RIP Dilbert

Cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the famous Dilbert comic strip, passed away earlier this week. Mr. Adams had become quite a crank over the years and precious few people are mourning his passing... but we can take the occasion to mourn our youth! No matter how we might want to deny it today, Dilbert was a massive part of the pop culture of the early 1990s that produced Wing Commander. And the comic inspired the development of the series several times!

Dilbert began in 1989 and reached the height of its popularity in the early 1990s. The strip lampooned white collar office work and was celebrated by tortured engineers and creatives around the world for capturing exactly how they felt about their pointy haired bosses. Fridges, cubicles and offices everywhere sported favorite Dilbert strips... and Origin Systems was not immune. Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III describes art director Chris Douglas' office's 1990s pop culture ephemra, complete with printed Dilbert comics on the door:

Chris has decked his door with "Dilbert” comic strips that he downloaded from the Internet, and his walls are hung with Maxfield Parrish posters. Compared to the other people on the Wing 3 team, however, the interior of his office is fairly uncluttered. Besides his PC and SGI there is only the black television that he uses to play tapes from his collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a comfortable chair, two strings of blue and purple origami cranes and thirty-four miniature Star Trek spaceships. "When I was a kid, I would have given anything for some of the toys they have out now,” he confides. "I’m pretty bitter about how empty my childhood was when today kids can get all sorts of neat stuff. . . now I just wish they’d come out with some Babylon 5 ships.”

The game itself confirms the inspiration by specifically listing Dilbert among the inspirations saved in its hidden quotes file!

TEAM INSPIRATION
X-Com; People On Fire; Two-Fisted John Woo Action; Doom II; Dilbert ; Simpsons; More Doom; Seinfeld; Net Doom; Star Trek (so sue us)

... and Wing Commander Armada, developed simultaneously, even has a star system named DILBURT! It's in Sector 6 of the campaign mode (DILBURT can also appear in randomly generated Armada maps).

And here's a copy of Wing Commander producer Warren Spector's 1996 bookmark file which includes, of course, the Dilbert Zone:

And the team's love of Dilbert continued through the development of Wing Commander Prophecy! When producers distributed the weekly component manager meeting notes (what we'd call a leads meeting today) he included a weekly Dilbert:

Finally: in 1997, Electronic Arts decided to eliminate Origin's crack creative services department, the part of the company responsible for published material like box designs and game manuals. The team, commanded by the great David Ladyman, opted to reform as an outside group offering its services to the entire industry... including the Wing Commander team. They would go on to develop the Wing Commander Prophecy guide and documentation, the Confederation Handbook for the movie and even manuals and subscriber magazines for Chris Roberts' Star Citizen! Ladyman and crew named their company Incan Monkey God Studios after a joke from a specific Dilbet strip. The company still maintains a website which includes the history of the name:

Our Name

And just what IS an Incan monkey god, you ask? What being has fostered our devotion? The force of which we speak emanated deep from within a delirious mind, when one of our own fell into the dreaded Stupor of Wordlessness. Finally, haggard and uninspired, he sought out ethereal counseling. With the help of the Incan Monkey God, he emerged victorious, manuscript in hand.

Imagine a cartoon below…

Panel 1

Dilbert greets Tim and comments on his haggard appearance.

Tim comments that he hasn’t slept for five days because he’s been trying to finish a manuscript.

Panel 2

Here, Tim confides that he overcame his mental block with the help of the Incan monkey god.

Panel 3

Lucky break, says Dilbert.

Now, says Tim, he has to translate the resulting material into something legible.

The above text summarizes the Dilbert cartoon that led to the name for Incan Monkey God Studios. Sadly, for legal reasons, we do not have permission to display the strip here. If you want to see the original strip, click here.

We are not actually aware that the Incans had any monkey gods; the only monkey god we’ve ever heard of was first imagined by Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams. However, we certainly relate to Tim when we’re up against a deadline, especially at those times when the material has to be written before the game code we’re describing has been created.

3D Armada Takes Shape on Discord

Wing Commander Discord regular Justice recently acquired a 3D printer and over the past two weeks they've been sharing their progress putting together a fleet of Wing Commander ships for tabletop gaming! I've enjoyed following the little updates so much that I thought it would be good to post them in an update for everyone to see. Justice says "I intend to keep doing more ships, though I'll probably slow down a bit for now. Except for Voidfighters, the games I want to try with these are more capital ship oriented anyway, and for Voidfighters ideally I'd scale up the fighters and print them bigger." They are using 3D models available from Tyrel Lohr.

