New Wing Commander IV Timeline!

We've created a new timeline that shows you almost day-by-day (sometimes hour-by-hour!) what happened in Wing Commander IV! Since 2025 and 2673 have the same 'layout' of a year this means we can track Wing Commander IV 'as it happens' starting at the end of July. You can study the new timeline in Spreadsheet form here or read below for notes about how it was created and why it is different from previous attempts.

The issue determining a coherent day-by-day timeline for Wing Commander IV has always been the need to fit the events of the story into two weeks. This requirement derives from Paladin's line in the introduction: "...The Assembly looks forward to the results of your investigation. We shall decide a course of action within a fortnight…" The issue is that when the obvious time references in the novel are collected and the other references in the game are pinned together that everything takes a little bit more than two weeks.

As it turns out, the two week requirement was actually incorrect. The ellipses and the fade out cover how the novel continues the Assembly scene: "We shall decide a course of action within, ah . . . a fortnight of your completed report." The vote (the story's climax) will occur within two weeks AFTER Tolwyn completes his report. This matches the game exactly: Tolwyn is not delivering his report at the end of the game, he's being promoted. The novel goes on to establish that the report itself is two weeks away:

Tolwyn made a show of gracious acceptance. Taggart knew Tolwyn had gotten what he wanted, and now could afford to be gracious. Tolwyn turned slightly. Taggart was certain he did it to be better seen by the cameras. He raised his voice slightly, enunciating clearly for the journalists. "Thank you, Paladin. When you served under my command I knew I could always count on you," the admiral said. "I accept your vote of confidence on behalf of the Strategic Readiness Agency, and we shall endeavor to match your timetable for action."

"Two weeks," Taggart said, convinced Tolwyn was playing him, annoyed at Tolwyn's pointed reference to his once having been subservient to him. He searched for some sign of smugness or victory in the admiral's eyes, and saw nothing. Tolwyn's expression remained cool and still.

The admiral gave him another small smile. "Two weeks."

So the report is two weeks away and then the vote will occur within two weeks of that report. With this recognized what we will find is that the timeline of the novelization matches that of the game exactly! There are several points in Wing Commander IV where amounts of time are mentioned (ie, Eisen being gone for 46 hours or the vote being in five days), the novel adds several others and everything comes together perfectly!

Just One Day

Game Time References

To construct the new timeline, we began by collecting all of the references to the passage of time from the script, game and novelization. This gives us a set of 'rules' (most easily followed) from which to form the logic for our timeline.

Game

• "Flew off the TCS Liberty for 20 years." (0010B)
• "Maybe after putting my life on the line day in and day out for twenty years, hearing the crunch my feet make on real dirt is what I want." (0010D)
• "For months now, an undeclared war has been waged against us: acts of terrorism, piracy, sabotage." (0200A)
• "New school year, they're all excited." (0480A)
• "For weeks now, we have been experiencing an increasing harassment of legitimate Confed space operations." (0640A)
• "Confed had to maintain control for 40 years." (0640B)
• "We have reason to believe he's been feeding information to Border Worlds Intelligence these past weeks." (0800A)
• "I met Dominguez 40 years ago, during the Venice Offensive." (0890A)
• "For the past few days, I've been collecting mission data, coded transmissions, tracking fleet movements." (0890A)
• "Don't take offense sir, but how can you make jokes? An hour ago, I was a Confed pilot. Now I'm shooting them down." (1100A)
• "I spent seven years fighting the Kilrathi." (1221A)
• "Border Worlds Command has sent a marine detachment our way but they won't get here for another 16 hours, and we can't afford to wait for them, what with that Confed base down on Orestes IX." (1310A)
• "A Declaration of War with the Border Worlds has been put forth in the Assembly, the vote to take place in seven days." (1620A)
• "We've got less than a week before the Assembly's vote." (1720A)
• "You may recall that just a few years ago, you had the chance to kill me ... and didn't." (1750A)
• "It's just I haven't had much chance to sleep in the last few days." (1760A)
• "Forty years of service. " (1770A)
• "Sidetracked. Operation in the Lennox System. You know how thin our resources are. They'll be there within the hour." (1770A)
• "We expected you hours ago. / Things got a little hairy in Lennox." (1860A)
• "I stole a year ago from a Confed testing site, when no one was looking." (2490A)
• "46 hours. … How long it's been since Captain Eisen left." (2510A)
• "The Assembly votes in 5 days..." (2510A)
• " I could rig up a few in a week or so--" (3410B)
• "The Kilrathi understood this: they endured for millions of years and so shall we if we continue fighting!" (3510U)

Script

• "Several years since the end of The War with the Kilrathi..." (0010A)
• "the two men appraise each other, silent. it has been, after all, some time since their last encounter -- and they share two decades of tumultuous history." (0200A)
• "lt. colonel "gash" DEKKER opens his eyes. they're the eyes of a man who's seen a lot of bloodshed in his 30+ years; eyes that are sharp and hard, like the rest of his face. his voice is deep and cool, but he is definitely somebody you don't want to cross." (1860A)

Novel

• "He had survived twelve years of fighter combat against the Kilrathi, and two more of rough-and-tumble peace on the frontiers." (Chapter One, Part 1)
• "The Kilrathi War was less than two years over, and it seemed to him that the navy was already busy forgetting everything it had learned in three decades of conflict." (Chapter One, Part 1)
• "Otherwise, she would be dismissed at year's end for 'excessive time in grade.'" (Chapter One, Part 1)
• "He kept politely tapping for several minutes, then reversed the hammer in his hand. The second sweep crossed the hour." (Chapter One, Part 2)
• "We shall decide a course of action within, ah . . . a fortnight of your completed report." (Chapter One, Part 2)
• "'I accept your vote of confidence on behalf of the Strategic Readiness Agency, and we shall endeavor to match your timetable for action.' ... 'Two weeks,' Taggart said, convinced Tolwyn was playing him, annoyed at Tolwyn's pointed reference to his once having been subservient to him." (Chapter One, Part 2)
• "It was a delayed telecast from the Assembly Hall on Earth, and only two days old." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "Two years on the farm, however, had softened the hard edges and put a gloss of time over the hurt." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "The walls had no decoration other than old two-dees of comrades (many long dead), his framed citations and promotions, and curios picked up during twenty years of war." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "It was only nine a.m., local time, but the temperature was already up over 42 degrees centigrade." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "Eleven-thirty, and the place was already packed." (Chapter One, Part 4)
• "I flew off the ole Liberty for nineteen years." (Chapter One, Part 4)
• "I haven't killed anybody in a week, Mr., uh, Seether, and I'm due." (Chapter One, Part 4)
• "In the last several months, Colonel, we've suffered a series of escalating attacks." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "I'm told the vector mechanics are tricky and it takes the ore a couple of years to get here, but we get most of the iron we need for durasteel for a few centi-credits per ton." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "Two years grubbing in the dirt in Nephele to bring in a crop and fighting with the Farm Bureau had broadened his horizons in ways he'd never expected." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "His own uniform had been in a box in the quartermaster's stores until twelve hours before." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "I've booked you in the Arrow simulator at 1900 hours—to get your certification up to date." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "The unity that held us together through three decades is fraying now that the Kilrathi have faded." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "We'll get you checked out on our inventory tomorrow." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "We pulled a shore leave at Gonwyn's Glory about three months back." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "I got about six hours in an Arrow simulator yesterday, enough for a provisional rating,'" (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "The operations briefing'll be at 0600 hours." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "Yes, you'll need to recalibrate your watch for our eighteen-hour ship's day." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "His sleep, when he finally collapsed into his bed, gave him no rest." (Chapter Two, Part 5)
• "We'll be beginning the briefings for tomorrow's move to the Tyr system in about twenty minutes." (Chapter Three, Part 3)
• "It was his first serious combat mission and live carrier trap in two years, and both he and the ship had survived the experience intact." (Chapter Four, Part 3)
• "This good man was a prisoner on the ship he had commanded less than an hour ago." (Chapter Four, Part 5)
• "A full diagnostic would take almost half an hour, long enough to make him late for the reception." (Chapter Four, Part 6)
• "I've got the ready group this week and I know you need the flight hours." (Chapter Four, Part 7)
• "'I've served the Confederation for twenty years,' he said, 'regardless of what it's cost me.'" (Chapter Five, Part 2)
• "'We have just fought a tragic thirty-year war,' Paulson said, his hard edges softening as he tried to make peace." (Chapter Five, Part 4)
• "Blair knew his own reflexes and thinking speed were fast, fast enough to survive two decades of often hellish combat." (Chapter Five, Part 4)
• "We begin the next phase of our operations tomorrow, Colonel, so why don't you go get some shuteye." (Chapter Five, Part 4)
• "He thought back across his two decades of service, remembering all of the tests and tribulations of holding a commission in the Fleet during the war." (Chapter Six, Part 1)
• "He looked at his clock. Two-thirty." (Chapter Six, Part 1)
• "He'd been asleep a little more than an hour." (Chapter Six, Part 1)
• "That's the second unexplained surge in two days, so Paulson ordered it torn apart." (Chapter Six, Part 2)
• "The launch proved rough and his clearing turn slow, the results of having been away from the big ships for two years." (Chapter Six, Part 2)
• "He hadn't done a real eyes-only landing in a decade, and that had been in a fighter a lot more maneuverable than the Thunderbolt." (Chapter Seven, Part 1)
• "The Durangos were obsolete ten years ago!" (Chapter Seven, Part 1)
• "The generators were one of the few improvements the last couple of years had seen." (Chapter Seven, Part 1)
• "You only defected yesterday." (Chapter Seven, Part 2)
• "Most of the crew are pulling eighteen-hour-plus days to keep her from coming apart." (Chapter Seven, Part 2)
• "We served together during the Venice Offensive. That was three decades ago." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "'Electronic engineering,' Blair answered, 'but that was thirty years ago!'" (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "I've been on the admirals staff—one of the 'Black Gang'—for about the last two years." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "Within twelve hours I received a personal message from Tolwyn himself telling me to mind my own business." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "I passed on what they were selling, and within two hours my command override had been suspended." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "The carrier would be out of action for a month, perhaps six weeks." (Chapter Seven, Part 6)
• "Seether was amazed at how much damage could be wrought during one three-hour nap." (Chapter Seven, Part 6)
• "They went over three days back. According to our telemetry, either Blair or Marshall torpedoed the Lexington." (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "'I'm supposed to present my biennial report to the defense committee tomorrow,' he said. 'I figured I'd best give it to you first.'" (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "The Vesuvius'll be ready for shakedowns in a week or so." (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "But we lost three-hundred thirty on the Achilles last week," (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "'No,' Tolwyn said, shaking his head, 'my aides tell me a resolution declaring war on the Border Worlds will be brought up for debate before the full Assembly within a week.'" (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "His cloak of office lay casually thrown over a chair back, alongside the gavel that marked his position as the year's Master of the Assembly. " (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "Sleep didn't seem to be an option." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "The two-day refit at Orestes had accomplished other miracles as well." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "He hadn't realized how good a steak and vegetables would taste after a week of breathing smoke and eating condensed emergency rations." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "They'd worked side by side the entire two days at Orestes and had been possibly the only two people other than Eisen who hadn't taken an eight-hour shore leave." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "She'd fancied him no more than he had her, but she'd insisted they respect proprieties and had very specific ideas about where she should sleep. " (Chapter Eight, Part 5)
• "We have been harassed by unknown forces for the past 48 hours."; "We've got less than a week before the Assembly's vote." (Chapter Eight, Part 5)
• "Years ago, when I first signed on with Confed, there was a rookie pilot on my ship." (Chapter Eight, Part 5)
• "He was still worried twelve hours later while he waited with Eisen and a few well-wishers and watched a jump-capable transfer shuttle make a glass-smooth landing on the Intrepid's flight deck." (Chapter Eight, Part 7)
• "It's your first day on the job, sir." (Chapter Eight, Part 8)
• "'We have had two similar incidents in the last forty hours,' he said." (Chapter Eight, Part 8)
• "They'll be aboard in about an hour." (Chapter Eight, Part 8)
• "Maniac was damned dose to exceeding the Hellcat's eight-hour endurance." (Chapter Nine, Part 1)
• "But I fought the Kilrathi for 20 years, and I'm a tough old bird." (Chapter Nine, Part 3)
• "You had to have ten years experience, minimum, and be able to relocate with no questions asked." (Chapter Nine, Part 3)
• "Four hours later Blair sat in his command chair, worrying a thumbnail and wondering if he had made a grave mistake in trusting Bean." (Chapter Nine, Part 4)
• "'Did Panther get her stuff?' ... 'About an hour ago, in fact.'" (Chapter Nine, Part 9)
• "The timing won't have to be that fine, not if we can hit all three within an hour or so."; "Otherwise, we go in twelve hours." (Chapter Ten, Part 1)
• "'What time is pilot's brief?' ... 'About four hours.'" (Chapter Ten, Part 2)
• "Blair took this as a subtle hint for him to get some sleep." (Chapter Ten, Part 3)
• "The destroyers were new, and hadn't appeared on yesterday's recon tapes." (Chapter Ten, Part 4)
• "'It's too bad you couldn't have been here yesterday.' (Chapter Ten, Part 6)
• "'They mostly pushed us aside when they came aboard—greenies, twenty-year vets, we didn't matter to them.'" (Chapter Ten, Part 6)
• "He had revisited his last conversation with Velina over and over as he'd tried to sleep. " (Chapter Ten, Part 8)
• "Their groups suffered pretty heavily in yesterday's attack." (Chapter Eleven, Part 5)
• "We made landfall about five hours ago." (Chapter Eleven, Part 5)
• "It takes from sixty to ninety hours to run its course." (Chapter Eleven, Part 5)
• "If the rest of 'em don't ship out, they'll all be committing suicide in a year or so."
• "Blair dipped his head. He hadn't told anyone he had spent the night before tidying up his affairs and writing a short letter to Velina." (Chapter Twelve, Part 1)
• "'Twenty years ago,' he said conversationally, 'we ran an exhaustive computer analysis of the Kilrathi War.'" (Chapter Twelve, Part 3)
• "Phoenix wing will embark on the Vesuvius at zero-three hundred hours. Eagle's Claw wing will embark at zero-seven, together with the Marine battalion." (Chapter Twelve, Part 3)
• "Twenty years back, those on the project were already watching him." (Chapter Twelve, Part 4)

