Goodbye Lacey Reid

I have never wanted less to write something in this space. Yesterday, we lost a bright star in our universe. Lacey Reid (née Lacey Kumanchik) passed away after the fiercest fight with cancer anyone could ever conceive of. To rip off the bandage, as awkward as it seems: Lacey was the beloved wife of our founder Chris Reid and the mother of their three beautiful children. She was an engineer and an author and the kind of deep, bright soul. She is someone you do not know but who came into our lives in a way that was so important to (among many greater things) this space right here. We will plan to tell you more about her life in the future but I'm going to go ahead and try to tell you the briefest story of how I knew her in the hopes that you might think of her today as dearly as I have and always will. I hope that it's clear that in this incredible pain there is also infinite recompense from how incredible a person she was and how we were allowed, all too briefly, to have had her in our lives.

There has never been a more unlikely pair of friends than Chris Reid and me. We're a true Mutt and Jeff pair: I'm a big fat slob and Chris is short and fit and neat to a fault. Chris is a brilliant natural organizer and left to my own devices I'll cycle into endless thinky liberal arts nonsense and never get anything done. We live on opposite sides of the country and keep different schedules and there's every reason in the galaxy that we shouldn't be best friends. I met Chris in 1995 or so when we were each the respective obnoxious know-it-all of different parts of the nascent Wing Commander community: I ran the table at Origin's Official Wing Commander Chat Zone and Chris was the unquestioned master of alt.games.wing-commander on the Usenet. I remember we argued furiously about one of those true existential questions: when Wing Commander IV took place, 2672 or 2673 (Chris was right, for the record). By all rights we should've been enemies but instead we somehow came to realize that we completed each other in some special way. So we joined forces… and together (with the help of some amazing friends) we made one heck of a website and what I think is an enduring community!

I met Chris "IRL" in 1999 for what then seemed like the high point of our lives: the Austin SXSW premiere of the Wing Commander movie. We were both terrified high school kids who were seeing a world we'd dreamed about all our lives. And I should stress that meeting someone from the internet, especially in a strange city halfway across the country, wasn't something you did in 1999. But our moms bought us plane tickets and sent us on our way, presumably understanding what unthreatening dorky friends we already were. But it was wonderful and I, the most antisocial man in the world, left looking forward to the time someday in the future when I could see my friend again. And he must have felt the same way, because over the years we found reasons to get together despite the differences. We'd organize visits to conventions, archiving projects, movies that we both loved. And in that time we both grew up (more or less) and got jobs and lived our lives all the while continuing to work on the CIC (an update every day!).

In 2009, Chris and a bunch of our other old Wing Commander fans got together in Washington DC for something we were really excited about: the new Star Trek movie. We saw the first show in IMAX theater at the Air and Space Museum and we were all so happy to be together that we went out and saw it again at another theater afterwards. But it turned out Chris had somewhere else to be. I would later learn that he went home to Seattle and saw the movie again on a date! Which was exciting, we were awkward nerds! Neither of us were exactly ladies men. After that, he started to mention Lacey more and more. She was a fellow engineer at the (I'll leave it anonymous) airliner manufacturer Chris worked for. Men, especially men in their twenties, don't share so much about their personal lives directly, but you could just tell from how he'd want to mention her that this was a big deal. I remember using my elite internet skills to try to find out as much as I could about this woman who was threatening to take my buddy away! And what I learned was that she was pretty fascinating (she wrote romance novels and was GOOD at it) and obviously very smart. And as jealous as I might've subconsciously been, I was so happy to know that Chris was happy. And over the next few years we heard more and more about her whenever we'd meet up for some adventure or another. They got married in 2014 and we all flew up to Seattle to be part of it. And it was an incredible, incredible time. These two born organizers pulled off an event for the ages that was also so distinctly them and so distinctly human. It was held at the Museum of Flight and it was so wonderful to see how many people loved them. My antisocial streak continues to this day and I've absolutely never been to a wedding I didn't want to leave immediately… before or since, but that night in Seattle we danced under an SR-71 well into the night and I don't think anyone ever wanted it to end.

