Classic Keith Confusion Continues

The seventh and final Baen Wing Commander novel has a pretty famous error: the cover incorrectly credits the novel to William Keith instead of his brother and fellow author Andrew Keith. Fans caught the error just as the book was going to press; it was too late to change the cover. Andrew Keith had a sense of humor about the mistake, Baen apologized profusely and updated all of their digital marketing material. When False Colors was issued as an eBook, a corrected cover was included.

Andrew Keith tragically died several months after False Colors was published. He was a friend of the Wing Commander community and is greatly missed. His brother William provided an obituary for the October 1999 issue of Locus (#465) and took the opportunity to make sure the world knew that False Colors was his brother's work. It's a lovely read:

[John] Andrew Keith, 41, brother of, and some-time collaborator with, William H. Keith, died August 7, 1999 of double pulmonary thrombosis — massive clots in both lungs.

"...The onset was extremely sudden; he called me late Friday night complaining of nothing more than a slight weakness and shortness of breath. I got him to the hospital, and he died two hours later. He was not married; with our parents' deaths these past two years, I was the last family he had.

"Like me, Andrew was a full-time novelist, with most of his work in science fiction and military technothrillers. He collaborated with me on a time-traveling action/adventure series from Berkley, Freedom's Rangers in the late '80s, by 'Keith William Andrews,' and on the well-received military series Carrier, also from Berkley, by 'Keith Douglass.'

"He went on to write three books in the Fifth Foreign Legion SF-military series from Roc, also BattleTech: Blood of Heroes, and to write several of the military history books in the Seals: The Warrior Breed series by 'H. Jay Riker.' Seals: Navy Cross, the fourth book in that series, was his, as well as another manuscript still in the publishing pipeline. Silent Service: Grayback Class was the first in a new H. Jay Riker military series. The manuscript arrived for copyedit the day he died; I took over and have it back in the pipeline as well. So at least two more titles by Andrew are forthcoming from Avon.

"Recent military-SF work includes the popular Wing Commander novels. He wrote two or three — not sure how many exactly — for Baen, some in collaboration with William Forstchen. The first was Heart of the Tiger. His last-published SF book was Wing Commander: False Colors. Through an almost inconceivable screw-up, my name appeared on the front cover of that one, instead of his. [His name appears, correctly, on the title page, fortunately!] I appreciate the opportunity to get the news out that False Colors was his, not mine. He wrote a damned fine book, and he deserves the credit.

"There may have been other novels; I'm afraid I don't recall the details offhand, but I seem to remember a book set in Williamson's Legion of Space series, a long way back. The above are the ones I remember. I know he had worked, and was working on, several other series through book packager Bill Fawcett.

"In addition, he had several SF short stories published, including his first, a 'Fifth Foreign Legion' story, in Amazing and 'Legacy of Leonidas' in an anthology of Bolo stories published by Baen.

"Andrew will also be remembered for the excellent work he did before graduating to novels — writing game modules and adventures in several SF game universes — most notably Traveller, from GDW.

"Though most of his work was in military fiction, I know his real interest, as mine, was in SF.

"I will remember him as a promising writer tragically just on the verge of breaking out into a larger world, as a brilliant armchair historian, as a gentle friend, and as a loving brother. Damn it, I miss him."

- William H. Keith, Jr.

The crazy update to this story is that against all odds it actually happened again! I was thumbing through Bastei Lübbe's 2000 German translation of the Wing Commander IV novelization, Der Preis der Freiheit, and noticed something funny. In a reverse of the False Colors error, the German WC4 book correctly credits Ben Ohlander on the credit… but accidentally credits Andrew Keith on the title page (and in the list of books). A real "two nickels" weird-that-it-happened-twice situation!

The Eldred Scrolls (or: Bruce Lewis Can Lose)

The chain also included posts by artist Bruce Lewis who had been hired to storyboard an episode but had his work rejected at the last minute! He has a great sense of humor about this and by all accounts it wasn't indicative of his work; he went on to do some very impressive things over the years (and sadly passed away in 2019). You can read more about Bruce Lewis here and Tim Eldred's extensive work on Academy here.

Subject: Wing Commander Academy/on the air
From: Tim Eldred

Hi, all...
I debated whether or not I should post this, but on further reflection,
I decided it would be entirely appropriate, as the show is animated in
Japan, so here's the skinny:

WING COMMANDER ACADEMY, an animated program based on the famous computer
game starring Mark Hammill, Malcolm McDowell, Tom Wilson, and many
others, debuts TOMORROW (Saturday, Sept. 21) on the USA Network. Why am
I posting this? Because I had the honor of actually working on the show
as character designer, and I storyboarded pieces of several
episodes--all of which were animated in Japan!

Check it out if you're so inclined--I haven't seen any footage yet, so
I'm getting pretty geeked!

-Tim Eldred

Bruce Lewis - Sep 22, 1996

Gordon Waters wrote:

> Congrats, dude! Can't wait to see you the handiwork turned out! Maybe we
> can get Bruce to "smuggle" some footage from this to AWA? ^_-

No way, Gordo! The director of WCA rejected my storyboards AFTER they were
completed (even though he approved the samples I submitted beforehand)...I believe
his exact words were "You are the worst artist I've ever seen."

Forgive me if I'm less than enthusiastic about WCA...

Best,

Bruce "B-chan" Lewis
Manhattan Projects Multimedia

Tim Eldred - Sep 23, 1996

> Well at least improve the mech because they are kind of squary and
unrealistic. But keep at it

Would that I could!!! The mecha in the show were all pre-fabricated,as
they were originally designed for the computer games, and by the time I
was brought on board, another designer had already been given the job of
setting the final model sheets.

Bruce Lewis - Sep 26, 1996

Jeff Tatarek wrote:

> Bruce, I wish I could've been a fly on the wall when your storyboards got
> rejected. I'm at a loss to even begin justifying the Hollywood drone's
> comments, especially since I really enjoy your work. Wish -I- had the
> talent to match up to your "worst artist" status!

The weird thing is that I submitted a sample storyboard before Universal hired me, and
they said "great, looks good, welcome aboard.." Then I do the assignment (80+ pages of
storyboards) and run it by Tim (who says it looks fine) before submitting it and invoicing
Universal for what they owed me in return ($4K). A few days later the exec. prod of WCA,
Larry L______, calls me up and tells me the boards are "unnaceptable" and "the worst
I've ever seen."

Kore wa nan desu ka?

If I suck, fine, but at least tell me right up front, BEFORE I waste three weeks drawing
the damn thing! Now I gotta take MCA to court for four grand...

...just another tale from the glamorous life of a professional artist...

> Jerry Jetter is a
> damn sight better than anything I could ever crank out. Maybe Hollywood
> just ain't ready for the kinda-shojo look...

Thanks I'm blushing! As for Hollywood, someday SOMEDAY! they'll PAY for this
outrage!...

Best,

Bruce "B-chan" Lewis

Tim Eldred - Sep 26, 1996

Hi, Doug...
(I know you from Ann Arbor, don't I?)

> Well, 1 episode is hardly enough to judge by... Well, that's not actually
> true. At least it didn't make me retch like Mortal Kombat did... ;)

That's a plus!

> Anyways...questions: Is Wing Commander Academy supposed to fit into
> the game's timeline? If so, how? Maniac's managed to survive since
> your "character" first meets him aboard the Tiger's Claw in WC1. Also,
> as folks familiar with WC2 are aware, McDowell's character (forgot his
> name...) wasn't the captain of the Tiger's Claw...especially since he
> shows up in WC2, 3, and 4.

I've only ever played WC3, so I don't know that much about the overall timeline; therefore I can't tell you exactly what the
consistencies are between the show and the games. If you just look at it as something that might have happened to the characters in
their younger days, you'll be fine.

> The artwork seems nice enough...and the ships are rather accurate from
> the game(s). It also seems there's going to be continuity from
> episode to episode. I certainly hope so.

Indeed! There's much more continuity than usual, and that always makes for a better story. (Just wait 'til MY show goes into
production...!)

-Tim

Tim Eldred - Sep 26, 1996

Hey, Jeff...

> The animation, though... ennnnh... Overall I'd place it squarely in the
> midst of most lackluster farmed-out products. The fighters didn't track
> very well...they kinda went all over the screen with little regard for
> believable physics and sorta got distorted.

I tend to agree with you, and my experience working on the show gave me an insight into why this probably happens. Everything in the
show was designed by Americans and animated by Japanese. This means the model sheets of characters and mecha were conceived by
American sensibilities, which are different (not necessarily inferior to) Japanese sensibilities. It starts to look clumsy when you
try and shoehorn one into the other. I don't think it's really a budget issue; more an aesthetic one. Most Japanese animation is just
as limited as American animation, but they get around it with a more integrated design sensibility.

I tried to approach all of my own design and storyboard work from the Japanese sensibility; I'm really anxious to see if it made a
difference.

> FWIW, I couldn't detect a lot of "Eldred-ness" in the chara designs. It
> looks like a lot of it got washed out in the final production, and it just
> looks flat.

My contribution to episode 1 was actually negligible; this show was already pretty much done before I joined the team. I only had ONE
pure character design show up in episode 1; a red-headed female character who only appeared from the back. A lot of "my" characters
will start showing up in episode 2, and my first storyboards will start showing in episode 3. (although, actually, sequences that I
designed were apparently judged good enough to use in the opening title; about a third of the scenes therein are mine!)

