New Wing Commander IV Timeline!

We've created a new timeline that shows you almost day-by-day (sometimes hour-by-hour!) what happened in Wing Commander IV! Since 2025 and 2673 have the same 'layout' of a year this means we can track Wing Commander IV 'as it happens' starting at the end of July. You can study the new timeline in Spreadsheet form here or read below for notes about how it was created and why it is different from previous attempts.

The issue determining a coherent day-by-day timeline for Wing Commander IV has always been the need to fit the events of the story into two weeks. This requirement derives from Paladin's line in the introduction: "...The Assembly looks forward to the results of your investigation. We shall decide a course of action within a fortnight…" The issue is that when the obvious time references in the novel are collected and the other references in the game are pinned together that everything takes a little bit more than two weeks.

As it turns out, the two week requirement was actually incorrect. The ellipses and the fade out cover how the novel continues the Assembly scene: "We shall decide a course of action within, ah . . . a fortnight of your completed report." The vote (the story's climax) will occur within two weeks AFTER Tolwyn completes his report. This matches the game exactly: Tolwyn is not delivering his report at the end of the game, he's being promoted. The novel goes on to establish that the report itself is two weeks away:

Tolwyn made a show of gracious acceptance. Taggart knew Tolwyn had gotten what he wanted, and now could afford to be gracious. Tolwyn turned slightly. Taggart was certain he did it to be better seen by the cameras. He raised his voice slightly, enunciating clearly for the journalists. "Thank you, Paladin. When you served under my command I knew I could always count on you," the admiral said. "I accept your vote of confidence on behalf of the Strategic Readiness Agency, and we shall endeavor to match your timetable for action."

"Two weeks," Taggart said, convinced Tolwyn was playing him, annoyed at Tolwyn's pointed reference to his once having been subservient to him. He searched for some sign of smugness or victory in the admiral's eyes, and saw nothing. Tolwyn's expression remained cool and still.

The admiral gave him another small smile. "Two weeks."

So the report is two weeks away and then the vote will occur within two weeks of that report. With this recognized what we will find is that the timeline of the novelization matches that of the game exactly! There are several points in Wing Commander IV where amounts of time are mentioned (ie, Eisen being gone for 46 hours or the vote being in five days), the novel adds several others and everything comes together perfectly!

Just One Day

Game Time References

To construct the new timeline, we began by collecting all of the references to the passage of time from the script, game and novelization. This gives us a set of 'rules' (most easily followed) from which to form the logic for our timeline.

Game

• "Flew off the TCS Liberty for 20 years." (0010B)
• "Maybe after putting my life on the line day in and day out for twenty years, hearing the crunch my feet make on real dirt is what I want." (0010D)
• "For months now, an undeclared war has been waged against us: acts of terrorism, piracy, sabotage." (0200A)
• "New school year, they're all excited." (0480A)
• "For weeks now, we have been experiencing an increasing harassment of legitimate Confed space operations." (0640A)
• "Confed had to maintain control for 40 years." (0640B)
• "We have reason to believe he's been feeding information to Border Worlds Intelligence these past weeks." (0800A)
• "I met Dominguez 40 years ago, during the Venice Offensive." (0890A)
• "For the past few days, I've been collecting mission data, coded transmissions, tracking fleet movements." (0890A)
• "Don't take offense sir, but how can you make jokes? An hour ago, I was a Confed pilot. Now I'm shooting them down." (1100A)
• "I spent seven years fighting the Kilrathi." (1221A)
• "Border Worlds Command has sent a marine detachment our way but they won't get here for another 16 hours, and we can't afford to wait for them, what with that Confed base down on Orestes IX." (1310A)
• "A Declaration of War with the Border Worlds has been put forth in the Assembly, the vote to take place in seven days." (1620A)
• "We've got less than a week before the Assembly's vote." (1720A)
• "You may recall that just a few years ago, you had the chance to kill me ... and didn't." (1750A)
• "It's just I haven't had much chance to sleep in the last few days." (1760A)
• "Forty years of service. " (1770A)
• "Sidetracked. Operation in the Lennox System. You know how thin our resources are. They'll be there within the hour." (1770A)
• "We expected you hours ago. / Things got a little hairy in Lennox." (1860A)
• "I stole a year ago from a Confed testing site, when no one was looking." (2490A)
• "46 hours. … How long it's been since Captain Eisen left." (2510A)
• "The Assembly votes in 5 days..." (2510A)
• " I could rig up a few in a week or so--" (3410B)
• "The Kilrathi understood this: they endured for millions of years and so shall we if we continue fighting!" (3510U)

