Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Later this week the Wing Commander movie club will be watching Glory, the movie that served as the inspiration for the character of Downtown in Wing Commander II. In preparation, I thought it would be good to collect everything we know about Downtown into an update.. and in the process I learned that I didn't actually understand his intended backstory at all! We've written up as canonical a biography as possible, pontificated on the issues surrounding what is known about the character, detailed his development and collected a healthy archive of behind the scenes material and in-game conversations for your reference.
Character Biography
This writeup is done in the style of a wiki entry and takes into account all existing sources in an attempt to construct a singular story. It does not represent the specific intent of any one author; details on the development of Downtown's character and a discussion of the various changes to the story that have occurred over the years are discussed in further sections below the history.
Ross "Downtown" Baldwin (2630-2666) was a Terran Confederation Space Force Captain and fighter pilot in the Terran-Kilrathi War. He was a human of American descent. As a young child, Baldwin and his family were enslaved by the Kilrathi while attempting to flee their home planet in the face of an invasion. The Baldwins were sent to Ghorah Khar as laborers and were eventually separated with Ross being assigned to work in an Illudium mine; the fate of the rest of the family remains unknown.
Years later, in 2656, the long-simmering rebellion on Ghorah Khar erupted into a full scale revolution thanks to a newfound alliance with the Terran Confederation made possible by Ralgha nar Hhallas' defection. Ralgha and James Taggart returned to the planet undercover to coordinate the effort, which culminated in the system's independence from the Empire several weeks after Capt. Blair's trial. During the action, Ralgha encountered a Kilra'hra overseer attempting to kill Baldwin and intervened. Baldwin killed the kil and Ralgha helped Baldwin escape. Soon after his abolition, Baldwin was commissioned as a Terran Confederation Space Force Lieutenant and assigned to the Concordia-class supercruiser TCS Concordia's fighter squadron.
Ralgha's rescue began an unusual relationship that lasted the rest of Baldwin's life. Unable to locate or reconnect with his biological family, Baldwin would come to become emotionally dependent on Ralgha, viewing him as something of a father figure and a best friend. After Baldwin's death Ralgha would confide to Blair that he also loved Baldwin as a son, an unprecedented example of a kil expressing what seemed to be specifically human emotions. In a more properly Kilrathi sense, Ralgha also considered himself honorbound to be responsible for Baldwin. Ralgha credited developing a disgust with the practice of Kilrathi slavery to Baldwin's treatment. This in turn led to his decision to continue fighting the Empire after Ghorah Khar's liberation, taking a Terran Confederation Space Force commission. Baldwin was responsible for giving Ralgha his famous callsign "Hobbes", jokingly convincing Ralgha that it was because he had the wisdom of 17th century human philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
In 2665, Capt. Baldwin served aboard the Confederation-class TCS Concordia (CVS-65) alongside his rescuer.
In 2666, Baldwin's experience with Ghorah Khar prompted Col. Devereaux to assign him to escort a food transport from Niven to the system and back. While Baldwin's fighter was refueling on Niven he introduced himself to Capt. Blair, whom he had previously seen in briefings. As Blair and Baldwin were both on the planet during Comm Specialist McGuffin's murder they were not considered suspects. Baldwin would go on to become friends with Blair, often playing poker with him and conversing about his concerns over the war.
Baldwin was killed in action in 2666 in the Tesla System when his fighter was ambushed by ten Drakhri. He fought back but was ultimately shot down.
Personality
While young Baldwin's personality was seen as fiery and impulsive, by the time he served aboard the Concordia (CVS-65) he was often cool headed in dramatic interpersonal situations. An exception to this was his quickness to defend Ralgha when anyone questioned his loyalty, including Blair. Baldwin was well liked among his fellow Concordia crew. In addition to Ralgha, he maintained close friendships with Blair and Maj. Montclair and played poker with others, including Capt. Wright and occasional visitor James Taggart. He also tolerated Maj. Colson, although he did not share his aggressive bluster about flying and fighting the war. He, like Blair, confided in CPO McCullough, telling her of his rescue from slavery by Ralgha. Baldwin was notably well informed; he was the first to explain the Society of Mandarins to Blair and the first to know that Admiral Tolwyn had decided recapturing the Heaven's Gate starbase would be nearly impossible.
