On that note, I've seen one or two articles that suggested either Roberts or Garriott originally wanted to base the game on a Star Wars license. Neither of the articles was something I would consider credible, though - would you happen know if there's any truth to this?
I have heard this, but I think it still qualifies as an urban legend -- because no one has been able to tell me that it's true, just that it's something they heard about while working at Origin. It doesn't fit everything I know about how Wing Commander was developed, which included the rough concept for the storyline with the initial proposal.
I'm somwehat suspicious of the 'Star Wars' story because it didn't appear until there was sort of a formal competition between X-Wing and Wing Commander. It's essentially an anecdote which respons to a situation no one had actually imagined happening in 1989.
Garriott has a number of these 'we showed them!' stories assosciated with him... but I'm not sure that any of them are actually true. There's another one about how he called off SNES development because Nintendo was angry that Origin was developing ports of games for the Genesis... and as often as it gets repeated, no one ever points out that Origin *did* continue to develop for the SNES until long after the system was obsolete.
Now, it certainly could have been true - but if it is, it's probably a lot less minor than it seems. More akin to Origin demo'ing the in-developing Wing Commander for Lucasarts after it was already working and casually inquiring about the Star Wars license than Origin setting out to do anything but develop a game that captures the sense of Star Wars.
(A whole slew of 'haha, Origin is dumb' stories also fit into this catergory. One common claim among former employees is that Origin turned down the rights to publish Myst. This just doesn't make sense, since Origin wasn't a *publisher* in 1993... and Cyan wasn't some out-of-nowhere development house that needed to license the Origin name for themselves.)
Eh, while I'm far more interested in working out how Action Stations can be combined with the movie rather than with yelling about how the movie is bad because it's different to Action Stations, I must nonetheless point out that you're stretching things a bit here.
Firstly, Action Stations doesn't mention aliens - it says outright that there hasn't been any war for over a century (p.18). Secondly, even if it had only referred to alien wars, the overall meaning of the passage is pretty specific. Senator Jamison More is questioning why Confed needs to spend money on a fleet that has nothing to do - that really doesn't mesh that well with a Confederation that has just built the Grand Fleet to take on the Pilgrim Alliance. The great huge irony here is that even as Jamison More speaks his piece, the Confed Grand Fleet is fighting against the Pilgrims. It hasn't just finished fighting - it is fighting, and the war is not yet anywhere near won. Even more ironic is the fact that the Confederation has effectively been engaged in a cold war against the Pilgrims since the very moment it first tried to colonise the universe - so why talk about how safe it is and how we can cut fleet expenditures?
Allright, I think this is probably a good discussion to have at this point.
What I was trying to say was that Action Stations clearly divides between whole scale war and minor actions, because we see the latter presented in the novel - you're right that I haven't actually looked at the wording in a long time.
Lets think about scale, though.
Consider Orange Five, the 'limited war' ("phony war", at one point in the book) that everyone in Action Stations shrugs off of being unimportant. It doesn't involve putting the fleet on alert, the "peace party" politicians don't consider it a war (all the claims characters in the book make about the need for the fleet are said either while it is going on or with the assumption that it is going to happen). In nine days (.186 to .195) of this plan, the Confederation captures "half a dozen bases and four systems"
Also from Action Stations, speaking to the subject of scale: the size of the military action alluded to earlier... terrorists threatening to destroy an entire colony. Five years earlier that same Confederation lost an entire colony, Fawcett's World, to the Kilrathi without
ever even knowing it.
Now, compare this to the Pilgrim War -- four Kilrathi planets in the Facin Sector is a quarter the size of the entire Pilgrim Alliance! It's only one fewer planet in nine days than the Confederation took in five months of fighting the Pilgrim Alliance. Furthermore, at the time Action Stations begins, this fighting is over and has been for over two months. From 2634.078 (before Action Stations starts) to 2634.302 (after Action Stations ends) consists of the fleet blockading a single planet (Peron, in the Luyten System).