From there, we used a set of "Rosetta Stone" events to tie different parts of the game together. For example, we knew that Captain Eisen left the Intrepid on "Day X" and that during the Speradon series there is a conversation with Hawk where it is established that Eisen had left 46 hours earlier and that the Assembly's final vote (ie the end of the game) was five days away. From here, we could fill out most of the rest of the game following the lines mostly established by the novelization for how much time took place between different missions and common events. The two passes at these connections are listed as the 'logic' fields in the spreadsheet.

Notes & Issues

Introduction

The convoy attack which begins the novel is necessarily a different event than the scene it adapts from the game. The ships and characters involved are different. It also claims that "the Kilrathi War was less than two years over..." which has prompted me to place it in 2671, well in advance of the rest of the story. Perhaps this was the very first test of the flash-pak! The game's convoy attack scene, similarly, can't be placed exactly because the specific attack is never mentioned again.

With knowing a nod to Chris Reid, I have to note that the novelization clearly thinks Wing Commander IV takes place two years after Wing Commander III. There are several other references (cataloged above) to Blair not having worn a uniform or done so-and-so for two years. The "less than two years" in the intro really locks its placement but the others can all be read as confirming that Blair didn't immediately muster out in 2669 (which honestly makes sense). Note also that the game itself does NOT think this; all references in the script are to WC3 being 'several' years ago.

Start Time

I have opted to go with the maximum amount of time (14 days for the report and 14 days for the debate). This leaves three days between Blair's departure from the farm and his arrival at Orion. It is possible to move the start date forward up to three days or to insert the days sightly differently (one could go between the farm and the cantine, for instance). Having two days travel time from Nephele to Earth at the very least feels appropriate given that the same chapter also establishes that that's the speed emergency news arrives.

Ending

Paths Not Taken

I have attempted to chart theoretical timelines for the major paths not taken. I have treated Circe as equivalent to Speradon and I have dated Vagabond's death based on the timetable for Decker's marines. It was not possible to date the earlier Orestes that followed the first defection opportunity missions specifically.

External References

I note for posterity that the "Japanese DVD timeline" lists Wing Commander IV as taking place from 2673.219 to 2673.233. This comes from assuming the Wing Commander IV PSX e-mail is the start of the game and that the game lasts 14 days. Additionally, Star*Soldier lists 2673.219 as the overall date for Wing Commander IV, again referencing the e-mail. Since the new timeline encompasses these spans entirely I do not think it is an issue worth further attention.

Wing Commander IV's Lost Hellcats Found

In yesterday's update about connections between Wing Commander and Star Wars, we mentioned that the Hellcat takeoff scene from the Wing Commander IV intro had been the last one created. It turns out that that story hasn't been widely told… and it answers a small mystery the fandom has wondered about for almost thirty years!

Here's the story: As Wing Commander IV was preparing for launch, Chris Roberts wasn't happy with the game's introduction. He felt that the game's cinematic introduction wasn't doing enough to capture the player. A long standing philosophy at Origin was that the most effort (and by implication money) should be spent on the opening of a given game because that more than anything was what could guarantee a title would capture the player's attention. And Wing Commander IV had a spectacular intro… although it was one already compromised by the film shoot running out of time for the intended sequence on Blair's farm.

In November 1995, the game received a much needed six week delay which would allow for important polishing. This also gave Chris Roberts time to recut the introduction with the goal of making it more snappy and immersive. The team conducted a small series of reshoots of the pilot reactions from the first sequence and then the Assembly scene was significantly cut down, mostly dropping reaction shots from the various senators. The canteen scene was also tightened up with fewer shots of the location. Finally, the Nephele "takeoff" was completely redone: the original two shots were replaced with the new 'Star Wars' inspired one and one of the Hellcats in orbit.

The original starport takeoff scene was, however, included in one of the early trailers for the game. We just didn't know what it was! Fans speculated that this was from some sort of cancelled atmospheric mission… the reality is that the shot in the trailer was the original Nephele takeoff! The second shot, of the Hellcats boosting into the upper atmosphere, was not in the trailer and survives only as a screenshot. Here's the breakdown:

Wing Commander Movie Night: Star Wars

The Wing Commander movie club has faced the enemy at Midway and returned (relatively) unscathed. Now we're going to make the jump to hyperspace to watch a movie that was absolutely foundational for pretty much every aspect of Wing Commander: the original 1977 Star Wars (aka A New Hope). And we're going to watch the original version in order to understand exactly what Chris Roberts grew up wanting to turn into a game! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

We probably don't have to expend too many pixels explaining what Star Wars is. George Lucas' unexpected masterpiece combined the pulpy sci-fi serials of the 1930s with the most modern filmmaking technologies available. The result has become both modern mythology and a major basis for how and why movies are made.

We also probably don't have to spend much time pointing out the Wing Commander connections: from the very start of the series, the fantasy the games have tried to accomplish is letting the player experience an interactive version of Star Wars. And over the releases that connection only became more and more obvious, until you literally had Mark Hamill as the series' lead (complete with a pretty shameless flight down a deadly enemy trench…)! But we've collected some quotes and a few notes to get everyone stated–there should be a lot to talk about this time!

The Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide's comprehensive history of the making of those games starts with Chris Roberts' love of Star Wars:

Roberts had always been fascinated by science fiction movies and television shows, especially those like Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Return of the Jedi. He liked the action elements of space combat, the dazzling special effects, and the variety of characters the creators had imagined in future worlds. He wanted to bring those elements to the computer.

And that love was still present when he was making the movie. Here's Chris discussing his connection to Star Wars in the March 1999 issue of Sci-Fi Teen:

"Basically, I think every kid wants to be Luke Skywalker," reveals writer/director Chris Roberts, answering the oft-asked question: What inspired him to create Wing Commander, one of the most successful interactive video games in history, and now a movie scheduled to open this winter/spring?

"I grew up like every other kid," he recalls, "loving movies like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica on TV and science fiction in general. I originally created Wing Commander to give me the same experience and feeling I got when watching those films and TV shows, but while playing a game instead."

Generation XBox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood used Chris' lifelong love of Star Wars as the through line to tell the story of his making the Wing Commander movie:

A long time ago, in a galaxy not that far away lived a young boy called Chris Roberts. Chris wasn't just a Star Wars fan. He was the kind of Jedi geek who could tell you the difference between a tauntaun and a bantha in torturous detail. Born in California in 1968, he grew up in Manchester, England in the 1970s. When he was eight-years-old, he went to the cinema to see George Lucas's space opera. It changed his life. The moment he got back home he started building X-Wing fighters and Tie-fighters out of his Lego set. "That whole sense of being transported to another world had a big impact on me," he says. "Everything I've done has been about creating worlds that you can escape into." When he wasn't talking about Tie-Fighters, Roberts was busy tapping away at the red and black keys of his school's BBC Micro computers. He dreamed of making games that could capture the magic of Lucas's universe. If you'd told his younger self that one day he'd be living in California, running his own software company and directing Luke Skywalker - destroyer of the Death Star and the last of the illustrious Jedi Knights, aka actor Mark Hamill - he probably would have shat his pants.

Chris even listed Star Wars in the #1 slot on a list of his favorite movies in a December 1991 Point of Origin:

And indeed, the movie's original treatment does discuss Star Wars as an inspiration:

Like Star Wars, which was a heroic myth with a futuristic spin, this fundamental approach to the basic story touches on familiar chords in the audience's experience. After all, who didn't grow up with at least some exposure to the classic war movies? Wing Commander: The Movie will provide a similar experience, yet in a new and unique setting. In other words, it's something quite familiar and something quite different at the same time.

This was a balance, though, especially after Wing Commander III was so blatant about what it was borrowing. The movie's production notes point out the balance needed too make Wing Commander's film less obviously Star Wars-inspired:

"It's a hardcore war movie set in space, which has more in common with MIDWAY and THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN than with STAR WARS," he concludes. "It's a sci-fi movie with lots of fighting and battles, but with deep characters. I've made the movie I wanted to see."

Maniac was a still fan, though! The DVD liner notes:

A close friend of co -star freddie Prinze Jr., Lillard enjoyed playing The character of Maniac. "I loved Maniacs obsession with adrenaline - of needing that 'rush' to challenge the odds. And since I grew up with Star Wars, it was a dream to do a science fiction film."

The May 1999 Starlog confirms that Blair felt the same way:

Always an SF fan, Prinze also read many comic books growing up. He cites Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, an SF epic lent him by Wing Commander co-star Matt Lillard. for particular merit. "I had read it before, and Matt gave it to me in Luxembourg, so I got to read it again. I barely remembered the book, so it was like reading it for the first time. It's amazing. I always liked both Star Wars and Star Trek, so getting to be in Wing Commander and flying my own jet in outer space was a great deal of fun."

There are countless nods throughout the games and other media, though. The press release announcing Wing Commander Academy also noted the inspiration:

The first title boasted finely detailed, breathtaking graphics and cinematic sequences, with high-tech starfighters engaging in action inspired by the classic space battle films such as Star Wars. Set in the 27th century, the game finds mankind locked in a grueling war with the daring pilots of the Terran Confederation fending off the Kilrathi, a vicious, militaristic alien race. In the game, the player must employ cunning tactics and expert marksmanship to battle Kilrathi aces in heated deep-space dogfights to save the future of the world.

The April 1999 issue of Mix magazine has George Oldziey remembering his charge to do Star Wars style music for the games:

Meanwhile, score composer George Oldziey had been working with a VHS tape of the original Avid cut, with time-code. Roberts had specified a "sort of an orchestral 'Star Wars'-type soundtrack," says Oldziey, a requirement that would have been hard to meet using the technology that Oldziey had available on Wing Commander III, which he also scored.

Wing Commander IV's Nephele starport looks pretty familiar, too... this was the last CG shot added to the game, replacing another one which looked far less like Tattooine!

Here's an example of how things created for this movie have become shorthand. The request for this Privateer manual piece read "Interior bar scene: people making deals / Star Wars bar with no aliens":

And the Privateer team borrowed the Millennium Falcon extensively, filling in for the player ships in storyboards drawn before the designs were finished!

But Star Wars is everywhere and it has touched everyone who has worked on Wing Commander. Here's novelist Peter Telep from an article titled How Becoming a Professional Star Wars Sandtrooper Changed My Life!

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

We're going to try something slightly different this time around! We are going to be watching the 'despecialized' version of Star Wars which will most closely match the one that would've inspired Chris Roberts and the Wing Commander development teams. This means that the current version available on home video and streaming won't sync up. So please download version 1.7 of Harmy's Despecialized Edition if you want to watch along! You can read about the release here. If you are not able to locate a copy please stop by the Discord and ping a CIC staff member before Friday's showing for a download link.

How do we watch the movie together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 10 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

Learn Your Masers!

We often remember Wing Commander Prophecy and Secret Ops as being almost the same game; we tend to think of Secret Ops as almost an expansion, reusing Prophecy's assets almost exclusively. But one place Secret Ops didn't settle for the status quo was guns: it replaced five of the player guns with new, experimental options and it completely redid the VFX for four of the alien bolts!