Script

• "Several years since the end of The War with the Kilrathi..." (0010A)
• "the two men appraise each other, silent. it has been, after all, some time since their last encounter -- and they share two decades of tumultuous history." (0200A)
• "lt. colonel "gash" DEKKER opens his eyes. they're the eyes of a man who's seen a lot of bloodshed in his 30+ years; eyes that are sharp and hard, like the rest of his face. his voice is deep and cool, but he is definitely somebody you don't want to cross." (1860A)

Novel

• "He had survived twelve years of fighter combat against the Kilrathi, and two more of rough-and-tumble peace on the frontiers." (Chapter One, Part 1)
• "The Kilrathi War was less than two years over, and it seemed to him that the navy was already busy forgetting everything it had learned in three decades of conflict." (Chapter One, Part 1)
• "Otherwise, she would be dismissed at year's end for 'excessive time in grade.'" (Chapter One, Part 1)
• "He kept politely tapping for several minutes, then reversed the hammer in his hand. The second sweep crossed the hour." (Chapter One, Part 2)
• "We shall decide a course of action within, ah . . . a fortnight of your completed report." (Chapter One, Part 2)
• "'I accept your vote of confidence on behalf of the Strategic Readiness Agency, and we shall endeavor to match your timetable for action.' ... 'Two weeks,' Taggart said, convinced Tolwyn was playing him, annoyed at Tolwyn's pointed reference to his once having been subservient to him." (Chapter One, Part 2)
• "It was a delayed telecast from the Assembly Hall on Earth, and only two days old." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "Two years on the farm, however, had softened the hard edges and put a gloss of time over the hurt." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "The walls had no decoration other than old two-dees of comrades (many long dead), his framed citations and promotions, and curios picked up during twenty years of war." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "It was only nine a.m., local time, but the temperature was already up over 42 degrees centigrade." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "Eleven-thirty, and the place was already packed." (Chapter One, Part 4)
• "I flew off the ole Liberty for nineteen years." (Chapter One, Part 4)
• "I haven't killed anybody in a week, Mr., uh, Seether, and I'm due." (Chapter One, Part 4)
• "In the last several months, Colonel, we've suffered a series of escalating attacks." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "I'm told the vector mechanics are tricky and it takes the ore a couple of years to get here, but we get most of the iron we need for durasteel for a few centi-credits per ton." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "Two years grubbing in the dirt in Nephele to bring in a crop and fighting with the Farm Bureau had broadened his horizons in ways he'd never expected." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "His own uniform had been in a box in the quartermaster's stores until twelve hours before." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "I've booked you in the Arrow simulator at 1900 hours—to get your certification up to date." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "The unity that held us together through three decades is fraying now that the Kilrathi have faded." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "We'll get you checked out on our inventory tomorrow." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "We pulled a shore leave at Gonwyn's Glory about three months back." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "I got about six hours in an Arrow simulator yesterday, enough for a provisional rating,'" (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "The operations briefing'll be at 0600 hours." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "Yes, you'll need to recalibrate your watch for our eighteen-hour ship's day." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "His sleep, when he finally collapsed into his bed, gave him no rest." (Chapter Two, Part 5)
• "We'll be beginning the briefings for tomorrow's move to the Tyr system in about twenty minutes." (Chapter Three, Part 3)
• "It was his first serious combat mission and live carrier trap in two years, and both he and the ship had survived the experience intact." (Chapter Four, Part 3)
• "This good man was a prisoner on the ship he had commanded less than an hour ago." (Chapter Four, Part 5)
• "A full diagnostic would take almost half an hour, long enough to make him late for the reception." (Chapter Four, Part 6)
• "I've got the ready group this week and I know you need the flight hours." (Chapter Four, Part 7)
• "'I've served the Confederation for twenty years,' he said, 'regardless of what it's cost me.'" (Chapter Five, Part 2)
• "'We have just fought a tragic thirty-year war,' Paulson said, his hard edges softening as he tried to make peace." (Chapter Five, Part 4)
• "Blair knew his own reflexes and thinking speed were fast, fast enough to survive two decades of often hellish combat." (Chapter Five, Part 4)
• "We begin the next phase of our operations tomorrow, Colonel, so why don't you go get some shuteye." (Chapter Five, Part 4)
• "He thought back across his two decades of service, remembering all of the tests and tribulations of holding a commission in the Fleet during the war." (Chapter Six, Part 1)
• "He looked at his clock. Two-thirty." (Chapter Six, Part 1)
• "He'd been asleep a little more than an hour." (Chapter Six, Part 1)
• "That's the second unexplained surge in two days, so Paulson ordered it torn apart." (Chapter Six, Part 2)
• "The launch proved rough and his clearing turn slow, the results of having been away from the big ships for two years." (Chapter Six, Part 2)
• "He hadn't done a real eyes-only landing in a decade, and that had been in a fighter a lot more maneuverable than the Thunderbolt." (Chapter Seven, Part 1)