So as I said you didn't know Lacey Reid, but she was so important to why we are still here. Why we are more mature and smarter and better people than we had been. She made my friend, the man that made all of this website possible, so happy. She completed him in life the same way he did me in Wing Commander fandom. And I have so very many great memories of just that, whether it was Chris facetiming everyone the news after one of those Cloud Imperium Wing Commander anniversary livestreams that he came down for that they expecting or just seeing the slightest mention of here here in the news that she'd made a cake for the site's birthday or that they'd gone plane watching together. These felt like little cracks of humanity in my friend sneaking out into the world we'd made here and seeing them you just knew we were all better for it. And after they were married, we were blessed to get to know Lacey. She wasn't taking my friend away, she loved him and understood how important his world was. I'm so glad they got to come see us when we lived in California and everything seemed so happy. I'm so glad I got to know her. We became friends on social media and would tweet and later skeet back and forth. It was obvious that she was amazing. She lifted up Chris, she was clearly an incredible, thoughtful mom, she was endlessly socially conscious and she was just as smart and witty as I imagined snooping around about her when I first learned her name. And it was also pretty clear in our friendship she knew exactly how much I loved her husband and that she knew I would do my best to be there for her and that she appreciated that. (She also thought I was more famous than I actually am from all my Star Citizen nonsense, which seemed like such a kindness!) If there is a concept of a good soul, it was Lacey. If there isn't then she persisted in spite of that reality.

But that's another part of the story and it's an important one to remember here: Lacey fought cancer so hard. She found out very unexpectedly several years ago that she had what was very clearly terminal cancer. Doctors gave her very little time and she said hell no to that. She fought through countless surgeries and treatments and through so much pain and suffering. She lived to get to see her kids go to school and make happy memories with her and as almost impossible as it was to watch it happen it was also the brightest kind of shining humanity you can ever imagine. I could not have done it, I could not have come close. But she was so strong and she showed us what we would've thought was impossible. I'm privileged to have known her and seen such a good, good fight. She was so special in so many ways I'm not capable of expressing, that I'm forgetting and that I'm already mad at myself for forgetting to say in this space.

As much as this all hurts, I am so happy she found Chris, made him an even better person and that I got to know her. Most of her story isn't mine at all, but I will be endlessly grateful for what she, without a hint of selfishness, shared with me. I can't… artfully express how much hurt there is right now. How much anger that just I have that this beautiful family had to suffer for so long only to reach this inevitable end. How sad I am that the thing that felt like my friend's missing piece is gone. How furious I am that she can't be there for the kids she loved so dearly (I will note that they are lucky to have such a conscious and good father to help them through this nightmare). But I do know that all of these things hurt because they mattered in the first place. That we feel her loss because it is a true loss, and though we are worse for this tragedy having occurred we are better for having known her at all. And I'm happy that I got to let you know how I knew her.

My dear friend Chris, I love you and I am so sorry. My dear friend Lacey, I love you and I am so sorry.

Annual Call For Award Nominations

Better late than ever! We've been spinning a few too many plates these past few months and we just haven't had time to do the 2025 Fan Project of the Year and Hall of Fame award contest yet. But we don't want to give up on the tradition, so we're kicking it off today!

As always, we are asking the community to highlight your favorite projects of the past year. It could be massive ongoing fan games, it could be fan art or music or it could be any of the incredible mods or utilities that WingNuts have put hard work into.

We will also be deciding the second ever Hall of Fame award. You can nominate projects or individual fans who have made a contribution to the community and the fandom over the year. Last year's winners were Klavs and HCl so whoever you nominate will have to be pretty impressive!

Please email your nominations to news@wcnews.com and check back next week for the final vote. Here are our previous honored winners:

I also want to note that I'm handling this job for the first time in CIC history. The competition has always been run by Chris Reid in the past and it's a great example of the kind of thankless, labor intensive work he does for the CIC while I get to have fun thinking about Privateer 2 lore and movie trivia. Chris will return next year so I want to take this rare opportunity to thank him for his endless work. CIC staff aren't eligible for the Hall of Fame award but if they were, Chris would be first on my list.

