explained as the precursor to the bulkheads we see on in SW77. And John Barry in his own hand asserts the influence of 2001.

What I see clearly now is that there is a great deal of sleight of hand in any narrative that asserts that the Colin Cantwell model we associate with the Blockade Runner (I'll call it "CC01") was only ever initially the Pirate Ship, and was "forced" to become the Rebel Ship just because Space: 1999 came along and looked like the Pirate Ship. Tavoularis' storyboards give the lie to that. I think Lucas knew not to commit to any final role for either of the two long, linear Colin Cantwell models. The Colin Cantwell model ("CC02") that has a sensor dome at the back of the main pressurized area, the 10 dorsal escape pods behind that, another pronounced flat hexagon motif, an X-array of engines, and is also, going from the windows, at a scale 2-3 times as large as the scale of CC01, is most likely the seed value that gave rise to the 4-3-4 engine array of the modern BR, but also gave rise to the larger scale version of the BR once ILM had performed its emergency maneuver from Pirate Ship (single conic, bomber cockpit) to Newly-BR (hammerhead cockpit still small scale).

It looks to me that Lucas told Tavoularis to do storyboards using CC01 model as a Rebel Ship fleeing the Star Destroyer, but then later, still in 1975, had Tavoularis use the CC01 model to represent the Pirate Ship docking at Prison City (Storyboards page 42-45). Yet later, still in 1975, he had other artists like Joe Johnson commit more firmly to using the CC01 as the basis for the Pirate Ship. Looking at things in 2017, the CC02 has the sense of human scale that is more commensurate with the Blockade Runner than the CC01 ever was. CC02 could have made a good seed value for a capital Leia Rebel Ship, but not a Han Solo Pirate Ship. Whereas, CC01 was smaller scale to begin with and more immediately versatile and easy to place into either conception, and storyboard, and recommended itself more easily to being physically built as a studio model. The studio model that would be based on CC01 would be a sure thing, no matter what role or scale it would finally take. Lucas was able to pivot back to an earlier position because it had been the first position all along, even if it was represented as being an emergency move made at wit's end in the eleventh hour, when there were no other alternatives.

 

Apropos of nothing: I just thought I'd mention that at the latest Celebration I saw original Joe Johnston storyboards of the Death Star fight for sale, in which the X-Wings all had their numbers painted on the aft fuselage (ie, "6" for Red Six), where in the final film the modelmakers stuck a bunch of greeblies.

Stuff like this is why I personally deplore LFL selling that sort of historical record off to collectors... who knows where those boards are now?

Also: really amazing to see the progression of horizontal strips of padding as a starship interior design element. You can even trace its lineage down further to Star Trek TNG and beyond.