New Wing Commander Game?

The pilgrim plot only reared its head in the wc movie, and let's face it, the movie is the most disliked product in the franchise.

No way in hell would a new game revive the most unliked wc product. (yeah, I know the movie has some fans here)

It's also pretty cool that in addition to the general timeline integration, Wing Commander Arena (within the game itself) makes a bunch of internal references - the Broadsword was originally introduced as a missile-heavy platform during the Pilgrim War, etc.

*Tentatively raises hand* Along LOAF's lines, I want to point out that the only part of the Kilarthi you really see in the movie is their HEADS. It's not like it's somehow implied that the rest of their bodies are suddenly hairless.

And the Kilrathi in the movie have very cool bodies! Unfortunately the costumes are somewhat stiff when shown on screen, but they have a very menacing posture, that doublejointed ankle-knee, nice claws, etc. They're better than many other appearances where the Kilrathi just have humanoid bodies or a giant robe beneath a lion head.
 
The thing that got me about Academy was that Blair and Maniac served under Tolwyn, not Halcyon. This made me confuse Halcyon and Tolwyn for the longest time.

If memory serves me, we never actually meet the captain of the Claw in the game. We only see Halcyon who is more of a Carrier Air Wing commander rather than a ship's captain.

The captain of the Tiger's Claw appears in Freedom Flight and his name is Captain Thorn. He was clearly Ellen Guon's invention and as such he is mentioned in some earlier series bible and is then referred to in several other places--including the Wing Commander III novelization, where Blair talks about a previously unknown period in which Tolwyn accused Thorn of cowardice and took command himself (presumably this is when Wing Commander Academy happened).

... but Wedge is correct that Halcyon refers to himself as the Tiger's Claw's commander at one point in The Secret Missions ('I'd rather not command a slagged ship', or somesuch). The timeline works out like this:

Captain Sansky commands the Tiger's Claw from an unknown point until the movie, where he kills himself. Commander Gerald, the next in the chain of command, takes over for Pilgrim Stars but is never actually promoted to captain or permanently assigned (the book actually makes a point of this). Captain Thorn is assigned to replace him. Commodore Tolwyn accuses Thorn and usurps command for Wing Commander Academy (and part if not most of Wing Commander I). He either moves on to greener pastures beforehand or simply decides not to accompany the carrier on the suicide mission against the Sivar--leaving Halcyon in command (the fate of Commander Nelson is anyone's guess). By the time the 'Claw returns to human space, Thorn has been cleared of any charges and returns to command for Secret Missions 2 (and probably the carrier's death the next year).

The Irish lady in the show reminds me of the mechanic from WC2, and many of the ship designs on both sides span from WC1 to WC3. Finally, it seems like Blair is shot down in almost EVERY episode (without being given the Golden Sun or the speech about how Confed's fighters are expensive, etc.). I loved the show (infinitely more than the movie), but these inconsistencies and anachronisms threw me off too.

The 'Irish lady' was a different character--her name was Maya McEdance. The mechanic from Wing Commander 2 was Janet "Sparks" McCullough--although she was certainly still around in 2654 (she shows up on the Austin the next year in Freedom Flight). Any similarity there is probably actually a coincidence... Wing Commander Academy's cast was derived from the Victory crew in Wing Commander III (*all* the same pilots, in the initial plans). Maya being distinctly Irish was likely to make sure we know she's *not* porn star Ginger Lynn. :)

(And her Scotch-Irish American last name aside, Sparks isn't Irish in any way in the first place... she doesn't have the early games' /charming/ accent-in-text like Paladin and on the rare occcasion that you hear her voice she's as Texan as anyone else in Wing Commander II...)

I think the ships are all specifically ones that don't have a known entry dates--that's why we're seeing Scimitars and Grikaths, which the existing continuity said can be around at the time, instead of Morningstars and Rapier IIs which we specifically know when they entered service.

