Snakeir Crew Represent (or: We Will Grist'Ar'roc You)

Oh, you're a fan of giant rubber cat monsters? Name four of them! The final cut of the Wing Commander movie famously sliced its intended Kilrathi appearances to the bone, removing everything before the climactic final chase and surprising viewers when it finally cuts to a series of brief conversations on their distinctive green-atmosphere'd flagship. So: who are these kils, anyway?

The film's credits identify two of the characters as KILRATH CAPTAIN and KILRATHI ADMIRAL and the shooting script identifies a third speaking character as KILRATHI TECH. The Admiral is the kil who stands to the right and is (technically) the only one whose lips we see move. The Captain is the one who is usually speaking to him but his dialogue occurs when he's seen from behind or when we are looking at their viewscreen. The tech is at the port aft bridge station where he is intended to be the Snakeir's equivalent of the Radar Man position seen aboard the Tiger Claw and the Concordia and at Pegasus. His line is "the Rapier is homing in on a Confederation signal" but as previously suggested the closeup shown in the final is actually the Admiral. Here are the subtitled lines we see in the final cut:

Scene 281 (2 shots)

Scene 308 (2 shots)

Scene 313 (2 shots)

Scene 316 (1 shot)

Unnumbered Scene (2 shots)

From there there's the greater lore: Peter Telep's adaptations include backstories for these characters and one of the extras. The Snakeir's name is the KIS Grist'Ar'roc and the captain is Kal Shintahr Thiraka nar Kiranka. The admiral, who is in command of the battlegroup, is Kalralahr Bokoth nar Kiranka. The Kilrathi Tech line is assigned to the superdreadnaught's tactical officer, Second Fang Norsh'kal. The unspeaking character seen at helm behind the captain and admiral is the carrier's executive officer, Shintahr Ke'Soick. We learn that Bokoth is the most respected admiral in the fleet and in the grand tradition of stock-thickening novelizations, Telep adds an additional arc for the Kilrathi with a jealous Thiraka plotting to betray Bokoth with Ke'Soick's help. Ke'Soick ultimately double-crosses Thiraka; Norsh'kal is blameless. So with the information from the novelization you can now amaze your friends by effortlessly identifying Bokoth, Thiraka, Ke'Soick and Norsh'kal!

X Toys produced an action figure of Bokoth which is confusingly named KILRATHI GENERAL instead of Kilrathi Admiral. Adding to the confusion, the trading card included shows a Kilrathi warrior (seen in the earlier battle scenes) and the action figure of the KILRATHI PILOT (cut from the final movie) has a mislabeled card showing the admiral! Still pretty neat that it exists, though.

While working up this update we took a look at some cut footage to determine how the bridge is actually laid out and how many Kilrathi crewmen there are. The answer is that there are seven bridge stations with Kilrathi and at least two others who enter and exit the bridge in the background. But only four Kilrathi (or arguably three) appear on the Snakeir's bridge in the final movie. AD has created a high quality blueprint detailing the bridge layout:

Bokoth and Thiraka stand in front of a viewscreen. To either side there are Kilrathi crewmen stationed in front of banks of bright lights. Towards the center of the room there is a helm station and a Sivar idol. At the rear of the bridge is an exit door flanked by two more crew positions (including the tactical officer/radar kil). Here are some shots from rough cuts of the film:

Looking from the rear towards the front, view screen in the center:

Looking from the front towards the rear, door in the center with bridge stations to either side:

Front looking rear, full crew:

Starboard fore "light screen" station:

Radar Kil/Tactical Station:

Kilrathi Admiral:

Helm Station & Sivar Idol:

Bridge Entrance:

Where did these come from? The original cut of the movie had four additional scenes set aboard the Snakeir which were intended to appear earlier in the movie to update you on the Kilrathi plan. They were cut because they significantly involve the dropped Pilgrim traitor, Admiral Wilson, and because there was a concentrated effort to reduce the screen time of the Kilrathi creatures (and to generally obscure them with more gas effects, CG-edited mouths and shots that don't show the aliens' faces). These scenes were:

Scene 11 & 12 - A conversation between Bokoth and Admiral Wilson (his identity obscured in a space suit). We learn that this traitor has given the Kilrathi the NAVCOM AI and that they are going to use it to destroy Earth.

Scene 110B - Thiraka reports to Bokoth and a still unidentified Wilson that the Tiger Claw has been located. We learn that there is a Pilgrim traitor aboard the carrier reporting to them. Wilson demands the Admiral launch an attack.

Scene 298B - Wilson castigates Bokoth for failing to destroy the Tiger Claw. Bokoth orders him to the ConCom to prepare the jump coordinates for Earth (setting up Wilson's further cut face off with Blair and Gerald).

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 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which is explicitly referenced as having influenced the Wing Commander movie's explosion VFX. 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: Top Gun Wrap Up

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander Movie Club has visited the danger zone and lived to tell the tale! We found that while Top Gun remains a striking movie full of fast action, striking cinematography and endearing characters… it also isn't much of a story. The scenes we remembered from years past were still wonderful but the lack of connective tissue seemed more apparent today. There's not really a character arc for Maverick: the film seems to set him up for a decision between being a devil-may-care fighter pilot like Iceman and a family man like Goose… and then Goose dies and instead he has to (fairly rapidly) get over his grief. But since the accident isn't his fault and he ultimately just splits the difference (he goes back to the girl AND is still a hotshot pilot!) there's not a very satisfying resolution.

But do you know what other movie has that exact combination of action, cinematography and characters but also falls apart in the final edit? Wing Commander, of course! As AD explained going in, FOX's marketing is absolutely correct: before we even get to dogfight cinematography, the movie borrows a LOT from Top Gun. Specifically, what's left of its character arcs strongly echoes the same scenes in Top Gun, often split into different characters: Blair is distracted by his war hero/traitor father's controversial past just like Maverick… and he's ultimately counseled by mentor Paladin just like Maverick's resolve is finally steeled by Tom Skerritt. Maniac's story is taken from Maverick with even fuller cloth: an flying accident kills a loved one (Rosie/Goose) causing him to lose his nerve before his CO gives an inspirational speech to bring him back into the fight. Angel and Charlie both act as love interests and psychologists for their respective Mavericks… and both Mavericks get a final "you're okay" scene with their rivals (Hunter and Iceman).

We previously quoted Wing Commander's VFX supervisor Chris Brown as saying Top Gun inspired the movie's dogfighting choreography and it's easy to see why. Top Gun's breathtaking aircraft photography and its frenetically paced cuts between cockpits, helmeted pilots and flying action are spectacular. Even the decision to use real F-5s instead of model MiGs is immediately understandable: models or CG would never look this good (the restored 2022 UHD release is strongly recommended)... I suppose this would be like having Talons show up as Kilrathi fighters, which did technically happen in Super Wing Commander. As you can see from some of the quick comparisons below, both movies use exactly the same set of paints for their dogfights just as Brown suggested: straight on shots of the pilots, ones that use their head motion to express action, angled exterior shots that include the aircraft (Wing Commander cut in half one of the Lightnings to allow for clear Top Gun style pilot shots). Then there's forward-facing VDU shots with very similar targeting systems… and that's all before the actual flying shots. Wing Commander can't match Top Gun's aircraft closeups but it does a great job on its take on Top Gun's more distant dogfight shots.

The Wing Commander movie's second act scramble is also heavily derived from Top Gun's two beautiful F-14s-at-sunrise takeoff sequences. Of course, this is just how an aircraft carrier works… but Top Gun was the movie that tuned the dramatic dance of loaders and catapult officers and showed it to the world, there's little doubt Wing Commander was following it.

And then there are plenty of aspects of Top Gun that connect back to the earlier games. Wing Commander III's scramble is similarly inspired as are things like the locker room… and Rachel's flight-oriented double entendres and even her look lead right back to Charlie!

… and let's not forget the now infamous volleyball scene. Wing Commander Academy gave us our long-deserved Maverick-and-buddy cheesecake when they went swimming on Greenhouse in On Both Your Houses! And this speaks to another aspect of Wing Commander that comes right from Top Gun: the 'best friends/rival bros' connection between Blair and Maniac which is clearly patterned after the relationships the Top Gun pilots have. In Top Gun their as-close-as-lovers connection is a fascinating setup (I would argue a Lawrentian one) that never quite goes anywhere. But maybe there's still time for that story…

I also suspect the Top Gun helmets are what Andrew Keith was imagining when he described Maniac's in the Wing Commander III novelization: "Marshall, wearing a flight suit and carrying his colorfully painted helmet under one arm." In fact, Andrew Keith likely owed his Wing Commander job to Top Gun mania. In 1991, he and his brother William Keith were hired to create a series of Top Gun-inspired action novels set aboard an aircraft carrier appropriately titled CARRIER. Andrew co-authored the first three and wrote the fourth on his own. The series, always attributed to the company name Keith Douglass, has continued well after Andrew's tragic passing.

But in spite of all of that there are some pretty interesting differences. Wing Commander's Maverick explicitly isn't like Top Gun's: he's a rule follower and not an obnoxious asshole. Despite borrowing the name from Top Gun he doesn't carry with him the personality; can you imagine Mark Hamill's Blair buzzing Captain Eisen in the tower? Maniac gets that part of the character instead but it's always portrayed as charmingly stupid and accidental instead of a good thing that comes from having a type A personality.