Finally, to head this off at the pass: you are not allowed to give your Wing Commander Project of the Year award to the President, no matter how pathetically he may beg.

Matthew Lillard Appreciates You!

Late last year, veteran Wing Commander actor Matthew Lillard made headlines after being insulted by director Quentin Tarantino. Movie lovers everywhere reacted with a surprising amount of anger to Tarantino's dismissal of the Maniac and Lillard was very open at the time about how much it hurt. Now he's back to thank the fans who supported him. In an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lillard took the time to appreciate everyone who had a kind word.

“It was like living through your own wake,” Lillard describes of all the tributes he received from his peers in the business on social media. “All those R.I.P. emails or tweets and Instagram posts and TikToks, all of the things we see after somebody passes are so sweet. And the reality is I just got to live through all of it firsthand — alive and kicking! I can't imagine a more lovely reaction to what happened.”

“It was crazy. I keep showing it to my wife to convince her that I am worthy, that people still like me,” Lillard tells EW, taking on a more jokey tone. “I am a piece of ass!”

He later adds, "Nobody has to like me. Nobody has to like any actor out there, obviously. It's personal preference. I am not everyone's first choice, that is obvious, but to then have that kind of reaction was beautiful.”

You can read the full interview here. I hope he know show much we genuinely appreciate his work on Wing Commander, as silly as that sounds to say!

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 are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Air Force One (1997) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

After Action Report: Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future

The Wing Commander movie club has traveled twenty minutes into the future to experience Max Headroom and... well, it was hard to see why this was such a big deal in 1984. This telemovie kicked off three separate televisions serieses and countless of ads and cameos for the character but it really feels like a 1980s Doctor Who or (complementary) a Privateer 2 cutscene. I also checked out the US version which retold this story as a 45 minute TV episode and found that although there was some more money spent on the sets it was pretty similar!

Max Headroom may not have been much of a movie but it helped us find some new Wing Commander history! You may recall that the big connection for our series was that the design pitch for the cancelled Privateer 3 listed Max Headroom as an influence on the game's world... which surely means that punk 1980s cyberpunk dystopia sense from the story's setting. But while researching material for the week's event I happened to connect with a veteran artist who worked on the Loose Cannon team in 1998. They still had access to a VHS tape from an executive review which included a number of never before seen ship renders and sketches! The resolution isn't great (we're going to try for a high quality transfer of the tape) but it's pretty fascinating to get a new look at all the incredible work done for this game that never saw the light of day...

The other small Wing Commander connection was that the film's female lead was Amanda Pays who played a Kindred assassin in Privateer 2: The Darkening. Here she plays the controller who helps out Edison remotely while he's reporting. She would reprise the role for the American television series there years later!

Movie Ephemera Down Under

Here's an interesting eBay find: an Australian press sheet for the Wing Commander movie. This document would've been set to film distributors that were interested in running the movie in their theaters. It contains a unique synopsis (with the correct year!) data about the film and information about what promotional support will be available.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
FILM DISTRIBUTORS PTY LTD
PRESS SHEET

SYNOPSIS
Earth year 2654. The Confederation is engaged in a brutal war with the vicious, bloodthirsty alien race, the Kilrathl. The Kilrathi have captured a computer navigation device, which they plan on using to jump behind enemy lines and attack Earth. Only three brazen young space pilots and their elite fighter squadron stand in the way of their planet's destruction.

Christopher Blair is fresh from the Academy, but his inexperience belies his incredible navigational skills. He has a genetically driven gift - an inate feel for the stars and for space-time itself. Blair's buddy, Todd 'Maniac' Marshall, is a brash, irresponsible fighter jock with a slightly crazed gleam in his eye. He likes to do things his way, and if he breaks a few rules, so much the better.

Their wing commander is the strong-willed and beautiful Jeanette 'Anger Deveraux, the leader of the fighter squadron. Deveraux's laser-like focus and leadership skills mask her growing attraction for Chris. With nothing but their own rebellious ways in common, Deveraux, Blair and Maniac will come together to face a seemingly invincible enemy — with the future of mankind at stake.