Unlike many whose lives were wrecked by war, Baldwin never became jaded even in spite of the loss of his family. He would wonder about their fates for the rest of his life, hoping that they might someday be reunited. As a result of this, he was not an aggressive warrior, expressing his hope that the war would end and often his own fears. He was very concerned about the traitor aboard the Concordia, surviving the situation at Heaven's Gate and later the Concordia's prospects facing two Kilrathi carriers and heavy fighter squadrons at Tesla. He was also an inveterate peacemaker interpersonally, attempting in the same Observation Deck conversation to settle the anger between Ralgha and Blair and Colson.
Hobbies
Baldwin was a poker enthusiast who frequently played with other Concordia pilots in the barracks. During the Heaven's Gate battle, he played a game with Blair, Colson and Wright, losing with a pair of kings to Colson's three aces. At Tesla, he won a game of five card draw with Ralgha, Blair and Taggart with a jack-high straight.
Baldwin had an interest in collecting human folk art. Blair later discovered a 20th century comic strip in Baldwin's collection that was the real origin of Ralgha's callsign Hobbes and informed Ralgha of the joke.
Legacy
Baldwin's death had an immediate impact on the Concordia's operations: he had been scheduled to fly a Broadsword bomber with Blair during the Concordia's stay in the Enigma System. His loss prompted Colonel Devereaux to assign herself to fly the missions instead.
The loss seemed to significantly affect Lt. Col. Ralgha nar Hhallas. After learning of the ambush, Ralgha spent an hour on the Concordia's Flight Deck staring into space and then confided in Captain Blair that he regretted having never told Baldwin that he had loved him as a son. The pair toasted Baldwin's memory with the remains of a bottle of Sukhar May'ya that James Taggart had left with Blair. The substantiality of Ralgha understanding human emotions over Baldwin's death remains undetermined given the later revelation that "Hobbes" was an artificial personality overlay.
In his post-war memoirs, Lt. Col. Carl LaFong would recall thinking of Baldwin specifically and other fallen comrades during the dogfighting around K'Tithrak Mang.
Behind the Screens
The key to understanding the development of the Wing Commander II script is knowing that the game originally had a much more complex narrative. Up until early summer 1991, Wing Commander II included an entire additional act set aboard a patrol carrier, the TCS Robert Peel, and quite a few additional characters and ships. Chris Roberts felt the game was unwieldy in this form and asked the team to streamline everything; this would also be necessary for shipping the whole thing on floppy disks! The game's introduction, which originally allowed you to fly the final patrol around the Tiger's Claw, was dropped and other aspects of the story were compressed: the Robert Peel segments became the opening at Caernaven. A lot of the original subplots (like Maniac visiting on a TCSO tour or a reporter feuding with Admiral Tolwyn) were removed. Many of the leftover assets were later reworked for the Special Operations mission disks.
Since the original outlines and character descriptions from different versions of the game have survived we can look back and get a good look at how individual characters and storylines developed. Downtown's overall arc actually remains pretty similar although some interesting details are lost as the game develops (and his name changes; he started life as 1st Lt. Gabriel Jefferson)… including some that might be important to our viewing of Glory. The biggest change to Downtown's story is the removal of some reflection. He was originally planned as a contrast to Iceman who was cut entirely. While Iceman has become angry and withdrawn because of the loss of his family, Downtown's experiences haven't left him with a hatred of the Kilrathi at all.
One element that seems especially important going into Glory is Downtown's enslavement. This is touched on only briefly in Wing Commander II but in his initial conception we had much more details inspired by the reality of slavery. We get the specific note that Tomcat (later Hobbes) helped him escape after he (Downtown) killed an "overseer" while in the final game Ralgha simply says that he saved Downtown's life from a Kilra'hra, or commoner. We also get the detail that he was enslaved in a Kharran Illudium mine and that in present day he wonders about the fate of his family and hopes to be reunited with them after the war. He comes across very much like an 19th century slave who escapes to freedom and returns to fight his oppressors ("I appear before you this evening as a thief and a robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master and ran off with them." - Frederick Douglass). Another related dropped element is the idea that Downtown would have a marking on his face from his Kilrathi enslavers. That doesn't make it to Wing Commander II but it must've stuck with Chris Roberts: the idea comes back in the movie with Paladin's Kilrathi POW tattoo!
