Wing Commander IV Storyboards - Scene 144 (November 24, 2010)

[Bandit LOAF]

Scene 144 features a famous conversation between Blair and Paulson about eugenics. The thing I can't figure out is why the Border Worlds in particular are supposed to be genetically inferior in this Nazi analogy--they're just Confederation colonies that happened to be on the Kilrathi border.

These storyboard images were recovered from a backup CD containing materials belonging to Origin's web development team. They were dated November 17, 1995 and were likely planned for a never-completed web feature.

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Original update published on November 24, 2010

 

[AD]

Scene 144 features a famous conversation between Blair and Paulson about eugenics. The thing I can't figure out is why the Border Worlds in particular are supposed to be genetically inferior in this Nazi analogy--they're just Confederation colonies that happened to be on the Kilrathi border.

I kind of wondered this... though you could argue that the gen-select bio-weapon was a terror device intended to be equally used on confed. However, this particular scene reminds me of some of the early documentation that actually had the WC movie's Pilgrims being "borderworlders." It's interesting to think of, especially in light of Paladin's explanation to Blair about what a Pilgrim is... especially one or two of the bits that ended up cut from the theatrical release:

You are one of the last descendants of a dying race. Pilgrims were the first human space explorers and settles. For five centuries they defied the odds: They embraced space and for that they were rewarded with a gift of a flawless sense of direction. No computers, Blair, no compasses, no charts. They just knew.

Then, in a small number, about one in a million, a biological change started to occur. They learned to feel the magnetic fields created by quasars and black holes, negotiate singularities, navigate not just the stars, but space-time itself.

Maybe in some alternate universe the movie really did have Borderworlders, who are also called pilgrims. And then in WC4 The Black Lance - and inexplicably Tolwyn - are still harbouring resentment towards Pilgrims and are trying to erase everyone who remotely has Pilgrim Ancestry? It's a far fetched but fun hypothesis. Though the question of why it doesn't kill Blair as well then arises...

 

[Quarto]

It actually makes good sense, as part of a Nazis-in-space analogy. The real Nazis also looked with mistrust at ethnic Germans from conquered states - they actually had several categories of Germans, because of fears that a German family living for several generations outside of Germany would have been "contaminated" over time through marriage to non-Germans and the like.

A space Nazi, I suppose, would consider the Border Worlders to be "mongrels", a genetic mixture out of control. One could of course point out to them that from an evolutionary perspective, the Border Worlders living in a harsher and more dangerous environment should be genetically superior (survival of the fittest and all that) - but then, just like with their real-world counterparts, you can hardly expect space Nazis to be logical.

 

[Bob McDob]

I think this scene works better in the book than in the game - there's more time to develop the Border Worlders as a distinctive entity, half-crazed space-gypsy-frontiersmen the characters know and symphathize with flying suicidal missions in recognizably obsolete craft, rather than differently-colored enemy ships that just happen to be flown by human pilots this time around. The other half of it is that the conversation with Paulso(/e)n, or at least Blair's internal monologue byplay of it, makes it clear that the main point is to force the Confederation into a war with the nearest convenient target, rather than some kind of intricately planned 'final solution' against the Colonies.