Wing Commander has always had an interesting relationship with the 'Maverick' name. It was Chris Roberts' callsign when he played the original game but they avoided locking down a canonical one for Blair for quite a while. The writers bible even named him Falcon/Phoenix with a backstory about how it changed between Wing Commander I and II and that's referenced in End Run… but since it was only ever in the bible and not the game itself, no one knew what Forstchen was referencing! The Sega CD release of Wing Commander I named the character "Hot Shot" (or Starbuck in Japan). The first mention of Maverick was in Super Wing Commander where the player character was given an entirely new name: Maverick Armstrong, leaving questions as to what the intent was. Blair was finally called Maverick in the Wing Commander III novel and for a time fans argued back and forth about whether that was really his callsign or just a description. But then Academy surprised everyone and used the callsign throughout every script. Blair was then listed as Maverick in Kilrathi Saga and in flight in Prophecy. The Wing Commander movie, for obvious Top Gun reasons, avoided giving him a callsign entirely! (Though it is mentioned in the adaptation… and then changed to Pilgrim for the sequel.)

I also couldn't help but notice that Maverick's rival Iceman was also likely the visual inspiration for Wing Commander II's Jazz. Wing Commander II based its characters on real actors (sometimes role specific ones) and it's not a stretch to imagine the art instruction for Jazz was to make him young Val Kilmer!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Wing Commander Combat Information Center team would like to wish you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving! When times are tough–like, say, when you've been imprisoned by a treacherous pirate–it's a genuine relief that you can still gather around the ten-legged space turkey and enjoy life with your loved ones. Also Maniac was there.

In all seriousness, we hope you are doing well today and always. And also a reminder that if you're looking for an internet family that good friends are always welcome on our Discord. We had planned to run a big in-universe article covering the history of the Pilgrims (GET IT?!) today but isn't just not ready for prime time yet. But a little taste of the research being compiled for the project is below to tide you over!

The Geography of the Pilgrim Alliance

At its height, the Pilgrim Alliance consisted of twelve member systems located primarily in the Terra and Vearrier quadrants of Sol Sector and at least eight more recently established colony worlds located across Vega. Eleven of the twelve Pilgrim Alliance systems have been identified. This list does not include Terran Confederation-settled worlds occupied by the Alliance during the 2631-2635 war.

• Alpha Centauri
• Beacon
• Bradshaw
• Cygnus
• Faith
• Frase
• Luyten
• McDaniel's World
• Promise
• Proxima Centauri
• Sirius

The twelfth system is either Canarus, Ella, Krieger, Talos, Tikopal or Weslyn. Beacon was the administrative capital of the Alliance and McDaniel's World was the religious center. After the surrender, nine of these Pilgrim systems were integrated into the Confederation as were an undetermined number of enclaves, including Mylon III. Three systems, Faith, Promise, McDaniel's World, along with seven colony planets, were allowed to remain semi-autonomous. The semi-autonomous Pilgrim population maintained neutrality in the Terran-Kilrathi War, although this was not recognized by the Empire. By 2654, two of the seven colonial enclaves had been destroyed, starting with the Hellespont in 2639. Surviving enclaves include Spiritia at Ymir, Divinity on Seva at Tamayo and Triune on Netheryana at Hell's Kitchen. The location of two enclaves, Mythada and Commune, is unknown.

Happy (Pre-)Black Friday!

DU Doo-Doo (or: When Numbers Get Not-Particularly-Serious)

Sharpshooter recently noticed an interesting little background thread in Wing Commander IV and decided to pull at it. The game's ship selection screens, which shows specifications for each flyable ship in the game when they are available for a mission, includes an interesting figure not included in other locations: "Dmg/Salvo". This measurement, listed in du or damage units, shows how much potential damage one single salvo from a ship's main guns can cause (not accounting for outside modifiers like windows or interiors on capital ships). Four of them match the game's internal gun damage values exactly: the Hellcat (2 Ion Cannons & 2 Particle Guns = (43x2)+(30x2) = 146 du), the Banshee (4 Lasers = (18x4) = 72 du), the Bearcat (4 Light Tachyon Gun = (4x50) = 200 du) and the Lance (2 Plasma Gun & 2 Tachyon Gun = (67x2)+(70x2) = 274 du).

The remaining three ships, however, do NOT match the in-game data. And it's from noticing this that we can learn a little bit more about Wing Commander IV's development! Upon investigation, we learned that the specifications shown in these screens are stored in LOADOUT.IFF separately from the gun values used in gameplay. What that means is they can be wrong without it impacting anything else; they're static values that aren't calculated from the 'real' numbers. So what we're seeing isn't an indication of something misunderstood about the game's inner workings… it's a sort of sensory echo of how the game was balanced!

Things like weapon damage values and ship specifications were always one of the last things locked when making a Wing Commander game. That's because they're an element that can be easily edited based on the Quality Assurance's playtesting. If testers find that a gun makes the game too easy or a ship's speed makes it too hard, those values could be easily altered right up until the game went gold (and today, well after!). However, there was one knock-on: printed material like manuals and hint books needed to be locked weeks earlier in order to be printed. So any changes to the game's simple balances made after these went to print would not be reflected. In the 90s, many hardcore Usenet jerks complained that Origin's manuals were 'notoriously inaccurate' as if the writers were lazy; the actual truth was that they were very accurate… for the latest build of the game they could possibly have referenced.

Today this means that we can look at differences between the values printed in those sources and the ones in the game and get an idea of how things were initially balanced… a bit like how a space telescope looks back in time by capturing light generated eons past! Let's compare the gun damage values from Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander IV with the ones in the game itself:

By including the numbers from Wing Commander III we can see that the base set stayed the same between both games… which means that the balance work on Wing Commander IV would've focused on the game's new 'heavy' gun variants. And indeed we can see that two values were changed after the guide went to print: the Heavy Ion Gun damage increased by ten and Heavy Photon Gun decreased by ten! This immediate explains the discrepancy in the Longbow screen. Using the guide numbers: 2 Plasma Guns & 2 Heavy Ion Guns = (2x67)+(2x50) = 234 du (versus the real in flight value, 254 du)!

The Vindicator tells us a slightly different story! The screen gives a value of 184 du while the final in-game guns, two Tachyons and two Lasers, only add up to 176. What most likely changed where was not a rebalancing of the gun values (which as we noted above remain the same as they did in Wing Commander III). Instead, we're seeing a full gun REPLACEMENT: the earlier iteration of the Vindicator must have had Heavy Photon Guns instead of Tachyons! This actually makes a little sense as the lore makes a point that tachyons guns are brand new while photon guns are more common on the workhorse fighters.

The Avenger, however, still isn't completely understood. The game lists a mysterious 267 du, an unlikely number in any of the scenarios we've thought through since the gun values should always be even numbers. A ship could theoretically get an uneven number if it had an odd number of guns but all evidence indicates that the Avenger was designed for four from the concept forward:

Our best guess here is that… it's an error. The Avenger carries two Heavy Photon Guns and two Heavy Mass Driver Cannons. Using the final in-game values that should be 248 du, a reduction of 19 from the screen which suggests a weapons change. But the earlier number in the guide gets us much closer: 268, a difference of just one (and matching the earlier guide's stats for Heavy Photon Guns and Heavy Mass Drivers).

Thanks for traveling to the past to help us learn how Wing Commander IV balanced its guns!

Wing Commander Movie Night: Star Trek VI

Top Gun? More like Top Fun! The third meeting of the Wing Commander movie club was a great success; we all had a great time finding out that Top Gun maybe wasn't the perfect film we remembered from our youths… and noting its massive influences on the entire Wing Commander franchise, of course! This week instead of going for a broad inspiration, we're going to be zeroing in on a very specific one in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

It's a good bet you're already familiar with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It's the last of the films spun off of the original Star Trek television series. It tells a story about old soldiers conspiring to prevent newly possible peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire with the Enterprise heroes there to save the day. Considered by many to be a favorite in the series, Star Trek VI is a suitable swan song for a beloved starship and her crew.

So what does this have to do with Wing Commander, as if we needed an excuse to watch more Star Trek? While Top Gun broadly influenced even the original Wing Commander, Star Trek VI wasn't even out when the series started (though the development team were famously Trek fans, breaking their crunch on the game only for an hour a week to watch new episodes of The Next Generation! Our basis for the pick is a very specific mention of the movie's influence on the Wing Commander film's explosive effects in an April 1999 Cinefex article (full article):

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. This sequence, along with the action in the movie's climactic scenes, featured vessels firing broadsides into one another, thus requiring extensive pyrotechnics to capture the grandeur of mighty ships in combat. Initially the idea had been to shy away from this scientifically inaccurate approach, since in reality, flames and fireballs would not long exist in the vacuum of space. "Pyro has been used extensively in space films, even prior to Star Wars," Chris Brown remarked. "So a lot of R&D went into developing an alternate look. But none of it worked for our traditional World War II kind of story. Our R&D didn't go entirely to waste, however, since the digital shockwave accompanying the pyrotechnic blasts only came about because of it. The idea was to do something in the vein of Star Trek VI's exploding planet shockwave, but then supplement it with rippling effects that enhanced the scale," Brown budgeted a pyro shoot into the schedule, but upon returning from Luxembourg, he discovered that the Digital Anvil team had created a viable and much less costly alternative. "They'd been experimenting with Pyromania's package of explosions on CD-ROM, and their tests were looking great. Rodney Brunet had tailored a number of the shots to make these generic explosions work for us in the context of our scenes.'

There should be lots of other things to talk about, though: Wing Commander and Star Trek VI are both products of the closing days of the cold war and they both express that influence in interesting ways. And as The Undiscovered Country is a roughly contemporary film, our franchise even shares a couple of actors!

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

Star Trek VI is currently streaming on Paramount+ in the United States and is available for rental or sale digitally at all storefronts. If you're interested in tracking down a physical copy, a UHD version featuring a striking new transfer was released in 2022 which remains in print. 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!