One final aspect of Downtown is the continual slight implication that he might be a traitor. He talks about living on Ghorah Khar, he is the first to explain the Society of Mandarins to Blair and he continually says he is worried about fighting the Kilrathi when Jazz is eager. Even his pointing out to Blair that neither of them is a suspect in McGuffin's murder serves to make him seem more suspicious! It's actually kind of a surprise in the Enigma series where he suddenly dies offscreen.
Finally, the early versions and character notes go farther in defining the father/son relationship between Ralgha and Downtown. Both characters touch on this in the game ("I have lost a true friend. My honor is lost as well. I treated him as a comrade, but I loved him as my son. I never told him. And now...I cannot.") but the final version doesn't quite get across the strength of the familial relationship. Dropping the Iceman storyline loses our chance to more directly gauge how far Downtown will go to defend Hobbes.
Issue: Why isn't Downtown in Freedom Flight?
This is my mea culpa! For many, many years I have read Wing Commander II to say that Ralgha rescued Downtown and that this was the reason he defected. I (and others) have considered it odd that Freedom Flight, written by the same woman as Wing Commander II, does not mention Downtown at all as we see Ralgha's defection (and hear the reasons for it). He doesn't mention a hatred of slavery at all and we follow his entire flight from Ghorah Khar. In fact, at one point he meets a young slave girl named Esther and seems to have no reaction other than that that's how Kilrathi society works. It turns out there's a reason for this: the game's writers do not say or intend for Downtown to have been the reason Ralgha defected. He is the reason Ralgha, whose previous interest was freeing Ghorah Khar at Hassa's behest, chose to join the Confederation military and continue fighting against the Kilrathi. It's even right there in the character description published in the Wing Commander I & II guide: "Years later, when Hobbes was working undercover on that planet for the Confederation, he helped the young man escape." Ralgha had no concerns in about slavery in Freedom Flight and would not have yet met Downtown… and Ellen Guon knew this!
The reason this is not at all clear is because of the reworking of the Wing Commander II story mentioned above which drops some of the background references originally spread throughout conversations with Hobbes and Downtown. The confusing point is that Wing Commander II tells the story very broadly in its final form: "The existence of human slaves is a shame to the Empire. That is why I joined the Confederation to fight against my own kind. But enough of that." The idea is not that Ralgha defected over Downtown; rather, when he returned to free Ghorah Khar (an event that occurs 'a few weeks' after Blair's trial in the intro) that he encountered the situation where Downtown was to be killed by a Kilra'hra and this is what caused him to turn against the Empire's practice of slavery. This is touched on throughout Wing Commander II but never in context; rather, Paladin and Hobbes make specific mention of their adventures freeing Ghorah Khar but don't tie it to Downtown. ("Hobbes: I was on Ghorah Khar when the local Kilrathi rebelled against the Empire and joined the Confederation. I had some small part in the action." - Ghorah Khar C) So Freedom Flight (set in 2655) didn't include Downtown because the incident hadn't happened yet! (In fact, armed with knowledge of Freedom Flight and its details about Ghorah Khar, there's a non-zero chance that the commoner in the story was intended to be Jakhai, Ralgha's rival and a kil the book makes a point of introducing as a Kilra'hra.)
Issue: How Old is Downtown?
Hobbes refers to Downtown as having been "a human child" when they met, although his judgement in the matter may be questionable as he also refers to him as "a human cub" when he dies ten years later. The series licensing bible refers to Downtown at the time of his rescue as a young boy but this was changed to young man when the material was published in the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide. Both versions, however, agree that he is in his "mid twenties" in Wing Commander II which suggests the intent was that he was a teenager when he was rescued from slavery. For further confirmation of this, the original, pre-rework outline for Wing Commander II notes that he "spent most of his childhood as a Kilrathi slave on Ghorah Khar." However, this is thrown into question by the Kilrathi Saga manual, which includes a document introducing four of the new pilots for Wing Commander II. While it contains some pretty important never-before-published information (like Downtown's full name!) it also has some issues.