Gun bolts fly by so quickly and after Wing Commander Academy or so there are so many to keep track of in your head... so we thought we'd show off the jump from WCP to WCSO AND provide an easy reference chart for anyone who wants to learn their lasers by sight. Enjoy!

Wing Commander Album Distribution Details

Last week we reported on the new Wing Commander II and Wing Commander Academy albums from Xeen Music. The albums are absolutely wonderful, including newly uncovered versions of tracks that no one has heard in almost 35 years! We've noticed some confusion about the different albums and versions currently available, so we've put together a quick cheat sheet and a master index to purchase or stream each version where available. Here's a quick cheat sheet:

Wing One - Music from Wing Commander I (27 tracks): This is The Fatman's 2016 release of the Wing Commander I music recorded from an authentic MT-32. This is NOT the release put together by Xeen Music.

Wing Commander I - Complete Original Soundtrack - MT​-​32 Archival Edition (55 tracks): This is the 2022 Xeen Music release of the Wing Commander I score. It is offered by The Fatman directly on some services. Every release listed below has the same music.

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi: MT-32/CM-32L Version (60 tracks): This is the standard version of the new Xeen Music Wing Commander II album available on most streaming services and for purchase via iTunes.

Wing Commander Academy+Bonus Tracks: MT-32/CM-32L (29 tracks): This is the standard version of the new Xeen Music Wing Commander Academy album available on most streaming services and for purchase via iTunes.

Wing Commander II​/​Academy Soundtrack (MT​-​32​/​CM​-​32L) (102 tracks): This is the combined version available on Bandcamp that includes both the Wing Commander II and Academy albums and bonus tracks.

Wing Commander II + Academy Original Soundtrack (Roland MT-32/CM-32L) (107 tracks): This is the combined version available on Patreon that includes both the Wing Commander II and Academy albums and (even more) bonus tracks.

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi + Wing Commander: Academy “Just the FAT” Edition (44 tracks): This version is sold by The Fatman directly and only includes the Wing Commander II tracks that his team worked on.

If you are curious which specific tracks are included with each release we have created a spreadsheet comparing them.

If you are interested in purchasing the albums outright, the best option is the combined Wing Commander II/Academy release available on the Xeen Music Patreon which, as noted above, has several additional tracks. The Xeen Music Patreon has some additional surprises for Wing Commander fans: it has also posted four 'bonus albums' which are beautifully archived copies of the FM Towns and Kilrathi Saga music for Wing Commander I and II. These are available for download at the $10/monthly level. This level also includes access to download the Wing Commander I - Complete Original Soundtrack - MT​-​32 Archival Edition, so it's absolutely worth your while to subscribe for at least a month! Here are links directly to the bonus albums:

• Wing Commander I (FM-Towns digital CD-DA version) (43 tracks)
• Wing Commander I: The Kilrathi Saga (22kHz digital) (41 tracks)
• Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (FM-Towns digital CD-DA version) (41 tracks)
• Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi: Kilrathi Saga (22hz digital) (53 tracks)

The Patreon releases of the Wing Commander I and II albums include all of the liner notes. They will also be updated if new music is recovered. The other major difference between the Bandcamp versions is that the Patreon albums are posted in FLAC and MP3 format while Bandcamp offers a variety of more obscure options (MP3 V0, MP3 320, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, ALAC, WAV and AIFF). Here's a page from the Wing Commander II liner notes to show you how well researched these are:

 - iTunes
 - Spotify
 - Apple Music
 - Amazon Music
 - Deezer
 - iHeart
 - Pandora

 - Bandcamp
 - Spotify
 - Amazon Music
 - Deezer

 - Patreon (102 tracks)
 - Bandcamp (107 tracks)
 - iTunes (60 tracks)
 - Spotify
 - Apple Music
 - Amazon Music
 - Deezer
 - iHeart
 - Tidal
 - Pandora

 - Bandcamp

 - iTunes
 - Spotify
 - Apple Music
 - Amazon Music
 - Deezer
 - iHeart
 - Tidal
 - Pandora
 - Audiomack

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Midway (1976), a movie with both creative and historical ties to Wing Commander. You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST (with a bit of pre-show starting 30 minutes earlier), but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: The Fifth Element

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club is ready to turn in our collective multipass! We watched The Fifth Element last week and it's just as strange and beautiful an experience as many of us remember from our youths. It represents such a fascinating moment in our culture when such a strange, not-like-anything-else film could get a blockbuster budget and a huge theatrical release. Whether you're interested in discussing deeper meanings or if you just want a completely unique audiovisual experience it's one heck of a film.

We loved the movie but there aren't many Wing Commander connections to report! We talked all about the cinematography of Thierry Arbogast and his team in the intro post and it was certainly on full display here. There's no question that his incredible talents are what made this movie look so incredible… and they're a significant reason why Wing Commander remains so appealing, too! Here's Korben Dallas' taxi, which was shot using the same rig and crew as the Rapiers in Wing Commander… and also made of the same mix of CG and physical taxi set.

Here's a featurette that covers the creation of the cab chase… with a focus on the gimbal!

The spectacular taxi rescue sequence (and the general out there European science fiction world) reminded us a lot of Privateer 2. It turns out both projects were shot at Pinewood Studios in London, one after the other! The traffic scenes, which drew from the comic work of French artist Jean-Claude Mézières, are especially similar to the Anhur and Hermes transition shots that show similar masses of hovercars, trucks and buses.

We did find one more fun incidental Wing Commander connection: a brief appearance by the famous Double Shadow knife. The Double Shadow is a two-bladed knife which often appears in science fiction productions; Wing Commander know it as Seether's knife from Wing Commander IV. In The Fifth Element, Korben's neighbor is using it to shave when the police show up to arrest him!

Alas, Babylon 5

Well, everyone knows Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. What this update presupposes is... maybe it wasn't. The Confederation starbase seen here should be pretty familiar: it's Blackmane Base, which appears in Wing Commander III. Depending on your performance in the game, you will either fight to resupply or to evacuate the base relatively early in the game. Canonically, the latter missions are flown and the base is disassembled.

What may surprise you is that there's a nerdy reference hidden deep in the bowels of the game: internally, the station is stored as BAB6… for Babylon 6, a clear nod to the television series that surely inspired its design:

And while the mesh is named BAB6 in the PC version of Wing Commander III the 3DO release makes the reference even more clear by storing the station's textures as BABYLON6.TXM (accessible via the game's debug mode):

In fact, the 3DO release even adds some related text to the station itself; right below the entrance to the flight deck reads STATION 6:

The reference is all the more impressive because Babylon 5 wasn't a cult classic when Wing Commander III was being made… in fact, it had barely started! The game released shortly after the sixth episode aired and the filename for the station must've been chosen much earlier. In spite of this, we have a pretty likely suspect for the reference. Art director Chris Douglas specifically talks about Babylon 5 in Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III:

Chris has decked his door with "Dilbert” comic strips that he downloaded from the Internet, and his walls are hung with Maxfield Parrish posters. Compared to the other people on the Wing 3 team, however, the interior of his office is fairly uncluttered. Besides his PC and SGI there is only the black television that he uses to play tapes from his collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a comfortable chair, two strings of blue and purple origami cranes and thirty-four miniature Star Trek spaceships. "When I was a kid, I would have given anything for some of the toys they have out now,” he confides. "I’m pretty bitter about how empty my childhood was when today kids can get all sorts of neat stuff. . . now I just wish they’d come out with some Babylon 5 ships.”

Chris would get his wish, by the way: Galoob would release six sets of Babylon 5 spaceships within the year! Hope he managed to pick them up.

Intel Poster Preservation

Here's a short but fascinating followup to our article on the partnership between Origin and Intel: st3lt3k added that an Internet Archive contributor named Star Raider has uploaded beautiful scans of all five of the 1994 CES posters! Origin wasn't promoting Wing Commander at the time but these is artwork worth studying nonetheless...

Very Stupid Calendar for Sale

Welcome to 2025, where retro gaming is "hip". And when something becomes popular it can start to generate a lot of useless, hastily assembled money-grabbing crap. Case in point is this 2025 "Retro Games Classic Gaming Calendar" from Red Rock Publishing:

The ultimate gaming calendar for all gamers, whether young or old! Here, the most legendary games of all time are brought back to life, whether for PC, Amiga, SEGA, PlayStation, XBOX, or other platforms - all through the new year!

Classics like WarCraft, Doom 3D, Monkey Island, Pacman, StarCraft, Super Mario, Quake, Diablo or Dune: In this calendar, the unforgettable giants of gaming history will accompany you throughout the new year, 365 days in a row.

Including a fold-out mega poster, all public and religious holidays as well as plenty of space to add your own notes, birthdays, etc. Format: Large Wall Dimensions: 59cm x 29.5cm

Sounds great, except… take a close look at February! The game of the month is supposed to be Elite but it's represented by a Wing Commander I screenshot!

Want your own very stupid calendar? If you're in Europe, you're in luck! Copies are currently available on Amazon UK and other European Amazon storefronts. The MSRP is £12.99. If you're looking to track down a copy elsewhere, the ISBN is ‎ 979-8893610666. For the record, we bought one!

Wing Commander Movie Night: Midway

The Wing Commander movie club watched The Fifth Element on Friday and it certainly wasn't Boron! (everyone laugh) Next up, we're going back to World War II… but in the Pacific this time! We're going to be watching the 1976 film Midway and you can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Midway is a star-studded, big budget war movie about the 1942 Battle of Midway, a naval engagement that changed the direction of World War 2 in the Pacific and which enshrined the aircraft carrier as the centerpiece of naval doctrine. Midway attempts to tell the story of the battle, a challenging thing for a conflict where the two sides rarely encountered each other.

Wing Commander's Kilrathi War has always been patterned after World War II in the Pacific so it's not a surprise that there are some clear connections to look out for! We'll talk about some connections to the real battle shortly, but first the 1976 film specifically was used as referenced during the making of the Wing Commander movie. In a March 1999 Salon interview, Chris Roberts credits Midway as a major inspiration: “‘Das Boot’ heavily influenced the film in terms of its look. Films like ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ [and] ‘Midway’ -- I tried to make my film in a sort of old-fashioned World War II sense.” A similar quote from Roberts was included in both the DVD liner notes and on the movie's official website: "WING COMMANDER is a hard-core war movie set in space. In some ways, it has more in common with Midway and The Battle of Britain than with a science fiction film," he adds. "It has lots of effects and combat scenes, all of which serve the characters and story. I wanted to make a film about people under the incredible tension of battle." The April 1999 issue of Cinefex talks about how the VFX team watched the movie to prepare for the capital ship battle sequences:

Seeking inspiration for the movement of the juggernaut capital ships, Digital Anvil viewed documentary footage and studied the war films Tora! Tora! Tora! and Midway. "After viewing these films," Brown stated, "Chris Roberts was adamant about holding on shots of these big ships coming across screen for a long time. That was more daring an approach than I was at first comfortable with, but in the end these long-duration shots worked very well, and they went a long way toward establishing the necessary sense of spectacle." This sense of spectacle - in the best Victory at Sea tradition - is particularly well illustrated partway through the film, when Tiger Claw is led into a trap and badly damaged during the ensuing battle.

And let's go ahead and get the obvious one done with: Wing Commander Prophecy's megacarrier is, of course, named after the historic battle. That doesn't inform much about the movie… but it's a good indication of how the battle itself continues to capture our imagination generations on.

Wing Commander stories have borrowed from the battle itself several times... going all the way back to the original Claw Marks, which uses some of the setup for the McAuliffe Ambush. Here Ches M. Penney stands in for cryptographer Joseph Rochefort:

On 2634.228, Confederation cryptographer Ches M. Penney partially decodes the current Kilrathi cipher. The intercepted message refers to a punitive strike being launched against the Confederation, starting with the colony on McAuliffe and the space station Alexandria in orbit around it. Confederation High Command launches a couter-offensive twice the size of the anticipated enemy fleet; it is to reach McAuliffe first and ambush the attackers.

On 2634.235, the Kilrathi fleet reaches McAuliffe. It is four times the predicted size; the incomplete translation of the intercepted message had underestimated the size of the Kilrathi offensive. So begins the McAuliffe Ambush engagement.

