Revisit The Saga Of The Warrior King (November 16, 2015)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Den of Geek has shone a light on one of the strangest cartoon crossovers of all time, The Saga of the Warrior King. In November of 1996, Wing Commander fans excited to see the eighth episode of Wing Commander Academy were treated to an odd surprise when the show was deferred for a half hour so that an episode of Mortal Kombat could air instead. What nobody realized at the time was that four different shows had inexplicably collaborated so a space viking voiced by Michael Dorn could hop through Street Fighter to Savage Dragon to Mortal Kombat and finally Wing Commander while chasing a mysterious object. There was never any promotion nor apparent reason for the bizarre tie-in, and Wing Commander fans have long regarded it as an enigmatic oddity of Saturday morning cartoon history. Author Gavin Jasper has done a good job recounting the entire tale at DoG here. For more background, check out the CIC's original writeup.







I???m going to level with you. I don???t know much about Wing Commander. Flight games aren???t my thing. I know that it???s about future space stuff where humans take on evil Thundercats via cosmic dog-fighting and the third game was groundbreaking for its use of cutscenes with real deal actors like Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell. That???s about as far as my knowledge goes on the subject prior to watching this episode.

There are two big things I notice from the start. First, the animation is very crisp for this era. It makes the other three shows look all clown shoes. Second, it pulls no punches. Death happens on-screen and it???s important. Enemy ships are blown up in space and it???s not like GI Joe where we see parachute escapes to assure us. Those cats are dead.

The pilot Gwen actually goes through emotional turmoil from killing and openly talks about how she loses a bit of herself every time she blows up a Kilrathi ship. That???s really unique to me. I???m so used to seeing cartoons sidestep murder that seeing the ethical and emotional repercussions talked about is mindblowing.

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Original update published on November 16, 2015
 
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This episode felt out of place the first time I saw it. Alien Space Vikings, pseudo-mystical glowing orbs... a far cry from the rest of the series that was a pretty good adaptation of WC. It wasn't until the CIC post about the crossover a few years ago did it make any sort of sense. But I still don't understand the point of it all. Crossovers between characters from different series would make sense from a marketing point of view (but still a bad idea for WC). But they just decided to create some guy completely novel to all of the series and have him pay everyone a visit? And then they go through all the trouble of doing this and he barely appears in the Mortal Kombat series where extradimensional space Vikings and pseudo-mystical glowing orbs actually fit. How is that fair?

So does this mean that Mortal Kombat, Savage Dragon and Street Fighter (or at least the animated incarnations of them) are part of the Wing Commander canon?
 
So does this mean that Mortal Kombat, Savage Dragon and Street Fighter (or at least the animated incarnations of them) are part of the Wing Commander canon?

This type of question comes up all the time throughout different sci fi communities, but it's a little bit of an odd thing to ask. :confused: What if I said the answer was yes? What would that change? EA's not going to make a Wing Commander game with Goro walking along in the background. No fan fiction crossover between these universes would be suddenly legitimized.

The answer when it comes to Wing Commander is very simple - all the stuff that happens in official WC products is fair game to be included in future WC products. So the existence of the Warrior King is canonical, sure. But Savage Dragon, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter are not Wing Commander products (they are not licensed by EA to use aspects of the WC universe), so they are not canon.
 
And if you want to see Goro flying a Rapier, well, that's what WCRPG is for, right?

Not sure that four arms and a bad temper would help you fly a fighter...one for the throttle, one for the stick, maybe one for the d-ring and the last one to cradle your eggs......
 
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