• "The Durangos were obsolete ten years ago!" (Chapter Seven, Part 1)
• "The generators were one of the few improvements the last couple of years had seen." (Chapter Seven, Part 1)
• "You only defected yesterday." (Chapter Seven, Part 2)
• "Most of the crew are pulling eighteen-hour-plus days to keep her from coming apart." (Chapter Seven, Part 2)
• "We served together during the Venice Offensive. That was three decades ago." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "'Electronic engineering,' Blair answered, 'but that was thirty years ago!'" (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "I've been on the admirals staff—one of the 'Black Gang'—for about the last two years." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "Within twelve hours I received a personal message from Tolwyn himself telling me to mind my own business." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "I passed on what they were selling, and within two hours my command override had been suspended." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "The carrier would be out of action for a month, perhaps six weeks." (Chapter Seven, Part 6)
• "Seether was amazed at how much damage could be wrought during one three-hour nap." (Chapter Seven, Part 6)
• "They went over three days back. According to our telemetry, either Blair or Marshall torpedoed the Lexington." (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "'I'm supposed to present my biennial report to the defense committee tomorrow,' he said. 'I figured I'd best give it to you first.'" (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "The Vesuvius'll be ready for shakedowns in a week or so." (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "But we lost three-hundred thirty on the Achilles last week," (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "'No,' Tolwyn said, shaking his head, 'my aides tell me a resolution declaring war on the Border Worlds will be brought up for debate before the full Assembly within a week.'" (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "His cloak of office lay casually thrown over a chair back, alongside the gavel that marked his position as the year's Master of the Assembly. " (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "Sleep didn't seem to be an option." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "The two-day refit at Orestes had accomplished other miracles as well." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "He hadn't realized how good a steak and vegetables would taste after a week of breathing smoke and eating condensed emergency rations." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "They'd worked side by side the entire two days at Orestes and had been possibly the only two people other than Eisen who hadn't taken an eight-hour shore leave." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "She'd fancied him no more than he had her, but she'd insisted they respect proprieties and had very specific ideas about where she should sleep. " (Chapter Eight, Part 5)
• "We have been harassed by unknown forces for the past 48 hours."; "We've got less than a week before the Assembly's vote." (Chapter Eight, Part 5)
• "Years ago, when I first signed on with Confed, there was a rookie pilot on my ship." (Chapter Eight, Part 5)
• "He was still worried twelve hours later while he waited with Eisen and a few well-wishers and watched a jump-capable transfer shuttle make a glass-smooth landing on the Intrepid's flight deck." (Chapter Eight, Part 7)
• "It's your first day on the job, sir." (Chapter Eight, Part 8)
• "'We have had two similar incidents in the last forty hours,' he said." (Chapter Eight, Part 8)
• "They'll be aboard in about an hour." (Chapter Eight, Part 8)
• "Maniac was damned dose to exceeding the Hellcat's eight-hour endurance." (Chapter Nine, Part 1)
• "But I fought the Kilrathi for 20 years, and I'm a tough old bird." (Chapter Nine, Part 3)
• "You had to have ten years experience, minimum, and be able to relocate with no questions asked." (Chapter Nine, Part 3)
• "Four hours later Blair sat in his command chair, worrying a thumbnail and wondering if he had made a grave mistake in trusting Bean." (Chapter Nine, Part 4)
• "'Did Panther get her stuff?' ... 'About an hour ago, in fact.'" (Chapter Nine, Part 9)
• "The timing won't have to be that fine, not if we can hit all three within an hour or so."; "Otherwise, we go in twelve hours." (Chapter Ten, Part 1)
• "'What time is pilot's brief?' ... 'About four hours.'" (Chapter Ten, Part 2)
• "Blair took this as a subtle hint for him to get some sleep." (Chapter Ten, Part 3)
• "The destroyers were new, and hadn't appeared on yesterday's recon tapes." (Chapter Ten, Part 4)
• "'It's too bad you couldn't have been here yesterday.' (Chapter Ten, Part 6)
• "'They mostly pushed us aside when they came aboard—greenies, twenty-year vets, we didn't matter to them.'" (Chapter Ten, Part 6)
• "He had revisited his last conversation with Velina over and over as he'd tried to sleep. " (Chapter Ten, Part 8)
• "Their groups suffered pretty heavily in yesterday's attack." (Chapter Eleven, Part 5)
• "We made landfall about five hours ago." (Chapter Eleven, Part 5)
• "It takes from sixty to ninety hours to run its course." (Chapter Eleven, Part 5)
• "If the rest of 'em don't ship out, they'll all be committing suicide in a year or so."
• "Blair dipped his head. He hadn't told anyone he had spent the night before tidying up his affairs and writing a short letter to Velina." (Chapter Twelve, Part 1)
• "'Twenty years ago,' he said conversationally, 'we ran an exhaustive computer analysis of the Kilrathi War.'" (Chapter Twelve, Part 3)
• "Phoenix wing will embark on the Vesuvius at zero-three hundred hours. Eagle's Claw wing will embark at zero-seven, together with the Marine battalion." (Chapter Twelve, Part 3)
• "Twenty years back, those on the project were already watching him." (Chapter Twelve, Part 4)

