Wing Commander Academy Episodic Reviews

Plywood Fiend

Plywood Fiend

Rear Admiral
Hello all.

Some of you may have noticed me looming out of the shadows from time to time to post about my new online reviewing endeavours. One project I've been meaning to start for a while now is a run through of Wing Commander Academy, providing an analytical/opinionated/averagely humorous examination of each episode. I've just uploaded the first one for 'Red and Blue' if anyone wants to see it.

 
I thought your observations were good but I do have a few thoughts...

First, this is a ten minute review of a twenty minute episode. For the majority of it, you were basically summarizing the entire episode for the viewer, making it feel rushed and easy to miss the more interesting points of discussion that you bring up. I think you do have to think about your audience a little... Are they WC fans that you hope will engage you in an interesting discussion about the episode? Then a recap isn't really necessary. Are they people you hope to turn on to WC with your 'review?' Then you've given them no reason to actually watch the episode now that you've told them absolutely everything in the whole episode.

I did like that you threw in a few brief moments from WC3 and WC1. What I wasn't as crazy about was how you reused a couple of clips. I kind of get the concept, but I think there are other ways to draw attention to the repetition without it feeling like an accident. It can be tough when you have a limited amount of footage to work with but I think there's room for some stylistic flair to get the point across.

All in all I did like it though, and thought you had some good observations and points of discussion.
 
Thanks for your comments. In terms of audience it's a trickier matter than it may seem. I'm trying to include things which will appeal to both fans and people who've never seen it before, and some degree of clashing may be inevitable. Without the summaries, any newcomers won't have a clue what I'm going on about when I try and expand upon the plot points but unless I make said summaries more interesting the fans aren't going to find much here of interest. Looking back over the review the summary does seem to be more straightforwardly factual than anything else.

In reviews like this, nostalgia is often one of the main appeals to potential watchers, though for the ever-enduring Wing Commander community the subject matter probably hasn’t drifted too far from anyone’s mind like, as an example, old star trek episodes might have. To that end I should probably dedicate more time to analysis and inciting discussion.

Well, thanks again for commenting. I should have more to work with for 'The Last One Left' I think... (Also, just wait till I get to covering the saga of the warrior king).
 
Learned an interesting fact about Last One Left earlier: they originally cast Elliott Gould as Damon Karnes but decided his voice work was unacceptable.
 
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