Confederation at War

Skanks

Rear Admiral
I just read Action Stations last night and there was something I don't understand. It says the Confederation had not been at war for 100 years (or over) and hence the fleet was in crap condition.

But then we are told in that the war with the Pilgrims just took place in the few years before the start of the war with the Kilrathi? It doesn't make sense to me. :confused:
 
Just a random thought, but as a possible in-universe situation (as opposed to the idea of Action Stations being written pre-movie script) is that the Pilgrim War could be similar to the modern-day Korean War, in which it was never officially declared a war. Rather, it's the Korean Police Action or something like that. So, along with the possibility that it was classified or something, it's possible that it's just referred to as "That time we cleaned up the Pilgrims" or some official-sounding name, instead of "War with the Pilgrim Alliance".
 
Greets! The war with the pilgrims lasted from 2632.018 (when confed officially declared war) up to the treaty of cygnus, 2635.049. The war with the Kilrathi begins in 2634.235 (Confederation Day). It turns out that the Pilgrim War wasn't nearly as bad as the Kilrathi War. I would guess that the ships at McAuliffe aren't exactly the pristine pride of the front line fleet. It's one of those 'came out before the movie' type deals. So the pilgrim war would be wrapping up as Confed siphons off the bulk of its forces to deal with the Kilrathi threat. Hmm.....kind of a tricky bit o' business...i'll have to research this more.

edit:

it was a pretty substantial conflict, nothing insanely gorey, but large enough to warrant a 'Grand Fleet' and there was also the 'Seige of Peron' where Blair's ol' man bought it trying to save his mother.
 
If I may ask a question, why does everyone try to merge the WC Movie universe with the WC game universe? As with most movies, I always assumed that the two were separate and independent interpretations of the story. For example, there were two Doctor Who movies produced that cast the Doctor as an earthly human who invented a time and space machine. I don't see anyone trying to harmonize those, so why are we trying to harmonize the Wing Commander realities?
 
Because its all one and the same.....the timelines coincide and compliment each other really well actually.
 
AKAImBatman said:
If I may ask a question, why does everyone try to merge the WC Movie universe with the WC game universe?

Because the movie is an informative backstory to the games that also just so happens (wink wink) to work well in the already established Wing Commander timeline and canon.

While I can understand someone might be put off by the different look or feel of the movie in compairison to the games, the movie in fact gives us a lot of great information that was otherwise unknown to us. Add to that the fact that it was an offically sanctioned project by not only Electronic Arts but creator Chris Roberts, and right there you have all the explaination you need to say that the movie and the games are one and the same timeline.

Now, as to the other question pertaining to the fleet. I'm not sure how well I remember the details but the Pilgrim War seemed to me to be more of an aggressive policing action at first. It reached the boiling point with a battle at Peron, a massive half-year long offensive where Blair lost his biological parents (when his father attempted to rescue Blair's mother, a Pilgrim). Peron saw the creation of what was The Grand Fleet - which may or may not have been the Concordia Battlegroup seen in the movie, LOAF will have to correct me on that - which effectively brought the Pilgrim radicals to their knees. In the truce, the Pilgrms sued for a non-military self-government if they complied with dismanteling their military.

In the time between the Pilgrim War and the Kilrathi War... well, I could make a pretty logical deduction (technology advanced, military spending cuts, etc) but I think LOAF is the one to talk to about this.
 
So the Pilgrim war ended after the Kilrathi war started? And if the Confederation had officially declared war on the Pilgrimsy, would not there of been a build up already? Certainly no talk of abandoning the military altogether or that the military is cerimonial. Sorry if I seem to be causing trouble, it just bothers me.
 
Skanks said:
So the Pilgrim war ended after the Kilrathi war started? And if the Confederation had officially declared war on the Pilgrimsy, would not there of been a build up already? Certainly no talk of abandoning the military altogether or that the military is cerimonial. Sorry if I seem to be causing trouble, it just bothers me.

I wrote something here - but removed it because LOAF will answer all your questions in ways I cannot even approach.
 
LeHah said:
I wrote something here - but removed it because LOAF will answer all your questions in ways I cannot even approach.

Cool thanks :) *waits for LOAF*
 
LeHah said:
Because the movie is an informative backstory to the games that also just so happens (wink wink) to work well in the already established Wing Commander timeline and canon.