Wildcat Thing, I Think I Love You

A few days ago we showed you the cover art for the Czech language editions of six Wing Commander novels. One thing that's always particularly interesting to think about is what the cover of any given Wing Commander novel is showing… and these are no exception! Case in point: the Czech version of Action Stations shows a wing of Raptor-like fighters with some kind of space station complex and/or group of ships in the background. We've run the numbers and we think there's only one scene this could be: a squadron of Wildcats from the Concordia (including young Geoffrey Tolwyn and Vance Richards) leading the counterattack against the Kilrathi at McAuliffe or perhaps defending the Concordia. The main station may be Alexandria and the surrounding ships (if they are separate objects) would be Terran and Kilrathi warships engaged in the battle.

What is a Wildcat? Action Stations gives us a brief look at the Terran Confederation two decades before Wing Commander I. One thing it includes is a totally different lineup of starfighters, the prior generation of ships flown by human and Kilrathi fighters. The two main human fighters are the Wildcat space interceptor and the Hurricane surface-to-space fighter escort. The relationship between the two ships is based on that of the Spitfire and the Hurricane during World War II. The Hurricane is the old reliable fighter that pilots swear by and the Wildcat is the top of the line, most modern type. There isn't really an action scene with the Hurricane, though, seeming to rule it out as a possibility here. The idea that the ships might resemble the Raptor also seems appropriate given the Raptor's appearance in another prequel scenario, the background story of the Enyo Engagement (and there's a further tie-in there as a young Tolwyn flew the Wildcat at McAuliffe and then the Raptor at Enyo five years later.)

Wildcat History

The Wildcat is a Terran Confederation carrier-based space interceptor that entered service in 2604 with the Terran Confederation Navy. Wildcats were designed to serve for twenty-five years but remained the Confederation's front line interceptor when the Terran-Kilrathi War began. The spacecraft cost fifty million credits. In 2630, the fleet board requested funding for a ten million dollar upgrade to replace outdated engines and repair increasingly common stress flaws which had been responsible for an increasing number of accidents (roughly one in three pre-war Wildcat pilots were killed in accidents if they flew for five years). Political machinations blocked the upgrade program and delayed the Wildcat's intended replacement until 2639 (a crash program after the war's start would ultimately introduce the Corsair to serve as a stopgap).

The Wildcat served extensively during the Pilgrim War and in the first days of the Terran-Kilrathi conflict. At the time of the McAuliffe Ambush, Wildcat squadrons were considered the most prestigious in the fleet with pilots requiring advanced training and five hundred hours of flight time in the spacecraft before being assigned to combat units. The first dogfight between human and Kilrathi carrier planes was fought at McAuliffe between Wildcats and their Kilrathi equivalent Kala-class fighters. Like the Kala, the Wildcat's primary armament consisted of two laser cannons and two mass driver cannons (though the ability to maintain full guns had not yet been developed). The Wildcat carried seven missiles including one dumb-fire and six with locking mechanisms. Despite its age, the Wildcat had a slight edge over the Kala in terms of speed and its shields and armor could sustain significantly greater damage.

Noted Wildcat pilots include Major Tanaka "Go-Devil" Shun, father of Lieutenant Colonel Tanaka "Spirit" Mariko, Lieutenant Vance Richards, who would go on to serve as the navy's spymaster and an admiral in three navies and Ensign Geoffrey Tolwyn. Tolwyn had not yet begun his advanced training to fly the Wildcat when the fighting at McAuliffe overtook him. Nevertheless, he volunteered to join Richards' Green Squadron aboard the TCS Concordia when the fighting broke out. In his first mission he shot down an enemy fighter, scored a partial kill on a bomber and intercepted a torpedo in space before it could hit Concordia. He suffered extensive injuries during the battle and an ensuing crash during landing but recovered from surgery and burn treatment in time to join Green Squadron for their part in the Confederation's counterattack. During that second sortie he shot down an enemy bomber and scored five hits on landing craft, destroying at least one. He also shot down a Kala flown by Prince Ratha nar Kiranka who, unknown to Towlyn, subsequently committed Zu'kara over the defeat. Tolwyn was awarded the Pewter Planet and the Medal of Honor for his heroics, kickstarting his rapid rise.

Fan Lore

Prior to this though, a cool piece of fan lore was the idea that the Wildcat might look just like the Hellcat V introduced in Wing Commander III. This thought was based on two things. The first is that the real world Wildcat and Hellcat also look extremely similar and seem to have a similar story with the Wildcat as the most advanced American carrier plane at the start of the war that found itself well countered by the Japanese Zero and the Hellcat as the newly designed replacement capable of outflying the enemy.

Adding to this idea, the jump between the F-90 Hellcat and the F-104 Bearcat also seems to intentionally mirror the late war jump from Grumman's F6F Hellcat to the more advanced and aerodynamic F8F Bearcat.

The other half of this theory relies on something really neat: the presence of the Hellcat on Wing Commander Academy. Since it's never identified on screen, fans have long theorized that the simulated fighters and the gate guardian seen in "Red and Blue" were not Hellcats but their predecessor the Wildcat. It especially seemed to fit that the gate guardian would be an older design rather than a top-of-the-line one. Additionally, the F-90 designation is seemingly far ahead of the F-44 Rapier II we know was introduced the same year we see Academy's Hellcats.

A gate guardian is typically a military vehicle (usually an airplane) that has been decommissioned and put on display at the entrance to a base. They are usually mounted on a pylon or similar display so they appear to be flying.

The Academy Hellcat

We do now know the intent behind the Hellcat on Wing Commander Academy and why it came to appear only in the first episode: it was designed and animated for an earlier iteration of the show! The ship WAS intended to be a Hellcat… but that's because the original plan for the show was that it would be a sort of 'Wing Commander 3 babies' that ignored older continuity in favor of simply adapting the Wing Commander III setting. Characters like Maya, Grunt, Payback and Archer were then intended to be Rachel, Vaquero, Cobra and Flint (you can find the series bible which details much of this here.

The plan to instead use Wing Commander I & II ship designs and original characters came about very late in the process after model sheets (the things animators base what they draw on) for the different ships were already created and some animation tests had already been produced. The change had several impacts on the show including the appearance of some later ships in early cameos; there are similar blink-and-you'll-miss-them appearances from the Avenger, Longbow and Arrow during the series' first few episodes.

This additional work also delayed other needed model sheets, especially those for capital ships. That's why the show uses a Kilrathi dreadnought-inspired design for everything from transports to blockade runners to destroyers and carriers. You can also tell that specific episodes that needed ships but didn't have sheets ready actually used the line art in Claw Marks. This is especially apparent when we see the Dorkir in "The Last One Left" and a Fralthi in "Expendable" (the same ship changes into a Ralari the next week).

Keeping the simulated Hellcats at the start of the show is also a nod to the show's namesake, Wing Commander Academy the game. Academy makes a pretty big deal about how the Academy's training simulator lets pilots fly and fight the NEXT generation of fighters that aren't actually in service yet, the F-97 Wraith and the Kilrathi Jrathek.

Bluesky's Ahead

Want another way to get Wing Commander news and interaction? We're happy to announce that we have set up an official Bluesky account for the Wing Commander Combat Information Center! Think of it as an updated version of Twitter that features a lot fewer Admirals Tolwyn and quite a few more adult depictions of Prince Thrakhath. And hey, bonus, they got the color of the sky just right.

You can access the profile here. We'll be posting news and updates and interacting with the community as much as we can. And if you're new to the service here's a very short directory of Wing Commander-relevant accounts that are already posting to the service. If you'd like to be added, please let us know in the comments!

• Richard Garriott - Origin Systems founder and assistant designer for the Wing Commander TCG.
• Siobhan Beeman - designer on the original Wing Commander and director Wing Commander 2
• Mark Hamill - the actor behind Colonel Blair (among other roles) in Wing Commander III, IV, Academy and Prophecy
• Diane Duane - noted sci-fi author and the writer of Privateer 2's cinematic screenplay
• David Arnold - composer for the Wing Commander film
• Paulie Hughes - lead programmer for Privateer 2
• Matthew Lilliard - actor who portrayed Maniac in the Wing Commander movie
• Tim Eldred - renowned storyboard artist who did concept work for the Academy television show
• Sean Murphy - animator and artist for SWC, WC4, WCP & SO - also the face of SWC Jazz and SQ5's Roger Wilco!
• Mark Vearrier - artist and production designer on WC3, WC4, KS, WCP & SO
• Dave Mattingly - legendary painter of the End Run cover

And of course, the WCCIC staff have personal accounts as well!

• Chris Reid
• LOAF
• Official CIC Account

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 Top Gun, which has been inspiring the series since the very first game. 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: Dam Busters Wrap Up

Greetings WingNuts,

In honor of last week's premiere meeting of the Wing Commander Movie Club (name pending) we've decided to start posting after action reports talking through what the group thought about and discussed with each movie. If all goes according to plan we'll run them in the news on Fridays alongside the reminder posts! Now what did we think about The Dam Busters…

In general, we found the movie to be extremely dry… especially the first half, which focuses on the development of the bouncing bomb and the training for the attack. Audience sensibilities have changed a lot in sixty-nine years: the thought of starting a war movie with old men talking about math and then not getting to an actual air battle until the very end would be unthinkable now. That's not to criticize the movie itself, it's just very difficult for a younger viewer to connect with today. Along the same lines, it's fascinating to see how a prestigious movie made with the war in sharp living memory is structured... and particularly how much more strongly they felt the need to stick to the real story as it was understood rather than updating it for a more satisfying narrative structure. Seeing how it assumes we are going into the story already familiar with extreme details of the war and how it expects we will view the morality of things like exploding dams is pretty fascinating. And then there's the third act, which is still fairly spectacular today. The extended raid sequence, which as noted in the introduction post was a major inspiration for Star Wars' Death Star battle, holds up very well. A fleet of actual war-era Lancaster bombers allowed for the kind of realism that modern CG is only just catching up to… seeing actual RAF bombers still puts the most expensive Masters of the Air sequences to shame.