Came out not too bad considering how tiny these bits are, and considering that I still haven't installed a 0.2 nozzle. Gotta be more careful to not touch the teeny tiny fins on the Hornet. Or use a sturdier material. I only have sturdier filament in colors right now. And print a bunch of them. And then play Full Thrust or Voidfighters or Billion Suns. Something this small I should probably just do a multicolor print, though. Oh well, time to throw some primer on the Hornet. Haven't really painted any of my prints yet, so that'll be a test. Probably would work better in resin, These are a couple models from that user mentioned in the news article recently. I got a cheap fdm printer black Friday. If I was gonna print more Constitutions, I'd probably need to make the struts holding the nacelles either flare into them a bit or actually insert in, it's a little too flexy. Probably would print bigger fighters for Voidfighters, though, since it's a fighter-scale game. Full Thrust would be cool to do with Confed and Kilrathi fleets, though its focus is on capital ships. Fighter squadrons are in there too, though, and it looks like they're especially good for intercepting capship missiles, which tracks well with WC3.

A bit stronger material, but it made the supports stick more to the guns, and they got more bent. Fins intact though

Multicolor print in progress. Probably won't finish before I leave today.

Gotta go, but they're getting there.

Done, but I'm not home to try and remove them.

Not an amazing success, but they are definitely Confed Hornets. Well, plus one test print I used as a flush target. If I print bigger ones, they might separate from support better, or I could slice them in half to print the halves flush and glue them. Or just forget the bottom details and make it flat for tabletop gaming. Options.

A couple more prints. Sliced the Bengal, which is why it has the seam, but the underside looks much nicer that way. Did one scim each way; had to glue one of the guns back on the print-in-place one

A rough paint job for a rough print (my 5 year old did the Raptors). Gonna make some hex bases and print some cats once I have a base design I like. Have a basic one and a plug for ships too thin for a post hole roughed out in Freecad, needs some details like lines to make it easy to see fore/port/aft/stbd. Probably more scims (but printed in color) . Maybe try some at 3x scale too.

One flight-ready Hornet. Glue is drying on a wing of 4 Raptors.

Printer had a little oopsie.

Anyway, I'm getting there

Anyone hungry for some... pancakes?

Ships based, time for bed.

I think I've got enough ships to try a couple games. Now I just need sometime to do it.

Printing some asteroids to have a little space terrain.

Asteroids from last night

Reprinting the confed fighters in a larger size now in one big 6+ hour batch (probably do Kilrathi overnight) to hopefully be easier to see at Voidfighters scale. The others ought to be good for Billion Suns or Full Thrust. Maybe the day after the birthday party I'll get to try them out. Voidfighters doesn't do anything bigger than corvettes, but has a fair amount of fighter customization as well as different pilot skill levels and leadership traits. Billion Suns has recon fighters/fighters/bombers/stealth bombers up through a bunch of capital ship classes, but with no per-ship customization. It has the most interesting scenario setups, with ship purchasing per-round and trying to earn the most credits by completing contracts. Some faction-level customization and upgrades, though. Full Thrust only has fighters if you have carriers to launch and support them, and is more focused on capital ship combat, but the capital ships are super customizable with lots of different weapons and interesting movement options, and one thing fighters can do is intercept capship missiles, which is pretty Wing Commandery. (This is still only like 50 cents worth of filament for 10 fighters and a drayman)

Bigger fighters next to the smaller ones. Still fit nicely on that base size.

Since I'm stubbornly keeping 4 colors on the Kilrathi ships though, that's going to take... 11 hours to print. Maybe I should have combined the black or gray into one or the other. 6 dralthi, 4 gratha, and a few misc transports to absorb some of the filament that would get wasted when it flushes out extra for color changes.

Didn't get much done this week, but here's some Salthi.