From there, we used a set of "Rosetta Stone" events to tie different parts of the game together. For example, we knew that Captain Eisen left the Intrepid on "Day X" and that during the Speradon series there is a conversation with Hawk where it is established that Eisen had left 46 hours earlier and that the Assembly's final vote (ie the end of the game) was five days away. From here, we could fill out most of the rest of the game following the lines mostly established by the novelization for how much time took place between different missions and common events. The two passes at these connections are listed as the 'logic' fields in the spreadsheet.

Notes & Issues

Introduction

The convoy attack which begins the novel is necessarily a different event than the scene it adapts from the game. The ships and characters involved are different. It also claims that "the Kilrathi War was less than two years over..." which has prompted me to place it in 2671, well in advance of the rest of the story. Perhaps this was the very first test of the flash-pak! The game's convoy attack scene, similarly, can't be placed exactly because the specific attack is never mentioned again.

With knowing a nod to Chris Reid, I have to note that the novelization clearly thinks Wing Commander IV takes place two years after Wing Commander III. There are several other references (cataloged above) to Blair not having worn a uniform or done so-and-so for two years. The "less than two years" in the intro really locks its placement but the others can all be read as confirming that Blair didn't immediately muster out in 2669 (which honestly makes sense). Note also that the game itself does NOT think this; all references in the script are to WC3 being 'several' years ago.

Start Time

I have opted to go with the maximum amount of time (14 days for the report and 14 days for the debate). This leaves three days between Blair's departure from the farm and his arrival at Orion. It is possible to move the start date forward up to three days or to insert the days sightly differently (one could go between the farm and the cantine, for instance). Having two days travel time from Nephele to Earth at the very least feels appropriate given that the same chapter also establishes that that's the speed emergency news arrives.

Ending

Paths Not Taken

I have attempted to chart theoretical timelines for the major paths not taken. I have treated Circe as equivalent to Speradon and I have dated Vagabond's death based on the timetable for Decker's marines. It was not possible to date the earlier Orestes that followed the first defection opportunity missions specifically.

External References

I note for posterity that the "Japanese DVD timeline" lists Wing Commander IV as taking place from 2673.219 to 2673.233. This comes from assuming the Wing Commander IV PSX e-mail is the start of the game and that the game lasts 14 days. Additionally, Star*Soldier lists 2673.219 as the overall date for Wing Commander IV, again referencing the e-mail. Since the new timeline encompasses these spans entirely I do not think it is an issue worth further attention.

