Star Wars: Skeleton Crew mystery spacecraft revealed to be Bill George’s Millennium Eagle
The new Disney+ series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew has proven to be a hit with fans young and old, telling a story about four kids accidentally launched on an interstellar adventure aboard a mysterious spacecraft, with plenty of influence from such 80s classics as The Goonies. As they try to get back home, the group encounters the pirate droid SM-33 (voiced by Nick Frost; the name is a leetspeak reference to Captain Hook’s sidekick Mr. Smee, from Peter Pan) and the pirate captain Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law), who happens to be Force-sensitive and has a mysterious past.
In the second episode, “Way, Way Out Past the Barrier,” SM-33 takes the kids to a pirate outpost known as Port Borgo, since he has no idea where their home world of At Attin is located. When they arrive, an establishing shot shows a wide variety of spacecraft in the background, which is as murky as Jod’s history.
It’s the kind of moment that invites fans to press the pause button and scan the scenery, looking for any familiar Star Wars spacecraft. And wouldn’t you know it, one ship in particular stuck out. The podcast Rebel Force Radio was among those speculating that the spaceship in question was actually Colin Cantwell’s original pirate ship design, which later became Princess Leia’s Blockade Runner after George Lucas decided that Colin’s creation was too similar to the Eagle Lander from Space: 1999.
The Millennium Eagle makes its Star Wars spacecraft debut
The truth has turned out to be a Star Wars /Space: 1999 mash-up, courtesy of now-retired ILMer Bill George. It’s a ship known as the Millennium Eagle, and it’s part of a website Bill maintains known as the Sci-Fi Air Show. (More on that below.)
ILM asked Bill to borrow the model so they could scan it. “No one ever told me who was behind the request,” he told me, “but when I was asked, I jumped at the opportunity!” I asked him if that means his Millennium Eagle is now officially part of Star Wars canon, and he replied: “I have no idea, but once a model is made, they tend to show up in other media. I’m just happy it made it into the background as kind of a ‘cameo’ appearance.”
Bill told me that the creation of the Millennium Eagle came about because “I’ve always loved the story of how the Pirate Ship design was changed as it was felt it looked too much like the Eagle from Space: 1999. My original concept was to do a mash-up of the two ships. That wasn’t hard at all as they do have similar proportions.”
He added: “The design I pulled from was the completed model of the Pirate Ship before it was redressed as the Rebel Blockade Runner. There are old photos of that particular model out there. I also used the landing gear design from the Ralph McQuarrie paintings. The look of the Pirate Ship evolved from Colin’s prototype models, but they were the genesis of it all.”
See Colin’s Star Wars Spacecraft
More Star Wars spacecraft speculation
Pierre Salard, who runs the Star Wars spacecraft-focused Spaceshipper account on X (formerly known as Twitter), was someone else also wondering about that mystery ship in Port Borgo. He told me: “When I looked up which ships were in Port Borgo, I double-checked. Was I dreaming? Could it be a diplomatic ship in the background? A CR90 corvette?
“And then I noticed a few details, and that’s when I realized it was the original pirate ship, to which I’d already dedicated a thread of several dozen tweets and which would become the Tantive IV [also known as Princess Leia’s Blockade Runner] in the film, although it was originally intended to be the Millennium Falcon. But the story is well known: Space: 1999 had just begun, and George Lucas found the design of the pirate ship too close to the famous Eagle Lander — another bird. And that’s how we got both the Falcon and Tantive IV designs.”
He added: “So to recognize this pirate ship design in the show, what a joy! It’s an affectionate nod to those who love the saga’s creation story. Plus, if you look closely, it seems to me they’ve made this design look even more like an Eagle, which made me smile. It’s really a fun, cute wink. Half a century later, nothing has been forgotten. And that’s all that matters.” (You can also follow him on the relatively new social media platform Bluesky.)
See Colin’s Star Wars Spacecraft
“It’s hard to imagine Star Wars without Colin’s artistic contribution”
Pierre and Bill are among the many Star Wars fans who have deep appreciation for Colin Cantwell’s work, although the former notes that he’d like more people to know about him: “Colin’s contribution to the creation of Star Wars is simply enormous, yet relatively unknown,” Pierre told me. “As the franchise’s first concept artist, he bridged the gap between George Lucas and Ralph McQuarrie / Joe Johnston. He was the first to draw George Lucas’s designs for the galaxy far, far away.
“His drawings and study models permeated the rest of the original film’s pre-production, influencing everything that followed. The TIE Fighter, Star Destroyer, Death Star and many other sci-fi vehicles all took their first form in his hands. Of course, other artists refined his work, but it was Colin who paved the way, allowing to refine and iterate designs that have since become iconic. Colin is a secret hero of movie making.”
Bill George said: “Colin contributed so much and right at the very beginning. The prototypes he constructed were of the many iconic designs we are all familiar with. It’s hard to imagine Star Wars without his artistic contribution.”
He added: “I met Colin briefly when I was working on Blade Runner and he came through the model shop. Years later, he was working as a CG artist on a commercial I was directing at a company called Metrolight. A few years ago at Wonderfest, I purchased a signed print of his X-Wing sketch. It was such a thrill, but I tried not to be too much of a fan boy.” (I asked Bill which commercial it was, but he couldn’t remember.)
See Colin’s Star Wars Spacecraft
Welcome to the Sci-Fi Air Show
And how about Bill’s Sci-Fi Air Show website? He may have more time for that project in the future, now that he’s retired and resettled in San Diego with his husband. He’s currently working on fixing up the home they bought, but he expects to find more projects when that one is done. “I still make models for fun,” he told me. (He wrote his answers in an email, but I like to think there was a little twinkle in Bill’s eye when he wrote that.)
The concept behind the Sci-Fi Air Show is a pretty simple one: What if the spacecraft we all know and love from many science-fiction movies and TV shows really existed at their full size, and could be put on display for the public to enjoy? Thanks to Bill’s modeling skills and ability to use Photoshop, that little dream became a reality, at least online.
He explained: “It’s my own personal fantasy that a lot of people seem to share. The idea is that for TV shows and movies, producers actually built functioning spaceships for use in production. If that happened, the natural progression would be that years later someone would gather many of the ships into a traveling airshow. I came up with the stories and for the images photographed models I built and Photoshopped them into background stills I took at real airshows.”