Wing Commander Movie Night: Heaven's Gate

It's time to bite the bullet and watch the longest and most controversial movie in our queue: Heaven's Gate (1980), Michael Cimino's deeply troubled, sprawling western. At the time of release, Heaven's Gate's massive budget, troubled production and hasty after-release recut earned it the title of the worst movie ever made… but today opinions differ greatly, with many critics now seeing it as a true masterpiece. We will be watching the commonly available Director's Cut, which is extremely similar to the original version of the film that was withdrawn from theaters. Because Heaven's Gate is a very long movie, 218 minutes, we will be starting an hour early at 9 PM Eastern this week. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Most Wing Commander fans will see the Heaven's Gate reference straight off: it's the name of Wing Commander II's fifth series' star system and the infamous captured starbase therein that Spirit kills herself destroying. (Although the notorious Heaven's Gate cult existed during the making of Wing Commander II, it was not widely known until 1994, three years later.)

Heaven's Gate also stars two of Privateer 2's leading men! Christopher Walken (Commander Hassan) plays Nate Champion and John Hurt (Joe the Bartender) is Billy Irvine.

Finally: the movie's director, Michael Cimino, gets a callout in the second of Wing Commander Prophecy's simulator missions. For our purposes, we'll count that separately like we do star systems named after directors and watch The Deer Hunter down the road!

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

Heaven's Gate is available to purchase on the standard streaming services. We will be watching the commonly available Director's Cut which is the version that is 218 minutes long. 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. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone! Note that this week's movie will start one hour earlier than the usual showing.

How can I help pick future movie club movies?

The movie club movies are voted on each week by the Wing Commander Discord. The poll is typically posted 24 hours before each week's screening and the next movie is announced at the end. The choices for the poll come from a master pool of Wing Commander-related movies. If you would like to suggest a film for inclusion in that pool you can post it to this thread.

Wing Commander Cartoon Party VI: I'd Rather Be Playing Wing Commander!

No one wants it to be 2026 but the fact of the matter is that it is... and we're halfway through January! Which at least means we can get together for another Saturday morning cartoon marathon. Which, once again, will include no cartoons. We're watching two movies with big Wing Commander references in them, both of which seem to indicate that the characters would rather be playing Wing Commander. And the difference is the point here, we're going to be going from a poorly preserved 1990s Lifetime movie to a pixel perfect HD sci fi story about space Nazis. No, not Wing Commander IV. We're watching:

Children of the Sun (1994): The lineup starts up with a 1994 made-for-TV 'Lifetime' movie that's about the trials and tribulations of children born allergic to the sun. We haven't watched the full movie before but reviews online are almost exclusively from people who remember being absolutely terrified of it as children. Apparently it left a lot of kids anxious that THEY were going to die if exposed to sunlight. But whatever the case, it has a truly odd cameo from WING COMMANDER II. (Sadly, the only copy available is very low resolution... but being terrible has never stopped us from showing something at one of these!)

Iron Sky (2012): Iron Sky is a sci-fi comedy about a Nazi moon colony set up during World War II returning to conquer the Earth. It's a weird, clunky movie that's a mix of let's-put-on-a-show CG and edgy culture war jokes about a culture that doesn't really exist anymore. But one thing is certain: it has a pretty solid Wing Commander joke! And who could've known it was such an immediate prediction of our future?

So JOIN US on Saturday, January 17th at noon Eastern when we'll enjoy them all together! We recommend pajamas and cereal to accompany the chat.

We've also uploaded a zip of both together locally that you can grab in advance. You can get that here. Children of the Dark is available in YouTube and Iron Sky is available for purchase or rent digitally. Children of the Dark has been released on VHS internationally and Iron Sky has been released on Blu-ray. Iron Sky is currently streaming on Pluto TV and Amazon Prime in the United States.

How do we watch the shows together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Saturday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the shows in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should download their own copies from the CIC and we will count down to play them one at a time together starting with the short at noon EST on Saturday. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

Will there be custom certificates made for the attendees this time?

Yes.

You still don't have ANY cartoons this time, why haven't you changed the name?

Shut up.

I love these events but want to do better long term planning. Do you have any others coming up?

We do but we're getting close to the end! Here's the upcoming schedule. And if you have any idea for a future lineup, please feel free to suggest it on the forums!