> Bruce, I wish I could've been a fly on the wall when your storyboards got
> rejected. I'm at a loss to even begin justifying the Hollywood drone's
> comments

I am also at a loss to explain what happened there. I know the guy pretty well, and this behavior was very uncharacteristic. Maybe he
didn't get his donut that morning.

-Tim

Bruce Lewis - Oct 8, 1996

Jeff Tatarek wrote:

> Bruce, I wish I could've been a fly on the wall when your storyboards got
> rejected. I'm at a loss to even begin justifying the Hollywood drone's
> comments, especially since I really enjoy your work. Wish -I- had the
> talent to match up to your "worst artist" status! ^_-.

That's kind of you, Jeff; thanks. As a reward, I put you into the upcoming STAR BLAZERS
SPECIAL EDITION comic that Argo's shipping with the video gift pack...

> Jerry Jetter is a
> damn sight better than anything I could ever crank out. Maybe Hollywood
> just ain't ready for the kinda-shojo look...

Thanks again. Hollowood ain't heard the last of Bruce Lewis...

Subject: RE: Wing Commander on USA
From: Tim Eldred

Hi, eduardo...
> Anybody catch the Wing Commander Academy(?) show on USA this past
> weekend? I saw the last half of it, and it looked promising, hopefully
> it won't get screwed up like JQ did. Now if USA would just give us some
> new ExoSquad or Sonic episodes...

As somebody who actually worked on the show (storyboards and character designs), I appreciate your
endorsement! This was my first TV experience, and so far I'm pretty happy with it--hope subsequent episodes
live up to your expectations!

-Tim Eldred

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Dune (1984) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: Apollo 13

Apollo 13 is essentially a flawless movie, so much so that it almost feels too slick to be real. But breaking it down into component parts–like the score, used in part to temp track Wing Commander–you begin to appreciate the sheer amount of artistry that went into every part of the thing. There's not a lot to share in this report; you can find the music used in the Wing Commander temp score in the initial post.

We were also curious about the scale of the Apollo spacecraft compared to familiar Wing Commander ships. I made this quick-and-dirty chart which mostly just highlights how poorly scaled the Wing Commander III ships are.

Lost Press Release: Wing Commander IV Mac

Wing Commander IV to Release on Macintosh -- Demo Now Available!

Los Angeles, Calif. -- The best is about to get even better. The
interactive movie that was called "the most impressive space adventure
game ever produced" by Universal Press Syndicate is preparing for its
next ground-breaking act as a new Power Macintosh(TM) title. ORIGIN's
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom(TM) is slated for release for
the Power Macintosh in June.

Already receiving critical acclaim as a PCCD title, Wing Commander IV
will incorporate several hours of live-action video and will feature
many talented actors from the cast of Wing Commander III: Malcolm
McDowell (A Clockwork Orange, Star Trek: Generations), Mark Hamill
(Star Wars), John Rhys-Davies (Indiana Jones movies), Jason Bernard
(Herman's Head) and Tom Wilson (Back to the Future I, II and III). A
nine-week shooting schedule for Wing Commander IV was completed last
July at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood.

The story comes from veteran Hollywood screenwriters Terry Borst and
Frank DePalma, who wrote the script for Wing Commander III. In Wing
Commander IV, you again play the role of Col. Christopher Blair
(Hamill). The bloody war between the humans and the cat-like Kilrathi
is over. But problems are beginning to crop up on a new front and this
time it's in your own back yard. Civil wars and unrest have broken out
in the Border Worlds. Blair is recalled to help the Terran government
stamp out the growing fires. It won't be easy. Signs of decay are
becoming impossible to ignore. The Confederation is beginning to
splinter under the new pressures and you must determine how to save
it---or if it should be saved at all.

Wing Commander IV will sport moving camera shots and real movie sets,
giving a more authentic feel to the cinematics. The graphics will
explode in high resolution graphics and will be much improved with
photo-realitsic textures on fighters. Player interactivity will be
enhanced both in and out of the cockpit with even greater control of
missions and drama. Because of a Power Macintosh enhancement, players
will also get an option not available on the game's PC version---the
ability to custom program their joysticks.

It's an ORIGIN Interactive Movie(TM) experience. Once again, the fate
of the human race hangs in the balance, but remember, in this movie,
you're making the calls.

The demo is available for download from ORIGIN's web site at
http://www.ea.com/origin.html

System Requirements for Demo:
MACINTOSH: Any Power Macintosh and 100% compatibles, System 7.1 or higher,
and a mouse
GRAPHICS: Standard 256-color (640 x 480 resolution required)
RAM/HD SPACE: 8 megs RAM; about 6.5 megabytes of hard drive space

System Requirements for Wing Commander IV Macintosh:
Power Macintosh and 100% compatibles
System 7.1 or higher
8 MB RAM
46 MB of hard drive space
Double-speed CD-ROM drive or faster
Mouse
GRAPHICS: Standard 256-color (640x480 resolution required)
Expected Retail Price: $50-$60

###

ORIGIN Systems develops and publishes state-of-the-art
entertainment software. To date, the company has released more than
50 titles, including the award-winning Ultima, Wing Commander and
Crusader series of games. ORIGIN is based in Austin, Texas , and is a
wholly owned subsidiary of Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS).

ORIGIN, ORIGIN Systems, We Create Worlds, Wing Commander, and Ultima
are registered trademarks and ORIGIN Interactive Movie and The Price
of Freedom are trademarks of ORIGIN Systems, Inc. Electronic Arts is a
registered trademark of Electronic Arts Inc. Macintosh is a registered
trademark and Power Macintosh is a trademark of Apple Computer
Inc. used under license. All other trademarks are the property of
their respective owners.

Wing Commander Goes to College

There's a scene in Pilgrim Stars, the first Wing Commander movie tie-in novel, where we see a news broadcast from a hastily-assembled Pilgrim concentration camp. The news chyron identifies the location of the camp as the University of Central Florida. Note that this includes a wonderful example of the 'sci-fi list' trope where one or two future events are included in a list of familiar ones:

Bellegarde now studied the image of a university campus. Ancient brick buildings with signs identifying them as Library, Administration, Biological Sciences, Offworld Sciences, and Humanities and Fine Arts girdled an oval reflection pond about thirty meters across. The caption read: DESIGNATED PILGRIM SAFE ZONE: UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA , EARTH. A half dozen rifle-toting young men sprinted along the pond’s perimeter, with an equal number of Marines in pursuit. The men took up flanking positions near the library and unleashed a vicious spray of conventional fire into the building’s glass doors as the reporter narrated the action. “Many Confederation citizens are using the current crisis as an excuse to take the law into their own hands. Some seek revenge for the Pilgrim war, and they intend to get it. Marines who have been assigned to protect camps like this one in Central Florida have been accused of doing a less than adequate job. One Marine, Private Jacko Fistalis, had this to say.”

The University of Central Florida (abbreviated UCF) is a real public university located in Tampa, Florida in the United States. Is there a special reason it was mentioned in Pilgrim Stars? Indeed! Author Peter Telep is both a graduate of UCF and was an English professor there when he wrote his Wing Commander books (and he continues to teach there today)! So it's a wink and a nod to his own history… which got me thinking: is the short description he gives of the scene based on the real school? A little searching through online maps revealed… yes it was!

The description reads: "Ancient brick buildings with signs identifying them as Library, Administration, Biological Sciences, Offworld Sciences, and Humanities and Fine Arts girdled an oval reflection pond about thirty meters across." I took a look at a campus map from 1999 and located where the reflecting pool and the four 'real' buildings would be. And sure enough, they match the descriptions!

Reflection Pond - Official Site

Library - John C. Hitt Library - Official Site

Administration - Millican Hall - Official Site

Biological Sciences - Official Site

Humanities and Fine Arts - Trevor Colbourn Hall - Official Site - The Trevor Colbourn Hall (pictured) that was present when the book was written has been demolished and replaced with a new building.

Go(G) Back to School with Wing Commander 50% Off

Wing Commander Movie Night: Dune

The Wing Commander movie club greatly enjoyed our trip back to 1970 with Apollo 13; it's a movie that comes together so perfectly it feels preordained rather than directed. This week we'll be traveling further into the future for another outer space adventure… but one that's anything but neutral about its director! The next film will be the 1984 version of Dune by David Lynch. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

A beloved IP meets a director who has his own, distinct vision separate from any of the fans. The results… something no one can quite explain. Am I talking about Wing Commander or Dune? But beyond that similarity, our first in game reference is a pretty clear one: in Privateer when you try to communicate with New Constantinople you can choose a line of Paul's from Dune: "My name is a killing word". Why? It's not entirely clear...

We also recently did a deep dive into in-universe references to sand worms, something that will always go back to the original Dune novel. You can find that article here.

Further Dune references are just as likely to be to the books, but they're worth mentioning! Privateer 2 names one of its three star systems (you know, from the Tri-System!) Irrulan after Dune's princess.

And there's Frank Herbert, author of Dune, on the Wing Commander universe map!

And is it really movie club without a little more Jurgen Prochnow? Here he plays Duke Leto Atreides!

