This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.
When we picked up the Wing Commander IV Polaroids this was one I was sure we'd never figure out. It wasn't labeled and the picture wasn't especially clear. She could be a patron in the bar on Nephele (few of whom are visible!), a reporter or a politician from the Assembly scenes... or anywhere else! It turns out I did not need to fear: she's actually a character with a fairly major scene... the comm officer who sends a distress message from the Telamon System. Blair and Sosa listen in horror as she reveals the Black Lance attack:
If you can hear this, it might not be too late. Unmarked ships are attacking and many people are dying! We know planet FT957 is far from any other colony, but, if you have any Humanity, please, send help immediately! Otherwise, our world is doomed – I don’t know if this damn thing is working!
The manual identifies the role (oddly specifically) as "Telamon Female Comm Officer" as played by Kirsten Moore. The IMDb says that Kirsten Moore is better known as Kirsten Severson. She went on to appear in a number of small roles through the early twenty-teens. Her credits seem to have a special focus as a motion capture performer with roles in The Polar Express and Mars Needs Moms. She has since left Hollywood for a private life and we've opted not to include a current photo because she doesn't maintain a public profile online.
This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.
Today we're giving you two Polaroids for the price of one! What's going on here? You're seeing two different pirate characters--Pirate and Pirate Ace--played by the same actor for their video loops. In the game, these appear as a total of six different video loops (three for each) that can have any pirate dialogue played over them (taunts, death screams, etc.). We can't confirm that the voice work, recorded later, was actually the credited actor, Todd Kimsey (despite being labeled 'Pirate #4' on both Polaroids, he's listed as only Pirate in the game's credits and no others appear in live action footage.) It's amazing how the amount of costume work you see in those photos ultimately becomes about five seconds of monochrome footage that ends up intentionally blurred and distorted!
This is the first close look we've ever had at the pirate costumes which appeared only in the VDU. And while they're simple robes they have some pretty interesting details that aren't in frame in the finished game! Both pirates feature previously unseen gold insignia on their chests. The helmets are existing Confederation pilots smeared with red and black paint to show off that they've been roughly lilberated from their original wearers. The first pirate's helmet (which IS visible in the game and which has appeared in other surviving pictures) has 'ROBERTS' crossed out and 'TRASHED' scrawled above it. The other simply blacks out the entire front of the helmet. The ace pilot also wears a set of more familiar insignias: Confederation pilot wings and three military ribbons worn on the wrong side. If, like many of the ribbons used in the production, they are real world military surplus then they're likely the Republic of Vietnam Staff Service Medal (Second class), Joint Meritorious Unit Award and Army of Occupation Medal.
In another bit of luck, Origin saved slightly higher color photos of both pirate VDUs while doing pre-production research on possible helmet designs for Wing Commander Prophecy. It's interesting to see that the pirate fighters are actually backlit with a bright green color:
Actor Todd Kimsey would go on to see plenty of success for nearly two decades following Wing Commander, performing numerous TV and film roles including the 2001 Planet of the Apes reboot. He's is certainly best recognized as Elaine's communist boyfriend in an episode of Seinfeld. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2016 at age 54 after a battle with lymphoma. You can learn more about his life at a memorial page hosted by alma mater, Davidson College. Once again, it's terribly sad to find that another Wing Commander veteran has passed away without having had their work really recognized.
This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.
We're stepping away from flight suits for today's Wing Commander IV Polaroid post. What we have here is something intriguing: a young woman in a non-standard uniform with a nametag that reads "LOATS". The picture is labeled only "Com. Specialist" and features no visible insignia patches, making this one an interesting challenge... or not, because despite two typos the start to our seach is right in the manual connected right to the text under the photo: "Circle V Comm. Specialist - Saxon Trainer". The 'Circle V' must actually be 'Circe V', an embattled planet you (optionally) visit midway through the game and a short Google search revealed that "Saxon Trainer" is really Saxon TRAINOR.