But what about the connection to Wing Commander? We had gone into the movie asked to pay special attention to the score, which Chris Roberts had asked David Arnold and Kevin Kiner to study for the 1999 film. What we found was… very little music! It became a bit of a running joke how little music was actually in the film until the famous Dam Busters March during the climax.

It's hard to say the march sounds particularly like Wing Commander's overture but its role in the film and the way it stands out does come across. ace, who is more of an expert on such things than I could even imagine, reviewed it thusly: "Wikipedia mentions how the composer's son claims that he was trying to write something that sounds like one of the Pomp and Circumstance marches, and it really, really does. You could listen to all of them together and not pick them apart. It's the kind of thing you'd go to the concert hall to listen to and smile very loudly at. And a mostly ceremonial, self-congratulatory, militaristic sound that calls back to the glory days of pre-Great War England seems to be the perfect choice for The Dam Busters."

It seems telling that The Dam Busters March has been played by British military bands for generations… and that those same groups now sometimes include Wing Commander's overture in their performances! Even if the two don't sound the same, they captured a very similar imagination.

The bigger connection to Wing Commander that we picked up was that the very structure of the air raid is extremely similar to a Wing Commander mission… down to the specific camera angles used in the pilot's briefing! From the similar uniforms to the same shot of everyone standing up, the Dam Busters' briefing could've easily stood in for one of Colonel Halcyon's on the Tiger's Claw.

And then the mission itself is literally a Wing Commander mission complete with an orchestrated takeoff sequence, a flight to the nav point, an air battle and then a return to base with a shot of how much damage the hero bomber has suffered! If the Wing Commander I team weren't consciously thinking of this movie they were thinking of something that was visually and narratively influenced by it at some point.

We also see a very early example of the 'leaders nervously waiting for word at headquarters' trope that air combat stories introduced. As Harris and company wait around the radio for word of the squadron's fate you can't help but think of something like Wing Commander Academy's "Red and Blue" with Tolwyn and company waiting to hear from the cadets in the nebula as its great, great, great grandson.

And then there's the elephant in the room… which in this case is a black dog with an unfortunate name. Volumes have been written on the subject and they aren't particularly interesting but if you aren't familiar, the historical squadron leader's dog was named an egregious racial slur which was then used as the code word to announce over the radio that the attack had been successful. The end result in the film, which kept with its theme and stuck as close to reality as possible, isn't so much something offensive that no one should watch as it is an endless series of cringes as British soldiers happily shout something awful to greet the dog. It is the rare situation where you breathe a sigh of relief when a dog is finally hit by a car. That said, Wing Commander DOES also have a story in which a heroic wing commander happens to have a (contemporarily) offensively-named cat… False Colors, where we meet Kevin Tolwyn's black cat Thrakhath!

He tossed his bag on the bunk and did a double-take as something moved against the space-black blanket. "Well, hello, who's this?"
Tolwyn reached down and picked up a bundle of black fur. "The official Independence reception committee. Jason, meet Thrakhath. He's one of our ship's cats."
The black cat opened a pair of startling green eyes and studied Bondarevsky suspiciously. After a moment the cat started to purr loudly, obviously glad of the attention Tolwyn was giving his neck and ears.
Bondarevsky chuckled. "Thrakhath, huh? Does he know he's royalty?"
"Absolutely," Tolwyn replied, returning the cat to the bed. "He finds his way into just about every corner of the ship, usually through the ventilation system . . . though some of us think he can walk through walls when he wants to. But he's staked out this deck as his personal territory. If you don't want him slipping in here and bothering you, we'll install a screen he can't get through."
"Nonsense," Bondarevsky replied. "I can use the company."

Aside: the accuracy of the description of Thrakhath disappearing into a black blanket tells me that Andrew Keith absolutely had a black cat. Thank you to our Thrakhath model: Sullivan T. Cat.

Want to join the club but can't be around for the group watch? Just watch the movie and share your thoughts on Discord or the forums to earn your wings!

The SCOUT is OUT!

Caliban System, 2669; second mission. Captain Eisen has ordered you to clear every single nav point to prevent the Kilrathi from reporting the Victory's jump point. You battle through two nav points of fierce fighters and then find… four capital ships, unescorted? There's a light destroyed, two corvettes and a…

… it's a transport? No, it's a… "scout"? The existence of the scout has long been recognized but to the best of my knowledge no one had really looked into /why/ it was there. So I did… and learned some interesting things in the process, including a pretty significant change to something we had previously thought about the making of the game!

Wing Commander III famously shipped on time… but to make this happen the developers had to cut some broken features rather than spend time to get them working. A number of these changes were related to an item attachment bug which caused issues in some cases when models were supposed to be connected to a ship. This resulted in a number of otherwise completed ships and vehicles being dropped from the game at the eleventh hour. The team removed the intended Kilrathi transport, the Confederation frigate, the Kilrathi missile tank and others because they couldn't be made to work correctly with the time allowed.

Some small item attachments DID work, however, and I started my investigation by looking at one. Kilrathi carriers have lines of blank fighters on their deck, the Victory has little trucks and barrels and the Clarkson-class transports in Wing Commander III carry a variety of cargo pods along their triangular superstructure. This allows for a total of up to ten cargo pods on any given transport: three along each side of the triangle plus a fourth pod in the extra space at the front on top. First, I studied the internal filenames and models to identify each type of container:

Next, I decided to chart out the possible transport configurations. I learned that there are three different configurations seen in Wing Commander III: fully laden with a variety of containers in every slot, partially loaded with only four containers in the forward slots and then completely empty. Here are all three configurations:

Further organizing, I found eighteen different transports in Wing Commander III missions. Almost half of them are from the losing Blackmane series and two appear in the simulator. Interestingly, the only time we see the fully laden variant is in Orsini A4 (the Skipper mission) and in the sim. The others are all the partial configuration except for the booby-trapped ones, which are empty (a sign of danger!). Additional fact: the first transport you escort in Orsini A3 is labeled 'cargo' instead of 'transport'.

Aside: Wait what? Booby-trapped? It's easy to miss: in either version of the Blackmane series you come across a pair of transports to escort home only to find that they explode and damage your ship when you approach them to link up (followed by an attack from decloaking Strakha). These transports were captured by the Kilrathi and then set to explode to ambush you. How was the audience supposed to know this? It isn't mentioned anywhere in the final PC game; instead, the warning about these transports came in a TNC news segment that was cut late for space.

This is Barbara Miles with another TNC InfoBurst. Reports have surfaced that captured Confederation transports and freighters have been used by the enemy as decoys, luring in unsuspecting fighter pilots who are then ambushed by the enemy.

This demonstrates an issue with Wing Commander III's design that speaks to all of this: as it was not possible to rework the briefing and debriefing scenes ones they were shot, planners had to be as generic as possible to allow mission designers to adapt to the ordinary challenges that come up between an initial implementation and release. It becomes increasingly difficult to have missions where, say, Captain Eisen tells you you're going to encounter a particular fighter or Rollins congratulates you for sinking a carrier because the film shoot happened before any of that could've been built, much less playtested. Occasionally, this works the other way around, where a briefing or debriefing seems to indicate the game intended you to have done something that never happened. And that's where this sort of Wing Commander archaeology begins!

The attach bug actually carries over to Wing Commander IV where they decided to simply not include any cargo containers on the Clarkson… which neuters the feel of the early escort missions just a little bit!

Wing Commander IV does do some additional development of the transport, though. In the introduction we see a high res cinematic model of the Clarkson configured as the Amadeus, a medical transport. The 'rungs' each have two inhabitable modules filled with civilians (briefly).

There's no in-game Amadeus model other than the damaged hulk you discover early in the game. But you can see here that instead of attaching a separate set of boxes they've simply created a single model of the transport and the cargo together. The same thing occurs with the Peleus jammer which uses a Clarkson base and attaches weird evil antennae to it.

Wing Commander IV does have an abandoned Clarkson cargo pod in its files, though! This set of military pods was intended to be applied to the transport in order to serve as a marine troopship. It would've been present around the Lexington in the Tyr series as the home of the troops used to seize the ground installations (or, for Playstation fans, the three identical space labs).

And here's an interesting bit of Amadeus-related archaeology. A prototype of the 'attached habitation pods' are actually visible in a rendering included in the 1995 Wing Commander card game. This art was done by Origin and likely represents the state of the cinematic quality model between Wing Commander III and IV. So you're essentially looking at the Amadeus for the introduction as she took shape! If you zoom in to the scan you can even read the ship's registration number, TCV 147-52, something not present in the WC3 art.

This all brings us to the Kilrathi "triangle transport" which was famously cut from the game because of the attachment bugs. For many years, the accepted story has been that there were two freighters designed for Wing Commander III: one triangular transport and one boxy one connected with a series of latticeworks. The triangular transport was later named Dukara in Star Soldier and the multipart ship was named the Sha'kar, both in honor of transports specced out for Privateer Online. Both transports are present in the games' files but only the Sha'kar ever appears in the original PC version of the game.