FILM FACTS
Censorship: PG
PARENTAL GUIDANCE RECOMMENDED FOR PERSONS UNDER 15 YEARS
MEDIUM LEVEL VIOLENCE
MEDIUM LEVEL COARSE LANGUAGE.
SEXUAL REFERENCES
Time:100 minutes Process: Cinemascope, SR, SRD Spools: 6

ACCISSORIES
One Sheets, Daybills
Advertising ....As Shown.
Trailer

What's Missing from GOG?

For over a decade now, GOG has been the online home of classic Origin games. It has introduced countless new fans to series like Wing Commander, Ultima and Crusader. But... what's missing? Origin published dozens of games in its two decades of development and there are plenty of gems that simply aren't available today. So we've conducted a quick audit in the hopes of bringing some recognition to the titles that still can't be legally played today. We've attempted to Origin's output into three categories: the 1980s, 1990s and then an appendix of related titles that weren't developed by or published under the Origin label. The lists do not include re-releases or mission disks, assuming that any GOG release would be the most complete version of that particular title.

Publisher Era (1983-1990)

From 1983 to 1990, Origin was a workshop-style studio which partnered with independent creators to develop and published their games in exchange for a stake in their release. In that time they released 20 games ranging from Ultima III and Caverns of Callisto in 1983 to Bad Blood in 1990. Eight of these games have been published digitally on GOG, primarily from the Ultima series. Of the remaining games, two do not have MS-DOS ports (Caverns of Callisto and Ring Quest). The other 10 games would be easy to release from a technical standpoint but depending on the individual deals they may not be owned outright by Electronic Arts (this is the case with Space Rogue, which has been published on GOG independently). Two of them, AutoDuel and Omega, are adapted from pen and paper games developed by Steve Jackson Games which may make a digital rerelease more difficult. Two of these games, Moebius and Windwalker, represent a series. Ring Quest is a text based adventure game by Dallas Snell which was the sequel to a game called The Quest which was never republished by Origin. Knights of Legend is a standalone game which has notable connections to the Ultima games. 2400 A.D., Times of Lore, Omega, Tangled Tales and Bad Blood are standalone IPs; Times of Lore and Bad Blood might be particularly interesting because of their place in Chris Roberts' storied career.

• Caverns of Callisto (1983)
• Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony (1985)
• Ring Quest (1986)
• AutoDuel (1986)
• Ogre (1986)
• 2400 A.D. (1988)
• Times of Lore (1988)
• Knights of Legend (1989)
• Omega (1989)
• Tangled Tales: The Misadventures of a Wizard's Apprentice (1989)
• Windwalker (1989)
• Bad Blood (1990)

Studio Era (1990-2004)

The second half of the Origin story is as a more familiar development studio that owned its own IPs (and later was owned and financed by published Electronic Arts). Wing Commander and Ultima VI were the titles that changed their police and everything after 1991 was published by EA rather than Origin directly. During this time, Origin released 40 games. 25 of these games are available through GOG. Of the remaining 15 titles, 5 do not have MS-DOS or Windows 9x ports (Ultima: Runes of Virtue, Origin FX, Ultima: Runes of Virtue II, Metal Morph and Super Wing Commander), one is an MMO (Ultima Online) and one was released free online (Transland). The final eight games include three in the Jane's series of military simulations, two titles developed by other studios (Shadowcaster and Abuse) and three truly essential in-house games whose lack of release is baffling: Pacific Strike, CyberMage and Wings of Glory. Any of these would be easy wins for GOG and EA!

• Ultima: Runes of Virtue (1991)
• Origin FX (1992)
• Shadowcaster (1993)
• Ultima: Runes of Virtue II (1993)
• Pacific Strike (1994)
• Metal Morph (1994)
• Super Wing Commander (1994)
• CyberMage: Darklight Awakening (1995)
• Wings of Glory (1995)
• Abuse (1996)
• Jane's AH-64D Longbow (1996)
• Transland (1996)
• Ultima Online (1997)
• Jane's Combat Simulations: Longbow 2 (1997)
• Jane's F-15 (1998)

We've also collected a list of 'related' games like Wing Commander Arena and Lord of Ultima which you can find in this spreadsheet. These games are either connected narratively to Origin games (like Wing Commander Arena) or they are releases where Origin had something to do with the development (like the Jane's and Zero Pilot serieses). Of these 23 games, one is available on GOG (System Shock 2), though two of the non-Origin Jane's games are available via Steam.