Who, then, is LOATS? If you tend to side with Panther over Hawk then you may just remember her: at the end of the Circe series she contacts the Intrepid to thank you for your help. She actually has some pretty extensive dialogue, quoted below... along with possibly one of the single worst phrases ever put to script in which she describes a transmission she is sending to you as "a hefty data-squirt". She's credited as "Circean Communications Specialist" in the script and the scene is all about rewarding Blair and company with a package of spy data that Circe's deep space network has collected. The scene is likely forgotten because this never really pays off in terms of the implied gameplay reward... but you can tell it was intended to be something of a hook/reward for players who suffered through the tougher do-gooder Circe missions rather than collecting toys at Speradon! But nothing was ever implemented, so it doesn't change the ending of the game or add access to any special equipment.
C.I.C. - SOSA -K3
Blair sees sosa at her console...
SOSA
Sir, I think you're going to find this very interesting...
as he moves closer, Blair sees a CIRCEAN COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST on Sosa's terminal screen.
CIRCEAN (COMM SCREEN)
Colonel, I just want to tell you how much your efforts have meant to all of us here in Circe.
BLAIR
Just doing our duty. I'll pass your thanks on to the crew.
CIRCEAN (COMM SCREEN)
We have something else we'd like to offer you... During the Kilrathi war we built a pretty extensive eavesdropping web around the outer edges of this system. This civil war has narrowed our focus greatly, so there's been little time to process what the web's picked up -- it's mostly been archived. Parsing this encrypted stuff isn't a priority for us, but maybe you'll find some use for it.
(to Sosa)
It's a hefty data-squirt, Lieutenant. Hope you have the bandwidth.
SOSA
Hell, yes. Open the floodgates.
she hits some buttons and we see an "upload thermometer" engage.
BLAIR
Keep me posted on this.
The Google search which located the correct spelling of the actress' name also turned up some excellent news: unlike several of the other featured players we've showcased in this series, Ms. Trainor is still working in Hollywood today! She has wracked up dozens of familiar credits over the years and even runs a company called The Studio that offers acting classes and coaching! Genre fans will be happy to hear that she has appeared in episodes of just about every series you fondly remember, from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Sliders to The X-Files!
In the end, this one little preserved Polaroid has taught us quite a bit of Wing Commander IV lore, from what a specialist uniform looks like to the fact that the character was named Loats! Just the connection that she was calling from Circe V or the fact that people from the system are called Circean are on their own interesting. If only more of this kind of material had survived!
This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.
Last Thanksgiving, we wrote about a Polaroid of Moose and how the character represented three different people at once: the actor who played him in a cutscene, the member of the development team whose name and photograph were used for his wingman selection screen and finally the member of the Playstation team whose name replaced them in that port. Now, we've found a polaroid that represents FOUR different people! Meet Miner.
Unraveling the Polaroid meant once again dealing with a small problem: Miner is in full Confederation fighter pilot costume (next to the nose of the famous Confederation shuttle set!) and so his face isn't very visible. Luckily, the "Mike" and "Confed Pilot" scribbled at the bottom were enough to move the needle: the game's printed credits do indeed credit a Confed Pilot... MICHAEL Wachtel! From there, we learned that like most of the others we've learned about he was a young actor just starting out when Wing Commander IV was being shot. He worked a variety of extra jobs hoping for bigger roles. In the final game, he appears in three of the 'transition' scenes aboard the TCS Lexington; whatever flight deck shot he was dressed in gloves and a helmet for must have wound up on the cutting room floor!
Michael Wachtel ultimately had only one other credited featured role: as Marine #1 in an episode of Wing Commander's nearest cousin, Space Above and Beyond. The episode, "Dear Earth", aired just three weeks after Wing Commander IV shipped! Mr. Wachtel's career in front of the camera may have been short but he didn't leave the industry! He went on to found a company called Production Security Services which continues to provide... well, security services, to this day!
Who is Miner the character? Blink-and-you'll-miss-him but Miner appears in the very first mission of Wing Commander IV: he (along with wingman Quality) are providing CAP for Bluepoint station when you and Maniac arrive. Like a number of other Confederation pilots, he doesn't appear on the Lexington's killboard until the Tyr series. This was to prevent recording too many sets of mission-specific comms for the talk-heavy Hellespont series. But you still don't actually get to fly with him - he'll show as being in sickbay every time! He finally appears again during the defection mission where you'll either have to shoot down him or Vagabond. Like Moose, Miner uses the 'generic' wingman VDU that does not show his callsign. While the game's files include text that allows Miner to appear in various other missions (like the discovery of the flashpacked transport) there are no audio files and he can't actually be selected as a wingman.