Wing Commander IV's Lost Hellcats Found

In yesterday's update about connections between Wing Commander and Star Wars, we mentioned that the Hellcat takeoff scene from the Wing Commander IV intro had been the last one created. It turns out that that story hasn't been widely told… and it answers a small mystery the fandom has wondered about for almost thirty years!

Here's the story: As Wing Commander IV was preparing for launch, Chris Roberts wasn't happy with the game's introduction. He felt that the game's cinematic introduction wasn't doing enough to capture the player. A long standing philosophy at Origin was that the most effort (and by implication money) should be spent on the opening of a given game because that more than anything was what could guarantee a title would capture the player's attention. And Wing Commander IV had a spectacular intro… although it was one already compromised by the film shoot running out of time for the intended sequence on Blair's farm.

In November 1995, the game received a much needed six week delay which would allow for important polishing. This also gave Chris Roberts time to recut the introduction with the goal of making it more snappy and immersive. The team conducted a small series of reshoots of the pilot reactions from the first sequence and then the Assembly scene was significantly cut down, mostly dropping reaction shots from the various senators. The canteen scene was also tightened up with fewer shots of the location. Finally, the Nephele "takeoff" was completely redone: the original two shots were replaced with the new 'Star Wars' inspired one and one of the Hellcats in orbit.

The original starport takeoff scene was, however, included in one of the early trailers for the game. We just didn't know what it was! Fans speculated that this was from some sort of cancelled atmospheric mission… the reality is that the shot in the trailer was the original Nephele takeoff! The second shot, of the Hellcats boosting into the upper atmosphere, was not in the trailer and survives only as a screenshot. Here's the breakdown:

Wing Commander Movie Night: Star Wars

The Wing Commander movie club has faced the enemy at Midway and returned (relatively) unscathed. Now we're going to make the jump to hyperspace to watch a movie that was absolutely foundational for pretty much every aspect of Wing Commander: the original 1977 Star Wars (aka A New Hope). And we're going to watch the original version in order to understand exactly what Chris Roberts grew up wanting to turn into a game! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

We probably don't have to expend too many pixels explaining what Star Wars is. George Lucas' unexpected masterpiece combined the pulpy sci-fi serials of the 1930s with the most modern filmmaking technologies available. The result has become both modern mythology and a major basis for how and why movies are made.

We also probably don't have to spend much time pointing out the Wing Commander connections: from the very start of the series, the fantasy the games have tried to accomplish is letting the player experience an interactive version of Star Wars. And over the releases that connection only became more and more obvious, until you literally had Mark Hamill as the series' lead (complete with a pretty shameless flight down a deadly enemy trench…)! But we've collected some quotes and a few notes to get everyone stated–there should be a lot to talk about this time!

The Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide's comprehensive history of the making of those games starts with Chris Roberts' love of Star Wars:

Roberts had always been fascinated by science fiction movies and television shows, especially those like Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Return of the Jedi. He liked the action elements of space combat, the dazzling special effects, and the variety of characters the creators had imagined in future worlds. He wanted to bring those elements to the computer.

And that love was still present when he was making the movie. Here's Chris discussing his connection to Star Wars in the March 1999 issue of Sci-Fi Teen:

"Basically, I think every kid wants to be Luke Skywalker," reveals writer/director Chris Roberts, answering the oft-asked question: What inspired him to create Wing Commander, one of the most successful interactive video games in history, and now a movie scheduled to open this winter/spring?

"I grew up like every other kid," he recalls, "loving movies like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica on TV and science fiction in general. I originally created Wing Commander to give me the same experience and feeling I got when watching those films and TV shows, but while playing a game instead."

Generation XBox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood used Chris' lifelong love of Star Wars as the through line to tell the story of his making the Wing Commander movie:

A long time ago, in a galaxy not that far away lived a young boy called Chris Roberts. Chris wasn't just a Star Wars fan. He was the kind of Jedi geek who could tell you the difference between a tauntaun and a bantha in torturous detail. Born in California in 1968, he grew up in Manchester, England in the 1970s. When he was eight-years-old, he went to the cinema to see George Lucas's space opera. It changed his life. The moment he got back home he started building X-Wing fighters and Tie-fighters out of his Lego set. "That whole sense of being transported to another world had a big impact on me," he says. "Everything I've done has been about creating worlds that you can escape into." When he wasn't talking about Tie-Fighters, Roberts was busy tapping away at the red and black keys of his school's BBC Micro computers. He dreamed of making games that could capture the magic of Lucas's universe. If you'd told his younger self that one day he'd be living in California, running his own software company and directing Luke Skywalker - destroyer of the Death Star and the last of the illustrious Jedi Knights, aka actor Mark Hamill - he probably would have shat his pants.