• Marathon 7 - The Worst Parts of a Lot of Things - February 14

The Secrets of Wing Commander Prophecy, Part 1 - Series B

We've been working on new, more comprehensive guide pages for WIng Commander Prophecy as part of the great WCPedia project. To try and better understand how missions work, I decided to try and learn more about how the game's mission data works… and once I'd done that, I made some pretty shocking discoveries: Wing Commander Prophecy is full of undocumented nav points with hidden enemy ships!

Over the next few weeks, we're going to premiere the new guide pages one series at a time alongside a news post that points out some of the interesting discoveries. This first update covers the game's first series, the H'rekkah missions. You will play only four missions in H'rekkah but there are a total of six; Wing Commander Prophecy's mission tree is actually very complex!

You can find the individual pages for the first series missions below. Each guide now contains a complete object index, links to the relevant scripts and cutscenes and all the information in Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander Prophecy and the CIC's previous game guide… plus lots of ever-expanding extras! We're pretty happy with the current design but are also eager to add more so structural feedback is more than welcome… and of course, you can help us expand the WCPedia!

• B1: H'rekkah - Kilrathi Distress Call
• B2: H'rekkah - Black Widow Rescue
• B3a: H'rekkah - Sweep and Rendezvous
• B3b: H'rekkah - Patrol and Rendezvous
• B4a: H'rekkah - Wasp Intercept
• B4b: H'rekkah - Tactical Retreat

You can also track all the individual ship spawns with my notes using this spreadsheet.

B1: H'rekkah - Kilrathi Distress Call

The game's first mission in the game doesn't have any hidden Nephilim but it DOES have an in-flight cutscene that was dropped very late in the process… so late that the audio is still stored in the final game! This scene was cut from the game because the shader for the cloak effect wasn't working correctly at ship time.

Stiletto: Just stay cloaked until we figure out if they're friendly.
Maestro: Um... they're shooting at me. Guess they're not friendly.
Stiletto: Activate your cloaking device, Maestro!
Maestro: I am using my cloaking device!
Stiletto: Hey! They're shooting at me, too! Watch it, kids! They can see through our cloaking somehow!

There are also several unused comms referring to another wing, Charlie, which is encountering alien ships elsewhere.

B2: H'rekkah - Black Widow Rescue

This is the discovery that truly startled me: the second mission in the game has FOUR hidden NAV points which make it possible to score over 100 kills if flown in the correct order! During the briefing, the CAG notes that your nav map has been set up to limit enemy encounters… and it turns out if you try to change it you can spawn up to four additional nav points of Morays!

B3a: H'rekkah - Sweep and Rendezvous

After discovering all the hidden, undocumented encounters in B2 I was reminded that Wing Commander Prophecy producer Billy Cain once mentioned exactly this, that the game was designed to reward you for rearranging your flight path. I thought he was talking about some half forgotten idea at the time and didn't pay much attention to it… but it turns out that that is how many missions in the game work! In B3a, if you try to skip the nav points and go directly to the Midway's jump then you'll encounter an additional formation of Moray and Manta.

B3b: H'rekkah - Patrol and Rendezvous

B3b has the same hidden NAV point as B3a… with a greater number of enemies and more of the practically indistinguishable Wild Weasel variants of Mantas!

Welcome to Ultima 101

WingNuts, are you curious about how the other half lives? Well, for the past two years a YouTuber named Majuular has been putting together spectacularly detailed histories and playthroughs of the entire Ultima series, starting with Akalabeth and recently reaching 1993's Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds. These videos are well researched, well produced and thoroughly entertaining… even though each one is hours long! You can find the complete playlist here. Here are a few options that might be of special interest to Wing Commander fans... though it's really worth starting from the beginning as the story of Ultima is significantly the story of Origin Systems itself!

Ultima VII: The Black Gate includes what is probably the most famous Wing Commander crossover, a side quest which includes an appearance by Prince Thrakhath's Bloodfang starfighter trapped in a cornfield!

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss has a smaller Wing Commander Easter egg: the phrase "you cannot defeat the Drakhri" (sic) scrawled on the wall of the game's deepest dungeon.

Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds has a race of cat people it says are descended from the Kilrathi!

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny has a cameo from Chris Roberts, who helped develop the game before he created Wing Commander!

Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle was intended to feature an area called Cat Island featuring a storyline that tied in to Wing Commander, but it was largely cut during development.