Miner gave up on being a "people person" before he hit his teenage years. His home sector has a very dark sun, and he comes from the farthest planet out. The icy and inhospitible conditions didn't allow for very much people interaction. He's an audience - a people watcher. Most people feel he is cold and calculating, never realizing that he has a much clearer idea of events than nearly anyone else onboard.
Like the previously profiled Moose (and every other Wing Commander IV redshirt who appears in cutscenes), Miner is represented in the game by a face and name that do not match the actor playing him. When you select him as a wingman you see that he's "Chris Douglas". Now Chris Douglas is a name every Wing Commander fan should know: his contributions across most of the series were incredibly important, from his modeling and texturing ships in Wing Commander II to acting as one of the first modern game art directors on Wing Commander III and IV. From knife-like Kilrathi spaceships to a Confederation fleet that would've looked at home on a modern aircraft carrier, his influence on Wing Commander was enormous. He's even credited with originally breaking the Wing Commander IV story!
But wait, who's this? Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander IV has a completely different name and picture for Miner! Shown here is Rodney "Miner" Brunet, again an Origin Systems employee. At first we assumed this was a case of an unexpected change being made to the game late in development after the official guide had already signed off (a necessity in order for it to be printed and on store shelves). But then I started another run through Wing Commander IV and found... this time, Miner (in-game) had switched to Rodney Brunet! Same copy of the game, no differences at all in settings. We knew we could be pretty sure this was NOT a case of removing a fired employee; Mr. Brunet would go on to work for Chris Roberts at Digital Anvil, animating sequences for the Wing Commander movie. After several play through's of the game's first five missions we discovered it's the result of possibly an ancient Easter egg: if you choose to help the drunk in the intro then Miner is Chris Douglas and if you don't he's Rodney Brunet! Why? The reasoning may be lost to time, but enabling this meant including two separate sets of pilot names in three languages each in LANGUAGES.TRE! Mr. Brunet has been a prolific artist throughout the industry since Digital Anvil. In fact, his career seems to represent the exact dream behind that studio: countless game projects for Microsoft alongside film work for Robert Rodriguez on projects like Planet Terror and Machete. He maintains a website with lots of fascinating work from his career!
Finally, the name (but NOT the picture!) was changed in the PlayStation port of Wing Commander IV. Chris Douglas became Kevin Armstrong... but unlike other PlayStation name changes there's no Kevin Armstrong in the credits! We know that Kevin Armstrong was a QA tester for Origin Systems in 1993 when he worked on Ultima VII Part 2. He would go on to join Lion Entertainment, the Austin-based company responsible for several major Macintosh and PlayStation conversions. He's credited as a programmer on Lion's port of Quake but while the company did much of the work on Wing Commander IV he isn't listed when the credits roll. Of course we couldn't let the story end on a question mark so with some heavy digging through the Usenet we discovered a 1997 post from Mr. Armstrong that specifically says he's working on WCIV PSX (source!). It's not uncommon for developers not to be credited for their work so it's pretty neat that we can end this story with one more name on Wing Commander IV's roll of honor.
This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.
You knew he was coming! Today's Polaroid is Border Worlds Pilot #2, Lester Barrie. Like Moose and Bob-O-Matte, Hacker appears briefly in the Peleus jammer introduction where his Banshee is shot down by a group of Excaliburs. His continuity Polaroid gives us a great look at a grey Border Worlds flight suit and a bit of a cheat the production used frequently: since Hacker was only ever seen from the shoulders up he doesn't have a full flight suit... just the top!
This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.
Our Polaroid research continues to produce surprising stories: this time, we've found a justified star. Or at least... the star of Justified! While the label on the photograph reads "BW Pilot Garret 'Moose'", the actor in question is none other than Walton Goggins (credited as Walt Goggins). Moose appears in the Peleus jamming scene, one of the three Border Worlds Banshee pilots that are ambushed and shot down by a flight of Excaliburs. The Polaroid gives us a great look at a Border Worlds flight suit, which the production dyed grey from the original tan Confederation suits with some minor alterations (like the Union of Border Worlds patch on his left shoulder).