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

Dune is available for rent or purchase on the standard streaming services. If you would like a physical copy, the movie was released on UHD in 2021 and remains in print around the world. It is also currently streaming on Netflix. A copy is available on the Internet Archive. Please note that we will be watching the theatrical cut rather than the dramatically different TV cut. If you are not able to locate a copy please stop by the Discord and ping a CIC staff member before Friday's showing.

How do we watch the movie together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 10 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

Fine Fralthi and Fantastic Fiction

Crack artist ulimann644 is back with two more extremely cool renderings of Wing Commander ships! The first is a scene which uses his previously shown Fralthi model and adds a brand new Drathi to the mix. The second imagines the cover to a Wing Commander story using his Hornet model.

WING COMMANDER - KILRATHI BATTLEGROUP (DeviantArt)

This is my second WING COMMANDER Wallpaper with my FRALTHI-CLASS MESH and my brandnew (delivered on Tuesday) DRATHI-CLASS mesh.

Hope you like it.

Software:
- Lightwave 2024
- Photoshop
- ImageFX

WING COMMANDER - OPERATION ENYO (DeviantArt)

This is a virtual WING COMMANDER Cover.

Hope you like it

Credits: All Artwork by me.

Software:
- Lightwave 3D
- Photoshop
- ImageFX

Buy My Books

Last month we discovered some fascinating trade ads for some of Baen's Wing Commander novels. Next I thought I'd take a look at how Baen advertised the Wing Commander novels in their own books and I found a couple of fun examples that were repeated in dozens of Baen paperbacks in the early 90s. Publishers--especially pulpy ones like Baen--would often fill out the last few page of a paperback with advertisements for other things they published. I was particularly impressed with this advertisement that attempts to explain their philosophy behind publishing computer game tie-in books. Neat description of Wing Commander, too: "The computer game which supplies the background world for these novels is a current all-time bestseller. Fly with the best the Confederation of Earth has to offer against the ferocious catlike alien Kilrathi!"

Here's an advertisement that's a sort of "flow chart" that lets you pick the perfect Baen series to try. Wing Commander is suggested for anyone that likes computer games which... seems reasonable!

This is a later take on the same idea which recommends Wing Commander for anyone that likes Star Wars. It seems crazy to just say it!

The other major mention of Wing Commander in these types of ads is ones specifically promoting the works of Mercedes Lackey. Ms. Lackey was published prolifically with Baen and they didn't miss an opportunity to cross-promote her Wing Commander contribution, Freedom Flight! In case you're curious, the Mercedes Lackey fan club advertised here is now defunct but it was replaced with a newsletter that is still published. Here are three variations of Mercedes Lackey ads, one, two and three page versions.

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Apollo 13 and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: The Exorcist

We were pleased to see that everyone in last week's Wing Commander movie club enjoyed The Exorcist! As the series goes on we're happy for excuses--however flimsy--to show movies that aren't so bent towards space opera. In lieu of any forced commentary, we are instead going to use this space to introduce the other three movies that are coming from Privateer storyboards: Heaven's Gate, Ishtar and The Last Temptation of Christ! (Though of course Heaven's Gate already earned a slot for being referenced as a star system in Wing Commander II).

Its All Breen Done

Here's a neat memory of Wing Commander III from a celebrity! Elias Toufexis recently tweeted that he remembers playing Wing Commander III as a kid and hoped to act in a game someday… and now he's been in almost one hundred of them!

He has appeared in everything from Assassin's Creed to the excellent Star Trek: Resurgence. But he's probably best known for his recent role on Star Trek Discovery as Breen prince La'ak.

Dark Horse Candidate

Here's a story we don't quite know what to do with: we've discovered an interesting "rumor" published in the August 1992 issue of Computer Gaming World. The magazine claims that Dark Horse comics was working on a Wing Commander comic book that would've been written by James Hudnall. Origin certainly wanted to license a Wing Commander comic but this is the first we've ever heard of a publisher or a writer having been involved. Dark Horse still exists today but unfortunately James Hudnall passed way in 2019. We'd certainly love to know more!

Dark Horse Comics, the fast-growing and sometimes iconoclastic comics publisher in the Northwest, is believed to be working with Origin on a Wing Commander comic. James Hudnall, one of the most prolific Dark Horse scripters, will be writing the book.

Wing Commander Movie Night: Apollo 13

Well last week was certainly pretty Excorciting. No? Well, we had a good time. Next week we'll be honoring the recent passing of astronaut Jim Lovell by watching his story in Ron Howard's 1995 Apollo 13. This should be a fun one! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

It's space history but... how is it Wing Commander? Like Demolition Man, Apollo 13 was a source for temp tracks for the Wing Commander movie. In fact, Chris Roberts used a total of four different tracks from James Horner's score at varying points in the temp score. The first is "Into the LEM" which was used for the moment Paladin presented Tolwyn's ring to Captain Sansky and then again later when Sansky died.

Two tracks, Master Alarm and Manual Burn, were used for the Tiger Claw's big jump scene.

Finally, Re-entry and Splashdown was used for the movie's finale where Blair returns to the Tiger Claw to see Angel rescued.

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

Apollo 13 is available for rent or purchase on the standard streaming services. If you would like a physical copy, the movie was released on UHD in 2017 and remains in print around the world. A copy is available on the Internet Archive. If you are not able to locate a copy please stop by the Discord and ping a CIC staff member before Friday's showing.

How do we watch the movie together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 10 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

Goodbye Craig Halverson

We have some sad news to pass along today: the exOrigin Facebook group reports that veteran Wing Commander artist Craig Halverson has passed away. If Mr. Halverson's name sounds familiar it's because his excellent work graced over a dozen Origin games. We've said before but the 'Origin mystique' made it feel like familiar names like that were part of how you experienced the games. Our condolences go out to his friends and family, we will do our best to preserve his work. If you would like to share any memories we would be happy to publish them in this space.

Craig Halverson joined Origin Systems during its heyday in 1991 and quickly made a name for himself in the burgeoning art group where he worked alongside the likes of Chris Douglas, Beverly Garland, Alan Perez and Paul Steed to create some of Origin's most unique and immersive worlds. Mr. Halverson got his start in the crucible of Chris Roberts' Strike Commander, creating character art, environments and 3D objects. He would go on to work on Privateer, Armada and Wing Commander III along with a number of other projects.

Origin Systems Gameography

• Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1991, FM Towns) - Art
• Origin FX (1992) - Artist
• Strike Commander (1993, DOS) - RealSpace Terrain Textures, Cinematic Animation, Backgrounds, Character Animations, Voice of "The Drunk"
• Strike Commander: Tactical Operations (1993) - Art
• Wing Commander Privateer (1993) - Artwork
• Strike Commander (1993, CD-ROM) - Art Department
• Pacific Strike (1994) - Art
• Wing Commander Armada (1994) - Additional Artwork
• Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (1994) - 3-D Artist, Interior Art (manual)
• Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger 3DO (1995) - Art
• Crusader: No Remorse (1995) - Concept Art (not credited)
• Wings of Glory (1995) - Additional Artwork, Special Thanks
• Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga (1996) - Interior Art (manual)

He would go on to work for Digital Anvil on projects that included 2003's Brute Force for the Xbox. Mr. Halverson left Origin shortly after production of Crusader: No Remorse began but he was still able to contribute concept work to the project! Here's a piece from the official guide:

He was tuckerized in Wing Commander III twice. He's mentioned in a wild line for the Victory's PA system that says "Technicians Halverson and Downing required in forward gunnery two." Downing was producer David Downing. He's also credited "in universe" for his manual art in Victory Streak.

One thing we know he was proud of was creating the Thunderbolt VII and Excalibur cockpits for Wing Commander III. Here's a behind the scenes image that he included in his online portfolio for many years:

We make--correctly I would argue–-a big deal about Origin's slogan about "creating worlds". Well, here's a great example of that in the most literal fashion. Strike Commander's team included a training/quick combat map that was based on an imaginary environment which could show off all the features of the game. And here's that entire world with its capital city, Halverston! These creators of worlds really have left something that will last forever.

Welcome!

Happy Birthday from Mr. Obutu

LeHah has provided us a kingly gift this year: a Cameo video from Hugh Quarshie, who played Lt. Cmdr. Obutu in the Wing Commander movie! He was nice enough to spend a few minutes talking about a job he probably didn't want to remember (I mean, he was in Star Wars that same year!).

Super Wing Commander Cutscene Collection

You may have seen Super Wing Commander's unusual introduction before... but have you seen the various midgames? They're pretty fascinating! The original game had a series of midgames that would play after every other system to give you the state of the war (based on how you played): Kilrathi fighting scientists on McAuliffe, sabotage on Brimstone and so on. Super Wing Commander replaced this in the main campaign with two 'vehicle focused' cutscenes... though Prince Thrakhath makes a surprise appearance in the first one! After that, there are custom intros for Secret Missions and Campaign 2 ("Secret Missions 1.5") and an endgame that varies depending on which of your wingmen have died in the campaign! We've included them all below.

Midgame 1 - Winning

Midgame 1 - Losing

Midgame 2 - Winning

Midgame 2 - Losing

Secret Missions Intro

Campaign 2 Intro

Endgame - All Wingmen Survive

Endgame - All Wingmen Die

All Jump Destinations

Launch - Hornet

Launch - Scimitar

Launch - Raptor

Launch - Rapier

Launch - Dralth

Landing - Hornet

Landing - Scimitar

Landing - Raptor

Landing - Rapier

Landing - Dralthi

Landing - Damaged States

AD's Extended Wing Commander Movie Cut: First Eight Minutes!