Here we are told that Downtown is 26 in 2656, the year Ghorah Khar was freed. This would mean he was 35-37 in Wing Commander II and not a particularly young cub. The document is dated 2656.120 which is roughly three months after the destruction of the Tiger's Claw (though the same Kilrathi Saga manual incorrectly lists this as much later in the year in another article). The issue here seems to be that they have taken Shadow, Stingray and Downtown's ages from their internal character descriptions for Wing Commander II without remembering that Wing Commander II takes place ten years later. None of these pilots should have been transferred to the Concordia in 2656 (and in fact Shadow was never transferred to the Concordia; she flew a single mission aboard her before returning to Caernarvon). In fact, the earliest reference to the Concordia being in service is otherwise 2661 (from Tolwyn having commanded her for seven years as of Fleet Action). 2656 seems very unlikely given the published established fact that it takes five years to construct a new carrier and the Concordia's keel-mounted Phase Transit Cannon was developed from the wreckage of the Sivar recovered only the previous year.
If this document is correct prima facie then it is most likely referring to an earlier Concordia, either the movie's Concordia-class supercruiser or another otherwise uncited ship bearing the name. The rest could, for the most part, also technically be true. Shadow's original internal character description even allows that she could have served a tour on the front lines years earlier: "Capt. Bethany Norwood served a tour of duty in the navy when she was younger, and after retirement joined the Reserves." Could Downtown be a newly minted lieutenant on 2656.120, perhaps weeks or days after his rescue from slavery? Only if he had some unknown backstory along the lines of Wing Commander Academy's Grunt. That's not impossible but it's certainly not the intent of the original Wing Commander II authors. The other possibility is that only the date is wrong and it should refer to pilots transferred to the Concordia in 2665. That eases some issues but does nothing for Shadow (who was certainly never transferred to the Concordia as an InSys pilot) and means that Jazz's age is wildly incorrect somewhere. Jazz's age is problematic in either take though far more slightly in the first. The 32 is taken from the Super Wing Commander/Sega CD Claw Marks which means that it's two years off; if he was 32 in April 2654 then he should be 34 in May 2656. But if he is 32 in Wing Commander II then he's only 22 in Secret Missions II and can't have had his established nine year career (though Freedom Flight doesn't acknowledge this either; at one point he tells Hunter he has flown two combat missions… though that could just be at Firekka!). One element that does argue in favor of intentionality from this document is the fact that Downtown is listed as a lieutenant rather than the captain he appears as in Wing Commander II though the other three characters do have their final ranks.
So in the end it's entirely possible to make this document fit but it also is also clearly not the intent of the authors of either Wing Commander II or the Kilrathi Saga manual. It's most valuable because it likely tells us exactly the ages (and names!) intended by the Wing Commander II team in 1991 for all four characters and we can work with that in many directions. And of course continuity is like that sometimes, sometimes what no one wanted ends up being the story going forward! In this case, three separate authors with only the ability to reference some of their predecessors' work have created a story none of them had planned. It's fascinating to see, through this material, that Ellen Guon had intended Jazz to be a brand new pilot in Secret Missions 2 (and Freedom Flight). The authors who updated Claw Marks for Super Wing Commander didn't have that background and decided he was 32 and established he'd been flying for nine years. And then the people compiling the Kilrathi Saga manual had access to all of this information and tried to manage it as best they could! (Or, did they? One thing to consider when trying to decode this history is that because of the rapid increase in hardware and operating systems people in the mid 1990s actually had a much harder time playing the original games than we do today; they also lacked the tools we have to access most Wing Commander information quickly!). And that's all fascinating. (Or: perhaps all the issues with ages in every manual are just tied to the characters regularly traveling faster than light… that's one to think about another day!)
Issue: Who Named Hobbes?