Credited as Border Worlds Pilot #3, Mr. Goggins would quickly go from nearly faceless tertiary character to major star, one of the more recognizable actors working today. In the last decade he has conquered both television with lead roles in Justified, Vice Principals and others and film with appearances in movies like Predators, The Hateful Eight and the recent Tomb Raider. While his face is never seen in Wing Commander IV, his distinct ice blue eyes are easy to pick out!
So why haven't you noticed Walton Goggins before? It's not because of his blink-and-you-miss-it, visually obscured role... it's because the game and it's associated media have told you to think of the person beneath the Moose helmet as a large bald man! Unlike the other two 'jammer' victims, Hacker and Bob-O-Matte, Moose appears as an option on the Intrepid's roster of wingmen up until his scripted death which means you can pick him from the screen below where he is clearly not Walton Goggins.
That's because the 'redshirt' pilot portraits on the selection screen aren't from the film production at all... in fact, they're the Origin developers identified in the listed names. Here, Moose's face is Wing Commander IV's assistant product manager Patrick Bradshaw. Mr. Bradshaw worked in Origin's marketing group and served as product manager for Wing Commander IV, Kilrathi Saga, Privateer 2, Prophecy and other familiar titles. He may be best known to players, though, as the model for the four-page Christmas-themed Origin advertisement which appeared in magazines around December 1995. Origin held an open casting call for this campaign at the office and several developers appeared in related ads. Talk about putting everything into the job!
If you're a veteran of the Playstation version of the game then you may be confused by all this; the Playstation team kept the original portraits but used the names as an opportunity to tuckerize their own team members... Patrick "Moose" Bradshaw becomes Brian "Moose" Adams, credited as PlayStation Data Manager on the title. It's also interesting that Moose's canonical biography from Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander IV further reinforces the idea implied by his callsign that he's an imposing, tall man despite this never being visible in any way in the game:
Moose is a big, quiet nice guy, although most people find his size intimidating. In terms of combat experience, he's logged thousands of hours of combat time, but most of the actual combat was of the "hot and heavy" variety. He became a fighter because he wanted to see the galaxy first hand, but also "wants to make a difference". He was the first in his family to enter service rather than work in an industrial field.
You also don't hear Goggins voice when you fly with Moose. That's because most (but not all - more on that in a future update!) of the redshirts don't have unique videos and their voiceover work was done by local voice talent in Austin rather than actors from the film shoot. Instead, the second unit shoot recorded loops of a pilot with an unlabeled helmet. Since the clips don't show the characters' mouths, any set of responses could be played over these clips. That's why Moose has a helmet in the film clip above but when you fly with him you simply see this:
You may recall that we've previously covered Border Worlds Pilot #1, "Bob-O-Matte", who was played by Mauricio Mendoza. That leaves one more credited Border Worlds pilot from the jammer scene... and we'll learn more about his surprising life next!
This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.
Today's polaroid led us to several interesting stories. Pictured here as "Confed Cap #3" is actor Charles "Chip" Esten. Since appearing as a featured extra in Wing Commander IV, Esten has gone on to a considerable amount of success including appearing as a series regular on ABC drama Nashville, playing Josh Porter on The Office and on multiple iterations of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Mr. Esten is very active today and even retweeted our request to help identify his polaroid!
The polaroid gives you a good look at a Terran Confederation Navy jacket complete with a name and rank that aren't visible on screen (JARVIS and Lieutenant Commander, respectively). Wing Commander Prophecy would later establish a different canonical rank for Lieutenant Commander (three squares). As a featured extra, Esten is credited in the game as "Generic Cap #1". While there are multiple claims online that these credits belong to the voice actors responsible for capital ship comms, that is incorrect. The 'Generic Cap' characters are the background Navy and Space Force officers who appear throughout the TCS Lexington scenes, mostly in the briefing room, rec room and during the game's series of elaborate transition videos. While it's difficult to be absolutely sure, we believe Esten is most visible as a communications officer who appears in several of the briefing scenes and in the initial ready room meeting with Captain Eisen. The numbering of the polaroid itself indicates that it was taken during a second unit shoot of transition scenes (where multiple Navy officers are visible though none clearly enough to confirm their identity).
