The Great Wing Commander Article Hunt, Part One

One activity I love to do to wind down after a long day is to search the Internet Archive for historical articles about Wing Commander. Preservationists around the world have scanned thousands upon thousands of old magazines and they're full of gems that tell the story of our favorite series (and just about anything else you can imagine). Here's the result of a recent night's search!

First up, we've got a short article from an English magazine called Raze (December 1990). It's a preview of the original Wing Commander that correctly identifies it as "a candidate for game of the year". It's always interesting to see what early players of the game thought would be the most important aspects…

German magazine Power Play (May 1991) offers us up a fascinating early interview with Chris Roberts! This was conducted white Wing Commander II was still early in development so there's some fascinating information about the initial concept… including mention of Maniac's intended role as a TV star (and the fact that they were aiming to ship on FOUR disks!). He also talks all about the making of the original game and the then-current plans to port it to the Amiga at Origin.

We have featured this fascinating issue of Amiga magazine "The One" (July 1992) before but we missed the index page which has an uncovered Drakhri render that must've been provided by Origin at the time! It's not the one that appears on the cover of the game. But the article itself is fascinating, all about Nick Pelling's work to port the original Wing Commander to the Amiga.

Spanish magazine "MicroMania" (October 1995) gives us a lengthy, early preview of Wing Commander IV which includes great sidebar interviews with Chris Roberts, Mark Hamill and Tom Wilson. There are also lots of great set photos, including good looks at the fully realized shuttle set.

And here's another brief preview from Computer Gaming World (November 1995). Great behind-the-scenes photo of the Lexington bar! The claim that all of the original cast is returning "except for a few of the female characters" probably wouldn't be great PR today.

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 Firefox which was the origin of the original design for Wing Commander's Rapier fighter. 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 but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

Goodbye Steve Sanders

We are sad today to report the passing of a man whose connection to Wing Commander we didn't know until it appeared in his obituary. Steve Sanders was a Austin-based voice actor who appeared in numerous Origin games starting with 1995's BioForge who died earlier this month. You can read his obituary here in the Port Aransas South Jetty; it's particularly well written and gets across that he was a good person.

Mr. Sanders is credited with three 'name' roles in Origin games. He played the main villains in both BioForge (1995) and Cybermage: Darklight Awakening (1996), the Mengele-esque Doctor Mastaba and the cyberpunk supervillain NeCrom respectively. He did double duty in BioForge as Dane, a cyborg at the emotional heart of the game. He was also credited with performing additional voices in Ultima IX, the credit given to most of the game's cast.

What we did not know is that he also acted in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (1995) and at least one of the Crusader games. That's not an indication that he wasn't important; Origin did not always credit their voice actors on projects like the full motion video games that had to adhere to specific SGA-related rules. His work in Wing Commander IV could've included anything from background talk to the comm lines for any of the game's distinctive redshirt wingmen.

We'd love to know more about Mr. Sanders' work in our favorite games and it's so sad to think that we can't get those stories from him. Our thoughts are with his friends and family; from his online presence it certainly seems like he was both loved and kind. We're including YouTube clips of his BioForge and Cybermage characters below; if you have a better ear for human voices than we do, please let us know if you can figure out who he played in Wing Commander IV!

Dr. Mastaba

Dane

NeCrom

(Thank you to OpenBioForge for passing along this news.)

Hot Wing Commander Summer

Xeen Music Goes to Mars

Earlier this year, Xeen Music published an incredible Wing Commander II and Academy archival soundtrack. Now they're back with a similar release for the wonderful-but-oft-forgotten Words of Ultima: Martian Dreams. Like Wing Commander, Martian Dreams used the OriginFX graphics engine and was produced by the great Warren Spector (who also appears as a character!). Martian Dreams' composers include Wing Commander veterans George "The Fatman" Sanger and Dana Glover. The album is a comprehensive 57-track collection which is available for purchase on Bandcamp or through the Xeen Music patreon. Like the Wing Commander album, this release is fully licensed from Electronic Arts and picking it up is a great way to show there's interest in Origin's classics!

