Wing Commander 3 together with the pilgrim story

B

boringnickname

Rear Admiral
I've said it here multiple times: I don't like the pilgrim stuff in the movie and I wished the movie would never introduce them. It just doesn't fit. If Blair would have been a pilgrim, a hated minority, then there is just no way, that that super cockey Maniac in WC3 wouldn't use it against him.

And this got me thinking, I don't like the pilgrim stuff, BUT, if Chris Robert just had to introduce the Pilgrims into the WC universe, then Wing Commander 3 would be perfect for it. Far better than to introduce them in the movie.


Many inconsistencies between WC2 and WC3 could be resolved that way.

How it would work:

Shortly before the events of WC3, Blair finds out that his real parents were Pilgrims (he was adopted). Tolwyn finds it out too, and soon the rest of the fleet knows this. This would greatly explain why Tolwyn is again such an ass towards Blair, even though they departed friendly in WC 2.

It would also be great backdrop why Maniac is so unfriendly towards the Player in WC3, despite being friends with Blair in the previous games. They don't trust him because of his pilgrim heritage.


And imagine how darker and more intense the game could be. I would make Maniac and Cobra allies against Blair. They would constantly torture the player because of his friendship with Hobbes, along the lines of:

"Only a pilgrim could trust a Kilrathi"
"A pilgrim and a Kilrathi, what a nice pair!"

etc.

The player would feel like an outcast, with Hobbes being his/her only true friend on the ship. And THEN.. POOF. Hobbes betrayed you, and Cobra was right all along. Your only friend on that ship f*cked you, and your enemies were right!

The betrayal would be a far more intense than it is now.


So, what do you think? Would Pilgrims+WC3 make a good combination?
 
Firstly, just because you don't like something doesn't mean it never happened. You just have to learn to accept it and move on.

Secondly, it just doesn't make sense for people to turn against you just because they find out something new about you. They are you friends because of what they have been through with you and who you are. Unless they are really fickle - and sadly, I know there are people like this, but then, they could hardly be called real friends - people don't walk away from friendships just because something unpleasant about your heritage or past comes to light.

Finally, the reasons for the apparent change in attitude in characters from WC2 to WC3 are many, but also consider that you're moving from one set of writers to another, together with the introduction of live actors who each bring their own personality and style beneath the characters they are portraying on screen.
 
It just doesn't fit. If Blair would have been a pilgrim, a hated minority, then there is just no way, that that super cockey Maniac in WC3 wouldn't use it against him
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I can't really parse that one. Maniac and Blair's friendship has frayed by Wing Commander III because of mutual frustration... but I don't think that could turn him into a bigot. Maniac's fantasy is simply that he's better than Blair, not that Blair is a monster who must be brought down.

Remember that in 2669 they're intimiately familiar with each other's failings--your mom's a Pilgrim. Well, you killed a Drayman full of people and then went to the nut house. You couldn't save the Tiger's Claw. Well, you got the Wild Eagles killed. They're pilots bragging, not people tearing each other down. (And the Pilgrim thing is so personal for them both--remember from the movie that Maniac is the person at the Academy in whom Blair confided.)

Also, Pilgrim Truth essentially eliminates Pilgrims as an aspect of the Wing Commander canon from 2654 forward--so it's not really an issue anyone would care about in Wing Commander III.

Shortly before the events of WC3, Blair finds out that his real parents were Pilgrims (he was adopted). Tolwyn finds it out too, and soon the rest of the fleet knows this. This would greatly explain why Tolwyn is again such an ass towards Blair, even though they departed friendly in WC 2.
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That said, the existing Pilgrim story is a good reason for Tolwyn to be so insistent that Blair betrayed the Tiger's Claw in WC2...
 
Bandit LOAF said:
That said, the existing Pilgrim story is a good reason for Tolwyn to be so insistent that Blair betrayed the Tiger's Claw in WC2...
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I have a very hard time buying that. He served with Blair's father and seemed like he knew the family. I more took it as that Tolwyn was so frustrated and a man making ludicrous claims who was already responsable for negligence made the perfect target for Tolwyn's anger. I doubt Tolwyn would have allowed Blair to fly if he truly believed Blair betrayed the Claw. He probably would have had him either on lock down, or scrubbing decks, if that.
 