This is an odd one. Wing Commander II is very clear that Hobbes was named by Downtown. He tells you so himself: "The original Hobbes was a human philosopher. Downtown suggested the callsign, as he considers me to be very wise." The (pretty good) joke here is that of course Hobbes was so named because he looks like the stuffed tiger from the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip rather than because he has the wisdom of 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. (Interestingly, this was also the source of Hobbes the tiger's name. Bill Watterson says that he was "named after a seventeenth-century philosopher with a dim view of human nature [and] Hobbes has the patient dignity and common sense of most animals I’ve met.") BUT the Wing Commander III novelization, written three years after Wing Commander II, gives this story to Blair instead… and it makes the joke a little more subtle:
This is just a case of Andrew Keith not being familiar with deep lore buried in Wing Commander II. Working from the bible, he would be completely unaware that Hobbes' name already had an origin story. Perhaps Blair is just a jerk who has stolen his dead comrade's story! Or maybe he just figured out Downtown's joke and told Hobbes. (That said, his memory is being pretty gentle with himself: Blair also certainly didn't always find Ralgha cheerful, competent and capable, he hated the thought of flying with a Kilrathi when they met!). The Wing Commander III novelization has a pretty broad sense of Ralgha's backstory and references it shortly before, too: "Blair could hardly believe that more than ten years had passed since Lord Ralgha, a ship-captain of the Imperial Kilrathi fleet, defected to the Terran Confederation. TCS Tiger's Claw was in the squadron which helped him carry out his defection, and Blair (a junior lieutenant) had worn polish still fresh on his flight wings. Ralgha moved from supplying information to Terran Intelligence to serving in the Space Force, and he had remained in Blair's squadron for a time before new assignments took them down separate paths." This is all technically true (though odd that Blair is still a junior lieutenant at Firekka) but it's worded very oddly since it's describing a story that takes place not over a few months but thirteen years (that is, the "remained in Blair's squadron" refers to Wing Commander II and not something that happened on the Tiger's Claw).
Appendix: Behind the Screens References
The Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide
Series Bible (source)
Wing Commander II Characters document (source)
Wing Commander II Script Outline (source)
Wing Commander II Conversations with Downtown
Niven C
Ghorah Khar (Losing) C
Ghorah Khar B
Heaven's Gate C
Tesla B & Tesla (Losing) B
Tesla D & Tesla (Losing) D
Wing Commander II Conversations About Downtown
Ghorah Khar A
Ghorah Khar B
Ghorah Khar D
Enigma A
Ultimate Strategy Guide References
With the exception of the character description above which is used as an example in the Making Of section, Downtown is almost never mentioned in the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide. This is, in and of itself, an interesting character note! For posterity, here are the two times he is referenced:
"We needed to clear a path for the Concordia and, after the loss of Downtown, Angel would fly the patrol route with me in Broadswords." - Enigma A
"I think Spirit, Downtown, Bossman, and all the other pilots who had lost their lives were in the cockpit with me." - K'Tithrak Mang D
--
Original update published on December 11, 2024
Character Biography
This writeup is done in the style of a wiki entry and takes into account all existing sources in an attempt to construct a singular story. It does not represent the specific intent of any one author; details on the development of Downtown's character and a discussion of the various changes to the story that have occurred over the years are discussed in further sections below the history.
Ross "Downtown" Baldwin (2630-2666) was a Terran Confederation Space Force Captain and fighter pilot in the Terran-Kilrathi War. He was a human of American descent. As a young child, Baldwin and his family were enslaved by the Kilrathi while attempting to flee their home planet in the face of an invasion. The Baldwins were sent to Ghorah Khar as laborers and were eventually separated with Ross being assigned to work in an Illudium mine; the fate of the rest of the family remains unknown.
Years later, in 2656, the long-simmering rebellion on Ghorah Khar erupted into a full scale revolution thanks to a newfound alliance with the Terran Confederation made possible by Ralgha nar Hhallas' defection. Ralgha and James Taggart returned to the planet undercover to coordinate the effort, which culminated in the system's independence from the Empire several weeks after Capt. Blair's trial. During the action, Ralgha encountered a Kilra'hra overseer attempting to kill Baldwin and intervened. Baldwin killed the kil and Ralgha helped Baldwin escape. Soon after his abolition, Baldwin was commissioned as a Terran Confederation Space Force Lieutenant and assigned to the Concordia-class supercruiser TCS Concordia's fighter squadron.