When William Forstchen told the complete story of McAuliffe in Action Stations, he doubled down on the connection and had Penney responsible for exacty the same trick as Rochefort:

"It's from Lieutenant Ches Penney," Speedwell announced, "one of our better cryptologists out on the frontier. Here's the original burst signal."
First there was a sharp, high-pitched squeal, lasting barely a second, then it was replayed after decompression, a quavering tone nearly a dozen seconds in length.
"Long signal," Skip announced.
"Penney had damn little to go on. The Cats have been shifting codes at increasingly shorter intervals. Something in the initial part of the tone caught his attention. That's the signature message, which tells the receiver which coding system to use. Seems that they recycled an older code that we had partially cracked, and Penney remembered it. Anyhow, here it is in Kilrathi."
Speedwell pointed to the screen as page after page of text scrolled past in the strange, blocked pictographs of what Skip knew was Kilrathi.
"Even here, most of the message is filler, so he started to run random pattern searches and finally hit on it."
The translation in English now appeared. Skip read the text once and hit the stop button. Turning in his chair he refreshed his mug of coffee, then turned back to the screen, features pale, reading slowly.
"Target Vikyah?" he whispered, already sensing what the answer was.
"McAuliffe," Speedwell replied.
"How do we know that?"
"Because it reports our translight burst transmitter is down due to intense solar flares as reported from the Carlin system. There's only one Confed base offline at the moment, and that's McAuliffe, where we've been having problems with flares of late. This message reporting the signal problems was sent by one of their listening posts inward to Kilrah yesterday. Twelve hours later it was repeated back outwards, Skip, back outwards to an Admiral Nargth."
"McAuliffe," Skip whispered. "Damn it all, they're going for McAuliffe."
"Looks that way. There's a lot of holes in the message, Skip. Penney pulled this one out right from the very edge. It looks like we caught, at best, maybe a quarter of the message, but we know the code name for this Admiral Nargth's command, and their target is McAuliffe."

... except it turns out he'd already used the trick for a previous novel, Fleet Action. The Kilrathi need to stop falling for this!

Most of the message was untranslated but one line highlighted in red leaped out at him . . . "Remove target 2778A on moon of Nak'tara from primary strike list. Accident has destroyed target, . . ." there were several lines untranslated . . . "shortage in antimatter weapons produced from 2778A expected, will update."
Jason looked back up at Vance.
"They took the bait. We broadcast the false message on a code we knew they had already cracked. Their listening post, most likely right in their embassy office picked it up and passed it back to Kilrah. Nak'tara means Earth. It means that whatever it is they're preparing out there in Hari is being aimed for an attack straight at Earth. Damn it, the bastards are getting ready to strike."
...

"First of all, what the hell was this signal you had me send?"
As Geoff explained Banbridge's features lit up.
"Same trick we Americans once used against the Japanese at Midway with the fake report of a water distillery breaking down. The Japanese picked it up and reported to their fleet that 'target X' was short of water, and by that little trick we knew their next target was Midway. Vance always did know his history."

Action Stations also introduces the fact that Commander Turner is descended from the commander of Torpedo Squadron 8, who died during the battle. At the end of the book, Turner reflects on how their heroism is like that of the Confederation fighters defending McAuliffe.

Skip's gaze shifted to the other print, of a naval battle, back when fleets still sailed on water.
"You had an ancestor in that one, didn't you?"
"Squadron Leader, Torpedo Eight," Turner said proudly, even though he was speaking of someone dead nearly three quarters of a millennium.
"And they all got shot down, but not one of them wavered from the attack on the Japanese carriers. Their heroic sacrifice pulled the fighters down to sea level, allowing the dive-bombers to slip through. Damn, what guts they had then," Skip said, looking back at Turner who arched an eyebrow in surprise that his friend remembered the story from the Battle of Midway.

And would you like to play the battle itself? You can't do it in a Wing Commander game but you can do it in an extremely similar, related one: Origin's 1993 Pacific Strike allows you to play through the battle as a pilot aboard the USS Enterprise. The game uses Wing Commander III's RealSpace engine and the overall design of the game is adapted from Wing Commander I! Pacific Strike is as close to possible as the fictional concept of abandonware: Origin actually did abandon support for it and offer everyone who purchased the game refunds! In that light, it might be fair to pick up a copy on the Internet Archive.

Pre-Show!

We're going to try something new this week by including a pre-show, like how you might watch trailers, cartoons or newsreels before a movie! We'll post the preshow material here and you can watch it any time… or show up half an hour early and we'll do a group watch in the Discord chat!

During the actual 1942 Battle of Midway, acclaimed director John Ford was present and filmed footage of the action which he turned into an 18-minute propaganda film titled The Battle of Midway. Both the Wing Commander movie's production notes and the more recent book XBox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood claim that The Battle of Midway was influential to the film. Here's the complete film, which is in the public domain:

Internet Archive download

Inspired by the heroism of the torpedo pilots who gave their lives in the initial strike, Ford also cut an eight minute film about Torpedo Squadron 8 which shows the pilots and crews in the days before the battle. Given the connection to Action Stations, it's also worth a watch!

Internet Archive download

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

Midway is currently available for rental or sale digitally at all storefronts. Please note that that you want the 1976 film and not the 2019 version of the story. A copy is also available for download from Archive.org. If you're interested in tracking down a physical copy, a BluRay version was released in 2013 and remains in print today. If you are unable to track down a copy please ping a member of the WCCIC staff on the Discord in advance of the watch.

There is a significantly extended TV cut of Midway available which we won't be covering. If you're interested, though, copies are available on the Internet Archive either with or without commercials!

How do we watch the movie together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 10 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

Goodbye Benoît Allemane

Sad news today: French voice actor Benoît Allemane passed away on Sunday. To say that M. Alleman was prolific would be an understatement; he performed the French voices for characters from Doctor Claw to Baloo and in the process dubbed countless film and genre roles over the years. He was likely best known as the official French voice of actor Morgan Freeman, who paid tribute to him on Instagram.

You can find an obituary here. He is best known to Wing Commander fans, however, as the French voice of Captain William Eisen in localized releases of Wing Commander III and IV. Here's a briefing from Wing Commander IV showing his dub work in action:

Our thoughts are with M. Allemane's family, friends and fans.

Thank you to Sergorn for reporting this news.

BREAKING NEWS: Wing Commander II & Academy Albums Released

A few weeks ago, we reported the welcome surprise that The Fatman had released the "Just the FAT" edition of the Wing Commander II soundtrack… and we mentioned that a complete release was on the way from Xeen Music! And now, that release is here!

• Wing Commander II Soundtrack
• Wing Commander Academy Soundtrack

These are, in a word, incredible. Andrew Harrington of Xeen Music has spent months researching and restoring the music of Wing Commander II and Academy and has produced an incredible collection with everything you know… and whole a lot you don't! He has reached out to the original composers, tracked down cut music and music that was simplified to save disk space… and he's collected it all alongside comprehensive notes about what you're listening to. And it's all properly licensed through Electronic Arts, this is an official release. This is surely the isometal standard for video game music releases!

As you can see at the links above, the albums are now available across a variety of platforms that include both music stores and streaming services! If you're a Spotify, Amazon Music or Apple Music user you can start listening to Wing Commander II music right now. Streaming services have a 60-track Wing Commander II album and a 29-track Wing Commander Academy one. A more comprehensive 102-track version is available for sale through storefronts like Bandcamp. Finally, it looks like the version available via Patreon is the superior release, with several bonus tracks not included with the others.

Here's the complete description of the Patreon release:

Wing Commander II + Academy Original Soundtrack (Roland MT-32/CM-32L)

Available in FLAC or MP3.

Includes commentary written by Andrew Harrington and George Sanger (with exclusive design notes by Martin Galway), and cover artwork.

TOTAL PLAYTIME: 3:27:09
TOTAL TRACKS: 107

This soundtrack has been recorded directly from an authentic Roland MT-32. Due to the hardware limitations of the MT-32 causing polyphony problems, if necessary, each channel has been recorded independently and then merged into a single track. Therefore, no notation data is lost through polyphony limitations and the tracks may be heard at their fullest.

Track titles are based on the original files and design documents, except where the original filenames remain unknown. In these cases, the track names in {brackets} have been created by myself based on how the music is used in the final version of the game, and should not be considered official at this time.

Unfortunately, most of the original MIDI files for Dana Glover's, and all of those of Nenad Vugrinec's, John Tipton's and Kirk Winterrowd's compositions cannot currently be located. The final game versions have been used in these cases.

Due to memory concerns, a majority of the themes were cut down in size (sometimes drastically) in the final version of Wing Commander II. Because not all of the original versions can be located, based on an internal design document, the following known full-length versions remain lost:

* The Flight Deck
* Jazz's Escape

The following compositions (composed after the design document was written), MAY have original full-length versions that are still lost:

* {Jazz's Drammatic Music}
* Defeat End-Game
* Victory End-Game
* {New Plans}
* {Vision}
* End-Game Medley

Regarding "normal" vs. "sysex" versions -- The recordings on the official Origin CD use the default MT-32 "orchestra hit" and "harp" while the game uses a custom-edited tone with less reverb (which definitely sounds inferior). Since the default versions sound superior and were used in the official CD, I have decided it best to include both variations and let the listener decide which he prefers.

The exclusive John Tipton versions are the original versions before they reached the final game, demonstrating how the music was intended to be heard.

The archival soundtrack series contains all known music from said title, including 1 second jingles, unused music, beta versions, and more.

Soundtrack and any bonus materials may not be re-distributed elsewhere without the express permission of Xeen Music.

$4.58 (after Bandcamp fees) of each sale automatically goes to Electronic Arts for music licensing, and the rest is divided between Xeen Music and George Sanger.

Published by Xeen Music (2025-01-09)

Produced by Andrew Harrington

* Wing Commander I music composed by George A. Sanger, David Govett and Herman Miller, ©1990 George A. Sanger.

* Wing Commander II music composed by George A. Sanger, Dana Glover, Martin Galway, Nenad Vugrinec, ©1991 Electronic Arts

* Wing Commander Academy music composed by Kirk Winterrowd and John Tipton, ©1993 Electronic Arts

* Authentic Roland MT-32 recordings and editing by Andrew Harrington, ©2025 Andrew Harrington.

* John Tipton recordings, ©1993 John Tipton.

Licensed by Electronic Arts, Inc. or George A. Sanger.

TRACKLIST:
Soundtrax Logo (Origin FX Intro)
Wing Commander II Main Theme - Cloak & Dagger - version 4 ^
Wing Commander II Main Theme - Cloak & Dagger - version 5-game edit
Deepspace Conversation - version 3 ^
Deepspace Conversation - version 4-game edit
Selected Mid-Games #1 [was "Mission Failure"]
Tolwyn's Office - original version ^
Tolwyn's Office - game edit
{The Kilrathi Theme} - normal Orchestra Hit
{The Kilrathi Theme} - sysex Orchestra Hit
The Bridge - original version ^
The Bridge - game edit
Scramble Through Launch - Wing Commander II version
Flying to Dogfight - Wing Commander II version
Dogfight: Regular Combat - Wing Commander II version
Dogfight: Tailing an Enemy
Dogfight: Being Tailed
Dogfight: Intense Combat - This One Really Counts!
Dogfight: Your Wingman's Been Hit
Dogfight: Ally Killed
Dogfight: Missile Tracking You
Dogfight: You're Severely Damaged - Floundering
Dogfight: Target Hit
Dogfight: Enemy Ace Killed
Dogfight: Overall Defeat
Dogfight: Overall Victory
Returning Defeated
Returning Normal
Returning Triumphant
Landing
Medium Damage Assessment
Debriefing-Unsuccessful - Wing Commander II version ^
Debriefing-Successful ^
The Flight Deck - game edit - normal Orchestra Hit
The Flight Deck - game edit - sysex Orchestra Hit
Jazz's Theme ^
Jazz's Music #1 'Auld Lang Syne'
Love Theme - Angel Devereaux - version 3
Grim Defense or Escort Mission - Wing Commander II version
Kilrathi Ace Dogfight - version 2 ^
Kilrathi Ace Dogfight - version 3-game edit
Eject-Imminent Rescue
Hero's Funeral
Dogs Playing Poker (with percussion) ^
Dogs Playing Poker (no percussion) ^
Poker - Slow Space Blues - version 3 ^
Poker - Slow Space Blues - version 4-game edit
{Jazz's Drammatic Music}
Commander's Office Visit
Strike Mission - Go Get 'Em!
Jumpspace - version 1
Torpedo Run - version 2 ^
Torpedo Run - version 3-game edit
Off-Duty - original version ^
Off-Duty - game edit
Goal Line - Defending the Claw
Defeat End-Game - normal Orchestra Hit (maybe game edit)
Defeat End-Game - sysex Orchestra Hit (maybe game edit)
Jazz's Escape - game edit - normal Orchestra Hit
Jazz's Escape - game edit - sysex Orchestra Hit
Jazz's Dogfight - original (Battle-Normal from Martian Dreams) ^
Jazz's Dogfight - version 2 ^
Jazz's Dogfight - version 3-game edit
Jazz's Music #2 "Storm Clouds"
Jazz's Music #3 "As Time Goes By"
Prince Thrakhath's Dogfight - version 3 ^
Prince Thrakhath's Dogfight - version 4-game edit
Victory End-Game - normal Orchestra Hit (maybe game edit)
Victory End-Game - sysex Orchestra Hit (maybe game edit)
{New Plans} - normal Orchestra Hit (maybe game edit)
{New Plans} - sysex Orchestra Hit (maybe game edit)
Prince Thrakhath's Theme - version 1 ^
Prince Thrakhath's Theme - version 2-game edit
Prince Thrakhath's Theme - faster version ^ {Vision} (maybe game edit)
Selected Mid-Games #2 - normal Orchestra Hit
Selected Mid-Games #2 - sysex Orchestra Hit
End-Game Medley - normal Orchestra Hit & Harp
End-Game Medley - sysex Orchestra Hit & Harp
{Academy Introduction} - normal Orchestra Hit
{Academy Introduction} - sysex Orchestra Hit
Academy Credits - Tipton version ^
Academy Credits - game version - normal Orchestra Hit
Academy Credits - game version - sysex Orchestra Hit
Simulation Room - Tipton version ^
Simulation Room - game version - normal Orchestra Hit
Simulation Room - game version - sysex Orchestra Hit
{Mission Builder}
Wave Go! - Tipton version ^
Wave Go! - game version - normal Orchestra Hit
Wave Go! - game version - sysex Orchestra Hit
Wave Transition - Tipton version ^
Wave Transition - game version - normal Orchestra Hit
Wave Transition - game version - sysex Orchestra Hit
Simulated Death - Tipton version ^
Simulated Death - game version
{Gauntlet Defeat} {unknown unused cue}
{Gauntlet Victory} - normal Orchestra Hit
{Gauntlet Victory} - sysex Orchestra Hit
Wing Commander II Main Theme to Debriefing-Unsuccessful Transition
Wing Commander II Main Theme with Transition to Debriefing-Unsuccessful
Wing Commander II Main Theme with Transition to Debriefing-Unsuccessful ~ Debriefing-Unsuccessful