Also note that the animosity towards Pilgrims doesn't come from the actual fighting - once the Confederation set its mind to taking out the Pilgrim Alliance, they seem to have done so with reletive ease. The reason the Pilgrims are so loathed is because of their early attacks - slave labor and mass executions on Celeste and "more remote colonies". I can't help but liken these incidents more to the terrorists threatening to destroy a planet or the loss of an entire colony ship because it was so remote than I can to galactic warfare on the scale of the Terran/Kilrathi conflict.
It also seems important to note that the Confederation military doesn't lose any battles in this war. The attack on Port of Titan is repelled -- and it doesn't even result in the declaration of war. The Confederation fleet goes on to march through the Pilgrim colonies and demand a surrender, once sufficiently provoked. The Pilgrim Alliance expected to fight a full scale war, but found the Confederation to be its military superiors. The present fleet, to the likes of Senator More, is completely adequate for its task - it's problem is that its leadership is more interested in building toys (a pair of Grand Fleets) than serving a purpose defending Celeste and the other remote olonies attacked by Pilgrims. This is apparently a political point of debate, as it shows up in the Tolwyn interview.
Also, there's the matter of Tolwyn. Apparently, Ensign Tolwyn, at the moment when he sinks his career by speaking out against Senator More, is already a Rear Admiral (having earned his first star for his role in designing the Grand Fleet). It is remarkable that nobody has heard of this young man... who has already been awarded the Conroy Medal and a Senatorial Commendation for his work designing software controlling Grand Fleet manoeuvres. Under these circumstances, it's tempting to suggest that the Tolwyn from the movie is different than the one from the games.
Again, I'm not saying this to try to prove how the movie doesn't fit with the games - I grew out of that phase many years ago . What I am interested in is how this can be explained.
The relevant passage: "He earned his first star before his fortieth birthday, as en engineer building the first Grand Fleet in the Pilgrim war. A few months alter, he gave up the star to take command of his first battle-ship, as part of the Second Grand Fleet."
I think the key here is that the handbook is particularly vauge about Tolwyn. He wasn't responsible for "designing the Grand Fleet", he served "as an engineer building the first Grand Fleet in the Pilgrim war". Chris Reid works at Boeing, he didn't design the 777.
The idea of his being a "Rear Admiral" isn't stated, either - instead we have the vauge 'earned his first star'. Is that about promotion (it is, I have trouble making sense of it -- he demoted himself so he could command a ship? That's like drinking to stay sober.), or is it about his reputation (his 'star is rising', and he gave up on engineering to be a fighting officer?)... or, in the unique context of Wing Commander, is it about a martial award of some sort? I don't think it's impossible that he (like Blair!) would have pursued an engineering degree at the academy, and then put that to use serving with Maj. Blair as a midshipman (in 2633).
(As for commanding a battleship in the Second Grand Fleet -- that much is easy, as the Second Grand Fleet is launched *after* Action Stations, a novel that ends with Tolwyn's being made a line commander...)
I did some work on a Tolwyn bio quite a while ago, combining the various notes about his history into a coherent history. It's nowhere near done, but I'll put up what I wrote for your consideration (as long as you realize that I haven't even thought about it in months -- if there's interest I'll try to continue it.):
https://www.wcnews.com/loaf/tolwynbio.doc
A note for those observing this conversation: While the general desire is to claim that the movie 'contradicted' Action Stations, consider several points. - Action Stations is a licensed novel while the Wing Commander movie was written and directed by the creator of the series. - Action Stations was published after the movie was written and filmed. - Action Stations is not a 'Wing Commander novel', it's a 'novel in Wing Commander' - the conceit of the book is that you're reading a book someone in the Wing Commander universe wrote. I personally don't believe any of these things matter in terms of deciding continuity... but if you're preparing to complain about the movie, keep these facts in mind first.