Ultima VI: The False Prophet features the universe-hopping Segallion, initially created by Todd Michael Porter and featured in Knights of Legend. Segallion shows up in Wing Commander I as a Tiger's Claw redshirt and the name of a star system!

Seggallion also shows up in Ultima V and Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire.

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 Gathering (1993), the pilot film that kicked off Babylon 5, and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: Class of Beverly Hills

Class of Beverly Hills certainly was not high art but we had a great time revisiting 1990. The Beverly Hills 90210 pilot aired roughly two weeks after Wing Commander shipped and it had a massive cultural impact. Its embrace of California culture helped define America around the world to a generation of kids that wanted to be Brandon or Brenda. It was also shockingly tame compared to anything on television today; crazy to think that this was once the razor's edge of the generation gap!

The Wing Commander connection, "Brain 90210" on the Super Wing Commander trainsim board, remains elusive. But here it is compared to the series' titles!

... so let's look at the OTHER TrainSim pilot names! They change from port to port. We'll try to identify which developer each represents where known!

Wing Commander (Original)

• Dibber - Chris Roberts
• Gryphon
• Potshot
• Seggallion
• Sutek - Paul Isaacs
• Zoro - Ken Demarest III

Wing Commander (Kilrathi Saga)

• Bishop
• Mongo
• Goblin
• Mangler - Chris Douglas
• Jefftep - Jeff Grills
• The Man

Super Wing Commander

• Faustus
• Slammer
• Lightspeed - Jeff Everett
• Bat
• Brain 90210
• Buster

And here's Ian Ziering, future star of Freelancer, as Steve Sanders! Turns out Luke Perry isn't even in the pilot movie... he was added in the first episode when the show went to series. No Sub Zero screenshot for us!

Flight of the Intruder

Here's a pretty insignificant but also interesting little behind-the-screens detail I only just noticed: the 1993 Origin catalog lists the yet-to-be-released second Wing Commander novel as "Intruder/End Run". It looks like the Christopher Stasheff novella that kicks off the book was at one point named Intruder instead of Milk Run! The name certainly fits the story just as well. The idea behind End Run was that Stasheff's story would set up the scenario and Dr. Forstchen's novel would bring in Bear and company to explore that setup. We're betting that the title was changed late in the process to better connect the two stories which do seem to end up further apart than the original idea just on account of their very different writing styles.

Wing Commander: Intruder/End Run (April) $4.99
by Christopher Stasheff and Bill Forstchen
What are the Kilrathi protecting on the remote world of Vukar Tag? Mission Specialist Ramona Chekhova and the crew of the Johnny Greene must go where no human has gone before to discover their secret, even at the cost of their lives. And once it is revealed, how can Jason "Bear" Bondarevsky, former mutineer and now commander of the Tarawa's ragtag fighter wings, exploit it when the Confederation is most desperately in need of a miracle?

Everyone's Turning Thirty

February 12, 1996-

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (MS-DOS)

Wing Commander CTCG Promo #2: Admiral Tolwyn

Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

March 27, 1996-

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (PlayStation)

May 30, 1996-

Wing Commander IV Demo (Macintosh) - download it here

June 4, 1996-

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (MS-DOS DVD)

June 8, 1996-

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (Macintosh)

Septeber 21, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - Red and Blue

September 28, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - The Last One Left

October 1, 1996-

Wing Commander: The Price of Freedom (Baen)

Wing Commander III Navi Book (Locus)

October 5, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - The Most Delicate Instrument

October 9, 1996-

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (Windows 95)

October 12, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - Word of Honor

October 15, 1996-

Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga

October 19, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - Lords of the Sky

November 2, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - Chain of Command

November 9, 1996-

Wing Commander: The Secret Missions (Windows 95) - download it here!

Wing Commander Academy - Expendable

November 16, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - Recreation

November 20, 1996-

Origin's Official Guide to Privateer 2 The Darkening

November 23, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - Walking Wounded

November 25, 1996-

Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2 - Crusade (Windows 95) - download it here!

November 30, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - On Both Your Houses

December 7, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - Invisible Enemy

December 9, 1996-

Wing Commander II: Special Operations 1 (Windows 95) - download it here!

Wing Commander II: Special Operations 2 (Windows 95) - download it here!