BONUS TRACKS
Jazz's Music #1 - normal Piano
Jazz's Music #2 - normal Piano
Jazz's Music #3 - normal Piano
{Jazz's Drammatic Music} - normal Piano

^ = unused track

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is a fun one: The Fifth Element, a movie that shares a cinematographer with Wing Commander! You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST, but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: Das Boot

Greetings WingNuts,

We are back from our long sea tour! After two weeks, the Wing Commander movie club has watched the director's cut of Das Boot. Most in attendance had seen at least the theatrical version before so we had a good idea what we were getting into… but it was certainly a tough watch! Unlike some of the war films we've watched in this series, Das Boot's impact has not diminished over the years. It's a hard edged story that portrays the reality of warfare: that most of the people fighting aren't there supporting an ideology but because society offers them no other choice. It's not an easy watch but it's a valuable one.

Of course there were a lot of Wing Commander connections to discuss given the film's importance in inspiring the Wing Commander film's look, feel, specific scenes and even… well, its captain. AD provided this excerpt from Chris Roberts' original Wing Commander film pitch where he talks all about how it will be inspired more by war films than science fiction. As he concludes: "almost a Das Boot in space!" Truer words were never spoken!

Like Star Wars, which was a heroic myth with a futuristic spin, this fundamental approach to the basic story touches on familiar chords in the audience's experience. After all, who didn't grow up with at least some exposure to the classic war movies? Wing Commander: The Movie will provide a similar experience, yet in a new and unique setting. In other words, it's something quite familiar and something quite different at the same time.

Although the heroes become trapped deep behind enemy lines and ultimately must battle their way back out again, the combat will be infrequent... yet always lurking in the background. There will probably be no more than four set combat pieces, but they'll be spectacular ones, with incredible effects done exclusively with high-end computer graphics-think Return of the Jedi on steroids!

Through it all, through the combat and the drama and the heroics, the largely unseen enemy is out there, watching constantly for the opportunity to crush our heroes and their dreams. Space combat in this universe follows the tradition of naval warfare in the Pacific during WW II. The two opposing sides maneuver around strategic planets and jump points, playing a deadly game of Silent Running-esque cat and mouse, with certain doom to whoever's located first. In the end, much of the drama turns on the tense interactions between the isolated main characters, as they search desperately for a way out of their increasingly dire predicament... almost a Das Boot in space."

And here's producer Todd Moyer saying much the same thing in the film's production notes. I guess he read the pitch!

Lamont had a number of problems to deal with on this production that his experience on TITANIC could not solve. "We had to create everything - the aircraft interiors, the decks, the equipment," he explains. "It's a very different task than doing a historical reality. I like detail; we try to create a high-tech atmosphere as efficiently as possible. These days, with better camera systems, the audience can see a lot more; when you look at the sets of a movie you'll agree that there's a lot of attention to detail. But sometimes the design comes from what you can find and how much of it you can find." Moyer continues: "Peter has created a sense of both vastness and confinement - very much like a DAS BOOT in space.

The most obvious connection is of course that German actor Jürgen Prochnow plays both U-96's nameless captain and the Tiger's Claw's XO (and later captain) Commander Geralld. He also appears in another part of the Wing Commander universe: as Xavier Shondi in Privateer 2: The Darkening. Despite his similar status in all three roles, our viewing of Das Boot confirms they couldn't be more dissimilar. As a submarine captain, he is expressly apolitical; he is not a goose-stepping Nazi but a man doing his job and navigating life as best he can. In Wing Commander, he does begin the story as a boot licking fascist, threatening Blair over his heritage and spitting venom over the Pilgrims. And then in Privateer 2, he's a third extreme: the leader of a group fighting for Mutant rights. Here he is a zealot of the opposite stripe, a heroic fighter in a good cause (and a man who loves an extremely weird bar.)

Chris Roberts described the connection to Das Boot by saying "there were some scenes I wanted in the movie that were the equivalent of Das Boot's depth-charging scene." And that's certainly true, Das Boot's central depth charge scene is absolutely the inspiration for Wing Commander's crater bombing (Das Boot even refers to U-96 hiding in a crater at one point!). But the building tension with the characters believing they'd escaped only to find the threat closer is identical in both movies. Note the obvious similarities in lighting the battle sequences, too – that's something we'll learn more about with the next film! The torpedo sequence which precedes the depth charge attack is also extremely similar to the Tiger Claw torpedoing the Kilrathi fleet during the ambush.

Wing Commander's storyboards indicate that the 'blue light' shot was originally intended to be a CG insert that would show the Kilrathi destroyer crossing the Tiger Claw. But it seems like they'd decided just to show the Das Boot-inspired blue light by the time the movie was being shot!

Incidentally, both Das Boot and Wing Commander understand what Roger Ebert does not: the threat of detection is not caused by people talking on a submarine… they're quiet because it's a tense professional environment. In real life, the danger is dropping something metal that would hit the hull (like a hammer) and not the crew talking too loudly. Wing Commander assumed viewers understood this and… they did not.

Beyond this specific scene, though, Chris Roberts borrowed a LOT of other ideas from Das Boot. And we should pause to say that isn't a criticism in any way… it's fascinating to see the inspiration, but it's also a totally valid way to create something new. The Tiger's Claw's modern-warship-like sets were heavily inspired by Das Boot's cramped submarine sets:

Even Maniac and Blair's initial visit to the ship with the camera pushing down the corridor and into the rec room seems extremely similar to Das Boot's initial tour of U-96 for the war correspondent.

Many of the movie's shots are similar to those in Das Boot. Compare the crew eating, the sonar officer at work and this remarkably referential shot of Blair resting in his bunk!

The two even share similar establishing shots. Both obfuscate the whole of the submarine/carrier and show it in a variety of different colored backgrounds to get across the mood of a sequence. And check out how much the plane that attacks the sub at one point comes in just like Angel's Rapier squadron!

Another element of Wing Commander that remains in the film but was somewhat cut down in the final edit is that the three major action sequences on the Tiger's Claw, the jump, the ambush and the final broadside battle, all had a series of 'lower decks' scenes filmed where you would see the engineer, flight boss, torpedo crews and so on at work. These were originally longer and better established the characters… in the final film they simply flash by in montages.

All the Little People

We've taken a look under the hood of Wing Commander II and come away with more questions than answers! This collection of sprites is the 'mid' character artwork, the ones that show up in establishing and group shots punctuated by the more familiar animated portraits. Let's take a look and maybe you can help identify some of the mystery images!

The Kilrathi sprites include Khasra and the guard that appears next to him in one cut scene… and one kil we can't put our finger on! Does the older Kilrathi ever actually show up in the game? He might have been intended to stand in for Khasra in the final mission cutscene… but in the final game Khasra being shot down doesn't stop him from talking to Thrakhath later.

Duty uniforms from the base game: Angel, Hobbes, Stingray, Downtown, Doomsday, Jazz, Shadow and Spirit. Pay attention to Hobbes' boots, which are accurate to the ones seen on his physical costume in Wing Commander III!

Duty uniforms from the mission disks: Major Edmonds, Minx, Crossbones, Talon and Maniac.

Flight suits from the base game: Angel, Hobbes, Doomsday, Jazz and Shadow.

Flight suits from the mission disks: Paladin, Blair, Thrakhath, Minx, Crossbones, Talon and Maniac. I had never noticed while playing that Maniac has different pants and that he wears a little medal (presumably from saving that strike fleet at Deneb).

Other: a guard, Tolwyn, Paladin, Spirit in her kimono and a guard variant added for Special Operations 1. The second guard is almost identical to the original one.

This is a set of scene specific variants and we don't know where they're from exactly. Smaller Angel (use unknown), smaller Tolwyn (use unknown), Tolwyn at his desk, Sparks on the repair deck, Downtown at the planetary base. Jazz at the piano and Angel at her desk.

Backs, duty uniforms: Spirit, Blair, Angel, Stingray and Jazz.

Backs, flight suits: Spirit, Blair, Ralgha, Stingray, Jazz, Doomsday and Shadow.

Other: Thrakhath, Blair in dress uniform, Paladin

Mission disks: Paladin in flight suit, Thrakhath in flight suit, Maniac in flight suit and Jazz in dress uniform.

Counting Kamars

Late last year we posted a guide to the weapons of Wing Commander Academy. One of the topics was the slight differences between the 'generic' Kilrathi capital ship design created for the show. Star*Soldier divided these similar ships into different sizes: the Kamar-class blockade-runner, the Dorkar-class transport, the Ralar-class destroyer and the Naukar-class carrier.

We decided it would be interesting to go through the season and see how many of the capital ships we could identify in-continuity. We learned that the model appears on the show a total of 18 times, although six of these are briefing holograms and one, a carrier, is a TrainSim opponent. The remaining 11 are one Kamar, two Ralar, two Dorkar, three Naukars… and two cruisers and a corvette?! That's right, in the process of trying to identify each ship's class (first from dialogue and failing that by looking at outlines, scripts and storyboards) we discovered that there were two previously unknown classes intended in the set! We've cataloged every ship below:

Unnamed Naukar-class
Episode: Red and Blue, Act 1
ID: "Hey, I hope you're not thinking about taking on that carrier."
Notes: Simulated

Unnamed Kamar-class
Episode: Red and Blue, Acts 2 & 3
ID: "During a routine training flight they surprised and destroyed a Kilrathi blockade-runner."
Notes: Identified as a blockade-runner by the Confederation Handbook; destroyed

Unnamed Dorkar-class
Episode: The Last One Left, Act 1
ID: "A Kilrathi transport!"
Notes: Destroyed or captured

Ras'Nik'Ra & Unnamed Ralar-class
Episode: Chain of Command, Acts 2 & 3
ID: "Two destroyers, two corvettes and four, no wait a minute five fighters."
Notes: One is destroyed in Act 1. The other is identified as the Ras'Nik'Ra in the script despite not matching the Fralthi seen in Expendable.

Unnamed Corvette
Episode: Chain of Command, Acts 2 & 3
ID: "Thrakhath's Dreadnought, Garahl's destroyer, and a Kilrathi corvette guard the jump node."
Notes: Identified as a corvette in the script & storyboards. It is possible that it is the same type as the Kamar blockade-runner. Storyboards confirm that the choice as a corvette was intentional.

Unknown (3)
Episode: Chain of Command, Acts 2
ID: ""... the Kilrathi main fleet...""
Notes: Briefing room holograms; most likely intended to represent the carriers Admiral Bergstrom believed were present

Unnamed Cruiser (2)
Episode: Chain of Command, Act 3
ID: "TWO KILRATHI CRUISERS - both targeting the Manassas."
Notes: Identified as cruisers in the script & storyboards.

Unnamed Dorkar-class
Episode: Invisible Enemy, Act 1
ID: "As a Kilrathi Transport flies INTO THE SHOT, moving away."
Notes: Identified as a transport in the script; destroyed

Unnamed Nakuar-class
Episode: Invisible Enemy, Acts 1 & 2
ID: "I'm returning to the carrier to rearm."
Notes: It is possible this is the same carrier as in Recreation or Price of Victory but nothing specifically indicates this.