Chris even listed Star Wars in the #1 slot on a list of his favorite movies in a December 1991 Point of Origin:

And indeed, the movie's original treatment does discuss Star Wars as an inspiration:

Like Star Wars, which was a heroic myth with a futuristic spin, this fundamental approach to the basic story touches on familiar chords in the audience's experience. After all, who didn't grow up with at least some exposure to the classic war movies? Wing Commander: The Movie will provide a similar experience, yet in a new and unique setting. In other words, it's something quite familiar and something quite different at the same time.

This was a balance, though, especially after Wing Commander III was so blatant about what it was borrowing. The movie's production notes point out the balance needed too make Wing Commander's film less obviously Star Wars-inspired:

"It's a hardcore war movie set in space, which has more in common with MIDWAY and THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN than with STAR WARS," he concludes. "It's a sci-fi movie with lots of fighting and battles, but with deep characters. I've made the movie I wanted to see."

Maniac was a still fan, though! The DVD liner notes:

A close friend of co -star freddie Prinze Jr., Lillard enjoyed playing The character of Maniac. "I loved Maniacs obsession with adrenaline - of needing that 'rush' to challenge the odds. And since I grew up with Star Wars, it was a dream to do a science fiction film."

The May 1999 Starlog confirms that Blair felt the same way:

Always an SF fan, Prinze also read many comic books growing up. He cites Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, an SF epic lent him by Wing Commander co-star Matt Lillard. for particular merit. "I had read it before, and Matt gave it to me in Luxembourg, so I got to read it again. I barely remembered the book, so it was like reading it for the first time. It's amazing. I always liked both Star Wars and Star Trek, so getting to be in Wing Commander and flying my own jet in outer space was a great deal of fun."

There are countless nods throughout the games and other media, though. The press release announcing Wing Commander Academy also noted the inspiration:

The first title boasted finely detailed, breathtaking graphics and cinematic sequences, with high-tech starfighters engaging in action inspired by the classic space battle films such as Star Wars. Set in the 27th century, the game finds mankind locked in a grueling war with the daring pilots of the Terran Confederation fending off the Kilrathi, a vicious, militaristic alien race. In the game, the player must employ cunning tactics and expert marksmanship to battle Kilrathi aces in heated deep-space dogfights to save the future of the world.

The April 1999 issue of Mix magazine has George Oldziey remembering his charge to do Star Wars style music for the games:

Meanwhile, score composer George Oldziey had been working with a VHS tape of the original Avid cut, with time-code. Roberts had specified a "sort of an orchestral 'Star Wars'-type soundtrack," says Oldziey, a requirement that would have been hard to meet using the technology that Oldziey had available on Wing Commander III, which he also scored.

Wing Commander IV's Nephele starport looks pretty familiar, too... this was the last CG shot added to the game, replacing another one which looked far less like Tattooine!

Here's an example of how things created for this movie have become shorthand. The request for this Privateer manual piece read "Interior bar scene: people making deals / Star Wars bar with no aliens":

And the Privateer team borrowed the Millennium Falcon extensively, filling in for the player ships in storyboards drawn before the designs were finished!

But Star Wars is everywhere and it has touched everyone who has worked on Wing Commander. Here's novelist Peter Telep from an article titled How Becoming a Professional Star Wars Sandtrooper Changed My Life!

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

We're going to try something slightly different this time around! We are going to be watching the 'despecialized' version of Star Wars which will most closely match the one that would've inspired Chris Roberts and the Wing Commander development teams. This means that the current version available on home video and streaming won't sync up. So please download version 1.7 of Harmy's Despecialized Edition if you want to watch along! You can read about the release 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 for a download link.

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!

Learn Your Masers!

We often remember Wing Commander Prophecy and Secret Ops as being almost the same game; we tend to think of Secret Ops as almost an expansion, reusing Prophecy's assets almost exclusively. But one place Secret Ops didn't settle for the status quo was guns: it replaced five of the player guns with new, experimental options and it completely redid the VFX for four of the alien bolts!