All the Text in One Place

Would it really be a year in Wing Commander if I didn't have a new spreadsheet for you? This one is intended to help everyone debating on the forums and editing the WCPedia: a complete collection of all the dialogue from all of the Origin FX 'talking head' games. Whether you want the in flight comms from Privateer or the option of comparing the original script across multiple platforms it's all available right here.

Birthday Greetings from the Gemini Sector (also Germany)

This year has been quite intense so unfortunately I didn't have the time for something more ambitious. So I decided to revisit a render I worked on many years ago. It's two Dralthi VIIs ambushing a Paradigm in orbit of a moon. Once again I used the models from the Privateer 3D Archive. The render itself was done in Blender 4.5 with some editing in Adobe Photoshop.

New Poll!

It's time for a new CIC Birthday Poll! Each year we ask how long folks have been visiting. It's wild that some of us have been reporting the Wing Commander news for almost thirty years now!

That's a Wrap!

Thank you once again for all of the support all year long! There are some amazing things coming in the months ahead, and we'll be here to enjoy them with all of you. Stay tuned for breaking news!

You Are Cordially Invited...

• A Super Stream!
• An Awesome Archive!
• Return of the Mac!
• Ships and Scripts!
• Fan Fellowship!
• Cake? ...and more!

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is The Exorcist and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: Seven Samurai

The Wing Commander movie club made it through Seven Samurai! Wing Commander never had a 'team up' style story like Seven Samurai... but it ALMOST did! The sequel to Wing Commander Secret Ops was intended to involve a team of seven (six plus the player) elite mercenaries who operate outside the military chain of command. The project went by a number of names and was briefly formally announced as Wing Commander Strike Team... but it's best known as Shadow Force. You can read the original pitch document here. But I thought I'd pull out the character bios for the mercenaries so everyone could get to know them and think about what could have been! The character art was by a young Feng Zhu, who went on to an extraordinary career. (I do have to call out Sliver's "as sleek and lithe as panther, she uses her sexuality as a weapon" as especially goofy; how would this impact space combat? I guess it was the 90s!)

Codename: PRIME
Real Name: Quinn Kyle
Confed Intel ID: 0922
Designation: Command

Special Skills: As leader of the Contact Team, not only does he command Cerberus., but with a background in formal Confed Military and Intel training, he bridges the gap between light and dark as he receives and divines their orders.

Codename: TURK
Real Name: Eric Lightman
Confed Intel ID: 3488
Designation: Combat Tactics/Navigation

Special Skills: Combat-trained Marine. Skilled in covert tactics, field deployment, insertion and recovery. Decorated extensively for bravery before “being recruited” by Intel.

Codename: FURIE
Real Name: Jessica Dern
Confed Intel ID: 8821
Designation: Arms Expert/Intelligence gathering/Non-Human Culture and Protocol

Special Skills: Expert in Kilrathi Martial arts and weapons. In combat, her bloodlust is source of her strength, which she keeps it in check with her training. Intelligent and Dangerous.

Codename: HARDWARE
Real Name: DELETED
Alias Used: Victor Koonze
Confed Intel ID: 6025
Designation: Sciences/Decryption/Communications and Covert Insertion

Special Skills: Hybidized Tech-enhanced Human. His “natural” ability to infiltrate classified and military files on both sides of a war is a source of pride for him. He is brilliant, mercenary and since he had “limited choice’ in joining Intel, has lots of attitude.

Codename: SLIVER
Real Name: Jana Lilith
Confed Intel ID: 7953
Designation: Stealth/Political Assassination

Special Skills: Clean, effective, silent. As Sleek and lithe as panther, she uses her sexuality as a weapon. She is an expert in covert assault weaponry. She favors bladed weapons and prides herself in her ability to “surprise” her prey in more ways than one.

Codename: PRIEST
Real Name: Winston Quaid
Confed Intel ID: 0902
Designation: Mechanical/Philosophy/Archeology/Non-Human Technologies

Special Skills: Well educated and restrained, but ironically, an amazingly gifted fighter. Good at field stripping enemy machines and cannibalizing the parts

I also thought it would be fun to pull out some of the general references to Samurai in the Wing Commander canon. Which start all the way at the original Claw Marks where Spirit talks abut how she does not consider herself to be a Samurai.

The 24-year-old ace explains, "I did not join the armed forces for revenge. I have no fantasies of personally gunning down the pilot who killed my father. It is a matter of tradition and duty. The tradition is my family's, and the duty is to the Earth...I am often asked if I think of myself as a modern samurai. The answer is no. I am a military pilot, not a feudal retainer. But there is nothing to keep a modern pilot, Japanese or not, from trying to adhere to the best elements of the warrior-codes of the past: The code of the samurai, the code of the knight-errant, any code of honor and service.

Even the Tri-System apparently had samurai in their history… as evidenced by this in-game commercial for a TMNT parody, Mutant Cosmic Thunder Samurai Newt.

If your child hasn't got a Mutant Cosmic Thunder Samurai Newt...

Then you shouldn't be a parent!
In fact, if we discover that your offspring doesn't possess at least THREE of our posable figures with optional accessories, plus at least one of our horrendously overpriced poorly manufactured ThunderKillaCars, then we're going to send the Social Department round to your habitation...tomorrow! Buy one today, or your child could be in the care of deranged individuals of dubious sexuality and religious denomination by next week.
Crecheco. We care.

Wing Commander Action Stations has a scene where a human prisoner has a conversation with a Kilrathi lord. The character, a history teacher named Abram, compares the Kilrathi to samurai.

Abram laughed. "You know, Harga, I actually do like you. You remind me of the stories of our old Earth, the samurai of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Trained killers, but killers educated in the arts, music, poetry. I only wish all you Cats were that way. Hell, we might even have found a way to get along."

Samurai was also the watchword for the infamous Wing Commander movie Kilrathi. There's not much graceful movement in their finished form but with the concept art you can easily see the goal. Here's Chris Roberts and the designers in the April 1999 issue of Cinefex:

Roberts instructed Nik Williams of Animated Extras to avoid viewing any Kilrathi developed for past Wing Commander games. "Chris' original brief for us was to create feline Samurai," said Williams. "Descended from cats, the Kilrathi had since lost their facial hair and learned to walk upright. The principal challenge with the Kilrathi suit design which was developed by Pauline Fowler and Julian Murray, who sculpted several third-scale alien prototypes over a like-sized figure - was to disguise the human form within:' Towards that end, the Kilrathi warriors sported stylized armor with an exoskeletal shell, which served to mask the points at which a human performer's knees and elbows bent. The costumes were constructed largely from fiberglass, with a chain-mail-Iike, foam-lined fabric providing flexibility in the midsection, hips and knees. Knee and ankle joints were hinged mechanically, with stilts utilized to make the performers both taller and mobile.

And here's the team that created the Kilrathi in issue 33 of Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models:

SF&F: Animated Extras’ main contribution to the film was the construction of the cat-like alien race, the Kilrathi. Were you also involved with the design of these creatures?

Nik: Yes, we were. Chris had worked on the motion sequences on one of the Wing Commander games, where they had had feline-like Kilrathi. However, this time Chris wanted something that had never been seen before, and asked us not to look at the CD-ROM game for reference. Dave masters produced several designs and then it went quiet! We assumed by this that we didn’t have the project, then around Christmas it came up again. Our original designs for the Kilrathi utilized a combination of African and Japanese samurai warrior influences. Chris, however, wanted them to be more feline, but still wanted to keep the samurai aspect.

Here are two of the Samurai-style Kilrathi concepts so you can see what they were going for in the film. The first one is 'canon', too! The Handbook includes it in an in-universe article about the Kilrathi and captions it "Famous artist Mariano Diaz’s rendering of a Kilrathi General in full armor."

The Samurai's flag was a major part of the story as we followed its creation and then as it served to mark the passing of the various heroes. It can be a little hard to pick out in the final Wing Commander movie but all the Kilrathi have banners they wear like Samurai. The Confederation Handbook says "these banners indicate clan lineage or affiliation— all members of the crew of a Kilrathi space vessel belong to the same clan, with officers chosen from the families of clan leaders. The vessel would then belong to that clan, and a united force is achieved only when the clans unite to fight a common enemy."

Here's a closer look at some of the flag props themselves:

Finally, the fact that the village elder is referred to as 'Old Man' in the captions reminded me of a neat trick in the Wing Commander IV novel: at varying points early in the book, both Blair and Seether think about the phrase "come to Jesus". Blair says it's a favorite of Tolwyn and Seether quotes 'the old man'. He then refers to the mysterious leader of the Black Lance that way… so if you're a very close reader you can figure out the conspiracy extra early! (Action Stations also refers to Admiral Banbridge as 'the Old Man' capitalized; I include that here only because I don't know what to do with it.)

Wouldn't You Like to Read a Wing Commander Novel?