Na'Al'Kerrak, Naukar-class
Episode: Recreation, Acts 2 & 3
ID: "It's Kilrathi alright, a carrier."
Notes: Destroyed

Unknown (3)
Episode: Walking Wounded, Act 3
ID: "... a Kilrathi advance force…"
Notes: Briefing room holograms

Unnamed Naukar-class
Episode: Price of Victoy, Acts 1 - 3
ID: "Great, there's your carrier."
Notes: Destroyed

Wing Commander III Calendar Scanned

We recently posted a scan of the 1997/2673 Kilrathi Saga calendar, a classic Wing Commander document that hasn't been available online. But wasn't there another Wing Commander calendar? There was! The fancy Premiere Edition of Wing Commander III came with a trilingual calendar that shows off high resolution stills from the game's FMV. It's not quite as cool as the Kilrathi Saga calendar because it doesn't have any original lore... but it sure is pretty! But we've scanned the whole thing anyway and you can get either the high resolution version here (298 megs) or a smaller reading copy here (12 megs). You can take your time, though: you can't use this one again until 2034!

Wing Commander Movie Night: The Fifth Element

The Wing Commander movie club has run both silent and deep through Das Boot! We were certainly impressed… with the film and with just how much of the film Chris Roberts managed to work into Wing Commander. Next up we're going to watch something a little more fun: as suggested by Vera, Friday's movie will be The Fifth Element! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The Fifth Element is a 1997 science fiction film from French director Luc Besson. It tells the story of a futuristic taxi driver who inadvertently becomes the key to stopping an incredible weapon capable of destroying the Earth. That plot description is reductive, though: the film is celebrated for both its slick storytelling and its stunningly visualized world (with visuals inspired by the likes of Moebius and Mézières) that seemed like nothing we'd ever seen before at the time. Do you think it will hold up now that some of our audience probably doesn't even know what a taxi is? We'll find out!

Thierry Arbogast is a celebrated French cinematographer who is particularly known for working with Luc Besson on films like The Fifth Element, La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional and others. A cinematographer, or director of photography, is the person on a film who is responsible for how everything beijing filmed looks. They manage the camera, the light, the sets and so on in the service of the director's vision. It's a job that is both extremely creative but also highly technical. And it's such an important job that FOX's Wing Commander press kit photos, pictured below, misidentified Arbogast as director Chris Roberts!

Wing Commander's official website introduced Arbogast thusly:

Joining Lamont in working with director Chris Roberts in designing the film's overall look was director of photography Thierry Arbogast. Arbogast's work on the sci-fi thriller The Fifth Element demonstrated his abilities in that genre and made him an ideal choice to work on WING COMMANDER. While Arbogast and Lamont created a look that captures Roberts' retro-future world, the visual effects team, headed by Chris Brown, designed the intricate and vast worlds outside the ships.

While the production notes explained more about his overall role::

Moyer agrees: "We have an extraordinary group of department heads on this film, and I think they're crucial to the success of the project. For example, we have Thierry Arbogast as director of photography. His experience on THE FIFTH ELEMENT makes him uniquely qualified to work on this project because this is a very technical film. Almost every shot has a green or blue chromakey, there are holograms, all the sets are deployed on hydraulic devices - it's an extraordinarily complicated job."

THIERRY ARBOGAST (Director of Photography) has worked on films such as THE FIFTH ELEMENT, HUSSARD SUR LE TOIT, THE PROFESSIONAL, MY FAVORITE SEASON, and LA FEMME NIKITA. Arbogast received the Technical Grand Prix at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for his work on SHE'S SO LOVELY. He has also won the César Award for Best Cinematography twice. He was recognized for his work on THE FIFTH ELEMENT in 1998 and for HUSSARD SUR LE TOIT in 1996.

A soft-spoken man, Arbogast sees himself as something of a skilled worker for this project. "I think I'm working on this film thanks to my general experience as a cinematographer," he explains. In a most obvious comparison, he says: "THE FIFTH ELEMENT and WING COMMANDER are totally different films, with a different atmosphere and plot. THE FIFTH ELEMENT has much more comedy and fantasy. Here we are in a war film. It is a more realistic, sadder film. Sometimes we light the set completely with red or blue light, and then it is like in the old submarine films from 20 years ago. There are no limitations for a film like this, only "styles" to adhere to and to keep consistent.

But we don't select movies just because they shared a creative… there needs to be at least some connection between the productions. And for The Fifth Element, that connection is incredibly specific: Arbogast used the same motion gimbal rig for the Rapiers as he did the taxi! Here's a description of M. Arbogast's Rapier shooting setup from the August 1998 issue of SFX:

In one corner of the hangar set, another cockpit sits on a raised platform with lighting scaffold wrapped around it like a spider. The actor has just completed a series of close-up inserts and puts on a mock upper-crust English accent as he "tally-ho's" another target. To make the Rapiers perform for the camera, visual effects supervisor Chris Brown's CGI team at Digital Anvil in Texas will be creating the ship-to-ship battles in a fully computerized environment. In fact, several DA crew are on set getting high-resolution texture images of the "prop" fighters to later map onto the computer-generated versions. But at the same time, the actors must still be put in the thick of things, so another Rapier sits atop a gimbal rig and green-screen affair capable of shaking the few tons of mock-up back and forth violently. This is nothing new to the gimbal - its last job was handling Bruce Willis' Leeloo-punctured hover-taxi in The Fifth Element.

Arbogast's work was widely celebrated by the other luminaries involved in Wing Commander's production. Here's a sample of quotes and stories from them that show the impotence of his work (and equipment and crew) to the film. In the April 1999 issue of Cinefex where director Chris Brown discusses the work and especially the 'half Rapier' cockpit shots you may have seen filmed on the same gimbal setup:

While on patrol in their Rapiers, Blair and his wing commander, Deveraux (Saffron Burrows), encounter a Kilrathi communication ship near the brown dwarf. After an aerial dogfight the pair destroys two of the Dralthi fighters. Chris Brown directed second unit for the show. "I took a CYA approach to the Rapier fighter cockpit stuff," said Brown, "shooting everything three different ways. We utilized a half-cockpit for tight close ups, while medium shots were done from outside the Rapier mockup, looking in at the pilots through the cockpit glass, with a translight mounted behind for the background." Five generic nebulas were generated at Digital Anvil, then passed to the production art department which produced the translights. A mesh screen was placed between the Rapier and the trans light softening the background and suggesting greater depth. These translights were also utilized for scenes on the bridges of Diligent and Tiger Claw, for angles that included only a sliver of window in frame. "The translights saved us from an unmanageable number of greenscreen shots- I know I'll be using them again and again on future shows." For the third angle, the camera was moved back further from the mockup, which was mounted on a gimbal built for the taxi scene in The Fifth Element and shot against greenscreen.

SFX also discusses Arbogast's impact on the film's costumer, Magali Guidasci, while comparing the results with The Fifth Element:

As soon as Roberts calls "Cut!" there's a weird line-dance as the actors try to undress and make for the water cooler at the same time. The costumes are the brainchild of Magali Guidasci, whose exotic and colourful designs also appear in the martial arts kick-flick Double team an the forthcoming Bruce Willis asteroid movie Armageddon. On Wing Commander, Guidasci is working once more with director of photography Theirry Arbogast, recent winner of the French Cesar award for The Fifth Element, and it's Arbogast who puts into words their mutual desire to "paint the scenes with colour."

"This film is more moody than The Fifth Element - there's a different ambiance to it. Sometimes we set the lights completely red or blue and it's like those old submarine movies from 20 years ago. There are no restrictions to a movie like this, just 'styles' that you must adhere to."

The official movie magazine includes another story from Brown:

Like any good second-unit director, Brown knew that his shots would have to match Roberts' main unit scenes so when all the elements were finally combined, the resulting film would be seamless in tone and style. "By the time we got to the cockpit work, we were already about three to four weeks in, which was good. Chris also had had a nice rehearsal period with the cast, so when they came on to my set, these guys had their characters down. That really made a big difference in continuity. When they came in and hopped in the cockpit, I would take them on a quick joy ride, because the motion control-based simulator we used was just fantastic. It was the same one used for the taxi cab in The Fifth Element and the guys who were running it were just terrific. The cast really got into the whole feeling of things and manipulating these jets, and it really worked out well for us.

Eric Strauss, the movie's VFX producer, also praised Arbogast's work with light in the movie magazine:

Another eye-catching aspect of Wing Commander is its highly saturated color palette, which extends to the FX sequences. "Director of photography Thierry Arbogast did a lot of shooting in colored light, so on the bridge set, everything is bathed in red or blue depending on the situation, and our backgrounds, the digital elements and the scene's lights match that. We have a very colorful atmosphere. There's lots of nebulas and things bathed in different colors of light. We were very happy to push the envelope in terms of the way outer space looks, because it does have different hues and tones to it, which we tried to emulate as best we could."

In a December 1998 preview of the movie, producer Todd Moyer explains why he recruited Arbogast for the film:

"Because Chris was a first-time director, I wanted to have A-level people around him," explains Moyer, who recruited cinematographer Thierry Arbogast (Fifth Element) and production designer Peter Lamont (Titanic) to help create the retro-future look of the 27th Century. Inside of a set of cavernous warehouses that used to contain a munitions factory, Lamont and his team built the deck of the Tiger Claw with stunning detail. "We took an English Electric Lightning cockpit," explains Lamont, "and converted it into the Rapier fighter of the year 2665."

Chris Roberts explained why he chose Arbogast as the man to make Wing Commander distinct from other franchises in the March 1999 issue of Starlog:

For his cinematographer, the director tapped Thierry Arbogast of The Fifth Element. "I've been a big fan of Thierry because I loved Luc Besson's movies like La Femme Nikita and The Professional, and I wanted someone who was going to be bold and give me a colorful look," Roberts explains, "I wanted a look in this movie that would make it stand apart from other SF movies. Star Wars was very bright and '70s, Star Trek is sort of clean with clean lines while the aliens are dark and grungy, and ALIENS is dark and grungy. I wanted to stay away from those three big science fiction franchises and give Wing Commander its own identity. We're seeing a lot of space on the Hubble Telescope photos, and since we're going with the World War II look and the submarine motif, I wanted a colorful look to the film."

The Austin Chronicle interviewed Roberts about the movie in March 1999 and he explained that Arbogast had brought his experienced crew from France to work on the film:

AC: Did you use a mostly local crew or did you fly in people from Austin or Hollywood? I have no idea what the gaffer scene is in Denmark …

CR: It was kind of a combination. The art department was mostly English -- Peter Lamont was production designer and came out of Pinewood Studios -- and then we crewed up in the lower areas with a Luxembourg crew, [cinematographer] Thierry Arbogast brought his people over from France, and the grips were all Belgian. All in all, it was a pretty mixed crew.

Finally, in 1998 camera manufacturer ARRI's newsletter interviewed the man himself in some detail about the technical work that went into Wing Commander:

That’s right: when you hear the title WING COMMANDER you first think of the very popular computer game of the same name. It has now been adapted for the cinema in a suitably ambitious way, using state of the art technology. It is the year 2624. In the universe a war is going on. The heroes – stranded war veterans and daring young pilots – get involved in risky battles with each other and survive dangerous missions. Exciting fights and the struggle between good and bad are at the heart of this saga in outer space. “The story borrows from the film, THE BOAT, adapted of course for outer space”, Chris Roberts describing his feature film. It is the first time this American has directed a film – he also developed the computer game series of the same name.

WING COMMANDER was filmed in Luxembourg. With a budget of 45 million DM, it is the most expensive film project to date made in the Grand Duchy. The film was produced by the Carousel Picture Company (AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS) which the Luxembourger Romain Schroeder founded, together with his partner Tom Reeve in 1995.

The main roles are played by Freddie Prinze jr. (I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER) and Matthew Lillard (SCREAM), two of Hollywood’s rising stars. In supporting roles are Jürgen Prochnow (THE BOAT) and Tchéky Karyo (NIKITA). For his debut, Chris Roberts hired some of the best international specialists. In the team of over 170 people, such well-known names as Peter Lamont and Michael Ford can be found. They were responsible for the design of the buildings and details of the set construction. Both recently received an Oscar for their work on the mega-production TITANIC. In total, 25 people who worked on the TITANIC production were hired to work on this project. Césarwinner Thierry Arbogast (films include THE FIFTH ELEMENT, LEON, SHE’S SO LOVELY) was responsible for image composition. He shot WING COMMANDER with ARRIFLEX 535B and 435 cameras. Robert Wiesmann, head of the ARRI Camera Rental Park in Munich, spoke to him:

R.W.: Your last film, THE FIFTH ELEMENT was the same genre. Can we assume that Science Fiction is your preferred film genre?