Gun bolts fly by so quickly and after Wing Commander Academy or so there are so many to keep track of in your head... so we thought we'd show off the jump from WCP to WCSO AND provide an easy reference chart for anyone who wants to learn their lasers by sight. Enjoy!

Wing Commander Album Distribution Details

Last week we reported on the new Wing Commander II and Wing Commander Academy albums from Xeen Music. The albums are absolutely wonderful, including newly uncovered versions of tracks that no one has heard in almost 35 years! We've noticed some confusion about the different albums and versions currently available, so we've put together a quick cheat sheet and a master index to purchase or stream each version where available. Here's a quick cheat sheet:

Wing One - Music from Wing Commander I (27 tracks): This is The Fatman's 2016 release of the Wing Commander I music recorded from an authentic MT-32. This is NOT the release put together by Xeen Music.

Wing Commander I - Complete Original Soundtrack - MT​-​32 Archival Edition (55 tracks): This is the 2022 Xeen Music release of the Wing Commander I score. It is offered by The Fatman directly on some services. Every release listed below has the same music.

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi: MT-32/CM-32L Version (60 tracks): This is the standard version of the new Xeen Music Wing Commander II album available on most streaming services and for purchase via iTunes.

Wing Commander Academy+Bonus Tracks: MT-32/CM-32L (29 tracks): This is the standard version of the new Xeen Music Wing Commander Academy album available on most streaming services and for purchase via iTunes.

Wing Commander II​/​Academy Soundtrack (MT​-​32​/​CM​-​32L) (102 tracks): This is the combined version available on Bandcamp that includes both the Wing Commander II and Academy albums and bonus tracks.

Wing Commander II + Academy Original Soundtrack (Roland MT-32/CM-32L) (107 tracks): This is the combined version available on Patreon that includes both the Wing Commander II and Academy albums and (even more) bonus tracks.

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi + Wing Commander: Academy “Just the FAT” Edition (44 tracks): This version is sold by The Fatman directly and only includes the Wing Commander II tracks that his team worked on.

If you are curious which specific tracks are included with each release we have created a spreadsheet comparing them.

If you are interested in purchasing the albums outright, the best option is the combined Wing Commander II/Academy release available on the Xeen Music Patreon which, as noted above, has several additional tracks. The Xeen Music Patreon has some additional surprises for Wing Commander fans: it has also posted four 'bonus albums' which are beautifully archived copies of the FM Towns and Kilrathi Saga music for Wing Commander I and II. These are available for download at the $10/monthly level. This level also includes access to download the Wing Commander I - Complete Original Soundtrack - MT​-​32 Archival Edition, so it's absolutely worth your while to subscribe for at least a month! Here are links directly to the bonus albums:

• Wing Commander I (FM-Towns digital CD-DA version) (43 tracks)
• Wing Commander I: The Kilrathi Saga (22kHz digital) (41 tracks)
• Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (FM-Towns digital CD-DA version) (41 tracks)
• Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi: Kilrathi Saga (22hz digital) (53 tracks)

The Patreon releases of the Wing Commander I and II albums include all of the liner notes. They will also be updated if new music is recovered. The other major difference between the Bandcamp versions is that the Patreon albums are posted in FLAC and MP3 format while Bandcamp offers a variety of more obscure options (MP3 V0, MP3 320, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, ALAC, WAV and AIFF). Here's a page from the Wing Commander II liner notes to show you how well researched these are:

 - iTunes
 - Spotify
 - Apple Music
 - Amazon Music
 - Deezer
 - iHeart
 - Pandora

 - Bandcamp
 - Spotify
 - Amazon Music
 - Deezer

 - Patreon (102 tracks)
 - Bandcamp (107 tracks)
 - iTunes (60 tracks)
 - Spotify
 - Apple Music
 - Amazon Music
 - Deezer
 - iHeart
 - Tidal
 - Pandora

 - Bandcamp

 - iTunes
 - Spotify
 - Apple Music
 - Amazon Music
 - Deezer
 - iHeart
 - Tidal
 - Pandora
 - Audiomack

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 inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Midway (1976), a movie with both creative and historical ties to Wing Commander. You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST (with a bit of pre-show starting 30 minutes earlier), but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: The Fifth Element

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club is ready to turn in our collective multipass! We watched The Fifth Element last week and it's just as strange and beautiful an experience as many of us remember from our youths. It represents such a fascinating moment in our culture when such a strange, not-like-anything-else film could get a blockbuster budget and a huge theatrical release. Whether you're interested in discussing deeper meanings or if you just want a completely unique audiovisual experience it's one heck of a film.

