Pareidolia is the phenomenon where people see familiar patterns and images emerging from random backgrounds. Think the Man in the Moon, or a fervent religious believer spotting the image of the Virgin Mary in their cheese toastie.
But one keen-eyed Twitter user has managed to draw an even more unexpected connection. As Jayne Hunt quite correctly points out, this drab housing estate in Wales is a dead spit for the Millennium Falcon, the spaceship piloted by Harrison Ford’s Han Solo in Star Wars.
According to director George Lucas, the design of the iconic spaceship was cobbled together in a hurry from a hamburger and an olive. The estate is likely to have taken a bit more thought than that, but it is tempting to imagine it’s the handiwork of a lonely Star Wars fan, holed up in a fusty office somewhere in Caerphilly and fantasising about the ship said to be “fast as a bat-falcon and resilient enough to last a millennium.”
In a neat coincidence, the Millennium Falcon as seen in the original trilogy was actually built in a hanger in Wales. A huge scale model of the flying saucer was constructed in secrecy in Pembroke, before being transported to Pinewood Studios for shooting.
Up close, none of the local landmarks on the estate look like they’d appeal to location scouts hunting out sets for the forthcoming Star Wars sequels, though “Lywn-On Crescent” could perhaps lend its name to a Jedi like Obi-Wan Kenobi. But perhaps the series could undergo a gritty Welsh reboot on S4C, with the lead roles taken by Dai Vader and Look-You Skywalker.
The Millennium Falcon is, apparently, a highly modified Corellian Engineering Corporation (CEC) YT-1300 light freighter, 34 metres long and equipped with laser cannons and concussion missiles. It can jump into hyperspace in an instant, enabling Han to flee from his adversaries.
The estate in Oakdale, Caerphilly, is many times larger, but uncannily similar in design to the Falcon. It comes equipped with a Co-op and a rugby club, but reports that it is capable of faster-than-light travel remain unsubstantiated.
