Tolwyn: fallen hero or villian?

Well, there are several different incarnations of Tolwyn. There's the WC1-2 Tolwyn, the Malcolm McDowell Tolwyn, the Forstchen Tolwyn and the David Warner / Peter Telep Tolwyn.

Personally, I was talking about the McDowell Tolwyn. Forstchen tends to write him a bit too fatherly for my tastes, except in WC3 where's hes the hardass again. :)
 
Wow... I really hope you aren't going to start arguing that all these are different universes or something...

TC
 
Originally posted by TC
Wow... I really hope you aren't going to start arguing that all these are different universes or something...

TC
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no, but he did change noticably between those times
 
Originally posted by Frosty

Adaptation and evolution are different things. Humans will always adapt; nothing can stop what must be done. All creatures adjust themselves to their surroundings, as well as make efforts to adjust their surroundings to themselves, and it has nothing to do with genetics.
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It has everything to do with genetics. Again, going back to that sickle cell trait I was talking about, why is that gene prsent in much higher numbers in populations exposed to malaria? Simple, because it is selected for. People without it it die much earlier, while those with it live to have kids. The population as a whole becomes adapted to survive in that enviornment.

I doubt, however, that we will ever really evolve any further physically. It's simple, random mutations occur in a species' DNA over long stretches of time. If those mutations make the species' rate of reproduction increase, they stay. If they are a failure, the creatures that have them generally don't stick around too long.

Society has effectively halted any further evolution that might have occurred.

A lot of people say that in the future, people won't have any hair anymore, that we'll have evolved it out. That's a fallacy. A complete lack of body hair would offer no competitive advantage, mostly because we're no longer competing. In fact, it might prove to be a problem, since ugly no-hair people couldn't get h0t dates.
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We stopped our own evolution long ago. Tolwyn's tactics would've achieved nothing more than death. Now if I could only get my hands on some of those bombs... you couldn't imagine how many people I'd program out of existence. [/B]
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Tolwyn's tactics are lose-lose either way. If the situation in the future means that natural selection no longer applies (i.e we've modified and controlled our envoirnment to the point that it isn't how genetically fit you are thta determines your survival, but rather your technology and your social situation) then there is no advantage for the human race in being "genetically pure." All those billions and trillions of people would have died for nothing.

OTH, if the forced constant war does create selection pressures, then the loss of diversity from the loss of most of our gene pool would severely limit our ability to respond to that pressure. Species with diversity in their gene pool can cope with changing envoirnments and situations, while those with limited gene pools tend to stagnate. Agaun, we lose.

Best, Raptor
 
Tolwyn's personality changing...

The way I saw it, in the novels Tolwyn was pretty much always with Banbridge (his mentor) or Jason (his protege), and he was close to both of these men, so... And then in the games, he was with Blair, who he really didn't seem to care for.

Now, tell me. Does anyone here treat a close friend the same way you would someone you don't like?
 
Once again, there's different incarnations of Tolwyn, more so than any other WC character. I listed them below. All of them are correct, its just a matter of which one a person perfers. I perfer the McDowell Tolwyn myself. The comes the Telep / WCM novel Tolwyn, followed by Forstchen's and then WC1 & 2.

They're not from seperate universes or alternate dimensions, just different slants on the man. But when you say Tolwyn, I think of him leaning into the camera lens during the opening movie of WC3, while looking at his tactical screen or overlooking the assembly of the carriers in the beginning of WC4.
 
I don't think the Tolywn's are terribly different, we just see them in different situations.

Like someone said (i don't feel like looking through the thread for who), the WC1/2 Tolywn was your standard hardass military commander who didn't like Blair, so he's going to be alittle hostile. The McDowell Tolywn was pretty much the same, he just went nuts later on. The Warner/Telep Tolywn is seen before he has a reason to not like Blair, and things aren't going terribly bad. So he's not as intensly hardass, but still a tactical genius. The Forstchen Tolywn is usually around people he cares for. So he is going to be almost like a father figure to them. We see the "real", human Tolywn around these people. It seems when he's not around he people he cares for, he keeps a hard exterior about him.
 
The WCM / Telep Tolwyn is very Thrawn-esque. He's cool, composed, quiet and has the utmost respect from his crew. I'd like to point out how hysterically I laughed when Tolwyn said he was going to bomb every Pilgrim enclave because that was what Thrawn would've done.
 
He never turned traitor exactly. He just went overboard with the whold "Save humanity" shtick and engineered an unnessessary war (Unnessessary since the Nephs were coming in a few years) to give himself purpose. That's not turning traitor, that's just screwing up.
 
We see in the WC4's intro that some of the pilots became "lost" after the War. Maybe Tolwyn was like them : he spent his entiere life making war. During peacetime, his life had no more goal...
 
See my big Tolwyn ramble a few pages back for a more detailed idea, Sadic. :)
 
I don't think Tolwyn disliked Blair just because of the whole Traitor thing. I think it's because Blair has a habit of bucking with hardass, by-the-book brass like Tolwyn. Blair tends to have a mind of his own and has his own opinions and that's dangerous in the military, even for a Wing Commander.
 
Why did they cut the courtmartial scene out of WC2??? :(

It would've been great for the development of the relationship!
 
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