We loved the movie but there aren't many Wing Commander connections to report! We talked all about the cinematography of Thierry Arbogast and his team in the intro post and it was certainly on full display here. There's no question that his incredible talents are what made this movie look so incredible… and they're a significant reason why Wing Commander remains so appealing, too! Here's Korben Dallas' taxi, which was shot using the same rig and crew as the Rapiers in Wing Commander… and also made of the same mix of CG and physical taxi set.

Here's a featurette that covers the creation of the cab chase… with a focus on the gimbal!

The spectacular taxi rescue sequence (and the general out there European science fiction world) reminded us a lot of Privateer 2. It turns out both projects were shot at Pinewood Studios in London, one after the other! The traffic scenes, which drew from the comic work of French artist Jean-Claude Mézières, are especially similar to the Anhur and Hermes transition shots that show similar masses of hovercars, trucks and buses.

We did find one more fun incidental Wing Commander connection: a brief appearance by the famous Double Shadow knife. The Double Shadow is a two-bladed knife which often appears in science fiction productions; Wing Commander know it as Seether's knife from Wing Commander IV. In The Fifth Element, Korben's neighbor is using it to shave when the police show up to arrest him!

Alas, Babylon 5

Well, everyone knows Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. What this update presupposes is... maybe it wasn't. The Confederation starbase seen here should be pretty familiar: it's Blackmane Base, which appears in Wing Commander III. Depending on your performance in the game, you will either fight to resupply or to evacuate the base relatively early in the game. Canonically, the latter missions are flown and the base is disassembled.

What may surprise you is that there's a nerdy reference hidden deep in the bowels of the game: internally, the station is stored as BAB6… for Babylon 6, a clear nod to the television series that surely inspired its design:

And while the mesh is named BAB6 in the PC version of Wing Commander III the 3DO release makes the reference even more clear by storing the station's textures as BABYLON6.TXM (accessible via the game's debug mode):

In fact, the 3DO release even adds some related text to the station itself; right below the entrance to the flight deck reads STATION 6:

The reference is all the more impressive because Babylon 5 wasn't a cult classic when Wing Commander III was being made… in fact, it had barely started! The game released shortly after the sixth episode aired and the filename for the station must've been chosen much earlier. In spite of this, we have a pretty likely suspect for the reference. Art director Chris Douglas specifically talks about Babylon 5 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.”

Chris would get his wish, by the way: Galoob would release six sets of Babylon 5 spaceships within the year! Hope he managed to pick them up.

Intel Poster Preservation

Here's a short but fascinating followup to our article on the partnership between Origin and Intel: st3lt3k added that an Internet Archive contributor named Star Raider has uploaded beautiful scans of all five of the 1994 CES posters! Origin wasn't promoting Wing Commander at the time but these is artwork worth studying nonetheless...

Very Stupid Calendar for Sale

Welcome to 2025, where retro gaming is "hip". And when something becomes popular it can start to generate a lot of useless, hastily assembled money-grabbing crap. Case in point is this 2025 "Retro Games Classic Gaming Calendar" from Red Rock Publishing:

The ultimate gaming calendar for all gamers, whether young or old! Here, the most legendary games of all time are brought back to life, whether for PC, Amiga, SEGA, PlayStation, XBOX, or other platforms - all through the new year!

Classics like WarCraft, Doom 3D, Monkey Island, Pacman, StarCraft, Super Mario, Quake, Diablo or Dune: In this calendar, the unforgettable giants of gaming history will accompany you throughout the new year, 365 days in a row.

Including a fold-out mega poster, all public and religious holidays as well as plenty of space to add your own notes, birthdays, etc. Format: Large Wall Dimensions: 59cm x 29.5cm

Sounds great, except… take a close look at February! The game of the month is supposed to be Elite but it's represented by a Wing Commander I screenshot!

Want your own very stupid calendar? If you're in Europe, you're in luck! Copies are currently available on Amazon UK and other European Amazon storefronts. The MSRP is £12.99. If you're looking to track down a copy elsewhere, the ISBN is ‎ 979-8893610666. For the record, we bought one!