Wing Commander Movie Night: Firefox

The official Wing Commander movie club is BACK!... and for the record, we did find Showgirls pretty fascinating. But now we're back to movies that have been credited with inspiring Wing Commander and this week's film is a big one, at least visually: it's Firefox (1982). The legendary Clint Eastwood directs and stars in a high tech thriller from the height of the cold war. It's Eastwood vs. the Soviet Union in a race to capture a high tech airplane that should look pretty familiar to veterans of the Vega Campaign. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Firefox's influence on Wing Commander isn't a mystery… it's right there in the name! Firefox's titular MiG-31 Firefox super-jet is the very clear inspiration for Wing Commander's own F-44 Rapier II design. The Rapier becomes 'less' Firefox in each iteration but you can still see the inspiration all the way through some of the early concepts for the movie. Here's a quick visual history of the Rapier:

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

Firefox is available to download on the Internet Archive. It is available for rent or purchase on the standard streaming services. If you would like a physical copy, the movie was released on BluRay in 2011 and remains in print around the world. 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!

The Real Transports of Wing Commander II

What's in a name? One of the great, small innovations in Wing Commander II is that any ship can be assigned a custom name. The game's mission designers took great advantage of this, naming all sorts of background spacecraft… including 23 different human transports across the three campaigns! WC2 did an excellent job of coming up with 'unusual' names for its ships; while many future settings simply put classic warships into space, WC2 found more unique choices… especially for the Clydesdales and Free Traders.

I recently made a surprise discovery while playing Special Operations 2: a Clydesdale which we had always listed as the "Coatmain" was actually the "Cootmain". Which obviously got me thinking: what the heck is a Cootmain? I wasn't able to find the term anywhere, not on Google, not in old Usenet posts and not even in the sum total of human knowledge stored at the Internet Archive! From there I decided to look at all of the freighters in the game and the results of that research are below!

Before we look at the individual ships, let's examine the classes themselves. The publishing bible actually establishes a pretty interesting naming system for both the Clydesdale and the Free Trader:

FREE TRADER
Other Names In This Class: Named informally by crews. Officially, use only callsigns, e.g. TC-9122.
In Service: WC2
Class: Merchant Marine Transport (true civilian transports are unarmed)
Length: 83 meters
Maximum Velocity: 150 kps
Cruise Velocity: 100 kps
Acceleration: Poor
Max. Yaw, Pitch, Roll: 2 dps
Mass: 2,000 tonnes
Ship’s Weapons: Flak Cannon (1)
Ship’s Armor
Fore and Aft Shield: 10 cm equivalent each
Front and Rear: 9 cm each
Right and Left: 7 cm each

CLYDESDALE
Other Names In This Class: Named informally by crews. Officially, use only callsigns, e.g. TM-24772.
In Service: WC2
Class: Military Transport
Length: 73 meters
Maximum Velocity: 150 kps
Cruise Velocity: 100 kps
Acceleration: Bad
Max. Yaw, Pitch, Roll: 2 dps
Mass: 4,000 tonnes
Ship’s Weapons: Flak Cannon (2)
Ship’s Armor
Fore and Aft Shield: 25 cm equivalent each
Front and Rear: 12 cm each
Right and Left: 11 cm each

Presumably M is for military and C is for civilian. This isn't actually referenced in the game and (where noted below) sometimes freighters are explicitly given the 'TCS' designation. We've also noted where each ship appears and where, which of Wing Commander II's NPCs are used on each ship and where a specific role for the transport is mentioned in a cutscene (like minesweeper or tanker). And where do the class names come from? Wing Commander II director Siobhan Beeman was kind enough to comment on the origins of the class names on BlueSky: "Free Trader is named for the classic Traveller PC ship category. Clydesdale is named for the horses, just because they’re big and beautiful. :)" There are still several that are totally unaccounted for… so join the conversation and get to thinking what a Bhomis is or who Wilie C. was!