I think Blair ejecting doesn't happen nearly as much as you're thinking, but it's really the problem with Wing Commander as a setting for a show. Academy decided to go 'straight' and have the pilots actually be fighter pilots... FOX's Wing Commander-with-the-numbers-rubbed-off show, Space Above and Beyond, had to invent an elaborate and nonsensical background about how the elite fighter pilots were also ground troops. I like Academy better, but it did mean they had to come up with reason after reason to put the characters anywhere interesting.

(Correct me if I'm wrong, though, but did Blair actually eject only once? The show got that reputation because the episode where he ditches and the episode where he ejects were run one after the other...)

Red & Blue - Nothing.
The Last One Left - Surrenders to Karnes, fighter survives.
The Most Delicate Instrument - Nothing.
Word of Honor - Ditches, fighter survives.
Lords of the Sky - Ejects!
Chain of Commander - Nothing.
Expendable - Nothing.
Walking Wounded - Nothing.
Recreation - Nothing.
Invisible Enemy - Nothing.
The Price of Victory - Crash lands on the ice planet, fighter destroyed but he doesn't eject.
Glory of Sivar - Crash lands a Sartha--on purpose as part of the covert operation.

The silly bit about the Golden Sun and the speech aside (we don't see it! it must not have happened!), that brings to mind an interesting question--canonically speaking, when *did* Blair earn his medal? Discuss amongst yourself.



I know the Rapier is a different craft in the movie than in the game, but isn't the movie Broadsword supposed to be the same craft as the game Broadsword, just re-imagined?

Never understood why...you went to all the trouble to make the two Rapiers be separate; why not make the two Broadswords separate as well? But that's what I've heard.

I think because it would just seem so increasingly improbable--if you can accept that the actors/sets/etc. all look different, the ships seem natural. Insisting on a backstory where that's somehow a different Tiger's Claw around at the same time with the same people on it and a different set of fighters that all have the same names... it would satisfy some incredibly crazy geeks but lose any versimilitude at a much faster rate.
 
See, I don't read the novels heh. I'm going by the games (and to a lesser extent, Academy, primarily for the comparison).
 
I just go by the games (1-4).

I never read the novels, seen the movie all the way through (yet), or play Prophecy.

I'm all for a revival. Hopefully not a full reboot.
 
Compare the SWC tiger's Claw to WC1 for example.

Or, heck, within WC1 itself. There's several different models for the Claw (IIRC, the engine nozzle configuration is what differs). Granted, though, the differences between the models are more subtle than those between the models in SWC and WC1.
 
I know the Rapier is a different craft in the movie than in the game, but isn't the movie Broadsword supposed to be the same craft as the game Broadsword, just re-imagined?

Never understood why...you went to all the trouble to make the two Rapiers be separate; why not make the two Broadswords separate as well? But that's what I've heard.

This always vexed me for a long time. But I think I may have a way to reason it out:

Assuming that the Rapiers seen in the movie and the Rapiers seen in the game are different spaceframes (models I and II respectively. Compare the FH-1 Phantom to the F-4 Phantom II) , but the movie and game broadswords are the same thing, then the only answer can be frame modifications (armor, hardpoints, crew space, ect.)
Case in point, compare the visual difference between the variant seen in WC2 and the Behemoth model seen in Star*Soldier. Operating under this assumption, the two Broadswords flying off the Claw in the movie (and the one piloted by Chris Roberts himself) are an older variant, most likely being phased out during the events of the movie. The more familiar designs seen in WC Academy we’re most likely acquired when the Claw jumped back to Earth at the end of the movie.
 
I wonder if you can use the same logic to explain the Tiger Claw/Tiger's Claw debacle...

I like to think 'Extreme Retrofitting' occurred after that big battle (set just before Wing Commander 1 - it's referred to in Claw Marks if I remember correctly). Might also explain why they might have changed the name slightly? Shoehorn, shoehorn, shoehorn. But I love doing that.