In their original print form, the original seven Baen Wing Commander novels each open with an excerpt in their front matter. It's typically an action scene from later in the book intended to sell the book to readers not familiar with the franchise. And each one of these previews had a unique "tagline". Because this front matter isn't included in the ebook versions of the novels, these risk being lost to history… until now! Here they are, for posterity:

Freedom Flight - LEARNING BY DOING…
End Run - "Form up, you know your targets."
Fleet Action - THE LAST BEST HOPE OF MAN
Heart of the Tiger - TORA! TORA! TORA!
The Price of Freedom - LAST CONTACT
Action Stations - SCREAM-AND-LEAP! (THE KILRATHI HAVE A WORD FOR IT)
False Colors - NOW IT'S YOUR TURN...

Welcome to PETSCII Sector

PETSCII is a character set that was introduced for the Commodore PET in 1977 and which was used for Commodore's other PCs prior to the Amiga. And where there's a character set there are users turned artists who can do incredible things with it! In 2025, Commodore fans still compete to push the limits of PETSCII art. Case in point: a new piece named Deep Space Anomaly by Sande of Hokuto Force which placed fifth at Pågadata 2025, a Swedish retro computing art event. It features a Wing Commander-style cockpit view hunting down a Dralthi, a Death Star and the Enterprise. That's fun on its own and the amount of talent required to render that with a Commodore PET's built in font is extra impressive. You can learn more and download the 'native' version at the C-64 Scene Database (download backup). Thank you to elend for finding this; we are always thrilled to find a little Wing Commander in an unlikely place!

Where the Worms Are

When it comes to science fiction, sandworms are everywhere. We largely owe that to the enduring popularity of Dune. Its desert planet is defined by impossibly huge worms which play a major role in the story.. and that has led to decades of sandworms in fiction, from Beetlejuice to a Star Citizen demo. And Wing Commander is technically no exception! We don't ever get a visual of sandworms in the Wing Commander universe but we do know of at least THREE planets that are home to such creatures! Let's take a quick tour of the universe…

Brimstone II: In the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide, veteran Carl LaFong recounts his first days at the Terran Confederation Space Naval Academy. He includes a note given to him on arrival from the senior class as part of the hazing of new students. It mentions, among other things, that they are "lower than a sand worm in the Brimstone System." Here's the whole list:

As a Plebe, you represent the lowest form of life at the TCSNA. You are lower than a sand worms [sic] in the Brimstone System, lower than the bilge in an ancient frigate, lower than a hairball in a Kilrathi's innards. Until the end of your first year, you will be known as "youngsters," and as such, you will cater to the whims of those who arrived at the academy before you. The members of the 3rd, 2nd and 1st classes of the academy look forward to your imminent arrival."

Brimstone is a Kilrathi-held system which the Confederation fails to capture during the original Wing Commander. It's seen in one of the original game's cutscenes in which Confed commandos either succeed or fail to sabotage a major Kilrathi base on Brimstone II. No worms are visible there, though! Origin's 1990 internal description for the system reads:

Volcanic world.

Kilrathi military installation, population unknown.

Rocked by volcanic eruptions and violent earthquakes, Brimstone is a hostile and forbidding environment. Because of its strategic location, the Kilrathi have built a military base on the planet; the extent of Kilrathi settlement of the planet is not clear.

Isis VII: In Wing Commander IV, Maniac has a line that again shows there's a great deal of disrespect for sandworms in the Wing Commander universe. In response to learning that the Intrepid has lost internal power because of the jamming ship in the Peleus System, Maniac exclaims: "Oh, this is great. Now, we gotta fly blind! Groping around like some pathetic sandworm on Isis VII!". The Isis system is not mentioned anywhere else, though Wing Commander Prophecy does have the ICIS system!

Rigel: Wing Commander Arena's Star Soldier manual makes an oblique reference to sandworms in its travel guide review of the Midgard system: "Those seeking massive sandworms and powerful dust storms had best head for Rigel". Rigel is a real star, one of the brightest in the night sky. It is located about 850 light-years from Earth. It's seen in Special Operations 1 as the location of the Confederation supply depot taken over by the pirate faction of the Gettysburg mutineers.

Wing Commander Movie Night: The Exorcist

The results are in: seven is exactly the right number of samurai for a movie to have. This week, we're moving a few centuries forward in history… to the 1970s! Friday's Wing Commander-connected film will be the classic supernatural horror film The Exorcist. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The connection to The Exorcist is a funny one. The concept artists on the Privateer team would label their work with the names of movies and albums as a running joke… so we've added those movies to the movie club pool (that's right, Ishtar is coming)! In this case, The Exorcist was presumably chosen because of the name selected for this room, "refectory". It's a word usually used to refer to meeting rooms in churches. Here, however, it's been chosen for an options screen on Perry Naval Base which was first imagined as a cafeteria rather than another bar. Privateer's original art list describes it: "The refectory is your basic cafeteria, brightly lit with day-glow colors, etc…". As you can see, this concept was entirely dropped!

The "Luby's" sign in the concept art is a reference to a real restaurant: Luby's is Texas-based chain of cafeteria style restaurants known for comfort food. It's a good bet Origin had plenty of team lunches at a Luby's in the 90s!

Wing Commander did eventually get its own "Star Trek food maker" (aka replicator) in the first episode of Wing Commander Academy. Blair swipes a card and it generates a can of soda!

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

The Exorcist is available for rent or purchase on the standard streaming services. If you would like a physical copy, the movie was released on UHD in 2023 and remains in print around the world. We will be watching the theatrical cut rather than the 2001 director's cut. If you are not able to locate a copy please stop by the Discord and ping a CIC staff member before Friday's showing.

How do we watch the movie together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 10 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

Happy 27th Birthday CIC!

Batman Wishes His Plane Were This Cool

Find a Dralthi, pick it up -- all the day you'll have good luck. Don't you love coming across new takes on Wing Commander ships where you don't expect them? Case in point: David Müller posted this neat interpretation of Wing Commander III's Dralthi IV medium fighter that just feels so much like a modernized version of something you'd discover in a random Usenet binaries group back in the day. A well thought out and emotive take on a classic space fighter... I'd love to see more!

Wing Commander Fun Art (ArtStation)

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Seven Samurai and and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 6 PM PST/9 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time! Please note that the movie is starting one hour earlier than usual to accommodate its run time.

After Action Report: Demolition Man

Greetings WingNuts,

Last week, we watched the 1993 action classic Demolition Man. The only major connection to Wing Commander was that Chris Roberts used a track from the movie when temp tracking Wing Commander. Here's the scene in question as it appears in the movie… the music is pretty hidden under the gunfight! Can you imagine the scramble scene in Wing Commander sounding like this?

Are You Not Computer Entertained?

The Video Game History Foundation recently announced that they had acquired the rights to Computer Entertainer magazine, a gaming periodical that ran from 1982 to 1990, and made it freely available online under the Creative Commons license. This is an invaluable resource for early gaming historians… but the magazine ended its run in July 1990, two months before the original Wing Commander was released. Nevertheless, Danthrax (amazing Wing Commander Armada reference!) discovered two pretty interesting articles that are relevant to our interests!

The first article is from Computer Entertainer's penultimate issue, June 1990. It's short but it covers a very important point in history: the initial announcement that Origin will show off a space sim named 'Squadron' at the upcoming summer CES trade show.

Origin has two new programs to show at CES

First in series of Ultima spin-offs plus space combat simulation

Origin will launch a new series of Ultima spin-off games at CES with the first showing of VALLEY OF THE DINOSAURS (tentative title), planned for a fall release for MS-DOS systems. The series will be known as "Worlds of Ultima" and will use the Ultima play style with adventures in new worlds outside Britannia and the medieval tradition of the Ultima series. VALLEY OF THE DINOSAURS takes place in a pocket within the jungles of Brazil that was caught in a time warp when a Moonstone crashed there in ancient times. The player is sent by Lord British to this place where dinosaurs still roam and charged with the task of recovering the Moonstone. The player's antagonist is a modern-day evil character who has a machine which can create Moongates from Moonstones. Origin's second MS-DOS title to be shown at CES is Chris Roberts' SQUADRON (tentative title), a space combat simulation. The game is planned for fall release and features digitized video images rendered with scaled bit-map graphics.

The second article appears in the magazine's final issue, July 1990, and it is even more interesting. It's part of a report from CES which saw Squadron, now named Wingleader, for the very first time in the form of the game's rolling demo. Wing Commander was shown to the public for the first time alongside the first Worlds of Ultima game, Savage Empire. Oh, to go back in time and see that all unfold!

Origin reaches new heights with space combat simulator

New Worlds of Ultima series debuts

Origin stopped traffic at CES with WINGLEADER, Chris Roberts' 3-D space combat simulator. A demo of the program, running on a big-screen TV with stereo speakers, was impossible to ignore. We were nearly exhausted after a full day of walking, standing and talking, yet WINGLEADER brought us to instant, fascinated attention. Wonderful music, realistic sound that moves from one speaker to the other, and beautifully detailed 3-D graphics had us mesmerized. All this great action on the screen, and they even have a story to give purpose to the game. WINGLEADER (MSR $59.95) is due this fall for MS-DOS systems. The company also showed THE SAVAGE EMPIRE ($59.95), the first of a new line of MS-DOS role-playing products entitled Worlds of Ultima. The new series allows Richard "Lord British" Garriott and his team to venture beyond the medieval settings of Ultima while maintaining the Ultima technology. THE SAVAGE EMPIRE draws inspiration from pulp fiction of the 1930s and 40s and takes Ultima-style adventuring to the steamy jungles of a hidden land that has been frozen in time. The game is full of wonderful elements such as dinosaurs, mysterious pyramids, mad scientists and lost cities. This one looks like a lot of fun.