Thierry Arbogast: No, it was more a coincidence that Luc Besson made a Science Fiction film. As I had often worked with him before, it was also clear that he would ask me if I wanted to make the film.I very much like the type of cinema which in France is called genre films – for example period dramas, thrillers and of course also Science Fiction, which provide a particular challenge. I mean, I love films which belong to a precisely defined category.

R.W.: And what films do you like to go and see?

Thierry Arbogast: I think highly of Francis Ford Coppola’s THE GODFATHER, Michael Cimino’s HEAVEN’S GATE and also Clint Eastwood’s PALE RIDER. As a visual person I prefer this style – when beautiful images are shown. In general these are North American productions.

R.W.: On WING COMMANDER you also support Chris Roberts in directing, as he is actually a computer games programmer and this is his first time directing. How did you cope with this extra function as well as your tasks as DoP?

Thierry Arbogast: Oh no – you can’t claim that I directed on WING COMMANDER in any way. I just very much enjoy discussing with the director how a sequence should be shot. Or what possibilities existed to further tighten up a sequence.

With Luc Besson it’s completely different as he has a very exact idea of how a sequence should be shot. Often he even operates the camera. And then I’m the one who has to run after him. But I am, of course, very interested in the discussion with the director, as that is also part of filming.

And although this was his first film, Chris Roberts is a brilliant director, especially technically. He is very enthusiastic about the cinematic medium. And there were already many filmic sequences in the WING COMMANDER games, so you could say he has definitely a certain experience in directing.

R.W.: On the set it was noticed that you let the operator work the camera, although particularly in Europe that’s not very common.

Thierry Arbogast: First of all the sequence is discussed with the director to get a common understanding of it. Then, of course, I reach for the camera to establish the image composition. Then I leave the field to the operator and tell him: that’s exactly what we want.

The actual operating of the camera is a job which I don’t necessarily have to do. Sometimes it is also simply better to have an operator on the scene.

R.W.: You shot WING COMMANDER and THE FIFTH ELEMENT on Super 35. Who decided on this format?

Thierry Arbogast: Well, it wasn’t my personal choice. On THE FIFTH ELEMENT the recommendation on format came from Digital Domain, as with anamorphic lenses the special effects would have been more complicated. Luc Besson finally made the decision.

Personally I also like anamorphic lenses because of the aesthetic reproduction – they create something bizarre in the image which I find interesting. The same with zooms which cause the image to no longer look quite as natural. I would also like to try out the Variable Primes one day.

R.W.: You shot both THE FIFTH ELEMENT and WING COMMANDER with ARRIFLEX 435 and 535 cameras – how did you find them?

Thierry Arbogast: To be honest, if I have the choice between various camera systems, I prefer the one with the better viewfinder. That seems to me to be the main trump of an ARRI camera, as I like viewfinders on which the image seems very close. It is a little bit as if with an ARRIFLEX you are sitting in the fifth row of a cinema and with other cameras at the back of the cinema. Some cameramen like that because then they can assess the image globally and at the same time keep an eye on the contours. But that is rather a view of many operators. When I work as an operator, I prefer to see the image close up.

Another point is that the viewfinder can be pivoted to the other camera side. Sometimes you end up in the corner of a room and are forced to use the viewfinder on the other side. It doesn’t happen very often, but on WING COMMANDER that’s exactly what happened three or four times. And that alone justifies the system.

R.W.: You also had a special ground glass which darkened the surroundings to neutralise everything which wasn’t in the image. Was that the operator’s wish?

Thierry Arbogast: No, that was my idea. I hate seeing things in the camera which are outside the image. For me only the image counts – only the image composition and nothing else around it. I would even like the surrounding area to be completely black.

R.W.: Doesn’t it bother you, for example, to only see the sound assistant’s microphone once it comes into your image?

Thierry Arbogast: What can you do to stop it? All you can do is pivot to the ground when you see a microphone coming towards the image, and that creates a bad image composition. To me it makes more sense to say: OK, let’s repeat the scene. It certainly doesn’t justify leaving an edge around the actual image. However, I accept having very dark grey shadows to enable the operator to at least have minimal points of reference.

R.W.: On WING COMMANDER there were very many camera moves. Sometimes, for example, the camera rotates on its own axis with the Scorpio-head. Doesn’t that later cause a problem for animation?

Thierry Arbogast: No, not necessarily. On WING COMMANDER the special effects were much more easily adaptable than, for example, on THE FIFTH ELEMENT. The technical development of special effects moves very fast. With increasing experience people now have far less fear of many things.

R.W.: In the jets’ cockpits you also left the glass panes in the set. Doesn’t that normally create problems for post-production?

Thierry Arbogast: Yes and no. If the glass panes are kept, some of the set will also be reflected. That doesn’t affect the Green Screen’s performance though. But if we take the glass away, we would have no reflections, and they make everything look far more realistic.

R.W.: The budget of WING COMMANDER was much smaller than on THE FIFTH ELEMENT. Did that cause limitations?

Thierry Arbogast: As a DoP you don’t have a lot of influence on the production’s problems. The limitations exist and you have to live with them. But that also happens on a large film and it’s not necessarily a question of budget. In any case you have a certain responsibility to the production company. And that means, if I don’t really need something, I don’t take it. Even on a big film. It is correct that less money was available for WING COMMANDER than for THE FIFTH ELEMENT. Despite this, relatively speaking the budgets for both films were very small.

On WING COMMANDER we shot for 9 weeks with 4 cameras, on THE FIFTH ELEMENT it was 20 weeks, again with 4 cameras.

R.W.: Which of your own films is your favourite?

Thierry Arbogast: I very much like the films which Luc Besson directed, because he is an extraordinary director who teaches me a lot technically. It is a great pleasure to work with Luc. There is a film called LE BRASIER by director Rick Barbier which I also enjoyed a lot, or HUSAR ON THE ROOF. But somehow it’s strange to say that a film is your favourite. That is like deciding which child in the family is your favourite. I really like all the films I make, even the little productions, such as for example THE APARTMENT by Gilles Mimony.

R.W.: Thank you very much for this interview! Thierry Arbogast’s next project will again be with Luc Besson, who after THE FIFTH ELEMENT, LEON, NIKITA and THE BIG BLUE will begin filming JOAN OF ARC this summer.

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

The Fifth Element is currently available for rental or sale digitally at all storefronts. If you're interested in tracking down a physical copy, a UHD version was released in 2017 and remains in print today. If you are unable to track down a copy please ping a member of the WCCIC staff on the Discord in advance of the watch.

How do we watch the movie together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 10 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

Intel Everywhere

In early 1993, Origin Systems signed a brand deal with a major technology player, Intel Corporation. At the time, Intel's processors were the industry standard and they were particularly interested in expanding their marketing to appeal to the new furor for multimedia entertainment. The initial deal allowed Intel to use Wing Commander II and Strike Commander to promote their i486 chips. The February 12, 1993 issue of Point of Origin (Vol. 3, No. 32) summarizes the original agreement:

ORIGIN and Intel
Intel Corporation will showcase their 486 chips at the Software Publishing Association (SPA) conference in March and the Comdex trade show in May by running Strike Commander. Strike will be the only entertainment product used by Intel to show off the speed of their chips. ORIGIN has also granted permission for Intel to use some of the game play sequences and screen shots from Wing Commander II and Strike Commander in upcoming TV shots and print ads.

An expansion of the deal the next year would allow Intel to use a number of other Origin games to promote their new Pentium chips to consumers; this would result in some pretty fascinating and rarely remembered Wing Commander III marketing being published! Today we're going to take a look at both print and TV campaigns!

Print Campaigns

"Catch a Rising Star"
July to November 1993
Outlets: Business Week, Computerworld, Fortune, National Geographic

These are the earliest Wing Commander-related Intel ads we've been able to find, two page print spreads promoting the Intel486 DX2 processor. They use a screenshot from Wing Commander II showing a Rapier cockpit with Hobbes on the right VDU alongside other productivity software.

One fun aspect we noticed while researching this was that they cropped the software differently depending on the publication. Compare Business Week to Fortune to National Geographic! No alien cat faces allowed in the important world of finance.

"What's the Big Attraction?"
November to Spring 1995
Outlets: Business Week, The Computer Paper, PC Computing, GW2k: Gateway Magazine, Wired

This one is really exciting: a late 1994 two page spread that includes truly unique renders of two Arrow fighters from Wing Commander III!

"Boldly Go Where No PC Has Gone Before"
October to December 1994
Outlets: Edge (UK), PC Joker (DE), PC World (DE)

This print ad was part of a European campaign that used the same format for a number of different applications. We've found the Wing Commander III version in English and German.

Here are some examples of the non-Wing Commander ads in the campaign in English, German, Spanish and Italian:

TV Spots

"Fall Into Place"

This 1993 commercial shows Intel-supporting software dropping like Tetris blocks. Watch carefully and you'll find both Wing Commander II and Strike Commander!

This 1994 commercial features a kid doing his homework with Red Shift and then switching to "the Kilrathi sector" for (a mockup version of) Wing Commander III! It's even narrated by LeVar Burton.

Posters

Europe

European players received the biggest boon of the Origin/Intel partnership: these two "really fly" posters were widely distributed in English, French and German in a variety of different games (from Origin and other publishers). The Strike Commander poster was for 1993 and Wing Commander III replaced it in 1994.

CES 1994

Americans had a slightly different and significantly rarer Intel poster: these five prints showcasing different Origin games were distributed at CES in 1994.

And Beyond…

One funny side-effect of the co-branding deal is that while it was active Wing Commander's style guide used "intell", with two ls, for Confederation intelligence. It's visible throughout Victory Streak and continues sporadically all the way through the Pilgrim novels. Mag Force 7 didn't get the note, though, and actually had an 'Intel Inside' joke in a luck card:

Wing Commander had one more Intel campaign left in it: in 1996, a deal with Intel helped promote Privateer 2: The Darkening. The game even plays a brief Intel logo when it starts up! The partnership would vanish soon, though: when Chris Roberts started Digital Anvil and created the Wing Commander movie one of the biggest investors was Austin-based AMD, Intel's direct competitor.

Ship Confusion: Caernarvon, Carnovean, Caernavon, Caernaven

Wing Commander II famously opens with now-Captain Blair being reassigned to an InSystem Security squadron at a base called Caernarvon Station. Caernarvon is an impressive space station but it's clear that Blair is now just a two-bit cop in a backwater system unlikely ever to encounter the Kilrathi. The story quickly expands beyond Caernarvon Station but its familiarity led a number of later stories to attempt to reference the location again… every time with some kind of error! In fact, it has been referred to by as many as four different names. We're going to look at the origins of the station and then each of these references to try and figure out exactly what's going on. It's a thrilling quasi-typographical space station adventure, today on the Combat Information Center!

Namesakes

The space station in Wing Commander II is named after Caernarfon Castle, the eventual form of a fortification established in the late 11th Century in Gwynedd, Wales. The connection with Caernarvon Station being located in the Gwynedd System should be apparent! The name itself derives from a Welsh phrase for "the fortress on the land opposite Anglesey." Today, there is a town by the same name near the site of the castle.

Before we introduce the confusion surrounding the name in Wing Commander, we should acknowledge that there are multiple spellings owing to its origin as a Welsh name. Caernarfon is the Welsh spelling and it is the name used today for the town and often the castle. The English adaptations of the word, Carnarvon and Caernarvon, are often used in older material (and sometimes to refer to the castle specifically today, as in Wing Commander II).

What about Gwynedd? Gwynedd is a county in north Wales whose name originates with the medieval Kingdom of Gwynedd which existed in roughly the same area. The origin of the name itself is debated but many believe it to have originated in Old Irish where it would have referred to the 'wild people' or 'people of the wood'. It is connected to the given name Gwyneth which is also how it is pronounced.

Wing Commander II - Caernarvon Station

Caernarvon Station is an enormous space station with six large drydocks for capital ships and a 360 degree flight deck for fighter operations. The main 'wheel' of the station is 2.4 kilometers across. The Wing Commander II manual identifies the design as a Star Base. We see a fair amount of the interior, including the flight deck and comm room, during the game.

The base design itself was inspired by Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Headquarters and Battlestar Galactica's Cylon basestar. If you're interested in learning more about the making of the design itself, we have a complete article about the station's inspirations and its interior.

The retelling of Wing Commander II in the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide introduces a great deal of lore about the station. We are told that it is "the most remote outpost in Terran-controlled space" and that its full name is Caernarvon Space Station. Later we find that it was constructed as a research outpost for the Intergalactic Science Council which relocated to another sector just before Blair arrived. The Terran Confederation Space Navy took over the base for monitoring and reconnaissance in the Enigma Sector. Most of Blair's work involved analyzing data from remote-space sono-buoys, tracking space probes and occasionally flying patrol missions. Here's an extended sequence covering his time there:

Caernarvon Station was the pits. It was one of the oldest active space stations and my quarters reflected its age. Looking back, it's hard to believe I made it through 10 years of the most boring duty in the Space Navy.