Wing Commander II

Bhomis
Class: Free Trader
Comms: Female Freighter Pilot
Missions: Niven C; part of a convoy carrying medical supplies to Argarrio Two
Name Origin: Unknown
Notes: Explicitly TCS Bhomis, per cutscene

Bonnie H.
Class: Free Trader
Variant: Freighter
Comms: Paladin
Missions: Ghorah Khar B, Tesla A-C, Tesla (L) A & C; Paladin's top secret spy ship which visits the Concordia twice during the story
Name Origin: A term of endearment used in the 1986 film Highlander
Notes: H. stands for Heather; Angel notes that the ship is "not an ordinary freighter"

Dhalma
Class: Clydesdale
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot
Missions: Heaven's Gate B; part of a convoy that Blair and Spirit escort across Heaven's Gate
Name Origin: "I think Dhalma is an Arabic girl’s name meaning 'darkness'." - Siobhan Beeman

Excalibur
Class: Free Trader
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot
Missions: Niven C; part of a convoy carrying medical supplies to Argarrio Two
Name Origin: King Arthur's sword
Notes: Explicitly TCS Excalibur, per cutscene

Gunga Din
Class: Clydesdale
Variant: Minesweeper
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot
Missions: Ghorah Khar C; Blair and Hobbes relieve the Gunga Din's Broadsword escorts for a strike mission against a Kamekh
Name Origin: Either the Rudyard Kipling poem or the said poem's title character ("You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din")

Mama's Boy
Class: Clydesdale
Variant: Freighter
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot
Missions: Heaven's Gate C; freighter which transports missiles to the Concordia in advance of the assault on Heaven's Gate
Name Origin: Self-explanatory

Palomino
Class: Clydesdale
Comms: Female Freighter Pilot
Missions: Heaven's Gate B; part of a convoy that Blair and Spirit escort across Heaven's Gate
Name Origin: "Palomino is again because of horses (Austin is the middle of Texas ranch country)." - Siobhan Beeman; also a spaceship from the movie Black Hole

Sable Star
Class: Free Trader
Variant: Transport Carrier
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot
Missions: Ghorah Khar (L) B
Name Origin: May refer to the Texas Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA)'s Order of the Centurions of the Sable Star or famed 1970s groupie Sable Starr
Notes: The debriefing makes it seem like the Sable Star is somewhat 'famous'; Angel knows the ship by name even though she doesn't expect it to be nearby

Valdez
Class: Clydesdale
Variant: Tanker
Comms: Female Freighter Pilot
Missions: Novaya Kiev A; tanker you refuel at during a strike on a Kilrathi base
Name Origin: From the Exxon Valdez freighter which ran aground and caused a horrible oil spill in 1989

Willie C.
Class: Free Trader
Variant: Freighter
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot
Missions: Gwynedd D; freighter whose departure clearance prevents Blair and Shadow from landing on Caernarvon
Name Origin: Unknown; the only celebrity listed in the Wikipedia that fits is musician and activist Willie Colón

Unnamed
Class: Free Trader
Variant: Courier
Comms: Female Comm Officer
Missions: Novaya Kiev D; courier ship in the Talbot system which ejects a comm package for you to pick up before it is destroyed
Notes: Does not appear in flight; destroyed in a cutscene

Special Operations 1

Bonnie H.
Missions: Ghorah Khar 1 A, Ghorah Khar 2 B & C
Notes: The same Bonnie Heather which appears in Wing Commander II, see previous listing for details. The Bonnie Heather acts as your home ship for several missions in the second half of Special Operations 1 and several scenes are set aboard her.

Tinderbox
Class: Clydesdale
Variant: Tanker
Comms: Female Freighter Pilot
Missions: Ghorah Khar 1 B; tanker you escort to jump to N'Tanya
Name Origin: Container that stores fuel for a fireplace
Notes: Explicitly called a tanker but also said to be "running guns and supplies"

The Doric
Class: Clydesdale
Variant: Tanker
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot (Rigel D), Female Freighter Pilot (Second Chance B)
Missions: Rigel D & Second Chance B; one of the tankers heading to the Rigel depot without knowing it has been taken over by pirates
Name Origin: Relating to ancient Greece
Notes: Pilot gender varies based on mission

The Pathos
Class: Clydesdale
Variant: Tanker
Comms: Female Freighter Pilot (Rigel D), Male Freighter Pilot (Second Chance B)
Missions: Rigel D & Second Chance B; one of the tankers heading to the Rigel depot without knowing it has been taken over by pirates
Name Origin: The quality of sadness
Notes: Pilot gender varies based on mission

Special Operations 2

Camelopard
Class: Clydesdale
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot
Missions: Canewdon 1 A; one of the ships the Kilrathi attack to cover Jazz's escape
Name Origin: Archaic term for giraffe.