Imagine seeing a mid-way (not Midway) version - In between the Tiger Claw of the movie and the Tiger's Claw of WC1... And we come all the way back to the title of the thread. THATS what I would like to see in a fan mod!
 
I wonder if you can use the same logic to explain the Tiger Claw/Tiger's Claw debacle...

I like to think 'Extreme Retrofitting' occurred after that big battle (set just before Wing Commander 1 - it's referred to in Claw Marks if I remember correctly).

We've pointed it out many times before, but it's probably not worth much mental time to try to "reconcile" visual differences. It is what it is. Freddie Prinze looks a bit different from Bluehair who looks a bit different from Mark Hamill. The Claw has multiple different looks in different products, and sometimes in the same product. The Rapier I & II thing is a nice coincidence so no explanation is even necessary there, but you pretty much just need to (from like a WCPedia standpoint) just note what everything is and understand that everything can't be seamless.
 
I blame the first Star Trek movie, which somehow sold our generation on its implication that the Enterprise was 'refitted' from how it looked on the show... despite every interior and exterior surface being different (... and it having a different shape.)

Chris is right that there will never be a reasonable explanation for the visual differences. Even if we decide that the Tiger's Claw went into drydock and was for some reason turned from a big loaf of bread into a big angular thing with wings you're stuck with the fact that it sometimes exchanges its forward flight deck with a boat hull (on Wing Commander Academy), why the number of engines changes from blueprints to cutscenes to in flight in Wing Commander I and how it can look like a completely different ship for the same story in Super Wing Commander.

Okay, now that said...

... the Tiger's Claw *was* refitted in 2654, just before the movie. When Tolwyn first meets the cadets on Academy he tells them "I thought I'd have a look at you cadets while the Tiger's Claw is being refitted."
 
... the Tiger's Claw *was* refitted in 2654, just before the movie. When Tolwyn first meets the cadets on Academy he tells them "I thought I'd have a look at you cadets while the Tiger's Claw is being refitted."

At first I was going to mention that the idea that a refit could completely alter the look and shape and feel of a ship was silly, but then I remember the inclusion of things like Hurricane Bows and Angled Flight decks on World War II aircraft carriers and realized that if someone want to rebuild a ship from the keel beam up and call it a re-fit...they probably could.
 
At first I was going to mention that the idea that a refit could completely alter the look and shape and feel of a ship was silly, but then I remember the inclusion of things like Hurricane Bows and Angled Flight decks on World War II aircraft carriers and realized that if someone want to rebuild a ship from the keel beam up and call it a re-fit...they probably could.

It's not so much that it's an impossible thing as that it's an unlikely thing--and in order to "explain" this you need to pile fifteen or so improbable things together (they rebuilt the Tiger's Claw and redesigned the Ralari and the Fralthi and the Sivar and the Snakeir and the Dorkir and the Broadsword and so on that month). You end up losing credibility instead of building continuity.
 
It's not so much that it's an impossible thing as that it's an unlikely thing--and in order to "explain" this you need to pile fifteen or so improbable things together (they rebuilt the Tiger's Claw and redesigned the Ralari and the Fralthi and the Sivar and the Snakeir and the Dorkir and the Broadsword and so on that month). You end up losing credibility instead of building continuity.

We could always write off the film in the same vein as Action Stations - a fictional attempt to tell a story with some severe design liberties.
 
The problem is that there's a much stronger argument to write off Wing Commander I and II as a fictional attempt to tell a story with some severe design liberties and no one wants to do that :)

(This theoretical argument would go: the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide says so.)
 
Yeah--part of the conceit of the guide is that Wing Commander I and II are an 'interactive holovid' (directed by "Tristan Roberts"!) about the main character's experiences in the war, made many years later.
 
I'd like to see a new wing commander that involve the bird-like creatures....

maybe the player can be a bird.
 
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