Ah hah! Something to sink my teeth into.
Your complaint in this matter is not with the movie. The original Claw Marks manual establishes that Maniac is also a Class of 2654 TCSFA graduate... and The Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide fleshed out their Academy relationship at length in 1991.
Hmm... I'm not sure whether I'd go as far as to consider a strategy guide canon, but since Roberts' name is on it, I'll let it go.
Strakha - but I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the movie. The original game immediately follows the events of the movie... and all of these things seem to be appropriate events.
Skipper missiles. Their well known existence in the movie suggests the existence or development of the Strakha fighters. Whether or not Tolwyn had personal reasons for hanging Blair out to dry or not, the well documented existence of these missiles in the movie suggests that a cloaked ship threat in WC2 should have been taken VERY seriously by the other higher ups.
The movie would agree with you, terming the heavier shields on 2654's capital ships "meson shields". The movie certainly isn't the first source to introduce the idea that torpedoes were part of the arsenal at the time... it's integral to Action Stations' story, and they appear frequently on Wing Commander Academy (mostly set shortly after the movie).
Where in the movie does it use the term "meson shields"? I just watched it recently, and didn't ever notice the term being used. Actions Stations gripes are below.
Halcyon was the carrier's Wing Commander (and Captain, during The Secret Missions) - Angel was an individual squadron commander (of which the carrier would have six - the makeup of the Tiger's Claw's fighter wing is discussed heavily in Pilgrim Stars... and, of course, Halcyon himself shows up in the movie adaptation.
See, that's bass ackwards. In the game, the Wing Commander was the leader of the mission. and the missions were assigned by Colonel Halcyon in the role of a CAG. While we could imagine that as naval doctrine changed, the term "Wing Commander" changed to mean the CAG on smaller boats, it's difficult to argue with Halcyon stating that you are the Wing Commander.
Paladin was never Scottish - according to Claw Marks, he grew up on a space station orbiting Venus. The Wing Commander IV adaptation goes so far as to suggest that his brogue in the original games was entirely a put-on, a result of his covert operations training.
Indeed. The "brogue put on" would be fair enough assessment if the games didn't clearly state that he was a pilot in the first game and transferred to Black Ops sometime in between.
And, of course, Angel was never French or British - in both Claw Marks and the movie-related material she is from Brussels, Belgium.
Just because she grew up in Belgium doesn't mean that she didn't come from a French family. The games actually go out of their way to note her French accent, and intersperse her language with French words.
(The practice of casting British actors to play French-speaking characters is certainly nothing new. Anyone truly offended by this practice would do better to go complain about it to the Star Trek fans.)
Touche. May I point out, however, that Stewart did make the occasional attempt to play a French role? Between the various references to the French language, homeland, and cursing, he at least came across as a Frenchman with an exceptional English accent.
But... here we are. Never the less, I'm looking forward to the debate assosciated with these two: (Action Stations references)
*grin*
Here's my biggest gripes with Action Stations, laid out for all to hear:
1. Phase shields. If I may flip open my book to grab a quick example of the billions of times they were mentioned. Ah! Here's one:
"Have acquired phase sheild phasing," the weapons officer continued. "The weapon is locking on." (pg. 78)
From the continuity of the games, we know that phase shields weren't invented/in common use by the time we boarded the Tiger's Claw. Standard missiles were still the primary method of attacking capital ships. It wasn't until 10 years later that we see phase shields and anti-phase torpedos in common usage. Establishing their wartime usage prior to the WCII timeframe goes against the established canon. IIRC, I believe the WCII manual even mentioned their rather recent invention. (I'd check, but I loaned out my WCII deluxe years ago and never got it back.

)
2. The Concordia. Having a ship of the same name is acceptable. Since she participated in a heroic engagement, it would be quite likely that her name would be permanently added to the naval registry. Common examples in wet navy history are the Enterprise, Lexington, Intrepid, Hornet, and Wasp. My problem is that the author decided to make her the first of her class. This creates a problem in the Wing Commander continuity, because it suggests that the WCIV Confed is building a carrier that's over 30 years out of date! This makes even less sense when we look at the WCIV book adaption, which portrays the Concordia class as one of the Confederation's most advanced carriers! Had the author not decided to be so "prequelish", we could have assumed that the Concordia class was commisioned after the destruction of the TCS Concordia in WCII.
3. The Claw Marks account of "McAuliffe" was rather "creatively" interpreted. Not wrong per say, but paints a very different picture.
4. A bad case of "prequelitis" prevades the book. Richards and Tolywn, I'm fine with that. But Kruger's dad, the Concordia, Landreich, the Prince's older brother, ad nausem, all add up to too much of "let's cram well known places and characters together into the storyline to sell more books, and damn the storyline!" Which, of course, led to the issue with the Concordia class and the phase shields.
5. The WWII parallels were cute, but pretty poorly executed, IMHO. In order for the Kilrathi to be the first to demonstrate the power of carriers, they needed to have phase shields and torpedos. But that then brings into question as to how the whole Varni and Panama scenarios were supposed to be carried out. This in turn, had to be covered over by stating that Confed had been developing torps for 12+ years, which then fell apart when they needed cat tech to make the devices actually work. In other words, the whole ball of wire just kept unravelling.
Anyway, I hope that makes some sense. I'm pretty tired, so it might be a little screwy in places. I'm sure I'll remember a lot more of the gripes I had tomorrow.