Bah! Nonsense, I say! According to the first game, I was a brand new pilot on the Tiger's Claw. I did not already know Maniac, nor was I very happy about flying with him. I was an awesome pilot who had no trouble getting along with the crew, and I was decorated beyond belief. If it hadn't been for that Strak'ka incident, I would have single-handedly have the war wrapped up in a short amount of time. Oh, and capships DID NOT HAVE PHASE SHIELDS, Paladin was an Scottish fighter pilot, Angel was a French fighter pilot, and my CAG was Colonel Halcyon. (I liked Halcyon. He gave me permission to blow Maniac out of the sky, and he always made me Wing Commander.)

Yet according to the movie, Maniac and I are best buds, WC1 ships have phase shields, Paladin is a French Commodore, Angel is a British Wing Commander and CAG, and I'm a mutant freak hated by all. Not to mention that I have to fly around in a hunk of junk someone decided to call a "fighter". :rolleyes:

Now if we try to harmonize with WC:Academy, things get even worse...

Add to that the fact that it was an offically sanctioned project by not only Electronic Arts but creator Chris Roberts, and right there you have all the explaination you need to say that the movie and the games are one and the same timeline.

Creators retell story lines all the time. For example, comic book Spiderman was bitten by a radioactive spider and had to create his own web slinger packs. In the movies, Spiderman was bitten by a genetically engineered spider and had the mutant ability to sling webs. Both were created by Stan Lee. Does that mean they are one in the same universe, or that they are different retellings of the same story?

And don't even start me on the billions of little continuity problems Action Stations introduced... :eek:
 
This would be the phenomena known as retroactive continuity. I'm sure it's been discussed at great length in previous discussions of the subject, so I'll try to keep it brief; any time you introduce new content at an arbitrary point in an established timeline, you create conflicts with events known to take place later along that timeline. This creates the need to rewrite those events to better accomodate the new content.

I am not a fan of the Wing Commander movie. However, if your suspension of disbelief can accomodate a few niggling inconsistancies (Tchéky Karyo's performance, for example), it can be made to fit within the established timeline relatively painlessly. For this reason, many members of the Wing Commander community have embraced it.

Love it or leave it, just spare yourself the embarrassment of questioning it.
 
6and7eighths said:
This would be the phenomena known as retroactive continuity.

Which is workable for the trainwreck of inconsistencies in Action Stations, but not for the inconsitencies in the movie. Square peg, round hole.

I am not a fan of the Wing Commander movie. However, if your suspension of disbelief can accomodate a few niggling inconsistancies (Tchéky Karyo's performance, for example), it can be made to fit within the established timeline relatively painlessly.

You're right! Just pretend that the Scottish are French, the French are British, and that I was brought up on charges because everyone forgot that cloaked ships and skipper missiles were a common Kilrathi tactic!

Nope, still not buying it.

Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned they're two different (but parallel) universes. Embracing them as one just causes a weird situation where we pick and choose what we want to be canon and turn a blind eye to what we *know* is canon.
 
6 years later, you'd think I'd be sick of these kind of threads...

Anyway...

Tcheky Karyo's inability to produce a Scottish accent doesn't make the character of Paladin any less Scottish. An actor shouldn't be confused with the character, otherwise we'd all be asking "Why does Tolwyn look like David Warner in '54, but Malcolm McDowell in '69 and beyond?" Same with Saffron Burrows.

Maniac and Blair were established as Academy classmates long before the movie (I believe in the WC1 guide with the infamous Carl LeFong, but LOAF can set me straight on that, and the Academy cartoon). They were always competitive, but other than in WC3, never outright antagonistic toward each other, AFAIK.

I believe Action Stations has capships with shields. They may not be phase shields, per se, but some other type of shielding. LOAF can handle this, too.

But 6and7eighths has a good point about retconning. It's just something we have to deal with as fans of a particular franchise, especially a science-fiction one. Just because we don't like a certain new feature of a continuity doesn't make it any less valid. 'Nuff said.

As for the original point of this thread, I think that's been settled. Yeah.
 
I'll reply first to the 'Pilgrim War' aspects of the thread and then later to the 'movie in general' posts. Here, then, is my contribution to the on-topic discussion:

I just read Action Stations last night and there was something I don't understand. It says the Confederation had not been at war for 100 years (or over) and hence the fleet was in crap condition.

But then we are told in that the war with the Pilgrims just took place in the few years before the start of the war with the Kilrathi? It doesn't make sense to me.

