Message from Robert Brown
Because some members here asked for his opinion, I am trying to pull Bob to this board. To no avail yet, but I got at least the following message from him:
***********************************************************
It's been a long time since I thought about the Falcon (which I called the "ship of riddles") much, and I am very rusty on the details. I gather the "365 days" images have caused some debate. I don't really see it as much of a controversy, but I gather some people wondered what I might have said on the matter, so here is my opinion. I believe the maquette is designed to model the "built filming set" rather than the real ship 'per se'.
We know that:
(a) filming sets do not match exterior designs or "common sense" ship design principles (cf: the illogical movable maze of Blockade Runner corridors - set designs for film & tv in every genre are usually dominated by short, relatively cheap, movable & re-usable corridor sections with plenty of bends &/or corners)
(b) we know the ANH & TESB interiors were built separately from the exterior & from the ILM ship models. We also know the TESB 'exterior' cockpit (a quasi interior they somehow shoe-horned Peter Mayhew into!) was considerably undersized when compared to the true standalone "hero" cockpit interior filming set.
(c) we know that the TESB Elstree Studio exterior was around 30%~40% undersized (the latest "Haynes" work is to be congratulated for finally accepting (and improving on the accuracy of) that figure (and forcing it upon the LFL thought-police, a great achievement)). I first rescaled the ship size to 34.8m about 14 years ago (
STAR WARS: The Millennium Falcon) though curiously, the Haynes authors didn't see fit to grant me any form of acknowledgement. Previously, Doctors Reynolds & Saxton were academically polite enough to do so in their texts, even though they did not adopt my analyses for the most part. I gather that Chris.T has since kindly acknowledged the omission on this board - so thanks for that. Nice to know there's still some real people hiding in the evil empire. I knew there was some good in there; the Emperor hadn't driven it from them fully!
QUESTIONS:
Q* could the maquette 'medical room' actually have fitted into the ship?
A* Yes. Once you scale up the exterior, as you must (it's official now!), it could be installed under the Haynes design (though headroom is getting tight in there because their forward hold is off centre to portside) and it could easily fit under my own deckplan design (as expertly rendered by the talented Frank V. Bonura)
http://web.archive.org/web/20000914162355/http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/mf/frank666.jpg)
Q* is it an accurate depiction of the "real" ship
A* No. Footage of the interior from the movies clearly show that there is no doorway in the north west (port shoulder) corner of the forward hold to anywhere. (
STAR WARS: The Millennium Falcon)
If such a room existed where the maquette shows it to be, then it must be accessed from somewhere off the western (port) arm of the ring corridor.
Personally I believe that particular space (if not filled with infrastructure or mechanism etc) is probably occupied by a relatively low-headroom cargo storage area (possibly even under vacuum) which is usually autoloaded by the front mandible cargo handling system (another interpretation of mine that the Haynes people have benefitted from).
The TESB footage of the "medical bunk" room in TESB (even the extended BluRay footage) was deliberately vague. It offers only enough to be sure that it is NOT the bunk behind the holochess-set. Personally, I believe the medical bunk is in one of the crew accommodation areas, in the outer quadrants of the ship (ie: outside the ring corridor) possibly West-North-West (immediately forward of the port docking arm, an area filled by an odd eccentric section of ring corridor in the Haynes plan), West-South-West (immediately aft of the portside docking arm) or East-South-East (aft of the starboard docking arm).
ASIDE:
An unrelated observation that I don't think I ever made entirely clear on my old website and always meant to clarify: The floor level of the ring corridor is about 150mm higher than the forward hold (this much is well known, I am sure (
STAR WARS: The Millennium Falcon))
so; it is just possible that virtually all the other floored spaces (including the engine bay - which BTW should be full of engines, as the exterior model suggests and as Joe.J knew) are also ~150mm lower than the ring corridor; ie, at the same height as the forward-hold deck level. This makes sense, particularly in the outer areas, as it offsets the rapidly shrinking headroom at the edge of the saucer just a little. The deck height of the gun ladder corridor and docking arms are at ring corridor height (the corridor to the cockpit must actually slope upwards, as we see no evidence for steps, because the cockpit itself is considerably elevated from the ring corridor. Configursation of the interior artificial grav deflectors probably makes it "feel" flat to walk up though (as with the gun pits, which are 90 degrees from horizontal)). The deck height in the circuitry bay (the kissing scene) is at the lower level, same as the forward hold, which suggests this same level for other (if not all) "non-ring corridor" spaces.
just my 2c
and please remember I DON'T HAVE THE ANSWERS (and neither does anyone else!)
SO THINK FOR YOURSELVES ... coz that's where the fun begins
best regards to you, last of the free-thinkers
B^2 (PhD)
***********************************************************
Cheers!
Falk