But Tolwyn in WC2 did not want Blair to fly. Yet he had no real evidence to prevent him from doing so completely. Blair had the support of high-ranked people like Angel, Paladin and Hobbes, so Tolwyn could only do things to make life very difficult for Blair. Which he did.
 
I believe the Tolwyn/Blair relationship has benefited greatly from the spinoff material.

Wing Commander II was always unclear about this--why was Tolwyn *so* vehemently against Blair, but not 'really'? That is to say that if one of the Navy's top commanders *really* believed Blair was a traitor then Blair would not have kept flying--and he certainly wouldn't have kept flying off the Concordia! Instead Tolwyn is just obnoxious to Blair--talking the talk but never walking the walk, as it were.

Wing Commander Academy is the first prequel to add something valuable to this story. Tolwyn had taken a particular interest in Blair, coming to observe him while in flight school, personally assigning him to his carrier and then trying to act as his mentor and benefactor... until Blair publicly embarassed Tolwyn at the medal ceremony at the end of the show. There's the root of the antagonism right there.

Which is great, but it leaves another question in our minds: why was Tolwyn interested in Blair in the first place? The show isn't clear--Maniac implies it's because Blair's family is rich, but I can't really see Tolwyn caring all to much about that...

The movie spinoff material tells us, though: Tolwyn served under Blair's father in the Pilgrim War... and he also knew about Blair's abilities. We learn in the Handbook that Tolwyn has been following Blair's Academy career for several years, having a psychologist interview him at several points while he was in school either to honor his father or...

... because the GE program is looking for superior genetic templates at this exact time, twenty years before WC4, and Blair's ancestry makes him an ideal choice.
 
Which makes me realise that there are far too many... for lack of a better word, versions of Tolwyn. Movie, WCATV, WC2, WC3/4... with what you said about the possibility of looking for GE seed templates, that's a very interesting link tying them all together.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The movie spinoff material tells us, though: Tolwyn served under Blair's father in the Pilgrim War... and he also knew about Blair's abilities. We learn in the Handbook that Tolwyn has been following Blair's Academy career for several years, having a psychologist interview him at several points while he was in school either to honor his father or...

... because the GE program is looking for superior genetic templates at this exact time, twenty years before WC4, and Blair's ancestry makes him an ideal choice.
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That makes a lot of sense to me.
 
I like Loaf's comments here. I agree with wedge though that Tolwyn is too changeable a character.

While I can't like the arguements that tolwyn and maniac change with the writers, at least from an in-universe point of view, I accept that is the most likely reason to justify it.

To my mind, maniac starts as Blairs friend and challenger - they both want to be the best. When Blair is court-martialed maniac effectively wins the battle, but Blair's reinstatement and subsequent hero-work in wc2 naturally annoy maniac. Being promoted over maniac into the victories WC position is the naturaly reason for the hatred we see in wc3, and the ensuing more hero-work is explanation for maniac's attitude in wc4 (especially since blair is retired and STILL gets the job ordering maniac around).

Sadly though, I can't reconcile Tolwyn in this. Yes he was blairs fathers friend and expects a lot of him (doubly so in the plotting needed for the GE program), the dissapointment and anger we then see in wc2 is natural. The restored the honour at the end of wc2 should however mean that tolwyn no longer dislikes him. so either he's playing the long game and knows when he sends blair to the victory that he will need him later (explains the presence of maniac too, they are both excellent pilots) OR something has happened that we are not party to, to make tolwyn dislike blair again (possibly he dissaproves of blair sticking his nose into a secret mission, questioning orders about being sent to the victory and fraternising with angel, plus blair has just spent several months out of action, during which time the battle of terra and the loss of the concordia took place.

Admittedly, blair seems more comfortable with tolwyn in the opening of wc3, he speaks out of turn and presses the admiral, implying that there is a begrudging relationship there if not a friendship.
 
Both Maniac and Tolwyn are far more friendly towards Blair in WC4 than in WC3 (at least the first half of WC4 for Tolwyn). And both of them are especially friendly in the Special Operations episodes.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
... because the GE program is looking for superior genetic templates at this exact time, twenty years before WC4, and Blair's ancestry makes him an ideal choice.
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I haven't read the Telep novels in a number of years, but I kind of remember the author half-explaining Pilgrim skills as being a type of telepathy where Pilgrims can tap into another dimension and use a dead Pilgrim's experience?

