Well, the difference is that Kirk is still just a human after all, and his father being a bigwig doesn't change the entire fictional universe. It's also known that Kirk is big war hero with lots of medals and stuff. Him being from a family of military big names isn't that surprising. It's a lot less surprising for sure than Blair being part space god.
I disagree--I think that just like Wing Commander, the retcon about Kirk's family significantly changes something fundamental about the Star Trek world (and unlike Wing Commander, I'm not necessarily okay with it). Until Star Trek XI we were lead to believe that Kirk was a great man because he was this pinnacle of Roddenberry's humanism--a shining example of the best man can accomplish. But then the new movie says no, it's because The Force. He's great because he was always destined to be great and even if he lives his life differently he's still going to be that guy. Whether the new backstory about his father is signifier or signified is a matter for debate, I suppose, but either way (like the Pilgrim story) it feels positively unearned. Trek XI treats it like a great reveal that Kirk's father had been alive in the other timeline and was an influence to him... which is all news to 40 preceding years of stories.
And my feeling is that in Wing Commander it *doesn't matter* like it does in Star Trek. Wing Commander is a new movie for a new audience that doesn't know Blair from Adam... and the addition to his backstory is so slight and insignificant as to not matter to anyone, whereas in Star Trek it changes everything you know about the world.
To get back to my "Kirk being part alien" analogy: The species Kirk's grandfather belonged to (let's call them "seekers", that's their Federation nickname because they seeked for some artefact in Fed space and killed lots in the process ) also had a devastating war with the Federation that was crucial to its whole history, we learn for example that the first contact with the Cardassians was due to seeker influence and that seekers looked very much like humans and so infiltrated humanity and interbred with them. Also the warp drive as it is used in the TNG era is based mostly on the technology of the seekers. Furthermore, suddenly other important and established characters (like Paladin in the movie...) would have seeker heritage. Scotty's mother for example would have been a seeker.
You sure hate Pilgrims!
... just like Commander Gerald.
Seriously, though, you're taking your analogy too far--trying to make us think of Pilgrims as some kind of alien monster instead of ordinary humans with a crazy religion. Here's Blair's mom:
Not some kind of alien! (... although her goofy collar does look positively... uh... Pilgrim.)
Wasn't there a Deep Space Nine--a REALLY GOOD Deep Space Nine--where we retcon that Doctor Bashir had been an amazing doctor the whole time not because he was some superior individual but because his parents had him genetically enhanced... which was banned because of a devastating war with the Federation that was crucial to its whole... and so on.
You must admit that my impression is a lot closer to the info the movie gave us than your long winded explanation that comes from the books.
If the movie wanted to tell us that the Pilgrims alone started the war and there are still billions of them left, it did an extremely bad job in doing so.
I disagree, if for no other reason than that in thirteen years of talking about this no one else has ever mentioned getting this impression from the movie.
I think that thought is what started Daimon Karnes down his lonely path. Hell, for all we know, he might have bear witness to the Peron massacre.
Interesting side-note--Peron is a planet in the Luyten system... so you were actually defending it at one point in Secret Ops!
For those interested in what the Peron Massacre was: as the war swung in favor of the Confederation they began island hopping through the Pilgrim Alliance with the aim of reaching McDaniel's World... and Peron was the planet where the Pilgrims decided to make their last stand. It came down to a bloody seven month long siege of the planet with neither side willing to give up... which finally ended when a second Confederation fleet was readied. The planet was devastated in the process and the Pilgrims, now realizing the Confederation's resources and resolve, opted to surrender rather than allow the same thing to happen to their core worlds.
The geography of the Pilgrim Alliance actually comes from the WCU map, which has a cluster of 'religious sounding' systems in the lower right hand corner of the Sol Sector.
Paladin, it's one in a million who can jump a Quasar.
Note that 'one in a million' is still a heck of a lot of a people in a universe with trillions of humans.
So no, Blair doen't really have faith in his ability to make the jump. Paladin's comment isn't whether the pilgrim ability is scientific or not. It's about Blair himself.
There's also a "you aren't alone" aspect to it. Blair isn't the only one who struggled with his heritage and decided to stay with the Confederation--Paladin has been there, and understands... and still carries his cross himself.
One last musing--I'm thinking whoever came up with the Pilgrim name was probably just not an American. To someone outside the US it's probably a perfectly cromulent name, meaning religious seekers/travellers... it's only here that we assosciate it specifically with New Englanders and turkeys.
Whether it's genetics or faith isn't that important for the movie though.
Being able to navigate through space by faith alone is actually cooler and is less of a cliche than the "superhuman through super genes" stuff.
Sci fi is full of genetic supermen, but being actually able to have "powers" because of faith or mental training alone is more interesting. Actually I can only think of the various schools in Dune, in which the training gives superman powers that comes close to this concept. Star Wars doesn't count anymore, because of the addition of "Midi-Chlorians" and its AIDS-Test like "force testing kit".
Training and magic worm juice.
(Okay, okay, not the Suk doctors... but still.)
You're exaggerating the Pilgrim ability again, though--it's not some superhuman thing... it's an ordinary genetic option that ordinary people could have, but that Pilgrims *do* have.
And it's not the actual power of the Pilgrims or how those powers came to be what's wrong with them, but how they were included into the movie, out of nowhere. Major characters are suddenly Pilgrims, the technology of jumping being based on their technology/ability, huge subplot about a all-encompassing war and discrimination introduced as if it's common knowledge etc.
It's funny, I threw on Expendable last night before bed... and there's actually a bit where Blair does his Pilgrim navigation thing. They come out of the jump point, spot the Kilrathi... and Payback has to cover Blair while he calculates the jump, complete with the same punching-a-keypad action from the movie. I don't know if it was intentional (the script probably existed at the time) or not, but it was kind of neat either way.
The ideal time for the movie would have been just before Wing Commander 3, using the novels End Run and Fleet Action as main source but concentrate the focus on Blair. (We all know he fought at the Battle of Earth) This way way most actors from WC3 and 4 would appear and you have a full rugged war story with intrigues, action, doomsdays and all the stuff you want in a movie. So what if the main people wouldn't be young athletes, they are damn war veterans in the worst war mainkind has ever seen, damn.
We know he fought at the Battle of Earth... because he was retconned there by a later story
There was never any chance that you would see the Wing Commander III and IV casts (with the exception of Malcolm McDowell and maybe John Rhys-Davies) in a Wing Commander movie. They're just two entirely different strata of productions.