Privateer 2: The Darkening (MS-DOS)

December 14, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - Price of Victory

December 21, 1996-

Wing Commander Academy - Glory of Sivar

... and it's somehow the 20th anniversary of EA Replay, released on November 14, 2006 for the PSP!

Space Cadet Rewind Revisits StarLancer

Space Cadet Rewind, the able YouTuber that has done in-depth reviews of several Wing Commander games, is back with a video covering Wing Commander's lesser known cousin: StarLancer! And unlike the Digital Antiquarian, they actually did proper research into Digital Anvil and the making of the game. It's well worth a watch.

And if this inflicts you with a dreaded case of StarLancer fever, be sure to check out our article about how the game reuses assets from the Wing Commander movie in a surprising number of places!

Wing Commander Movie Night: The Gathering

The Wing Commander movie club had a pretty good time with the Beverly Hills 90210 pilot; it wasn't high art but it was a lot of fun... and gave us a good picture of the pop culture world Wing Commander was born into. This week, we're finishing our TV miniseries by looking at a second pilot that's a little more relevant to Wing Commander's world: The Gathering (1993). It's the telemovie that kicked off the Babylon 5 franchise! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Babylon 5 was midway through its first season when Wing Commander III's development was in high gear and we're confident the team included some fans. In fact, the Blackmane base model was a nod to Babylon 5's titular station. It's even stored as "BABYLON6" in the game's files!

The 3DO version even references this in the game: the name "STATION 6" is clearly visible on one of its textures!

And here's Art director Chris Douglas specifically talking about Babylon 5 in his interview in Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III:

Chris has decked his door with "Dilbert” comic strips that he downloaded from the Internet, and his walls are hung with Maxfield Parrish posters. Compared to the other people on the Wing 3 team, however, the interior of his office is fairly uncluttered. Besides his PC and SGI there is only the black television that he uses to play tapes from his collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a comfortable chair, two strings of blue and purple origami cranes and thirty-four miniature Star Trek spaceships. "When I was a kid, I would have given anything for some of the toys they have out now,” he confides. "I’m pretty bitter about how empty my childhood was when today kids can get all sorts of neat stuff. . . now I just wish they’d come out with some Babylon 5 ships.”

Babylon 5 fandom was still in force on the Wing Commander Prophecy team in 1997. The universe map features at least two Babylon 5 nods in the Kilrah Sector: K'za-Ha'duhm after the Shadow world Z'ha'dum and Pak Ma'hran after the Pak'ma'ra alien species.

Wing Commander Arena has a B5 nod, too! Without spoiling the end of the show, the phrase "menace to navigation" in a classified ad about a derelict Behemoth class ship is an intentional reference. (Interestingly, the exact phrase also shows up in a cut Privateer 2 scene... but that was years before the series ended!)

Wing Commander's cutscenes were… roughly the same quality as Babylon 5, and as a result they shared a number of major actors! Over the course of the series, these appearances included:

• David Warner - Aldous Gajic in Grail / Rhinehart in Privateer 2 / Admiral Tolwyn in Wing Commander
• Mauricio Mendoza - a Ranger in No Compromises / Border Worlds Pilot #1 in Wing Commander IV
• Jessica Walter - Senator Elise Voudreau in A Spider in the Web / Admiral Bergstrom on Wing Commander Academy
• David McCallum - Dr. Vance Hendricks in Infection / Canera Captain in Privateer 2
• John Shuck - Draal in The Long, Twilight Struggle and Voics of Authority / Hobbes in Wing Commander III

… and Robert Rusler, Seether himself, was a series regular during season 2… where he played a space fighter pilot! Not only that but Seether's Double Shadow knife was also frequently used as a generic alien knife by Babylon 5's props department. It also appeared on the spinoff, Crusade!

The fandom apparently goes both ways! Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski was an avid Wing Commander player back in the day... and since he was a big Usenet and social media poster, there's a great history of that preserved! On 12/29/94 he posted to GENIE looking for Wing Commander III cheat codes... just a few weeks after the game came out!