The story went that the Dukara was intended to be the game's transport and the Sha'kar was designed specifically as a tanker for the Torgo series Behemoth refueling mission. Because of the attachment error, the Dukara was replaced in both roles by the Sha'kar (mirroring, interestingly, Wing Commander 1 and 2 which both began with two Kilrathi freighters each and cut one for disk space).

One of the biggest pieces of evidence for this has been that that's how the 3DO port, which had more time to fix bugs and add features, presents the transports. The Dukara is resurrected and the Sha'kar is limited to a single appearance in the refueling mission.

But it turns out, that isn't what was intended for the Sha'kar at all! The attachment bug did, indeed, create this situation but the Sha'kar was never meant to be a transport. To learn more, I organized the game's unused Kilrathi container options. There are a total of seven. Four of them mirror their Confederation counterparts and the others are a pair of more unique shapes and one special fuel pod. As intended, these would have appeared down the side of the Dukaras with variation depending on the mission… including the tanker mission, which would've used the longer fuel tanks on the chart.

So if the Kilrathi transport and tanker were intended to be the same Dukara triangle transport then what was the Sha'kar designed for? The answer will shock you unless you read the title of this article and/or the introduction: it was originally meant to be a SCOUT! The idea was that the Scout Frigate was an especially unusual Kilrathi ship that is so incredibly rare that it seems to the player to be an incredibly special encounter. It's a fascinating piece of worldbuilding and game design that was unfortunately totally lost to the maelstrom in the final release… despite the fact that the scout appears correctly and works exactly as intended! But because it's "just" a transport the player doesn't notice it and because there's no reference to it in the briefing or debriefing there's no real reason to ever even consider why it has a different name (or why its survival immediately prompts you to lose the series).

There's actually a second potential Scout encounter in the game and its presence explains a weird mechanic that WC3 somehow uses only once. If you choose to rescue Flint in the Locanda series you must visit four different nav points. Each nav point has a fixed percent chance of an encounter from a set of four possible. An average play through tends to give you one of these random encounters and then one with Flint fighting a Fralthi II cruiser. But you can have up to four different sets of enemies present chosen at random… with the rarest encounter being a Scout and a pair of Vaktoth. Again, the high level idea is that the Scout is something so incredibly special that players will argue whether or not it even existed. It's so clever, it's a perfect moment of Chris Roberts immersion and it's clearly something that a fair amount of thought and actual development time went into realizing! But it's totally negated by the model being turned into the standard transport!

But do we know anything else about the Scout? It turns out, we do! There have been some Scout facts in our faces for thirty years and we just haven't been able to see them. Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III actually has a full description and a set of specifications for the scout printed in its unusual Kilrathi ships section!

SCOUT FRIGATE
The scout frigate is a glorified frigate, equipped with high-resolution radar and enhanced tracking software that supports electronic jamming techniques. Their purpose is to scout out enemy actions and report fleet coordinates to their base of operation.

Class: Frigate
Length: 620 meters
Mass: 26,000 metric tonnes
Max. YPR: 5 dps
Max. Velocity: 160 kps
Acceleration: 10 k/s^2
Shields
Fore: 1000 cm equiv.
Aft: 1000 cm equiv.
Armor
Fore/Aft: 600 cm
Right/Left: 600 cm
Weapons
Laser Turrets (3)
FF missile turrets (2)

See how the role described matches the Caliban 2 mission setup exactly? The Scout is the thing scanning for the Victory and reporting its location to Thrakhath. And the Authorized Combat Guide to Wing Commander III even has a notation about how special the scout is! We knew this existed but assumed it was incorrectly referring to the (cut) Confederation frigate. In retrospect, the reason the stats are so close is because that's how all the similarly-classed ships in Wing Commander III work.. the Confederation's frigate, operated by Paladin's elite Covert Operations, is their equivalent of the special Kilrathi scout frigate.

Long range sensors show that there's a Kilrathi Scout Ship at nav 3 as well. This is a rare bird, probably the only one in this entire region. The Scout is a hybrid between a Corvette and a Destroyer. While this is a new class of ship and not one we have a lot of tactical data on, our analysis team recommends that you strafe its turrets and take them out first, then switch to your heavy guns and riddle the aft engine sections.

Aside: wait, how do I know what the Dukara is? I'm not some filthy 3DO owner! Even though it didn't appear in the game itself, the Dukara was pretty prolific from 1994 to 1996! It appears in the first ever released screenshot of Wing Commander III, in an Intel print ad, in the Wing Commander CCG and was then used for a pretty spectacular (and heavily promoted) cinematic sequence in Wing Commander IV! As you can see, they never return to the Sha'kar as a Kilrathi transport even though it would've been easy and made sense to the audience.

Well, that's the end!? No, there's another ship that was cut from Wing Commander III because of the attach bug and replaced by a generic reuse: the Confederation frigate. That's right, both sides had frigates and they were both mercilessly cut down by the God of software development. The Confederation frigate, later slightly confusingly named Caernarven-class, appears in the Alcor system where it is supposed to indicate Paladin's arrival (it's Paladin's frigate!). But in the final game it was replaced with a destroyer NAMED frigate:

Unlike the scout, the Confederation frigate's specifications actually appear in Victory Streak:

You will again recognize the cut frigate immediately: it was rehabilitated for Wing Commander IV where it was decked out as a pirate base ship and in Confederation and Border Worlds liveries.

And then there's one more ever-so-slight ship reuse. To eliminate a bug where you could fly the Torgo minelaying mission without enough mines, the 3DO port of Wing Commander III instead asks you to escort a pair of Confederation minelayers… and like the frigate, they are simply relabeled Southampton-class destroyers!

Wing Commander Cover Paintings Detailed

Here's a little treasure: six pieces of rarely-seen Wing Commander cover artwork without the trade dress! These stunning paintings were created by sci-fi and fantasy artist Jan Patrik Krásný for the Czech language translations of six Wing Commander novels. The books were published between 2001 and 2005 by Poutnik Knihy. Most interestingly, they were published not for the Wing Commander IP but because Dr. William Forstchen is particularly popular in the Czech Republic! The resulting cover art is a kind of what-if scenario where the novels are imagined on their own without the associated games!

Take an Amiga WC Break

The original Amiga version of Wing Commander had just 16 colors. It was released right before the Amiga 1200, which introduced the 256-color AGA version. Wing Commander is a computer game series from Origin Systems, the series creator is the American game developer Chris Roberts. The series is about humanity's fight for survival in the 27th century against aggressive alien races, particularly the cat-like Kilrathi.

Wing Commander Movie Night: Top Gun

I'm happy to report that our second Wing Commander movie night was a success! We had a great group of fans who enjoyed seeing–and lightly roasting–The Dam Busters together this past Friday night. You can find the complete after action report later this week. So next we're going to be watching a movie that's a little more modern… with some more obvious connections to both the original Wing Commander game and the 1999 film. That's right, on Friday you are welcome to join us for a group watch of Top Gun (1986).

Top Gun is a 1986 action film based on the United States Navy's elite program that teaches top fighter pilots skills that they in turn pass on to their compatriots. It helped usher in lead Tom Cruise's ongoing superstardom and is one of the prototypes of the modern blockbuster. My generation loved it for mixing pulse-pounding air combat with engaging characters we couldn't help but root for… but does it hold up compared to the mega-films of today?

… and more importantly, how does it connect to Wing Commander? Let me count the ways! For the 1999 film, Top Gun naturally influenced the shape of the dogfights. Visual effects supervisor Chris Brown talked about it in an April 1999 Cinefex interview (full article):

The bold, hand-held look of the live-action was carried through to the digital space exteriors. "Top Gun had some terrific aerial dynamics, which served as inspiration," said Brown. "We decided to let the smaller ships blow right into camera while adding camera shake, as if a shockwave of air has buffeted the camera operator. Of course, there's no air in space; but the visceral nature of this approach served the story best. Adding heat-ripple when a ship's engine passed close by was another thing we lifted from that film."

FOX's home video marketing department also made heavy use of Wing Commander's similarity to Top Gun. Advertisements at both the distributor and the consumer levels promised that the film was “‘Starship Troopers’ Meets ‘Top Gun’ in this no-holds-barred battle on the far reaches of space.” Hey, at least it's better than all hell breaking loose at the edge of the universe!

Of course, Top Gun and Wing Commander go much further back. Val Kilmer's Iceman is, of course, the inspiration for the taciturn Michael "Iceman" Casey introduced in the original game. And Chris Roberts himself took his callsign, Maverick, from the movie… and it eventually became the canonical callsign for Blair (used most frequently on Wing Commander Academy, avoided altogether in the film! An early Point of Origin even bragged about the December 1991 issue of Omni calling Wing Commander II "Top Gun 2001". Now there's an idea for a movie!

There was even a business partnership at one point! In 1996, Origin signed on to help promote Thrustmaster's line of high quality flight sticks and other equipment, going so far as to include advertisements in copies of Privateer 2. And then Thrustmaster, for their part, added one of Privateer 2's Heretic fighters to the box of their best selling Top Gun-branded 'stick!

The general idea for Wing Commander Academy, with pilots attending a special flight school that offers additional command instruction for the most promising fighter pilots, comes straight from Top Gun.

Finally, Top Gun is the rare film that we can authorotatively say is still watched in the Wing Commander universe! Peter Telep's Wing Commander novelizations include an exchange between Blair and Angel about his callsign in which he reveals that he has, indeed, seen Top Gun.

"Comm established," she replied, flashing him a thumbs-up on the left VDU. "Lieutenant, your call sign is Maverick? Where'd you get that? From some old movie?"