It also includes two screenshots from the game's press kit. One of which is a cockpit shot has been seen frequently and was included on the game's box… while the other is more of a rarity! It shows an earlier version of the Tiger's Claw rec room options screen, seemingly before the decision to include a TrainSim was made. In addition to a prominent second table, moved to the right in the final, there are some other neat differences. The pilots don't yet have their props, the top of the screen doesn't have weathering and loose cables and the Tiger's Claw bar ends up completely losing its stools! There's also no mission with Hunter and Angel together as the talking heads.

Both of these images are 'bullshots' which were created by artist Denis Loubet using Deluxe Paint around June 1990 to help launch the game's promotion. They would've been provided to the press in the form of 35mm slides. They are constructed out of in development art assets arranged to show how it was hoped the game would function in its final form. This allowed for the images to have higher resolution elements than the final product. That's also why these and the screenshots on the box feel slightly off; they're just a very good mockup of a game that happened to come extremely close to the creator's initial vision! You can read more about the original game's bullshots here.

Would you like to watch the rolling demo that wowed the gaming press that summer? Here's a recording courtesy of DOS Nostalgia:

What's the deal with the change in the game's name from month to month? Here's the story of the two name changes and the CES demo from the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide:

At almost every software company, the working title of a game under development changes by the time it's released. With the show right around the comer, everyone wanted to nail down a name right away. Trademark searches blew away any possibility of using the name Squadron, and after numerous meetings, Wingleader was selected.

Everyone in the company understood the importance of trade shows, but few were thrilled by the prospect of producing the items that make them successful. For the creative services department, the CES show meant that the box art had to be completed three months before the release of the game. They sure didn't want to incur the costs or the time involved in repeating the task a few months later. For the art department, the show required quality grapfiics for the demo that would, in all likelihood, never be used in the shipped version of the game. From a sound and music standpoint, the demo demanded editing work for narration, and transitional music that wouldn't match what was created for the final version. For the producer and director, it meant pulling resources away from the actual completion of the game to develop the self-running computer demo. . . a scheduling nightmare. For Chris Roberts, it meant a solid week of 18- to 20-hour days to finish the programming and assembly.

Needless to say, the CES show was a resounding success for Origin. The Wingleader demo surprised people in every corner of the industry who had thought of the company as the mecca of fantasy and role-playing software. It seemed to many that this action-adventure simulation had come right out of left field. Actually, it was a blast from home plate that the left-fielder never had a chance to reach. It was a monumental home run.

To Marten Davies, Vice President of Sales, the show was an unqualified success and produced the tool he needed to keep excitement at a fever pitch. "I kicked hard to have a demo completed for the show," he said. "It was just a gut reaction, but I knew I needed to flood the retail and distribution channels with he demo. Before the release of the game, I wanted the excitement to grow so that the confidence level would be extremely high. If we could get consumers beating a path in and out of the door, asking whether the game was out, distribution would respond."

While the demo disks produced for the trade show gave people the impression that Wingleader was a game, it was actually just a naked, arcadish simulation at that point in development. For the show, Chris had the playtesters fly around while he recorded it. Then he had the artists work on some special graphics while he coded the flying sequences in the demo. George wrote the text and picked out the order of the shots and Roberts fine-tuned it for the show. Now it was time to turn it into a game.

A high excitement level wasn't the only result of the trade show. In meetings with distributors. Origin had promised a September release of the game. The date was based on estimates from product development, but the deadline was now etched in stone and Chris, Jeff, Warren, and the rest of the team had to deliver.

From Wingleader to Wing Commander

A surprise awaited everyone at the end of the show. While the initial trademark search had cleared Wingleader, there were enough similar names of early software titles, MicroProse's Wingman among them, that the company yielded to its second choice, which had come through the search unscathed. Wingleader became Wing Commander, and with that final selection and the September deadline, the intensity moved to warp speed.

The Fatman also recently shared his memories of working on the CES demo. The legal issues have been resolved by the 27th century… if you leave the TrainSim to sit in the original game you'll find it's named Squadron!

The Old Testament

Years ago, we scanned a copy of what has been referred to as the Wing Commander "series bible" (here, PDF) It's a massive document that records all sorts of information about the Wing Commander series up through Wing Commander III. The copy we preserved came from the actual physical document that the Maverick team maintained and updated over time and which was rescued after the team was disbanded.

The core of this document was what might be called the Wing Commander licensing bible, a hundred page document put together just after the release of Special Operations 1 for the express purpose of being a reference for the writers of the Wing Commander novel series. Dr. Forstchen, for instance, was sent a copy of this initial document and used it for reference during the writing of End Run, Fleet Action and so on. For anyone thinking about that material, it's valuable to have a copy of the original bible so you know exactly what was available to the tie-in writers.

To that end, here's exactly that (PDF) generated from the original digital files. It's a great resource for sourcing odd little mentions from the Baen novels; unlike the development team, they never received any update to this so it never covered Wing Commander III or IV. It's also interesting seeing the source documents that made up much of the lore included here, initially written during the making of Wing Commander II. Fascinating history!

Baby You Can Drive My Carr (in a Rapier)

Before Wing Commander was ever an 'interactive movie' it already had a lead actress: Saranya Carr (2629-2688). Though she is barely ever seen, the story of Carr and her daughter Morgana is a constant in the background of Wing Commander's lore. Let's take a closer look…

Saranya Carr was created by Aaron Allston for the original Wing Commander's Claw Marks manual in 1990. She is a young actress who is the lead in what is implied to be a show-within-a-show series of film serials called Luna Jones, Jumpscout. Carr was introduced in the magazine's Comm Relay news section in a story about how the Terran Confederation Service Organization is sending her to the Tiger's Claw as part of a morale-building tour. We suspect her name, an Indian given name and a British surname, is intended to hint at a more blended human culture in the 27th century.

TCSO Show Scheduled

(Tiger's Claw, TCAFCN) - There’s good news for servicemen aboard the TCS Tiger's Claw: The TCSO (Terran Confederation Service Organization) will send an entertainment unit to the much-decorated carrier as early as next month.

The TCSO troupe includes dancers (normal and zero-g), singers, comedians, and the Confederation's best cyberlink illusionists.

Vidstar Saranya Carr, exotic heroine of the popular Luna Jones, JumpScout serial, is accompanying the TCSO troupe to the Tiger's Claw. Carr, 25, stated, "You bet your life I'm happy to be working with the TCSO. I mean, you see Luna Jones blowing Kilrathi fuzzies out of space every week, but Saranya Carr doesn't know a nav computer from a dialogue transceiver. Since I can't help our fighting forces directly, I'm proud to be able to entertain and build morale. Besides," she adds, "I'm not completely unselfish. Perhaps I can persuade someone to give me a ride in one of those new Rapiers..."

The TCSO show is also advertised on the back of the manual. The TCSO is a reference to the real world United Service Organizations. The USO is a charity which has been providing entertainment for members of the United States armed forces since the start of World War II. As does the TCSO in Wing Commander, the real world USO sends entertainers to perform for troops deployed around the world, including during active conflicts. Think the 'Playboy Playmates' scene in Apocalypse Now. Here in a wonderful example of the 'sci-fi list' we are promised dancers (normal and zero-g), singers, comedians, "cyberlink illusionists" and "the lovely SARANYA CARR star of Luna Jones, Jumpscout! (Down, boys!)" (Let's take a brief nod to the present-day sexism here and in the all-female dance revue as well as the reference to Luna Jones being 'exotic'.) The show will be held on May 20 (2654.140), which is a very helpful fact for anyone working on a day-to-day timeline of the original Wing Commander! The advertisement is sadly left out of later updates to Claw Marks.

This could've been the end of it but the TCSO show actually happens during the course of the game! That is, if you happen to play through the losing Port Hedland series. In the first mission, Colonel Halcyon orders you and Knight to escort home a Drayman carrying supplies and the TCSO show to the carrier. Maniac, eager to meet some "babes", interrupts the briefing twice.

Mission Briefing. Port Hedland, $T hours, $D.

COLONEL HALCYON
I know you're all excited about tomorrow's TCSO show, but...

MANIAC
Yeah -- bring on the babes!

COLONEL HALCYON
That'll be enough, Maniac.
We've got work to do. Alpha Wing's up first.

You wait for the commander to come to Eta Wing and your mission. Then...

(if Knight is alive) $C, Knight, you're on escort duty today.
(if Knight is dead) $C, you'll be flying solo today. Escort duty.
There's a Drayman coming, carrying vital supplies...

MANIAC
And some vital babes!

COLONEL HALCYON
Bring it home safely. This is your flight plan...
You'll head straight for Nav 1 -- the Drayman's jump point.
Wait for her there, but be careful...
... we've had reports of heavy enemy activity in the area.
The 'sport has orders to make a beeline for the Tiger's Claw.
Stay with her. Simple as that. Questions?

MAVERICK:
Yes, sir. You said there's heavy enemy activity. Any details?