Ralgha's rescue began an unusual relationship that lasted the rest of Baldwin's life. Unable to locate or reconnect with his biological family, Baldwin would come to become emotionally dependent on Ralgha, viewing him as something of a father figure and a best friend. After Baldwin's death Ralgha would confide to Blair that he also loved Baldwin as a son, an unprecedented example of a kil expressing what seemed to be specifically human emotions. In a more properly Kilrathi sense, Ralgha also considered himself honorbound to be responsible for Baldwin. Ralgha credited developing a disgust with the practice of Kilrathi slavery to Baldwin's treatment. This in turn led to his decision to continue fighting the Empire after Ghorah Khar's liberation, taking a Terran Confederation Space Force commission. Baldwin was responsible for giving Ralgha his famous callsign "Hobbes", jokingly convincing Ralgha that it was because he had the wisdom of 17th century human philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
In 2665, Capt. Baldwin served aboard the Confederation-class TCS Concordia (CVS-65) alongside his rescuer.
In 2666, Baldwin's experience with Ghorah Khar prompted Col. Devereaux to assign him to escort a food transport from Niven to the system and back. While Baldwin's fighter was refueling on Niven he introduced himself to Capt. Blair, whom he had previously seen in briefings. As Blair and Baldwin were both on the planet during Comm Specialist McGuffin's murder they were not considered suspects. Baldwin would go on to become friends with Blair, often playing poker with him and conversing about his concerns over the war.
Baldwin was killed in action in 2666 in the Tesla System when his fighter was ambushed by ten Drakhri. He fought back but was ultimately shot down.
Personality
While young Baldwin's personality was seen as fiery and impulsive, by the time he served aboard the Concordia (CVS-65) he was often cool headed in dramatic interpersonal situations. An exception to this was his quickness to defend Ralgha when anyone questioned his loyalty, including Blair. Baldwin was well liked among his fellow Concordia crew. In addition to Ralgha, he maintained close friendships with Blair and Maj. Montclair and played poker with others, including Capt. Wright and occasional visitor James Taggart. He also tolerated Maj. Colson, although he did not share his aggressive bluster about flying and fighting the war. He, like Blair, confided in CPO McCullough, telling her of his rescue from slavery by Ralgha. Baldwin was notably well informed; he was the first to explain the Society of Mandarins to Blair and the first to know that Admiral Tolwyn had decided recapturing the Heaven's Gate starbase would be nearly impossible.
Unlike many whose lives were wrecked by war, Baldwin never became jaded even in spite of the loss of his family. He would wonder about their fates for the rest of his life, hoping that they might someday be reunited. As a result of this, he was not an aggressive warrior, expressing his hope that the war would end and often his own fears. He was very concerned about the traitor aboard the Concordia, surviving the situation at Heaven's Gate and later the Concordia's prospects facing two Kilrathi carriers and heavy fighter squadrons at Tesla. He was also an inveterate peacemaker interpersonally, attempting in the same Observation Deck conversation to settle the anger between Ralgha and Blair and Colson.
Hobbies
Baldwin was a poker enthusiast who frequently played with other Concordia pilots in the barracks. During the Heaven's Gate battle, he played a game with Blair, Colson and Wright, losing with a pair of kings to Colson's three aces. At Tesla, he won a game of five card draw with Ralgha, Blair and Taggart with a jack-high straight.
Baldwin had an interest in collecting human folk art. Blair later discovered a 20th century comic strip in Baldwin's collection that was the real origin of Ralgha's callsign Hobbes and informed Ralgha of the joke.
Legacy
Baldwin's death had an immediate impact on the Concordia's operations: he had been scheduled to fly a Broadsword bomber with Blair during the Concordia's stay in the Enigma System. His loss prompted Colonel Devereaux to assign herself to fly the missions instead.
The loss seemed to significantly affect Lt. Col. Ralgha nar Hhallas. After learning of the ambush, Ralgha spent an hour on the Concordia's Flight Deck staring into space and then confided in Captain Blair that he regretted having never told Baldwin that he had loved him as a son. The pair toasted Baldwin's memory with the remains of a bottle of Sukhar May'ya that James Taggart had left with Blair. The substantiality of Ralgha understanding human emotions over Baldwin's death remains undetermined given the later revelation that "Hobbes" was an artificial personality overlay.