"Actually, ma'am, it's been a standing joke for a while now. Back at the academy, I had a rep for being a by-the-book flyer. So, of course, they called me Maverick. And yeah, I did see that old movie. They flew those big, heavy atmospheric fighters. Must've been fun back then."

"We'll never know," she said curtly. "All moorings are clear. External power disengaged. Internal systems nominal, roger."

All of which is to say we're going to have a LOT to talk about this time around!

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

Top Gun is currently streaming on Paramount+ in the United States and is 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 2020 which remains in print. 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!

Super Wing Commander & WC3 Added to Cockpit Reference Page

Retro PC Games (DE) Deep Dive Highlights WC Armada and More

Come with me back in time again – to 1994, to be precise! In this video, I flick through the 09/1994 issue of PC Games. Star Wars is on the cover, unfortunately not quite as present in the inside pages. There is only a small preview box for Dark Forces. And Full Throttle has also only been given a small space. But there are more great previews of upcoming games from CES, such as NASCAR Racing, Descent, Deadalus Encounter and many more.

Theme Park from Bullfrog is game of the month. A top-notch fun game. We take a look at Star Wars TIE Fighter from Lucasarts, the quasi-successor to the ingenious game X-Wing, and I have more nostalgic pictures from my buddy CaesarC0mm0dus. Further tests of Pizza Connection, Pinball Dreams 2 and its unspeakable copy protection, Wing Commander Armada and Overlord. The current game charts for this month and, of course, another look at old hardware and Rainer Rosshirt's letters section, as well as his infamous ‘Down the Drain’ section.

Together we browse through the magazine and experience a piece of PC gaming history up close!

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

When I set out to make "Wing Commander," I envisioned a classic World War II film as its model. Except that it was set in space, 500 years from now. This motif played strongly in the design and look of the picture. I also wanted it to play strongly in the score. I wanted the music to evoke some of the glorious old war film scores; full of heart, melody and heroic acts. "633 Squadron," "The Dam Busters" and other such classics came to my mind. When I first talked to David and Kevin about the score, they were in tune from step one.

In fact, my first conversation with David had him citing classic war film scores as a jumping- off point - and that was before I'd even pitched him on my 'WWII' in space concept! From that point on, I am happy to say I was in good hands. From hearing the first temps to being blown away by the orchestra on the scoring stage at Air Lyndhurst, I was constantly surprised and impressed. The sound they've managed to capture evokes epic movies from the fifties and sixties. It's some of the best space music I've heard, right up there with the classics we've all grown up with. The film required many things of the score, bravery, guts, youthfulness, mystery, danger, loss and redemption. David and Kevin delivered all that and hummable melodies into the bargain! (I guarantee you'll be whistling the title cue as you leave the cinema.) The film grows as a result. Bravo! Here's to working together again.

Chris Roberts
Director

Prototype Art: Original WC3 Start Screen

The fact that Wing Commander III drops you in media res instead of having a start screen has long been cited as one of those brilliant immersive Chris Robertsisms. Well, here's the original start menu from an earlier build! Suggests you would've had the option to transfer your character from WC2.

GOG Launches Preservation Program with Wing Commander Discounts

To help combat this, the service announced a new effort today to shore up some of their top titles. There are 100 games in the initial rollout, including Privateer and Wing Commander 3. Both have gotten a handful of updates to ensure they continue to run on modern systems. And both are 50% off to celebrate! We hope to see many more improvements added and more WC games added to the program in the future, but this is a nice start!

Nintendon’t Podcast Covers the Music of Wing Commander

Air date: Sat, 12/03/2016 - 9:00am to 9:30am

Combining the earnest plots of World War 2 films with an original sci-fi setting inspired by Star Trek and Star Wars, the Wing Commander games were a load of space sim fun. The Terran Confederation waged a years long battle against the evil feline Kilrathi alien race. Wing Commander’s music is equal parts bold, brassy, and tense.

So, climb into your spaceship and prepare for takeoff. It's time to listen to some of classic tracks from the Wing Commander computer games.

On today's program:

• Patrol - Wing Commander (PC) (George “The Fat Man” Sanger)
• Thrakhath - Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (PC) (Dana Karl Glover)
• Pleasure Base - Wing Commander: Privateer (PC) (Nenad Vugrinec)
• Introduction - Wing Commander III: The Heart of the Tiger (PC) (George Oldziey)
• Intense Combat Music 1 - Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (PC) (George Oldziey)
• Introduction - Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga (PC) (George “The Fatman” Sanger; rearranged by George Oldziey)
• In-Flight Music - Privateer 2: The Darkening (PC) (James Hannigan)
• Tones from the Sphere - Wing Commander: Prophecy (PC) (Cobalt 60)

Wing Commander Movie Night: The Dam Busters

We had so much fun watching Wing Commander on Discord last week and it was such a nice distraction that we thought we would try making it a regular event! And what could be more fun than going back in time to watch some of the classic movies that have been credited with inspiring Wing Commander? This week, we're watching The Dam Busters, one of the films Chris Roberts wanted the 1999 Wing Commander movie to emulate. Details about the film and how to find a copy follow.

The Dam Busters is a 1955 film which dramatizes Operation Chastise, a daring 1943 air raid in which specially trained British bomber crews dropped purpose-design "bouncing bombs" to destroy German dams. It's considered a classic war and aviation film, particularly in the United Kingdom where Wing Commander Guy Gibson's World War II heroics are revered. The film is also famous for being a major inspiration for the original Star Wars' "Death Star trench" run… which, in turn, gave us Wing Commander III's Temblor bombing. Here's a YouTube video that compares the two sequences:

Beyond the trench, what's the Wing Commander connection? You'll have to listen carefully on Friday! The Dam Busters is one of two films that Chris Roberts cited as inspiration for the 1999 film's score. Here is his introduction from the score's liner notes:

When I set out to make "Wing Commander," I envisioned a classic World War II film as its model. Except that it was set in space, 500 years from now. This motif played strongly in the design and look of the picture. I also wanted it to play strongly in the score. I wanted the music to evoke some of the glorious old war film scores; full of heart, melody and heroic acts. "633 Squadron," "The Dam Busters" and other such classics came to my mind. When I first talked to David and Kevin about the score, they were in tune from step one.

In fact, my first conversation with David had him citing classic war film scores as a jumping- off point - and that was before I'd even pitched him on my 'WWII' in space concept! From that point on, I am happy to say I was in good hands. From hearing the first temps to being blown away by the orchestra on the scoring stage at Air Lyndhurst, I was constantly surprised and impressed. The sound they've managed to capture evokes epic movies from the fifties and sixties. It's some of the best space music I've heard, right up there with the classics we've all grown up with. The film required many things of the score, bravery, guts, youthfulness, mystery, danger, loss and redemption. David and Kevin delivered all that and hummable melodies into the bargain! (I guarantee you'll be whistling the title cue as you leave the cinema.) The film grows as a result. Bravo! Here's to working together again.
Chris Roberts
Director

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

The Dam Busters is currently available for download via the Internet Archive. The film is not currently available for streaming or rent in the United States although it can be found on iTunes and similar services internationally. If you're interested in tracking down a physical copy, the only Region A Blu-ray currently available is part of a set of British war movies called "Their Finest Hour". The highest quality version on the market is StudioCanal's 2018 Blu-ray which is based on a recent 4K restoration. A Collector's Edition of the same is still available on the secondary market; this release is the only one that includes a 1.75:1 matted version which matches the film's premiere.

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!

Wing Commander Set Photos

We've got a treat for fans of the Wing Commander movie today! We've done high resolution scans of a collection of 48 set photographs saved from the film. These images are stunniing and they give us a new look at some of the incredible sets and props created for the movie... as well as a window into what life was like for Chris Roberts and the crew working on the film at the time!

Tiger Claw - Bridge

Tiger Claw - Flight Deck

Tiger Claw - Torpedo Room

Tiger Claw - Missile Room

Concordia - Bridge

Diligent - Bridge

Spacecraft

Time Slice

Film Crew

Chris Roberts

Sound Stages

The Physical Ships of Wing Commander

Canberra bomber's nose became the Confederation's Broadsword bomber!

Oh! And paperwork suggests they also constructed a Dralthi cockpit for the movie but it has never been seen.

Discord Watch Party Tonight

The Tiger's Claw: From Different Perspectives

Four different takes on the Tiger's Claw's lounge! Which one is home?

Connecting in the Only Way We Know How: With Wing Commander

Election Day Education: The Confed Executive Branch

The Executive Branch

The Terran Confederation is lead by an elected President and Vice President. There is no known term limit; President Harold Rodham held the office for fourteen years. 2634 was a presidential election year.

The President has the ability to order the military to mobilize for emergency action. He may elect to order the military to Defense Level Two, authorizing the putting of ships to space and the cancellation of leaves and mobilizing the active reserve forces, or Defense Level One, which also authorizes cross-border reconnaissance and shoot-to-kill orders. He is expressly prohibited from ordering offensive action without a declaration of war from the Senate. In 2634, the President ordered the military to Defense Level Two shortly before the McAuliffe Ambush, alerting key forces hours before the invasion. In 2668, President Quinson ordered the fleet to prepare for emergency action after taking office in preparation for the expected resumption of hostilities. The President has the ability to declare a disaster area; President Vasura declared the site of the 2654 Assembly bombing a disaster area. The President has the ability to order law enforcement to conduct an investigation; President Rodham ordered that Foreign Secretary Jamison be investigated after demanding her resignation.