COLONEL HALCYON
The Kilrathi have been moving heavy fighters into this sector, $C.
I expect you'll be running into Gratha, maybe Jalthi...
The pilots all seem to be rookies, but there are lots of them.
Anything else?...Good. That's all then.
Be careful and remember -- I want everyone back for the TCSO show!
Squadron dismissed.

Since the TCSO show is tomorrow, we know that $D should be 2654.139 (Wing Commander's in-game dates are dynamic and do not automatically match the lore). As an aside, the Super Nintendo version replaces both of Maniac's lines. "Yeah -- bring on the babes!" becomes "Yeah -- let the good times roll!" and "And some vital babes!" becomes "And some vital entertainment!".

If you talk to Shotglass before the mission he also mentions the TCSO show and tells us that it includes a hologram Bob Hope. Comedian Bob Hope was nearly synonymous with the USO for decades, performing for American troops abroad starting in World War II. The organization continues to maintain a website about him today. The joke about his retirement in Wing Commander was on his famous longevity; when it was written he was 87 years old and still touring (and would be through the Gulf War the next year). Of course, the math doesn't quite add up: if he retired 'almost five centuries' before Wing Commander I then he'd have still been working into the 22nd century. Which perhaps seemed likely at the time! In our timeline, Hope passed away in 2003. But, odd that he wasn't mentioned in the advertisement; maybe a Bob Hope holo is what a cyberlink illusionist performs!

Welcome back, $C. Heard about the TCSO show?
I hear the Bob Hope holo's a riot. I love ol' Ski-nose...
Retired almost five centuries ago, but you can't keep a good comic down.
But seriously, I hear the show may not make it. Too many kitties nearby.
Young punks mostly, but in Grathas - top-of-the-line bad news.
The furballs must think their kittens're better than our vets.
And they might be right, if you're talking about a kitten in a Gratha.
Even an amateur's dangerous in one of them...

If you successfully escort the Drayman to the Tiger's Claw then Halcyon will mention that "the TCSO show will go on as scheduled". If you fail the mission, the show simply isn't mentioned. A rare choice not to turn the screw!

The Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide also mentions the TCSO show in the Port Hedland 1 writeup. But there's a catch: Carl LaFong writes that he wasn't able to attend! He was busy flying a Drayman to another system when the show took place. Instead, Spirit flies the mission... but we do get a tantalizing description of the show itself! And mention that Sarayna Carr is one of his favorite actresses.

From all accounts, the TCSO show was a rousing success. The zero-gee dancers apparently turned weightlessness into a tool and wowed the crowed [sic] with their precision moves. One pilot described it as like watching a group of playful dolphins glide through the water.

I remember how miffed I was about missing the show. Saranya Carr, star of Luna Jones, Jumpscout and one of my favorite actresses, had really made an impression on everyone aboard the carrier. Oh, the sacrifices we make.

… but while Carl LaFong might have missed out on meeting Saranya, Christopher Blair did not! The Kilrathi Saga manual's Class of 2653 scrapbook is signed by (among other deep cut characters) Luna Jones herself! She wishes Blair "love and luck" and we are improbably going to learn why that is.

… the story continues in 1997's Secret Ops. Specifically, Saranya Carr herself makes an appearance in the ISDN article about Commodore Blair's memorial (Episode 3). Here the story takes some fascinating turns. First of all, we confirm the story implied by the Kilrathi Saga manual: Blair not only met Saranya Carr at the TCSO show but he was the pilot willing to give her a ride in his fighter! She claims that meeting Blair had a profound impact which changed the tone of later Luna Jones, Jumpscout serials. We also learn that she has become a reclusive subject of tabloid rumors having not appeared in public since 2676. And finally there's the introduction of her daughter in some self promotion straight out of Hollywood (holowood?): she's making a sequel to the Luna Jones series called Riva Jones, Daughter of Destiny. We've come a long way from Claw Marks! (Note that the timeline isn't quite right here. If she was 25 in 2654–which is even repeated here–she would be 52 here and not 50. Actresses, always lying about their ages!)

The major surprise of the night was the appearance of the reclusive Saranya Carr, famed star of the popular movie series, "Luna Jones, Jumpscout". Although scheduled to appear, the Actor has not made a public appearance in nearly five years. Greeted by a warm round of applause, the lovely Saranya was resplendent in a full length gown made of rare nanoptic fibers, which swirled in colors shifting upon the complimentary lighting that bounced off of its surface. Although tabloid rumors had placed her in a disheveled state of self-induced depression, there was no indication of that at the memorial. She acted as MC for the rest of the affair, but not before saying a few words.

Carr, now 50, made the following comments, "When I was twenty-five I was given the opportunity by the TCSO to visit a particular carrier. I leapt at the chance. I didn't care which it was, or where it was. I did not know it was to be the Tiger's Claw, and that the Lieutenant who would give me a ride in my first fighter would be a young Christopher Blair. He was a noble quiet soul, with a sense of duty that inspired the change in direction we took with "Luna Jones". Although our relationship was brief, he filled me with a respect for the pilots who protect our interests every time they put their hand on the stick. I knew this man was special, and that he would go onto great things. Little did I know that he would be regarded as a hero of such greatness, and that he would deserve every word of praise offered tonight. Now with my daughter's up and coming debut in "Riva Jones, Daughter of Destiny" I only hope we can recapture the verve and patriotic spirit of the previous films without being crushed by the shadow of our species most important hero. He will be missed, but not forgotten. Goodbye, Chris, may the world live up to the example you have set."

She then went on to introduce a long line of speakers, each of whose words were as memorable as the ones before. A complete transcript of the event is available in ISDN archives.

Finally, in the 1999 Wing Commander movie we actually get to see Sarayna Carr! On a blurry postcard in the background of Blair's quarters. The poster, infamously incorrectly claimed to be of Prinze's later wife Sarah Michelle Gellar, is intended to be a photo of Carr of the sort that might've been signed at the TCSO show. The inscription seems to read "do it for me boys" which fits with the tone of the event!

Who is the model 'really'? She's taken from a catalog of stock photos and shows up in a number of different places.

The movie novelization also includes an exchange about Carr and Luna Jones. Peter Telep uses her pop culture status for a run of the classic World War II 'who won the world series?' conversation to try and suss out infiltrators. The questioning pilot here is named Chris McCubbin after his fellow Wing Commander author but is played by Chris Roberts in a cameo appearance in the film!

"What the hell ..." A powerful spotlight shone on the cockpit. The light panned away, and behind it floated a Broadsword bomber that literally brought tears to Blair's eyes. The pilot snapped off a salute, and Blair managed a shaky reply.

A tube extended from the bomber's belly and locked onto the Rapier's primary external coupling. Blair threw back a row of toggles, and systems blinked on. One screen showed his Rapier firmly locked in the Broadsword's tractor beam.

"Good afternoon," the pilot said, his masked face now on Blair's VDU. "I'm Lieutenant C. W. McCubbin of the TCS Concordia. Who's Saranya Carr?"

"She's the star of Luna Jones, Jumpscout."

"That's good. But even the cats know that."

"C'mon, buddy. Do I look like a Kilrathi to you?"

"Well, Lieutenant, you're pretty damned ugly." The pilot chuckled, then fired thrusters, towing Blair off.

Somehow, the Wing Commander movie wasn't the end of Saranya Carr! For the aborted 2003 attempt at Privateer Online, Origin Systems' Hal Milton crafted a lengthy timeline of the Wing Commander universe from the end of Wing Commander Prophecy in 2681 to the intended start of Privateer Online in 2710. Here, surprisingly, we get regular updates about Saranya Carr and her daughter, now named Morgana. We learn that Riva Jones was not a success and that Morgana eventually falls on hard times. Her mother is killed in an asteroid collision in 2688! There's lots of exciting world building here that is absolutely worth a read. This background all leads up to the construction of a memorial site which likely would've been explorable in the final game world.

2683

Saranya Carr’s daughter stars in the holo-vid sequel to her popular “Luna Jones: Jumpscout”. Entitled “Riva Jones Daughter of Destiny”, Morgana Carr fails to capture the same success her mother achieved twenty-five years earlier.

2684

A holo-vid event entitled “Plague” is cancelled by Confederation order in light of the epidemic facing many Confederation and Kilrathi sectors.

Although the TCBN (Terran Confederation Broadcasting Network) protests that it is purely fiction, they agree to pull the feature co-starring Morgana Carr.

2688

Saranya Carr dies in a passenger craft asteroid collision. Millions mourn.

Morgana Carr gives eulogy at a funeral ceremony with over 500,000 attendees.

2695

Morgana Carr puts her eggs on the market in a last ditch effort to recoup money needed for outstanding debts incurred during the making of the aborted sequel to Riva Jones “Daughter of Destiny”.

2698

Galaxy First! Protests bioweapons by placing their ship in the test area. Although the Confederation craft present had no intention of harming the vessel, the protestors moved directly into the path of a Plunkett class destroyer.

The two vessels collided and the resultant damage was responsible for a critical hull breach on the Galaxy First! Vessel. All hands were lost, including Morgana Carr who had been on board with several other celebrities.

2700

Orbital memorial for Galaxy First! Bioweapon protest victims established. Funded by varied charitable organizations, including the recently founded Carr Institute for Galactic Preservation, the memorial is comprised of salvaged metals from the wreckage as well as natural rock mined from the varied heavenly bodies in the system.