Any Landing You Can Walk Away From

A NASA high-altitude research plane made a dramatic belly landing today at Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas today. Following a mechanical issue the plane was forced to land with its landing gear raised, showering the field with sparks and flame before it came to a stop. Luckily, the crew survived unscathed! Here's video of the incident:

But what does this have to do with Wing Commander? The plane in question is a Martin WB-57 Canberra which is a manufactured-under-license modification of a British Cold War bomber design: the English Electric Canberra. Behind the scenes fiends may already recognize that a B 2 model English Electric Canberra cockpit was used to build the Broadsword bomber set for the Wing Commander movie!

Even though the first Canberra flew over 75 years ago, several continue to serve in utility roles today as the type proved itself excellent for high altitude research and photo-recon work. Up until today, NASA operated three as part of their climate research efforts.

Wing Commander Movie Night: Air Force One

Last Friday was the birthday of movie club member and good friend Trelane so he was allowed to pick from the queue for next week's movie. And he picked… Air Force One (1997)! He explained the choice: "In an effort to make myself not feel 45, it will be one that reminds me of being a teenager." It's hard to argue, my memory of being a teenager certainly includes Air Force One being a perfect action movie. Will it hold up? And what does it have to do with Wing Commander? We'll find out! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Air Force One is another case from where Chris Roberts sourced music to temp track the Wing Commander movie. This time the track in question is called Free Flight. It was used for the scene early in the film where Blair delivers Admiral Tolwyn's message to Sansky and Gerald. You can listen to it below!

... and that was a good choice since Air Force One also stars Jürgen Prochnow! Wing Commander fans know him as both Commander Gerald in Wing Commander and Xavier Shondi in Privateer 2... here he plays General Radek, the terrorist leader whose capture prompts the hijacking of Air Force One.

There's also a pretty big behind the scenes connection you might not know about. The prime VFX house for Air Force One was Boss Films, a studio with roots going back to Industrial Light and Magic in the 1970s. They were responsible for many of the CG and model shots in the movie, including the establishing shots of the plane itself! Their line producer was an artist named Chris Brown. Boss Films closed shortly after Air Force One was released and Brown's next project was Wing Commander where he served as both VFX supervisor and Second Unit Director. He brought with him a VFX team formed from his former colleagues at Boss Films, including artists Quentin Frost, Hector Dante Tantoco, Mark Lambert and Sarma Vanguri and producer Erik Strauss. Another Air Force One and Boss Films veteran, Cory Bedwell, worked on Wing Commander as a CG artist for Pacific Title/Mirage Studios.

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

Air Force One is available to purchase on the standard streaming services. It is currently streaming in the United States on Sony Pictures Core, which no one has ever heard of. If you are not able to locate a copy please stop by the Discord and ping a CIC staff member before Friday's showing.

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!

How can I help pick future movie club movies?

The movie club movies are voted on each week by the Wing Commander Discord. The poll is typically posted 24 hours before each week's screening and the next movie is announced at the end. The choices for the poll come from a master pool of Wing Commander-related movies. If you would like to suggest a film for inclusion in that pool you can post it to this thread.

Snow Day!

Much of the United States is facing a major snow storm today so we thought we'd recognize that by unboxing a Kilrathi cold weather survival kit! As seen in The Price of Victory, this package stored aboard your average Dralthi medium fighter contains survival equipment necessary for navigating an icy moon...

First up, these Kilrathi hooded jackets don't just look smart, they're essential for staying warm in a hostile environment. One size apparently fits all!

You've also got a handy laser pistol. Blair seems to prefer this to his own sidearm, as he ignores the one in his own human survival kit to brandish this. It's the same model seen throughout the series arming a variety of types of Kilrathi soldiers.

Finally, we've got a transciever that is capable of audio communication with nearby spacecraft allowing them to locate you for rescue.