Bastille
Class: Clydesdale
Variant: Prison Ship
Comms: Female Freighter Pilot
Missions: Canewdon 1 A; the transport which is hijacked while moving Jazz to the TCS Alcatraz
Name Origin: Prison famously stormed during the 1789 French Revolution
Notes: The Bastille's captain is Male Comm Officer, per cutscene

Delphinium
Class: Clydesdale
Variant: Freighter
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot
Missions: Canewdon 1 A; one of the ships the Kilrathi attack to cover Jazz's escape
Name Origin: Type of flower
Notes: Explicitly a "TCS freighter", per cutscene; the SOS is sent by a female comm officer who is either aboard the Delphinium or the Xebec

The Polemic
Class: Clydesdale
Comms: Female Freighter Pilot
Missions: Canewdon 1 A; one of the ships the Kilrathi attack to cover Jazz's escape
Name Origin: A speech or presentation which is specifically critical

The Xebec
Class: Clydesdale
Variant: Freighter
Comms: Female Freighter Pilot
Missions: Canewdon 1 A; one of the ships the Kilrathi attack to cover Jazz's escape
Name Origin: A type of ancient sailing ship
Notes: Explicitly a "TCS freighter", per cutscene; the SOS is sent by a female comm officer who is either aboard the Delphinium or the Xebec

Cootmain
Class: Clydesdale
Comms: Male Freighter Pilot
Missions: Canewdon 3 A; the ship carrying Mandarin prisoners for the exchange
Name Origin: Unknown; essentially a googlenope

Iguana
Class: Clydesdale
Comms: Female Freighter Pilot
Missions: Canewdon 3 A; the ship carrying Confederation prisoners home from the exchange
Name Origin: A type of lizard
Notes: Blair refers to the Iguana as an "unarmed ship"

Exeter Stage Left

Here's a case of escort duty you DO want to pull: AEdwardBaker is back with another fantastic piece of Wing Commander art! This one is called Exeter Escort and it shows a mighty Exeter battleship escorting the famed Tiger's Claw. Maybe it's the Formidable! You can find the original on DeiantArt and more of their fantastic work here.

Exeter class destroyer escouting the carrier Tiger's Claw. Ships from Wing Commander.

Done in Blender.

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… except this week in which the movie did not inspire Wing Commander in any way. Tonight's film is Showgirls and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. 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 but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: Hell in the Pacific

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club is back from Hell in the Pacific and we were surprised by how interesting this movie we had never heard of before was! Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune are the only actors in the film, enemies unable to communicate abandoned on an island in the pacific during World War II. They must go from deadly foes to reluctant friends in a compelling anti-war story with great acting and very meaningful cinematography. The end result is more like an overly-lush stage play than any of the epic war films we've seen in previous weeks… totally unexpected, to say the least!

While Hell in the Pacific was absolutely the prototype for Enemy Mine and at least three Star Trek episodes we could not find the Wing Commander connection. We're going to make the extremely rare claim that there isn't an apparent one. Chris Brown, VFX director on the Wing Commander movie, cited Hell in the Pacific as an influence for the look of Wing Commander, mentioning specifically "tracer fire, millies and dogfight sequences." Hell in the Pacific includes none of these. We suspect he was either falling victim to Chris Roberts' penchant for defining things by movies without actually knowing them or he simply got the title wrong.

In the latter case, it's possible he was referring to the short propaganda film Fury in the Pacific. Fury in the Pacific was released in 1945 during the actual war and it does include real footage of all the things Brown mentions in his magazine quite. You can watch it here:

One Wing Commander story is clearly based on the story started in Hell in the Pacific: Academy's Word of Honor, which strands Blair, Grunt and a Kilrathi pilot on an island on the planet Pisces. And, unlike the versions adapted by Star Trek and similar, Academy retains the dark ending!