Only because I'm crummy at this stuff...anybody wants to send me cheat codes for Wing Commander III will live in my heart forever.
Damned kilrathi....

jms

There's even a Point of Origin that tells the story of the Wing Commander team contacting him in 1993 about the show:

Charles Cafrelli blasted a message to Babylon 5 and its creator/director/writer, Michael Straczynski, via CompuServ. Charles told him how much a lot of people at ORIGIN enjoyed the television show (and also passed along some of our artists' suggestions concerning bumps in the bitmaps). Straczynski sent Charles an e-mail reply: 'Do you realize how many hours of my life I have wasted in front of Wing Commander, Wing Commander II and the various Secret Missions modules? I hate all of you! Feh! Seriously, though, I'm glad y'all approve. I'll definitely relay the comments back to our design people.' Neat guy.

He occasionally fielded questions about whether or not things in his show were Wing Commander-related, usually denying them. That included the phrase "the price of freedom" (post) and "Earth's last, best hope" (post) which are both quotes from history. He also denied that Zathra's shuttle was based on the Tarsus from Privateer, though it has since come out that he didn't have as much creative control over the ship designs as he liked to suggest.

And in 1995, he even met with Chris Roberts to talk about doing a Wing Commander movie or series! He posted to GENIE on 8/8/96:

Actually met Chris Roberts last year, when we were in some preliminary discussions about us doing a Wing Commander movie or series. He definitely wants to be a film-maker.

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

We have chosen to watch the original 1993 version of The Gathering which would've been seen by the Wing Commander III team. In 1998, Warner Brothers re-edited the film with different scenes, new music and altered VFX and this is the edit generally available online. Since it is not available for purchase, we have made a copy of the 1993 cut available to download here. 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!

How can I help pick future movie club movies?

The movie club movies are voted on each week by the Wing Commander Discord. The poll is typically posted 24 hours before each week's screening and the next movie is announced at the end. The choices for the poll come from a master pool of Wing Commander-related movies. If you would like to suggest a film for inclusion in that pool you can post it to this thread.

Strike Commander Strikes Back (in VR!)

There's some pretty exciting news from Remi Leonard's libRealSpace project, an attempt to recreate the RealSpace engine originally built for Strike Commander as an open source platform. They've released a new build of Strike Commander with VR support just in time for 2026! Check out the video below which seems just about perfect.

RealSpace was created for Strike Commander and the game's "virtual cockpit" mode actually lends itself to VR very easily. Pacific Strike and Wings of Glory also had this feature and WoG actually supported 1996-vintage headsets like the VFX-1! But even more exciting, RealSpace was the engine for Wing Commander Armada, III and IV so we can dream about this somehow being adapted to our favorite series. You can download the build here.

Privateer Article Half Arsed

Condé Nast's longtime tech news website Ars Technica has published an article on, of all things, Wing Commander Privateer! It's a short--and to our ears accurate--look back at the game and how it managed to pull of something very special that still hasn't quite been repeated in the genre. Don't expect a detailed history or any shocking news (they're ultimately just trying to collect GOG affiliate sales) but it's nice to see the game celebrated... and thanks the prominence of the outlet there's already been a lot of chatter about Privateer on social media!

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 Class of Beverly Hills (1990), the pilot film that kicked off Beverly Hills 90210, and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: Arcadia of My Youth

We had some anime superfans in the audience for Arcadia of My Youth but we also had a lot of people who had never seen any anime at all ever. The former knew what to expect and I think everyone else was surprised. From the opening Goethe quote it was was clear this was going to be a serious space opera and not frivolous sex and violence. Just what Wing Commander fans want!

Here's Captain Harlock's distinctive skull logo as seen very, very briefly on Wing Commander Academy!

And here's a great example of how Tim Eldred's Wing Commander Academy storyboards were often inspired by shots from classic anime:

Happy New Year!

It's stardate 2026.001 which means that we would like to wish the Wing Commander community a very happy new year! Sadly, the time has come to once again put away your Kilrathi Saga 1997 calendar... you won't be able to use it again until 2031! Despite this setback, we're hopeful that 2026 will be a better year for both Wing Commander and our enduring family of fans.

It goes without saying that we're moving closer to the Wing Commander timeline every day: it's just 603 years until (the official) first contact with the Kilrathi! And we're just 56 years to the day from… the Mongolian invasion of China? That's what Action Stations says, anyway!:

Washington did it at the Battle of Trenton and turned the tide of the American Revolution. Sure, the British and Hessians screamed foul, but it brought victory. The Arab states did nearly the same thing in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the Mongols did it in their Chinese New Year strike of 2082.

New Year, New Poll!