Whether or not any of this actually happened is brought slightly into question by Wing Commander Arena's manual, Star Soldier. While Star Soldier does reference the unpublished Privateer Online material several times, it also features an advertisement for a holovid based on the Crusader games which stars… Morgana Carr! Star Soldier is dated January 2701 and the movie is said to release in the fall so perhaps it was her final role.

Wing Commander Movie Night: Seven Samurai

Demolition Man gets our seal of approval; it's not anything brilliant but it's endlessly fun and it really compares favorably to Judge Dredd. Our next movie will be Seven Samurai (1954) by Akira Kurosawa. Seven Samurai is regarded as a timeless classic and a film that has had endless influence on films since… so it will be pretty fun to see that and decide how it might connect back to Wing Commander! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along. Please note that the movie will begin one hour early (at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific) to accommodate the run time.

The Wing Commander universe has a sea of over a dozen stars named after the sci-fi authors that inspired the series, from Clarke to Niven. But there are only three named after directors: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas (both in the Enigma Sector)... and Akira Kurosawa in the Vega Sector. The system, sometimes spelled Kurasawa, first appeared in the original Wing Commander where the Tiger's Claw helps siege the Kilrathi bases at Kurosawa IV. It has been referenced a number of times since. But most famously, it's home to the hardest mission in Wing Commander history: Kurasawa 2, the so-called Ralari rescue. We've chosen Seven Samurai to recognize Kurosawa in this series and we will make an appropriate selection for Spielberg in the future.

The updated versions of Claw Marks published with the Sega CD and Super Wing Commander versions (and adapted for Claw Marks) include another mention of the system which establishes that the Tiger's Claw had fought there just before the start of the game.

This past week, the Tiger's Claw was fortunate enough to add another ace to its Confederation ranks. Second Lieutenant Todd "Maniac" Marshall knocked down his fifth Kilrathi in an engagement near Kurasawa System, where he and his wingleader, Captain Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux, were escorting a cargo ship.

And the movie sequel novel Pilgrim Stars has a moment where Blair thinks about being able to identify the system from his farm as a child:

As Blair stepped into the aft observation bubble, he felt a strong sense of déjà vu. He knew he had never been to this part of the ship, and he slowly realized that the brilliant night sky seen through the Plexi reminded him of the sky over his uncle's farm on Nephele. The farm stood four hundred kilometers away from the nearest metroplex, thus the light pollution that too often robbed the stars of their luster had never been a problem there. He could easily pick our stars like Mylon, Tyr, Kurasawa, Gimle, and even K'n'Rek, part of the Kilrathi empire. Though the stars were somewhat different here, their clarity and brilliance suggested something innocent and untainted by humans. Sadly, they had come to shed blood across the heavens, and Karista's face registered that grim fact.

But it's not just a system: Kurosawa has been honored with multiple namesakes in the Wing Commander universe. In Action Stations, Admiral Banbridge and his intelligence chief mention Captain Akiko Kurosawa, commander of the TCS Gibraltar.

"Nothing to sink our teeth into," Joshua replied. "You saw my report on what happened to the Beta team?"

Skip nodded and sighed. Of course their deaths would be listed as a training accident, bodies unrecoverable. They'd been nailed trying to slip into Kilrathi space near the Ingraya system in order to set up a listening post.

"That's the third team in as many months," Joshua said bitterly, looking into his mug of coffee. "One of them is Akiko Kurosawa's daughter, captain of Gibraltar. We've lost thirty good men and women for nothing."

"Why? Why are we getting hammered on covert intel?"

And there's a Confederation ship named Kurosawa, too! The 1999 Confederation Handbook establishes that the CS Kurosawa was the ship that studied the wreckage of the Iason after it was destroyed by the Kilrathi.

Ships were dispatched from Hyperion 2 to investigate the object, and at 0512 hours on .236 it was formally identified as the Iason. Port Admiral Miru, of Hellespont Naval Station, reached the scene in the CS Kurosawa at 1500 hours. Over the next 16 hours the hull was extensively scanned by Navy sensor teams, but Admiral Miru ordered a quarantine distance of 10 kilometers. No Confed personnel were allowed within that distance.

You can read the entire article here.

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

Seven Samurai is available for rent or purchase on the standard streaming services, and it's also currently on the HBO MAX platform. If you would like a physical copy, the movie was released on BluRay in 2024 and remains in print around the world. A copy is available for download from the Internet Archive. They also have a rare dubbed copy if you are not comfortable with subtitles. If you are not able to locate a copy please stop by the Discord and ping a CIC staff member before Friday's showing.

How do we watch the movie together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 9 PM EST. Please note that this is one hour earlier than usual to allow for the film's lengthy run time. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

Secrets of the Alias Tapes

Alias|Wavefront (now a subsidiary of AutoDesk) is a company with a long history of developing industry-focused 3D rendering tools. Origin's FMV Wing Commander games used their PowerAnimator suite for their CG work and the team at Digital Anvil used Maya for working on the Wing Commander film. Every year Alias|Wavefront produced a VHS 'showreel' that was part advertisement and part thank you for their loyal customers. It would include dozens of clips of projects from the previous year and then some longer segments describing how some of the work was accomplished.

DMJC was recently browsing their 1996 demo tape and found a fun surprise: a clip from Wing Commander IV! It turns out that Chris Roberts was eager to have his team's work shown alongside film production groups like ILM and encouraged his artists to submit their best efforts… and guess what, they compare pretty favorably with the ones being done by the movie industry! But from that hint we did a little hunting and found that the 1995 tape is both full of Wing Commander clips AND it includes a long segment with a Chris Roberts interview and never-before-seen behind the scenes shots from Wing Commander IV! Here's the segment:

We also discovered that the 1997 tape includes a submission from Digital Anvil. It's not completely clear but we believe it's an early iteration of the concom scene from the Wing Commander.

We also found this mystery in the 1996 tape: an elephant… person?... that's credited to Origin Systems. We've verified that it's not an Ultima elephant but it's also not clear what 1995-6 Origin project might have resulted in this clip.

It's also a lot of fun to watch the entire tapes which are chock full of clips from films and commercials you remember… with some neat tunes! They're like concentrated 1990s pills. We've embedded them below along with an index of Wing Commander and Origin clips for each. Let us know if you find anything we missed!

Alias | wavefront PowerAnimator Demo 1995

1m11s - Wing Commander IV clip, Hellcat under attack
1m26s - Wing Commander IV clip, Seether's mine trick
12m16s - Wing Commander IV clip, transport exploding
15m55s - Jane's Longbow cutscene
15m58s - Jane's Longbow cutscene
16m02s - Wing Commander IV segment
20m47s - Wing Commander IV clip, transport under escort

Alias | wavefront PowerAnimator Demo 1996

1m27s - Unidentified elephant
1m29s - Jane's Longbow cutscene
20m41s - Wing Commander IV clip, Kilrathi convoy flash-paking

Alias | wavefront PowerAnimator Demo 1997

17m12s - Unidentified Digital Anvil clip (original concom?)

Alias | wavefront PowerAnimator Demo 1999 (Maya)

0m20s - WCM clip, Rapier attack
0m31s - WCM clip, Broadsword rescue
0m55s - WCM clip, broadside
1m28s - WCM clip, Charybdis jump

27th CIC Birthday Party Set for August 16!

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Demolition Man and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: Forbidden Planet

Greetings WingNuts,

We'll start our look at Forbidden Planet with a gallery of the ship referenced on Wing Commander Academy, the United Planets Cruiser C-57D. It's simplistic compared to the kind of starships we know today but you can see the influence on the original Enterprise right off…

We'd show you a picture of the Krell, a name borrowed by Privateer 2 for a heavy fighter, but they don't actually appear in the film! All we ever see is their enormous underground machine.

Another enduring impact on science fiction is the prevalence of Altair as a location. Altair is a real star but the fact that it played such a major role in Forbidden Planet is the reason it appears constantly in other science fiction… including all over Wing Commander! The Wing Commander III 3DO port names one of the Confederation depots at Kilrah the TCS Altair:

The Wing Commander IV novelization makes Altair the planet Paladin represents in the Assembly:

He was lucky that, unlike the bottom feeders infesting the Assembly, he didn't have to whore himself to take care of the home folks. His own planet, Altair, was a soldiers' colony. Altairians appreciated soldier's talk, the blunter the better. He had promised his people only to try his best. He felt proud to serve them, proud they placed their trust in him.

The Tri-System isn't safe, either! "Altairian Rindpests" are a threat to randomly selected planets. This news story denotes a 200% increase in livestock prices on the given planet!

Altairian Rindpest hits $LOCATION

$CLIENT reports

The dreaded Altairian Rindpest, scourge of Livestock farmers everywhere, has struck on $LOCATION. Huge Livestock losses have occurred, as farmers are forced to put down all afflicted animals to prevent the epidemic from spreading. Imports are urgently required.

Don't forget Wing Commander Prophecy: Maestro's booze is 'Altairian Brandy' from the Consulate General's private reserve.

CASEY: Altairian Brandy? That's contraband! Where did you get it?

MAESTRO: It's a diplomatic perk. I borrowed it from the Consulate General's private reserve.

Privateer 3 would've had one more nod: the Border Worlds' light fighter was intended to be called the Altair-class.