I posted the casualty report from the Confederation Handbook a few weeks ago and got this excellent observation! There are actually FOUR contradictory versions of the story and while Bossman dies on Angel's wing in the original, none of those details were mentioned in the movie.
Joshua Fair: Wait, I thought Bossman was flying with Angel when he bought it.
As you remember from Secret Missions 2, the original story is that you return to the Tiger's Claw and learn during the debriefing that Bossman was killed earlier that day in an ambush. In the bar afterwards, his wingman Angel is inconsolable.
After you fly another mission, she breaks down and explains that she has tried so hard to keep from making emotional connections but that deep down she cares too much about the other pilots.
Incidentally, if Angel has died dynamically at some point in your campaign Paladin instead just tells you Bossman is dead with no fanfare.
So that's version one! In 1992, Crusade was adapted as part of the first Wing Commander novel, Freedom Flight. Here, Hunter returns to the Tiger's Claw after his joyride in a captured Dralthi to learn that Bossman has died.
The story itself is similar, flying with Angel, but with more detail that is at least not directly contradictory (I'd argue that 'ambushed by Drakhai' isn't quite intended to mean what's described here, but who cares!).
The problem is that the time no longer lines up because Freedom Flight changes the order of events from the game. In SM2, Ralgha defects immediately AFTER Bossman dies while here Bossman actually helps save the Fralthi (presumably to introduce the character inside the story).
It also specifies that Hunter flies the Dralthi a week after Ralgha defects, so it's not a case of all these things happening to happen on the same day.
Then there's Super Wing Commander! Version 3 drops Crusade in favor of a similar-but-anthropomorphic-bird-free story fans have dubbed "Secret Missions 1.5" which tells the story of a secret mission to attack the base where the Sivar was constructed.
In Super Wing Commander, the conversation is largely the same: your character (Armstrong!) lands and learns that Bossman was killed flying with Angel yesterday (instead of today). The bar conversations are very similar but the big difference is that you're in the Cairo System!
In the movie, we're never told what happened to Bossman beyond that he's dead and Blair has been assigned his Rapier. There's a special nod to his 26 kill markings in the script and then later Angel reveals that she cared too much and that's why she pretends the dead don't exist.
I've always thought this should get a little more criticism than things like the depth charge scene saying there's sound in space (it doesn't, Ebert!). How did the Tiger's Claw end up recovering a fighter plane but no pilot? At the very least there has to be a story!
One thing that interests me about it was the process of deciding what defines the Wing Commander IP. If you ask consumers, it's Mark Hamill and space cats. So to decide oh, the Tiger's Claw matters and oh the Maniac-Blair relationship matters fascinates me.
Most of these things weren't intended to be core parts of the IP. The characters in WC1 were created by an artist and had a writer fill out their backstories later! Blair and Maniac's relationship, the focus of so many later stories, was fluff invented for the first hint book!
Looking back at how Bossman made it in. Kevin Droney's original script doesn't have him at all; instead, Angel's connection is her ex-boyfriend who has married while she's been in space. A hologram to her arrives with the Diligent featuring him as an older man with two children.
This is part of a 'Forever War' aspect in the original story where relativistic space travel means that the Tiger Claw crew knows that traveling to fight means letting your loved ones age and die without you. This is slowly cut in rewrites before being ALMOST entirely eliminated.
Somehow, one aspect of this made it all the way to the finished movie: Maniac and Rosie's postcoital conversation about 'the briefing' and how "by the time you return, everyone you know will be dead and buried". It just doesn't tie back to anything else discussed in the movie!
Mike Finch's third draft adds Bossman and the 'never existed' plot. The original version reveals the intention: he had been Angel's Wing Commander and he was ambushed by Salthi. The ship mystery is also explained with mention that he died in sickbay.
… and then much of that was cut for the shooting script, leaving the authors of the Confederation Handbook to determine their own story. And here it is, in the form of a letter from Angel to Bossman's wife!
So what's the point? Well, in every case Bossman's death is intended to impact Angel, making her vulnerable. In the games (and Freedom Flight) it's an intentional prelude to Spirit's death in Wing Commander II and in the movie it's what breaks the 'never existed' thing.
That said, there's also a very simple cosmological reason for killing Bossman in the game takes: Wing Commander can only have so many wingmen on the kill board and it needs slots for Jazz and Doomsday! (Paladin is the other, who retires.)
What was the relationship with Bossman and Angel intended to be? It's never clear and while he creatively replaces her high school boyfriend, Pilgrim Stars does eventually make it canon that their relationship was not romantic.
Oh and his death isn't the only thing we can't agree on. What's his NAME? WC1 says he's Chen Kien… his fighter in the movie says CHARLES CHEN… and then for some reason the tie-in material all chooses VINCE CHEN. But then we have trouble even agreeing on what he looks like, so!
Appendix: there are also contradictions about his family. Claw Marks says his daughter was born March '53, the guide says he hasn't seen his wife and daughter in a year as of November '54 and Super Wing Commander claims he's never met his 11-month-old daughter as of August '55!
By the way, in the strategy guide Bossman doesn't even seem to know his own name (Chen is HIS surname!..).
To close, continuity is a lot more fascinating when you aren't so worried about making it all 'fit'. That's a fun exercise (we could even do it here!), but looking at how and why things were created the way they were is a lot more rewarding in the long run. Young Ben would NEVER!
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