Building The Millennium Falcon: Dejarik

Historical photos of the Millennium Falcon, original designation YT-1300 492727ZED has been unearthed from the Corellian Ship Yard archives.  This series covers all of them.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the famous Dejarik game was installed early in the construction phase of the Falcon. The reason for this is lost to the mists of time, but the prevailing theory is that the foreman's kids needed a place to hang out after school.

The main Dejarik module is built off-site, and installed into the frame of the spacecraft.

Once the game system was installed, high paid tech workers swooped in and programmed it.  It takes a long time to properly tune the game, as each creature in the game is trained like a Tamagotchi, making each game unique*.

It is due to the unique way this game is programmed that I don't think the game is installed early because the foreman needed a place for his kids to play after school.  However I do think it is likely that the real truth is that the foreman had a teenage nephew that he described thusly. "That boy is really good with those comp-u-tor thangs.  I can never figure it out me-self, but he knows how to make web pages for his pet tribble**.  He's a lazy mofo, but with comp-u-tors he's like a genius or something, so I did my sister  a favour and gave him a job with the game thinger."

Those of you in IT will also recognize this line of thinking on the part of the foreman as the likely cause for why the game pieces flicker a lot when playing.

I suspect similar stories are behind the high quality of the ships light speed drive.

* This is not an actual fact

** yeah, I know it seems odd for the nephew to have a pet from the Star Trek universe, when he is clearly based in the Star Wars universe, and you are likely all feeling smugly superior that you recognized that fact.  Good for you!  However I would point out that there is a lot of evidence that Star Wars is based in our universe, and you can, right now if you wish, visit the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, USS Enterprise, making it also our universe, so it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch now does it, you smugly superior sum-bitch.

Building The Millennium Falcon: The Main Frame

Historical photos of the Millennium Falcon, original designation YT-1300 492727ZED has been unearthed from the Corellian Ship Yard archives.

This photo shows the back frame being attached to the main spine of the ship.  Notice the large crane elevating and moving the large structure into place.  Also notice Bossk in the bottom left, during his early years he supplemented his bounty hunter income by working as a delivery boy in the shipyards.

Once the frame was maneuvered into place, workers welded large bolts to firmly attach it to the giant spine of the craft.

After a hard days work, the crew enjoys a well deserved lunch break.

Building The Millennium Falcon: The Beginning

I have always liked the historical photos of large ships being built.  Perhaps you know the ones I mean, of ships like the Titanic under construction in Northern Ireland. (If not, click here)

So as some of find regular readers of this very fine blog may recall, I have recently come into possession of the largest LEGO kit ever put up for retail sale. A full minifig scale model of the Millennium Falcon.

Building that will be a project in itself, and it will lead to more photographic projects.  However I wanted to capture the building of the Falcon itself - not in time-lapse or anything mundane like that, but rather in the style of those old timey photos of the gigantic ships of old.

This new series is what this project is about.  As I build the Falcon I am going to be taking said photos, and posting them here.

To kick it off, like all building projects, we'll start by studying the blueprints.

I am going to be taking my time to build the model, and will release photos as I go.  There are 17 bags of parts, and I am on bag 3, so I suspect this will be a summer long project.  Stay tuned to this blog for updates!

Entries in this series

• Building The Millennium Falcon: The Main Frame
• Building The Millennium Falcon: Dejarik
• Building The Millennium Falcon: Outer Hull
• more coming soon