The Pilgrim War actually goes from 2632 to 2635 -- so there's even a bit of overlap with the start of the Kilrathi War.

The references in Action Stations seem to refer only to interspecies conflict -- the war that was a century ago was with "the Yan". The same novel talks about more recent battles with terrorists and the like as part of the backstory of Turner, Banbridge et al -- which is very largely what the Pilgrim War was.

I would also claim that the Pilgrim War is far, far less important. It's an internal human conflict that involves twelve star systems... consider that in the first day of their major offensive, the Kilrathi captured three times as many human systems. ("Less important" wars fall through the cracks of history -- try asking the average American to explain the Mexican War or the Spanish-American War...)

So, along with the possibility that it was classified or something, it's possible that it's just referred to as "That time we cleaned up the Pilgrims" or some official-sounding name, instead of "War with the Pilgrim Alliance".

It's a good thought, but a formal declaration of war was made - on 2632.018, in response to a Pilgrim Alliance attack on the Celeste System. I think you're on the right track with the Korea analogy, though, in terms of how the public reacts to and treats the war (particularly compared to the nearly universally accepted and understood Kilrathi War as a World War II analogue).

So the Pilgrim war ended after the Kilrathi war started? And if the Confederation had officially declared war on the Pilgrimsy, would not there of been a build up already? Certainly no talk of abandoning the military altogether or that the military is cerimonial. Sorry if I seem to be causing trouble, it just bothers me.

Well, consider that in Action Stations the Confederation officially declared war on Kilrah. Military readiness is not a prequisite for declaring war - something America's involvement in either World War supports.

The fleet was in the same situation during the Pilgrim War as it was with the Kilrathi - focused on battleships and unprepared for a large scale conflict. The Confederation fought a purely defensive war for almost two years... while constructing a "Grand Fleet" which entered the war on 2633.235. That was followed by a "Second Grand Fleet" which finihsed the war once and for all a year later. Note that these are fleets of battleships rather than of carriers -- they're based around exactly the older military tactics and ideas that Action Stations is saying are now obsolete.
 
If I may ask a question, why does everyone try to merge the WC Movie universe with the WC game universe? As with most movies, I always assumed that the two were separate and independent interpretations of the story. For example, there were two Doctor Who movies produced that cast the Doctor as an earthly human who invented a time and space machine. I don't see anyone trying to harmonize those, so why are we trying to harmonize the Wing Commander realities?

Frankly, I'm surprised by that - Doctor Who fans are, in my experience, among the most dedicated to constructing a single, unified continuity. They certainly go through great lengths to include the more recent FOX TV movie in their continuity (which, without knowing more personally suggests to me that there's some internal friction over 'behind the scenes' aspects of the American theatrical features in the community). Still, Doctor Who suffers, perhaps, from an embarassment of riches -- hundreds of novels, TV episodes, spinoffs, audio stories, etc. These continue to be published fairly rapidly. Wing Commander does not - our curse/blessing is that we have a very limited canon right now... and all the time in the world to piece it together properly.

Bah! Nonsense, I say! According to the first game, I was a brand new pilot on the Tiger's Claw. I did not already know Maniac, nor was I very happy about flying with him.

Your complaint in this matter is not with the movie. The original Claw Marks manual establishes that Maniac is also a Class of 2654 TCSFA graduate... and The Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide fleshed out their Academy relationship at length in 1991.

I was an awesome pilot who had no trouble getting along with the crew, and I was decorated beyond belief. If it hadn't been for that Strak'ka incident, I would have single-handedly have the war wrapped up in a short amount of time.

Strakha - but I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the movie. The original game immediately follows the events of the movie... and all of these things seem to be appropriate events.

Oh, and capships DID NOT HAVE PHASE SHIELDS,

The movie would agree with you, terming the heavier shields on 2654's capital ships "meson shields". The movie certainly isn't the first source to introduce the idea that torpedoes were part of the arsenal at the time... it's integral to Action Stations' story, and they appear frequently on Wing Commander Academy (mostly set shortly after the movie).

Paladin was an Scottish fighter pilot, Angel was a French fighter pilot, and my CAG was Colonel Halcyon. (I liked Halcyon. He gave me permission to blow Maniac out of the sky, and he always made me Wing Commander.)