Caernarvon Station was originally designed as a research outpost for the Intergalactic Science Council (ISC), but in the year preceding my arrival, its scientific staff had been sent to a newer facility in another sector. When the TCSN took over, it was put into commission as a monitoring and reconnaissance station for the Enigma Sector of space.

Giving you a 10-year history of my years on the station would be the most boring reading since the Congressional Record during the latter part of the 20th Century. Suffice it to say that my responsibilities mainly involved punching keys on a computer, analyzing the data from remote-space sono-buoys, and tracking the progress of various space probes. Only an occasional patrol route in a light fighter broke the monotony until the year 2664. Until that time I never heard, sighted, or suspected the presence of the Kilrathi in our sector.

I tried to keep track of the war, the pilots I had known on the Tiger's Claw, and any new information on the Kilrathi through the computer network. It was, in some ways, my only direct connection with the war effort. I wasn't flying much any more, but I always scanned the databases for the latest dope provided by our intelligence services for combat pilots. If I ever did run into the Kilrathi again, I wanted to be ready.

In the last nine months I spent on the station, I discovered that, after a lull of almost nine years with only sporadic contact with the enemy, the action was heating up again. Of course, the new data from Intel increased at the same rate.

Bluehair and Shadow discuss their upcoming patrol, talk about how much of a waste of time it is — ‘There haven't been any Kilrathi sightings within 20 parsecs of this place for years." Mention that Bluehair and Shadow are two out of only six pilots on the station. The station (called Caernvarvon [sic]) is referred to disparagingly as a pre-fab communications platform.

Six pilots?! But I thought it had a 'full complement' of fighters, just like the Concordia. In fact, the Kilrathi Saga manual actually specifies that the Wing Commander II Space Station can carry 350 fighters!

Why is Caernarvon so large when it's supposed to be a backwater outpost or a communications platform? The answer is that the model itself was designed for an earlier version of Wing Commander II where it appeared only as the Heaven's Gate space station destroyed by Spirit. For this role it was designed as an imposing, enemy-occupied battlestation that it was supposed to be difficult for the Concordia crew to attack head on. When Wing Commander II was reworked, Blair's disgraced career was moved from the cruiser Robert Peel to Caernarvon Station and the artwork created for Heaven's Gate was reused. Note that based on the landing cutscene, the six pilots' equipment includes two Ferrets and two Sabres. There is also footage of a Rapier landing on a Space Station included in pre-release marketing material.

Wing Commander Fleet Action - Carnovean Station

The third Wing Commander novel, Fleet Action, makes the below reference to Confederation bases where the fleet is being shut down: Earth, Sirius and "Carnovean Station". Here's the full description:

The inactive fleet was therefore, at least for the moment, secured, the ships hooked to orbital bases for power and maintenance. Rodham, however, had agreed to the ship's crews being paid off and assigned to inactive reserves as a cost cutting measure, a fact which meant that hundreds of thousands of highly trained personnel were being pulled from their ships and demobilized as quickly as ships were pulled from the front and sent to the main bases either above Earth, Sirius, or out at Carnovean Station.

It's pretty clear that Dr. Forstchen is attempting to refer to Caernarvon Station, which is mentioned in the series bible he was provided. But because he's using a bible and not the game itself, the connection feels confused. It's extremely similar to how his nod to "Phoenix" (secretly Blair) in End Run was inscrutable. The station we see in Wing Commander II simply doesn't match what's being described here, unless things changed significantly between when we last saw it (two years prior to Fleet Action). And that's fair! Maybe the Third Enigma Campaign wound down there. The other issue is, of course, that the base in Wing Commander II it isn't named Carnovean Station. These two issues might just cancel each other out in a broader continuity, though: presumably Carnovean Station is simply something different from Caernarvon Station. And for the record, absolutely NOTHING is named Carnovean; it's a word that appears only in Fleet Action (which alongside the capitalization of Station further supports the idea that Caernarvon Station was the authorial intent)!

Victory Streak - Caernavon Station

… okay, what about Caernavon Station? The Wing Commander III manual, Victory Streak, features a letter to the editor which is reacting angrily to a previously written (in universe) article that criticized the uselessness and expense of "Caernavon Station".

DEAR ECS,
You’ve got to have cat-dung for brains if you think that anyone would believe that trash you wrote about Caernavon Station last week! You seem to think that because it was not designed as a military research installation, nothing that came out of it was worthwhile. You couldn’t be more wrong. My father spent his life trying to further the war effort there.

We didn’t know how the war was going to turn out in those years. No, they didn’t get any direct results from their weapons research. However, the advanced Kaplein Visual Radar Enhancement System that daily saves the lives of countless pilots was based on Caernavon studies. Capital ship waste hydro-recycling is another benefit. I would go on, but I would hate to take up your time when you obviously have so much background verification to catch up on!

dschrueders@victory.libr

We would give you our apologies, Lt. Schrueders, but we find nothing non-factual about the writeup on Caernavon Station. Having spent a year’s tour of duty there, we know all about the research that went on. Your father made many contributions in his time, including the Kaplein VRES system AND the hydro-recycling units.

But, did you know that for every successful project, at least five failed? Take in these stats – in 2058, the station spent 4.3 billion on vacuum fusion research. In 2060, they wasted almost the same amount on biological research – Meta-Analysis of Synapse Replacement, and the Incidence of Myocardial Infraction among Pre-Geriatic War Veterans. The total bill? It ran close to ©10 billion, enough to outfit an entire fleet and crew. So, Lieutenant, perhaps you ought to do some fact-checking for yourself.

IOH editorial opinion, we need to concentrate on making our young pilots better now, instead of waiting until they’re old ...

Again, this is clearly a spelling error in an attempt to reference Caernarvon Station from Wing Commander II. Here the lore much more closely matches that of the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide with the base having a scientific purpose and generally being disliked. But there's a bigger problem with this material: the fact that the dates listed are 600 years off! Is this a different station (presumably one in the Sol System) named Caernavon that has been doing this research for centuries? Maybe! Or maybe it's Caernarvon and 2058 and 2060 should be 2658 and 2660. Or maybe it's the same station and we somehow settle the Gwynedd System very, very early! (Which would, admittedly, jive with the claim that Caernarvon is one of the Confederation's oldest stations and cover the fact that scientists stopped using it before Blair arrived).

Wing Commander The Price of Freedom - Caernaven-class Frigate

Finally, there's the strange but mostly harmless fact that the Wing Commander IV novelization decided to name the frigate used by the pirates at the start of the game "Caernaven class". These frigates were first designed to serve as Paladin's headquarters in Wing Commander III but were cut from the game late because of a missile turret bug. The design was reused in Wing Commander IV and colored for all three of the game's factions. Here's the excerpt from the novel, which describes a pretty cool war book Blair can access to study enemy ships:

Blair yawed wide to the right, far enough to get a decent profile view of the ship. The targeting computer flashed a graphic over the ship, then listed a likely class identification in the targeting box. Blair sucked air in through his teeth as it selected Caernaven frigate. The Caernavens were an older, but still serviceable class.

He flipped to the tactical book again, this time to the Caernaven's page. He wasn't surprised to learn that the Confederation had stricken the ships from active service. Many were held in reserve status or had been mothballed. Others had been sold to the Border Worlds, or, stripped of their guns and weapon systems, to private concerns. The Kilrathi had even captured a few as trophy ships. Blair ground his teeth in frustration. The Caernavens were, without a doubt, as common as dirt.

The unusual thing about this description is the claim that the Confederation had stricken the ship from active service… because we see one of these frigates in Confederation colors in Wing Commander IV (see appendix below). Still, it's easy to assume it might be serving with some kind of reserve unit.

Appendix: The Way of Absolute Candar

Most of the ships that appear in Wing Commander Academy were created for Wing Commander II. The Star Base sprites are included but they are meant to represent a different type of base: Candar Space Station. Unlike most of the creative decisions referenced above, this was absolutely intentional: to allow players to create challenging defense missions, the game greatly reduces the armor, removes the phase shield and cuts the number of flak cannons in half. To explain these changes in-universe, the size of the base is also greatly reduced. Here's a comparison with the sprites scaled to one another:

It's extremely likely that the Wing Commander Academy team wanted to use the depot from Special Operations 1 but were not able to locate the correct mesh to create the new turnaround animation needed in the mission creation UI. This is also why the Crossbow turnaround has the original corvette textures once intended for the base game!

Appendix: List of Examples

Star Bases:

• Caernarvon Space Station - Gwynedd System (Wing Commander II)
• Heaven's Gate Starbase - Heaven's Gate System (Wing Commander II)
• Olympus Station - Ghorah Khar System (Special Operations 1)
• Pembroke Station - Pembroke System (Special Operations 1)
• Akko Station - (Special Operations 2)

• Candar Space Station - Simulated (Wing Commander Academy)

• Unnamed Pirate Frigate - Hellespont B1, B2A & B2B (destroyed)
• Unnamed Border Worlds Frigate - Orestes E1
• Unnamed Border Worlds Frigate - Circe KB
• Unnamed Confederation Frigate - Ella N1A (destroyed)

Appendix: Cheat Sheet

• Vengeance of the Kilrathi - Caernarvon Station
• Fleet Action - Carnovean Station
• Victory Streak - Caernavon Station
• The Price of Freedom - Caernaven-class frigate

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is the continuation of last week: the second half of Das Boot! You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. We'll be starting at the two hour mark. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST, but feel free to drop by and hang any time! Anyone is welcome, even if you didn't catch last week's first part of the film.

The Story So Far...

The movie begins with Jürgen Prochnow's captain driving Warner, a war correspondent, to meet the submarine's crew who are celebrating the night before their next cruise in a French bordello. The sailors are drunk and chaos ensues after another U-boat captain gives a speech insulting Hitler. Rowdy men harass the French singer and fire a pistol and fistfights break out all around.

The next day, after some discussion with the captain the submarine leaves its dock in France for a lengthy planned cruise.

We meet more of the crew as Werner tours the ship and learn that they are largely apolitical. Most are extremely young and more concerned with girlfriends and other thoughts of home than anything else. One watch officer is an adherent Nazi and we see that the rest of the crew thinks poorly of him. The spaces on the ship are cramped and the days are long; the crew spend their time bickering and boasting among one another and going through the routines of everyday life.

After a time, an enemy convoy is sighted and the submarine begins an attack. One of the convoy's escort destroyers spots the sub and targets it with depth charges. They are able to escape after a tense dive to escape the reach of the destroyer's weapons.

There is more boredom for the crew as they spend weeks traveling through heavy storms. We follow a lot of everyday life: meals, medical checks, cloud talk about the state of the world. Some interactions between men become tense as the boredom and fear increase.

At one point, the sub happens to run into another U-boat captained by the man who had spoken against Hitler in the bordello and everyone celebrates it as though the encounter were a joyous homecoming.

Next, in a dramatic sequence that Wing Commander movie viewers will find extremely familiar, the U-boat finally discovers an enemy convoy and attacks, sinking multiple ships before another destroyer sights them. To escape, they must again dive–this time below the recorded safety limit for their boat.

The U-boat manages to escape but one of the crew breaks during the attack and has to be physically restrained. The first half of the movie ends with the U-boat damaged but still alive and the crew stopping to finally rest.

New Year, New Poll!

Our old poll ran in the wake of the CIC's 26th Birthday. As usual, it shows a very sizable portion of our audience dates back to the turn of the millennium, yet there's a pretty good size group that's just found us recently too!

Happy New Year! Kilrathi Saga Calendar Scanned

Happy Wednesday, January 1st! How the heck did we know the date so accurately?! Well, it turns out that the days in 2025 match up to those in 1997 and 2673... which means that you can reuse the calendar included with The Kilrathi Saga this year! The Kilrathi Saga calendar is a wonderful manual produced by Origin as a 'feelie' for the game. It shows off concept art from across the trilogy and even includes lore dates from all over the timeline. A fair amount of Wing Commander continuity was introduced by this document, from the identity of the Rigakh cruiser to Colonel Blair's birthday! You can find January below and we've scanned the whole thing and you can download the entire calendar here (220 megabyte archival quality PDF. Compressed 9 meg PDF also available). Better enjoy now--you won't be able to do this again until 2031!

Why 2673? For one thing, it does correctly match up to 1997 (and 2025) so the team at Origin's creative services department did do their research. It's also when Wing Commander IV takes place! Chris Reid always knew it but it's something that was only truly confirmed by a secret e-mail hidden at Origin's Wing Commander IV PlayStation website around the same time. We've been hosting 'secret.htm' on the WC:CIC server ever since to keep the memory of this cool Easter egg alive!