I'm just wondering aloud but I wonder if that kind of ability would've been grafted to Tolwyn's GE soldiers.
 
I know we like to talk about the change in writers and the apparent attempt to simplify the relationships in Wing Commander III... but in so doing we're overlooking the in-universe explanation that was included precisely to allow this.

The difference between Wing Commander II and Wing Commander III is that the characters believe the war is lost. That's the subtext--all the characters are reacting to that belief in different ways... and it's stretching previously strained relationships.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I know we like to talk about the change in writers and the apparent attempt to simplify the relationships in Wing Commander III... but in so doing we're overlooking the in-universe explanation that was included precisely to allow this.

The difference between Wing Commander II and Wing Commander III is that the characters believe the war is lost. That's the subtext--all the characters are reacting to that belief in different ways... and it's stretching previously strained relationships.
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That's very true and provides a great explanation for the change in attitudes (especially in Tolwyn, who's the career soldier who doesn't like to lose at all).

I saw the same things back when I was playing the game the first time. It was obvious that things were getting darker for the Confederation, and I said to myself "Tolwyn's being an arse because he hates the fact that he's losing" (Add in the fact that he lost his flagship and you've got right reason for him to be pissed off)
 
Madman said:
So either he's playing the long game and knows when he sends blair to the victory that he will need him later (explains the presence of maniac too, they are both excellent pilots)
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Well, Tolwyn says this some time after arriving on Victory later in WC3, but it doesn't change the fact that Blair's relationship with Tolwyn is much different than in SO2
 
That is, indeed, why he sends Blair to the Victory--and why Hobbes is there, as well.

To Blair, though, that's just Tolwyn falling into his old routine--treating him like a (disposable) tool instead of a human being.
 
Wedge009 said:
Firstly, just because you don't like something doesn't mean it never happened. You just have to learn to accept it and move on.
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This is of course true for real-life.

But here we're talking about fiction. And there it's up to each individual what he/she will adopt into "his/her" universe of the franchise in question.



Somewhat like when you read a novel based on a science-fiction franchise. When you open the book, in your mind you are setting up the "canon" of the universe in question, then you start reading the book, which might establish new things, which are not in the original canon. However, at the end of the book, you don't "carry over" what you've read into what you think is canon. If you did that, you propably would get into a lot of trouble after reading more than a few novels, as the contradictions will pile up. A different thing is, if it's a series from one author and you can see it is meant to built upon each other, but at the end of the series, again you won't regard it as canon. After all, they're just fanfics that were published and sold.


The Wing Commander movie is very similar. When you start watching the movie, you have the Wing Commander canon in the back of your head, but you'll soon realize, the movie is just adapting it in Broad Strokes for one thing, and at the end of the movie you might just treat it the same you would a novel.

Maybe you could call that a "What-if?"-Story.
 
I remember being puzzled by Tolwyn's change of attitude between WC3 & 4 the first time I played through WC4. We went from a bit of a condecending jerk in WC3 to a more chummy 'you and me in it together' attitude at the beginning of WC4. That even stretched to the point where you capture Tolwyn & have a chat. It wasn't until the final reveal on the Black Lance base that you realise that he is, still, a condecending jerk. And mad to boot. It had me fooled - that tells me that it was some nice storytelling.

At least, it would have if I hadn't watched the trailer for WC4 first - it really should have had a 'SPOILER ALERT' message eh?
 
I knew who was responsible even though I hadn't seen the trailer, but I agree, it was a very odd choice to include that scene in the previews.

Nonetheless, Tolwyn still gave a convincing performance to Blair, I thought. Not just Blair, in fact, he had everyone fooled.
 
Mahak said:
At least, it would have if I hadn't watched the trailer for WC4 first - it really should have had a 'SPOILER ALERT' message eh?
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I think that the only time I ever saw that trailer to Wing4 was when I watched LOAF's Lala video.

The other trailer was being played back in '97 at Sam's Club (I want to say '96, but of course the game wasn't out then). I don't remember much, even though the thing was being looped continuously, but I remember the Intrepid flight deck exploding and Blair punching out Tolwyn. Not much spoilers, there. I picked up the Prima Strategy Guide then and there, which had a lot more spoilers in the first thirty pages than I knew or cared.

Man, Wing Commander trailers looped on monitors next to piles of game boxes and strategy guides at wholesale retailers - them was the days, eh?
 
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