Halcyon was the carrier's Wing Commander (and Captain, during The Secret Missions) - Angel was an individual squadron commander (of which the carrier would have six - the makeup of the Tiger's Claw's fighter wing is discussed heavily in Pilgrim Stars... and, of course, Halcyon himself shows up in the movie adaptation.

Paladin was never Scottish - according to Claw Marks, he grew up on a space station orbiting Venus. The Wing Commander IV adaptation goes so far as to suggest that his brogue in the original games was entirely a put-on, a result of his covert operations training.

And, of course, Angel was never French or British - in both Claw Marks and the movie-related material she is from Brussels, Belgium. (The practice of casting British actors to play French-speaking characters is certainly nothing new. Anyone truly offended by this practice would do better to go complain about it to the Star Trek fans.)

You're right! Just pretend that the Scottish are French, the French are British, and that I was brought up on charges because everyone forgot that cloaked ships and skipper missiles were a common Kilrathi tactic!

I don't think cloaked ships show up in the Wing Commander movie. None the less, it has always been heavily implied (by Super Wing Commander, by Wing Commander II itself) that Tolwyn *did* know about the existence of stealth fighters... and that he hung Blair out to dry for personal reasons.

6 years later, you'd think I'd be sick of these kind of threads...

One would think. But... here we are. Never the less, I'm looking forward to the debate assosciated with these two:

Which is workable for the trainwreck of inconsistencies in Action Stations, but not for the inconsitencies in the movie. Square peg, round hole.

and

And don't even start me on the billions of little continuity problems Action Stations introduced...
 
Dang, LOAF just totally made my day with that answer. Completely informative and very much covering all the bases. Nice LOAF.
 
Ah hah! Something to sink my teeth into. :)

Your complaint in this matter is not with the movie. The original Claw Marks manual establishes that Maniac is also a Class of 2654 TCSFA graduate... and The Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide fleshed out their Academy relationship at length in 1991.

Hmm... I'm not sure whether I'd go as far as to consider a strategy guide canon, but since Roberts' name is on it, I'll let it go.

Strakha - but I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the movie. The original game immediately follows the events of the movie... and all of these things seem to be appropriate events.

Skipper missiles. Their well known existence in the movie suggests the existence or development of the Strakha fighters. Whether or not Tolwyn had personal reasons for hanging Blair out to dry or not, the well documented existence of these missiles in the movie suggests that a cloaked ship threat in WC2 should have been taken VERY seriously by the other higher ups.

The movie would agree with you, terming the heavier shields on 2654's capital ships "meson shields". The movie certainly isn't the first source to introduce the idea that torpedoes were part of the arsenal at the time... it's integral to Action Stations' story, and they appear frequently on Wing Commander Academy (mostly set shortly after the movie).

Where in the movie does it use the term "meson shields"? I just watched it recently, and didn't ever notice the term being used. Actions Stations gripes are below. :)


Halcyon was the carrier's Wing Commander (and Captain, during The Secret Missions) - Angel was an individual squadron commander (of which the carrier would have six - the makeup of the Tiger's Claw's fighter wing is discussed heavily in Pilgrim Stars... and, of course, Halcyon himself shows up in the movie adaptation.

See, that's bass ackwards. In the game, the Wing Commander was the leader of the mission. and the missions were assigned by Colonel Halcyon in the role of a CAG. While we could imagine that as naval doctrine changed, the term "Wing Commander" changed to mean the CAG on smaller boats, it's difficult to argue with Halcyon stating that you are the Wing Commander.

Paladin was never Scottish - according to Claw Marks, he grew up on a space station orbiting Venus. The Wing Commander IV adaptation goes so far as to suggest that his brogue in the original games was entirely a put-on, a result of his covert operations training.

Indeed. The "brogue put on" would be fair enough assessment if the games didn't clearly state that he was a pilot in the first game and transferred to Black Ops sometime in between.

And, of course, Angel was never French or British - in both Claw Marks and the movie-related material she is from Brussels, Belgium.

Just because she grew up in Belgium doesn't mean that she didn't come from a French family. The games actually go out of their way to note her French accent, and intersperse her language with French words.

(The practice of casting British actors to play French-speaking characters is certainly nothing new. Anyone truly offended by this practice would do better to go complain about it to the Star Trek fans.)

Touche. May I point out, however, that Stewart did make the occasional attempt to play a French role? Between the various references to the French language, homeland, and cursing, he at least came across as a Frenchman with an exceptional English accent.