We don't have any polaroids for the other three Generic Cap credits so we thought we'd go ahead and look them up for this story. Unfortunately, some of what we learned ended up being very tragic, but in a way that we thought it would be important to report.
Generic Cap #2 is credited to "Michael Haplin" which turned out to be a complete dead end; Haplin has no other credits and no picture available online... nor is there any other mention of him in public archives. As a credited extra, though, he would have been a Hollywood professional rather than someone stepping in for a background cameo. Further searching suggested that Haplin is actually a typo and that it should be Michael Halpin. Sure enough, Michael Halpin is a succesful actor on both stage and screen who has since gone into production. You can find his biography here at The Unusual Suspects, a theater group he manages.
Generic Cap #3 is Carolyn "Cookie" Carosella who is visible in the background of rec room scenes and during the Lexington transitions; she's the taller blonde pilot with her hair in a bun. Her character's nametag is not visible but she wears a Space Force pilot's uniform with a 2nd Lt.'s rank badge. Ms. Carosella went on to success not only as an actress but also a casting agent and producer. Unfortunately, her story ends very sadly: she battled cancer for several years and ultimately passed away in 2021. In her final years, she told her story through a now defunct website hoping to inspire others who were also battling the disease. You can find a video interview of her discussing her fight here. It's terribly sad to lose anyone to such a horrible disease, but there's also an added melancholy here knowing that someone that helped make our universe was publicly suffering and we didn't even know who she was. At least Wing Commander IV will keep a little part of her alive off in the Epsilon Sector... and we'll remember her here.
Generic Cap #4 is Jeffrey Arbaugh. He's visible in the background of briefing room scenes (see below) and transition videos. Like many of the other background performers we've researched, he's still working in film and on stage today, with a host of credits. You can find a recent newspaper profile about him here.
This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the first post in the series' introduction here.
Fans of behind the scenes trivia likely also know Bob-O-Matte's namesake: the FMV games' compositing was enabled by a system called Ultimatte which was operated by a company called BlueScreen LLC owned by Bob Kertesz. Ultimatte + Bob Kertesz = Bob-O-Matte! Although much of his face was obscured in Wing Commander IV, Bob-O-Matte was played by an actor named Mauricio Mendoza in both productions. Mr. Mendoza has had a very succesful career in the decades since Wing Commander, appearing constantly on both stage and screen. His agent has posted a detailed IMDb biography and you can find him on social media.
We have purchased a little bit of Wing Commander history and are passing the information on to you! Artifacts from the Origin Museum are currently being auctioned on eBay which has the excellent effect of revealing some interesting Wing Commander material we did not know survived! In this case, a set of twenty seven polaroids from Wing Commander IV's Second Unit shoot which are full of fascinating behind the screens and lore information, including some better-than-ever looks at some of the game's different costumes and never-before-recorded identities of various background characters! We're studying each polaroid and collecting what we can about how it relates to the game and will be updating one at a time. Wing Commander IV's Second Unit shoot took care of things like shipboard transitions and comm videos. In the case of the latter, actors were typically filmed in front of a single small backdrop intended to imply a larger space station, military bunker or capital ship bridge. Our hope is to identify as many of the actors and roles as possible and then tell you all we can about them.
Our first snapshot was the easiest to identify: this is Todd Covert who the game credits as "Bluepoint Traffic Control". Players will immediately recognize him from one of the first comm videos where he welcomes you to Bluepoint and gives you permission to land at the end of the first mission. We can see from the polaroid that he is wearing a "Tiger" nametag, which is something we will find on a number of Wing Commander IV extras (the nametags could be easily swapped so that one costume could be used by multiple characters). Here's an in-game shot of his appearance:
In the polaroid he seems to be standing in front of a MIP, giving us a close look at that set. In the game itself, his backdrop seems to be one of the same 'computer walls' used in the Lexington's briefing room (a logical choice as the Lexington and Bluepoint would share similar systems and aesthetics). Where are they know? We were excited to learn that Mr. Covert is still acting! He has had a lengthy and well respected career, largely on stage rather than film. You can access an interview about his career here and you can find his official website here.
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