The President is responsible for appointing the Cabinet of the Terran Confederation who advise him and manage the departments of the executive branch. The President may also demand the resignation of cabinet members. Cabinet positions include the Foreign Secretary (also called Foreign Minister) who is responsible for interactions with foreign states and who oversees treaty negotiations. The Foreign Secretary is head of the State Department (also referred to as the Foreign Office.) In the period leading up to the Kilrathi war, the State Department was in favor of fighting a limited conflict as a show of strength and generally avoiding outright warfare with the Kilrathi. In 2668, Foreign Secretary Rhonda Jamison persuaded the President to support armistice talks with the Kilrathi. Jamison negotiated the resulting armistice agreement and was essential in persuading the Assembly to pass rapid military cutbacks in order to appease the Kilrathi. It was ultimately revealed that Kilrathi intelligence operatives had provided her proof that her son had been taken as a prisoner of war during the Third Enigma campaign. Also called the Confederation Foreign Service, the State Department oversaw the Confederation Peace Commission after the war, deploying officials to ensure that human worlds (members and non-members) abide by the Treaty of Torgo. A formal suit is considered to be the uniform of the Foreign Service. Jamison was unhappy with the war and desired to replace Rodham as President. The Kilrathi used this information to manipulate her actions to reduce the Confederation's readiness. Prior to his resignation, President Rodham demanded Jamison's resignation. Incoming President Quinson appointmented a new Foreign Minister but Jamison refused to resign, convincing some in the Assembly she was the victim of a military conspiracy. The Secretary of Defense is the President's key adviser on military issues. There was a cabinet-level position on cultural sensitivity whose role Senator More sought to expand in 2634 (though the Kilrathi invasion later that year likely rendered this a distant concern.)

The Vice President of the Terran Confederation is the first in the line of presidential line of succession and succeeds the President in the event of death, resignation or removal, completing his term. Vice President Rodham succeeded President Vasura after her death in 2654 and was himself succeeded by Vice President Quinson after his resignation in 2668. The Vice President also assumes the duties of the Senate’s Assembly Master in the event of death, resignation or removal until a new master is elected. Vice President Rodham had previously assumed this role following the 2654 bombing which of the Assembly which killed Assembly Master Pequin Gydideron.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a group of senior military leaders who advise the President. The Joint Chiefs are lead by the Chief of Staff. The Chief of Staff is appointed by the President. The group is made up of representatives from each branch of the military, including the Army, Navy, Space Force and Marine Corps. A red-and-gold card identifies that someone works for the office of the Chief of Staff; Winston Turner used such an identity card to access the base headquarters at Johnson Island as he attempted to mobilize the military for the impending invasion of McAuliffe. Admiral Wayne Spencer Banbridge was Commander in Chief of the Confederation Fleet (CICCONFEDFLT) at the outset of the Kilrathi war. Space Marshal Susan Jayhefsa was CICCONFEDFLT during the Pilgrim crisis in 2654. The Chief of Staff in 2654 was Marine General Jon Linta. The In 2668, a suicide bombing killed Chief of Staff Admiral Noragami the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, save Commandant of the Marine Corps General Grecko. Appointments may carry over from one administration to another: President Rodham appointed Grecko Chief of Staff hours before his resignation and he served the remainder of his term under President Dave Quinson (Grecko was killed shortly after his appointment during the Battle of Earth.) The Chief of Staff is legally required to inform the President if the military engages in combat during peacetime.

The President is protected by the Terran Confederation Secret Service. Secret Service agents are said to be identified by their black suits. President Vasura was preceded by two Secret Service agents when she appeared at Tolwyn’s tribunal in 2654.

Let the WC2 Soundtrack Take You Back to the Enigma Sector

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi is a space combat simulation game developed and published by Origin Systems in 1991. As the sequel to Wing Commander, the game transports you into an interstellar war between the Terran Confederation and the Kilrathi, a warrior race of feline-like aliens. While maintaining core gameplay from the original, such as space dogfights and managing wingmen, this installment places a greater emphasis on narrative, featuring structured missions and captivating sprite-animated cutscenes.

The story unfolds after the destruction of the Confederation’s flagship, the TCS Tiger's Claw, in a sudden Kilrathi stealth attack. You are one of the few surviving pilots, accused of negligence, and must now fight to regain your reputation and uncover the truth behind the stealth fighters. Combat missions require precise strategy and teamwork as you lead daring assaults, defend key outposts, and survive against increasingly powerful enemies. As you progress, the game’s structured mission tree allows you to influence the campaign’s outcome, though not without facing personal and political tensions aboard the Confederation’s flagship, TCS Concordia.

Wing Commander II enhances its predecessor with improved AI, audio, and graphics, along with new ships and weapons. The addition of voice-acted cutscenes deepens the storytelling, and the music—composed by Martin Galway, Dana Karl Glover, and "The Fat Man" (George Sanger)—plays a crucial role in heightening the drama and action throughout the campaign.

Neat Cult Reference or Just a Coincidence?

Oooooooh!

Salvage Tug History

Warfare isn't all space fighters dogfighting and battleships pummeling each other with plasma weapon. Wing Commander has always imagined a universe with a complex supply chain and support system behind the action with a variety of transports, depots, shuttles and other vehicles that are perhaps less sexy than a Rapier or a Bloodfang. Chief among these is the Kilrathi salvage tug, an impressive design that is only ever seen very briefly. For a better look at the tug than ever before we've recreated two images of it from panning shots (including one originally blocked by text):

On 4 July 2654, a flight Scimitars off the TCS Tiger's Claw commanded by 2nd Lt. Lindsay Price encountered a salvage tug escorted by a pair of Sartha and carrying a derelict human spacecraft. Price ordered her wingmen to attack, with 2nd Lt. Todd Marshall and 2nd Lt. Gwen Bowman each dispatching a Sartha. Despite the loss of their escort, the tug crew refused to abandon their salvage and escape. Price targeted the tug's port turret bank which initiated a chain reaction which destroyed the entire ship.

Armament

The salvage tug's largest focus is a powerful tractor beam which allows it to collect space salvage and move it across great distances. It is also well defended with four single-mount laser turrets capable of putting up an impressive amount of anti-spacecraft fire in the event of an attack.

Behind the Scenes

The Kilrathi salvage tug was created by Universal Cartoon Studios for the opening act of Wing Commander Academy's infamous crossover episode, Recreation. It appears only in the shots captured here in this one episode! The design seems to reference Wing Commander IV's twin-boom BWS Intrepid and the Star Trek franchise's Oberth-class (made famous by the USS Grissom in The Search for Spock). The detailing on the side of the hull, visible most clearly in frames where the ship's lasers are firing, references the interior ship textures seen throughout Wing Commander III.

Previewing the Wing Commander Novels

If you've followed these posts for any length of time you probably know that I find it particularly fascinating to look backwards at design documents, demos and unreleased builds of games because it lets you see how many individual elements were adapted and changed during the creative process. But games aren't the only Wing Commander stories that we can 'space telescope' back in time: many of the Wing Commander novels had published preview chapters which ranged from slightly to significantly different from their final forms!

To make a study ot these preview chapters, I collected their text and then diff'd each one with the equivalent chapter in Baen's ebook version of the final text. What I found ranged from many typographical and grammatical changes but in some cases some pretty significant edits to content and meaning. Below we'll look at each of the chapters and point out what changed in them but you can also review the entire collection of diff'd text in a Google Sheet available here.

Freedom Flight

The first and perhaps best known Wing Commander novel preview chapter was the lengthy excerpt included in the 1992 Wing Commander II Deluxe Edition manual. It covers Ralgha's interrogation and his encounter with Hassa as well as part of Hunter's visit to Firekka. You can download a PDF version of the manual here.

• There is a revision to the Kilrathi titles. Commander Jakhai becomes Kalrahr Jakhai and Ralgha is referred to as Lord rather than Captain. Thrakh’ra becomes Thrak'hra.
• The duration of Ralgha's stay in the Ghorah Khar prison is greatly reduced in the final version, from weeks to days.
• Ralgha's relationship with Hassa is changed from "old and beloved friend" to "old friend and beloved", a remarkably impactful shifting of two words.
• Ralgha originally exclaims "Not possible!" when he is told he must defect; this is removed in the final exchange.
• The final version makes several changes to better emphasize that Hunter and K'kai have never met in person.
• The detail that a Firekkan was at one point attempting to groom Hunter's eyelashes was added to the final text.
• In the initial version, K'kai's dialogue has a distinct accent that is mostly built around dropping h sounds (wi' instead of with, t'an instead of than and so on).
• Kika'li is fermented from kika seeds instead of seeds mixed with alcohol. The later version adds that Firekkans like to eat the seeds for their flavor and stress and pain reducing qualities, while human diplomats have adopted it because of the added alcohol.
• Rikik is one of many flock leaders in the original version but she is explicitly "Teehyn Ree, the leader of flock-leaders" in the final description.

This was not the only preview of Freedom Flight published! The November 1992 (Vol LXVII, No. 8, #576) issue of Amazing Stories magazine included an excerpt from Chapter Three in its Looking Forward preview section. The excerpt covers the first part of Hunter's mission to rescue the Ras Nik'hra. The changes are less significant than those to the manual excerpt but they are still very interesting. You can find a copy of the the issue online here.

• Youngblood's callsign "Puma" is not present in the Amazing Stories text. He is referred to only by his name.
• Hangover drugs are changed to simply drugs (this may have been an edit made in reverse for the magazine as it omits the section covering Hunter's hangover treatment).
• The type of Spirit's fighter is not described in the magazine version but it is implied to be a Rapier. The final book specifies that it is a Raptor and appropriately changes references to her firing a laser cannon and a dumb fire missile to a neutron gun and a friend-or-foe missile.