But... here we are. Never the less, I'm looking forward to the debate assosciated with these two: (Action Stations references)

*grin*

Here's my biggest gripes with Action Stations, laid out for all to hear:

1. Phase shields. If I may flip open my book to grab a quick example of the billions of times they were mentioned. Ah! Here's one:

"Have acquired phase sheild phasing," the weapons officer continued. "The weapon is locking on." (pg. 78)

From the continuity of the games, we know that phase shields weren't invented/in common use by the time we boarded the Tiger's Claw. Standard missiles were still the primary method of attacking capital ships. It wasn't until 10 years later that we see phase shields and anti-phase torpedos in common usage. Establishing their wartime usage prior to the WCII timeframe goes against the established canon. IIRC, I believe the WCII manual even mentioned their rather recent invention. (I'd check, but I loaned out my WCII deluxe years ago and never got it back. :()

2. The Concordia. Having a ship of the same name is acceptable. Since she participated in a heroic engagement, it would be quite likely that her name would be permanently added to the naval registry. Common examples in wet navy history are the Enterprise, Lexington, Intrepid, Hornet, and Wasp. My problem is that the author decided to make her the first of her class. This creates a problem in the Wing Commander continuity, because it suggests that the WCIV Confed is building a carrier that's over 30 years out of date! This makes even less sense when we look at the WCIV book adaption, which portrays the Concordia class as one of the Confederation's most advanced carriers! Had the author not decided to be so "prequelish", we could have assumed that the Concordia class was commisioned after the destruction of the TCS Concordia in WCII.

3. The Claw Marks account of "McAuliffe" was rather "creatively" interpreted. Not wrong per say, but paints a very different picture.

4. A bad case of "prequelitis" prevades the book. Richards and Tolywn, I'm fine with that. But Kruger's dad, the Concordia, Landreich, the Prince's older brother, ad nausem, all add up to too much of "let's cram well known places and characters together into the storyline to sell more books, and damn the storyline!" Which, of course, led to the issue with the Concordia class and the phase shields.

5. The WWII parallels were cute, but pretty poorly executed, IMHO. In order for the Kilrathi to be the first to demonstrate the power of carriers, they needed to have phase shields and torpedos. But that then brings into question as to how the whole Varni and Panama scenarios were supposed to be carried out. This in turn, had to be covered over by stating that Confed had been developing torps for 12+ years, which then fell apart when they needed cat tech to make the devices actually work. In other words, the whole ball of wire just kept unravelling.

Anyway, I hope that makes some sense. I'm pretty tired, so it might be a little screwy in places. I'm sure I'll remember a lot more of the gripes I had tomorrow. :)
 
AKAImBatman said:
Just because she grew up in Belgium doesn't mean that she didn't come from a French family. The games actually go out of their way to note her French accent, and intersperse her language with French words.

Dutch, French, and German are the three official languages in Belgium. It is estimated that almost 59% of population have Dutch as their first language and that a little more than 40% have French as their first language. Only 1% of the population have German as their mother tongue.

1. Flanders, in the north has Flemish as the official language of this region. Flemish is a version of Dutch.
2. Wallonia, which is in the south, has French as its official language.
3. German is the official language along a narrow strip along the German border.
4. The Brussels region is officially bilingual.


Although the Brussels region is considered officially bilingual, more than 75% of its inhabitants speak French as their primary or only language.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
None the less, it has always been heavily implied (by Super Wing Commander, by Wing Commander II itself) that Tolwyn *did* know about the existence of stealth fighters... and that he hung Blair out to dry for personal reasons.

That seems plausible to me. It could be a matter of morale. Tolwyn might think that if the rest of the military, or the public for that matter, knew that a highly decorated carrier such as the Tiger's Claw was destroyed by a knew Kilrathi technology to which we have no counter, they would go into panic mode. I would think its much easier for soldiers to get over the fact of there being traitors in the military than it is to get over the thought of a new enemy weapon that they cant stop.

AKAImBatman said:
Had the author not decided to be so "prequelish", we could have assumed that the Concordia class was commisioned after the destruction of the TCS Concordia in WCII.

It has been referenced many times that the Concordia class was the most common class of fleet carrier during the war with the Kilrathi. Fleet Action was published before Action Stations and there are several Concordia class carriers at the Battle of Earth. BEFORE the destruction of the TCS Concordia.
 
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