Setting the stage for a wondrous reveal
It’s a tense moment toward the end of “The Daughters of Ferrix,” the 11th episode in the first season of the TV show Andor on Disney Plus: Luthen Rael, a key member of the nascent Rebel Alliance, is on his way back to Coruscant when his conversation with his assistant, Kleya Marki, is interrupted mid-transmission.
Luthen is ordered to identify his ship, and he directs his onboard computer to concoct a forged identity. He does his best to stall the dour commander in charge while his computer comes up with a suitable transponder ID, giving us a chance to see the bridge of this ship that likely seemed new to most viewers.
The incident is likely bad news for Luthen. As his ship attempts to escape, we see the source of the interruption: an Imperial cruiser with three ominous dishes has spotted his craft and is in pursuit. It’s not as large as a standard Star Destroyer, but it still has the potential to disrupt his mission.
After Luthen transmits the ID, he asks his computer to identify the other ship. “Arrestor Cruiser,” it replies. “Cantwell class. Three klicks and closing.”
Cantwell class? Did we hear that right?
We did. The Imperial starcraft harassing Luthen is based on one of Colin Cantwell’s earliest Star Destroyer designs. The special effects wizards at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) had plucked Colin’s concept painting out of the archives, gave it a major role in a scene in a Star Wars show, and made sure it was entered into Star Wars canon with his name on it. (Technically, this cruiser made its first appearance even earlier than that; more on that below.)
Of course, Star Wars fans who have plumbed the depths of the making of the original trilogy already knew about that painting. Fans like Peter Briggs, co-writer of the 2004 movie Hellboy and someone who not only pored over every detail of the original movies as a kid but even had a chance to tour the Return of the Jedi sets in London one day in 1982.
“I have a particular obsession with what we now call the Arrestor Cruiser — a 1974 Colin Cantwell design for George Lucas’ mighty Star Destroyer,” Briggs recalls. “Colin had already tried his hand with a Star Destroyer that looked something like a cross between a stacked World War I Naval Dreadnaught and the Flatiron Building in New York, but when pictures were published of Colin’s long, sleek javelin-head Destroyer with the big radar dishes (originally intended by Colin to be anti-ship/space-to-land lasers) … I was in love.”
As if his younger self had been reading the future mindset of the ILM crew, Briggs continues: “It was the one specific design of Colin’s that looked as if you could take it straight off the page, put it in the middle of an Imperial fleet, and it would still look right at home. A keen toy collector (and amateur modeler), I coveted a three dimensional representation of the Javelin Destroyer for years, but couldn’t find time to fudge one together.”
A day that would be long-remembered
In the meantime, Briggs had been chatting with Colin as the 2018 release of Solo: A Star Wars Story neared, and a friend let him know that not only was Hot Wheels going to release a die-cast toy of Colin’s ship, but it was going to be a piece of official merchandise from the movie too.
He remembers: “I was there opening day for Solo to see the mighty ship — now called an Arrestor Cruiser — in action. What a swizz! We got a brief shot in an Imperial recruitment video at the Correlia Spaceport, looking elegant and menacing alongside a Star Destroyer … and that was it!”
However, Briggs and other fans found their disappointment short-lived, since the home video release of Solo featured a cut scene in which the Arrestor Cruiser played a prominent role. In fact, it was even the ship a young Han Solo was assigned to.
Four years later, Briggs finally felt some vindication when he saw that aforementioned scene in Andor: “Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael has his Fondor starship halted in orbit above the planet Segra-Milo by a prowling Arrestor Cruiser (even identified onscreen as ‘Cantwell Class,’ finally giving Colin his legendary onscreen status!), its dishes now gigantic tractor-beam arrays that prove ineffective against Luthen’s tricked-out spycraft. And 12-year-old me was finally happy.”
As were so many other Star Wars fans who always longed for one of Colin’s designs to make its way into the franchise’s official canon. Sadly, he didn’t live to see that episode of Andor, but he had been thrilled by his ship’s appearance in Solo. He had a concrete place in Star Wars that no one could take from him.
And speaking of a concrete place, how about a 34-inch-long physical model of Colin’s ship? That’s what Andy Preston created for a video on his YouTube channel, and we’re going to share that here:
We’ll leave you with a pair of videos featuring digital versions of the Cantwell-class Arrestor Cruiser. They were created by the talented person behind the Imperial Cinematic channel on YouTube and used with their permission.
*Star Wars © & ™ 2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC. All rights reserved. Used under authorization. COURTESY OF LUCASFILM LTD.