The magazine version also adds a short introduction from Wing Commander novel packager Bill Fawcett describing the book and setting the stage. While it may seem short, it is an interesting peek at what the people making the Wing Commander books thought about what they were doing:

Introduction by Bill Fawcett

This novel is set in the universe created by the popular Wing Commander computer games from Origin Systems. Like the best of all military books, it centers on people (and aliens) in the war and not devastation itself.

Uniquely, one of the collaborators, Ellen Guon, actually helped to design the game. The result is a fast-moving, constant action book that provides a real feel for what being part of an interstellar war would be like.

In this interlude, the pilots of the Fighter Carrier Tiger’s Claw are about to spread themselves thin in search of a raiding Kilrathi cruiser.

End Run

Amazing Stories went on to print a preview of the second Wing Commander novel, End Run, in their Winter 1994 issue (Vol LXVIII, No. 9, #578). This excerpt of Chapter VII of End Run covers the Tarawa crew's first battle at Kilrah. Unlike the Freedom Flight previews, the edits between the magazine and the final book are largely typographical. You can find a copy of the the issue online here.

The article also incudes an introduction by Bill Fawcett:

Introduction by Bill Fawcett

In End Run two of today's top action writers have teamed up to tell another story set in the same universe as the Wing Commander computer games. In this book, a light carrier has to provide a distraction that will send the Kilrathi navy scrambling after it.

Trashing the home of the Emperor's mother does the job. Now all the carrier's crew has to do is survive. In this excerpt, the carrier's fighters have just dealt with one threat — only to discover they now have to face an even larger force.

The Price of Freedom

The Price of Freedom, the Wing Commander IV novelization, was the biggest surprise. The game's manual (if it can be called that, see appendix) consists mostly of an excerpt from the upcoming book's prologue and first chapter redivided into four pieces. I discovered some pretty major changes, from characters' names to the types of ships they were flying… and there wasn't a particularly clear reason for any of it! There's some additional and murky backstory here: despite the fact that the Wing Commander IV novel shipped with what it claimed were four chapters of the adaptation, readers didn't find the book on store shelves for an entire calendar year. The story has never fully been made public but Origin explained at the time that the novel had to be held back for reworking in some fashion. For an adaptation which should've been timed to release with the game, that's an extremely expensive decision for Baen to have to make… and given that the final book was extremely different from the game in many noticeable ways it would be interesting to know what the first version looked like! Note that the booklet does credit version specific editing to Origin's Melissa Tyler, so it's possible that some of these changes may have been made in reverse specifically for the game version. You can download the manual here.

• The Confederation fighters in the opening attack are changed from Hellcats to Arrows. This is a doubly confusing change as they were Hellcats in the game!
• Two of Tiger's wingmen's names are changed. Darter becomes Sparrow and Slash becomes Scarman. The latter could be because there is a Slash in Wing Commander IV (one of the Confederation redshirts who favors the Black Lance)... but then there's also a Scar, who Scarman is repeatedly referred to as in the final text. And as with the ships, none of these names match the ones in the game (Tiger, Knave, Darter/Sparrow and Slash/Scarman vs. Russo, Sparky and Vinman). As an aside, I have always wondered if Tom Vale (Tiger) was taken from the contemporary UPN genre show Nowhere Man.
• Tiger gets an additional bit of inner monologue: "Ah, the peacetime fleet, back to polishing brass, kissing butts, and fighting against nothing more dangerous than boredom."
• "Newbee" is changed to "newbie"; this isn't a major change but I remember that odd spelling sticking out in 1996.
• The master of the Ashiri Maru has more of an accent expressed through the dialogue.
• A "sharp arc" becomes an "autoslide". Nice!
• In the manual Tiger's death is described as that he "felt a brief pain, then nothing" but in the final text he "didn't even have time to register pain".
• The Temblor Bomb as being referred to as "The Bomb" is removed.
• A mention of Operation Behemoth is dropped as is this passage about Tolwyn wearing all of his medals: "Why else, Taggart thought, would he pin on every gew-gaw and widget he'd been awarded since being commissioned?"
• An overly prophetic mention of Senators hearing rumors of "navy conspiracies" is reduced to simply "conspiracies". Similarly, Tolwyn's dialogue is edited to be sightly less dismissive of this ("little conspiracies" becomes "conspiracies" and spoken in your head by Malcolm McDowell this is a major change).
• Tolwyn's on-the-nose description of Border Worlds society is cleaned up. "Their society encourages independence and initiative rather than obedience to authority." becomes "Their loose society encourages irresponsibility and indiscriminate growth rather than cooperative and controlled development of resources for the benefit of all humans."
• The Senators who interrupt Tolwyn both have implied accents in the manual which are dropped in the final text.
• The fear of "random elements" is changed to "criminal elements".
• The final version adds a condescending line from Tolwyn where he references Paladin having once served under him in his speech. Good Wing Commander movie connection, though! (I would argue that the Tolwyn/Taggart connection in the movie material greatly improves their back and forth in Wing Commander IV. But that's a story for another time...)
• Maniac also has an implied accent in the original version ("I was 'sposed to get a squadron", "I was just passin' through", etc.).
• The canteen's "disco lights" are changed to "dancing lights and holos of yet more machines."
• The original description of the Border Worlders is removed: "It was as motley a collection of human flotsam as Blair had seen in a long time."
• The original explains that Blair is worried about pickpockets getting his wallet. "That wouldn't stop a sneak thief from picking them, but it would make it more difficult."
• In the manual, Blair orders a Hell's Kitchen like in the game. The scene is rewritten in the final book to have the bartender give Blair a drink uninvited which he then explains is all they serve.
• Bean's accent is more exaggerated in the original, though it continues to be present to some degree in the final version.
• Future economics removed from the original: "Without the steady injections of military spending to sustain the economy, it had slipped into recession, then depression. "
• The final version adds mention of Earth's factories having been destroyed in Fleet Action.

False Colors

The final preview chapter was released (with Baen's permission) by author Andrew Keith while False Colors was being edited. You can read the complete chapter online here.

• The date for the chapter is moved back sixty five days, from 2670.015 to 2669.315.
• Intelligence Officer Khirg's name is changed to Khirgh.
• The most significant change is that the original version's references to radiation from Vaku's brown dwarf are reworked to be very clear that the radiation is "weird" and "anomalous". Most significantly, the original draft's elegant concluding line, "Or persuade them that they had to work together with the human survivors if either group was going to see their homes again?", is awkwardly expanded with "before the brown dwarf's strange radiation filtered through the clouds and killed them slowly."

Pilgrim Truth

The unreleased Wing Commander novel, Pilgrim Truth, also had a published preview chapter. With permission from HarperCollins, Peter Telep released the book's Prologue on his official website during the leadup to the (canceled) release. However, there is no final version to compare so there's not much to note! You can read the prologue here. I suppose if you want to be a jerk on message boards you could use this knowledge to adopt the line that Pilgrim Truth itself is not canon though the prologue is! But to what end?

Appendix: What's the Deal with the WC Manual?!

From the original Claw Marks on, Wing Commander's manuals have always been famous for their in universe approach and copious amounts of worldbuilding. It is not an exaggeration to say that Aaron Allston and David Ladyman are as responsible for the Wing Commander universe we recognize as any programmer. Since release, fans have asked: why wasn't there such a lore manual for Wing Commander IV? The novel prequel includes a few pictures of the ships and an incorrect notation that their specifications are listed in a text file on the CD. What happened?

The first part of the answer is cold hard numbers. Every Origin game at the time had a "packaging" budget and timetable that defined what could be done for the physical release and on Wing Commander IV both were stretched with higher priorities than lore. Wing Commander IV required the pressing of more CD-ROMs than any game yet released. It also called for an extra-large custom box with a slipcover showcasing newly commissioned key art by painter Sam Yeates. Wing Commander IV's budget, determined by the intended US release, needed to press six CD-ROMs and print a custom oversized CD booklet, box and slipcover. The custom boxes were designed specifically to appeal to non-gamers and so additional money was spent on their design and production.

This 'more spectacular' packaging was part of the larger marketing campaign which focused on bringing non-gamers to the product rather than doubling down on existing fans. The size of the box, large and colorful to match a print ad campaign and to stand out on the shelves, also served to cover the initial idea that it might need up to seven CD-ROMs with their own jewel cases. This focus also meant that marketing time and money went to material that wouldn't, as happened in previous years, cycle back for reuse with a manual layout. In short, with an unusually short schedule, there just wasn't art time, render time, layout time, writing time or editing time available for a manual.

The other reason for the decision to include the novel was related to the game's production. Wing Commander IV was originally envisioned as having three sections instead of two: Blair would first fly in the Border Worlds as part of a local defense squadron facing pirates and in the process establish their distinct culture and point of view before returning to the Confederation on Tolwyn's orders and then finally defecting. With the game's compressed timeline, they compressed the first part of this into a spectacular introduction movie that, with a single mission in the middle, would establish the Border Worlds and then set up the game's story and Blair's role.

When Chris Roberts headed to Los Angeles to shoot the game, the plan was that it would open with first the Black Lance attack and then a sequence on Blair's farm where we would see how unhappy he is and learn what became of your love interest from Wing Commander III (in fact, it's rather odd that we know Blair is a farmer at all; it's only mentioned by Maniac and never seen!). Sets were designed, props were built and this was scheduled… but schedule overruns meant that there wasn't time left to shoot it. Additionally, the cantina scene which had elaborate props and extras in the hopes of being a major showcase that would establish the rough-and-tumble nature of the Border Worlders, didn't quite play as intended as shot. Including the novelization text, which adapted the unseen farm scene, meant that players of the game would at least be familiar with what was intended as they went in to the final edit (presumably, you all read the novelization during the installation!).