Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Following yesterday's poll results showing "Chain of Command" to be fandom's favorite Wing Commander Academy episode, LeHah has posted an article in which he corresponds with the episode's writer, Brooks Watchel! The e-mails cover his work on Exosquad and Academy and include lots of interesting trivia and information about the process behind writing an episode of our favorite show.
I had worked with Ralph Sanchez and the Mark & Michael Edens on "ExoSquad." They liked my work (did 4 episodes). WCA was in the same arena as ExoSquad, so they asked me to write one. Mark Edens came up with most of the story lines (as he did on ExoSquad). My father was career navy, so ships, aircraft and the military atmosphere were part of my childhood. I tried to put that ambiance into my scripts.
There was one big difference between ExoSquad and WCA. On ExoSquad we wrote as we liked and only got notes from the story editors and studio. On WCA there was another layer - the network. If you compare my first draft to the aired episode (and forgive me, it's been a decade since I've seen it) you'll note the military atmosphere (jargan, etc.) is more prevalent on the page than screen. I got the impression that the network exec (and I don't know who it was) was uncomfortable with things military and those aspects were toned down. At least that was my impression.
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Original update published on April 17, 2006
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