In his post-war memoirs, Lt. Col. Carl LaFong would recall thinking of Baldwin specifically and other fallen comrades during the dogfighting around K'Tithrak Mang.
Behind the Screens
The key to understanding the development of the Wing Commander II script is knowing that the game originally had a much more complex narrative. Up until early summer 1991, Wing Commander II included an entire additional act set aboard a patrol carrier, the TCS Robert Peel, and quite a few additional characters and ships. Chris Roberts felt the game was unwieldy in this form and asked the team to streamline everything; this would also be necessary for shipping the whole thing on floppy disks! The game's introduction, which originally allowed you to fly the final patrol around the Tiger's Claw, was dropped and other aspects of the story were compressed: the Robert Peel segments became the opening at Caernaven. A lot of the original subplots (like Maniac visiting on a TCSO tour or a reporter feuding with Admiral Tolwyn) were removed. Many of the leftover assets were later reworked for the Special Operations mission disks.
Since the original outlines and character descriptions from different versions of the game have survived we can look back and get a good look at how individual characters and storylines developed. Downtown's overall arc actually remains pretty similar although some interesting details are lost as the game develops (and his name changes; he started life as 1st Lt. Gabriel Jefferson)… including some that might be important to our viewing of Glory. The biggest change to Downtown's story is the removal of some reflection. He was originally planned as a contrast to Iceman who was cut entirely. While Iceman has become angry and withdrawn because of the loss of his family, Downtown's experiences haven't left him with a hatred of the Kilrathi at all.
One element that seems especially important going into Glory is Downtown's enslavement. This is touched on only briefly in Wing Commander II but in his initial conception we had much more details inspired by the reality of slavery. We get the specific note that Tomcat (later Hobbes) helped him escape after he (Downtown) killed an "overseer" while in the final game Ralgha simply says that he saved Downtown's life from a Kilra'hra, or commoner. We also get the detail that he was enslaved in a Kharran Illudium mine and that in present day he wonders about the fate of his family and hopes to be reunited with them after the war. He comes across very much like an 19th century slave who escapes to freedom and returns to fight his oppressors ("I appear before you this evening as a thief and a robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master and ran off with them." - Frederick Douglass). Another related dropped element is the idea that Downtown would have a marking on his face from his Kilrathi enslavers. That doesn't make it to Wing Commander II but it must've stuck with Chris Roberts: the idea comes back in the movie with Paladin's Kilrathi POW tattoo!
One final aspect of Downtown is the continual slight implication that he might be a traitor. He talks about living on Ghorah Khar, he is the first to explain the Society of Mandarins to Blair and he continually says he is worried about fighting the Kilrathi when Jazz is eager. Even his pointing out to Blair that neither of them is a suspect in McGuffin's murder serves to make him seem more suspicious! It's actually kind of a surprise in the Enigma series where he suddenly dies offscreen.
Finally, the early versions and character notes go farther in defining the father/son relationship between Ralgha and Downtown. Both characters touch on this in the game ("I have lost a true friend. My honor is lost as well. I treated him as a comrade, but I loved him as my son. I never told him. And now...I cannot.") but the final version doesn't quite get across the strength of the familial relationship. Dropping the Iceman storyline loses our chance to more directly gauge how far Downtown will go to defend Hobbes.
Issue: Why isn't Downtown in Freedom Flight?
This is my mea culpa! For many, many years I have read Wing Commander II to say that Ralgha rescued Downtown and that this was the reason he defected. I (and others) have considered it odd that Freedom Flight, written by the same woman as Wing Commander II, does not mention Downtown at all as we see Ralgha's defection (and hear the reasons for it). He doesn't mention a hatred of slavery at all and we follow his entire flight from Ghorah Khar. In fact, at one point he meets a young slave girl named Esther and seems to have no reaction other than that that's how Kilrathi society works. It turns out there's a reason for this: the game's writers do not say or intend for Downtown to have been the reason Ralgha defected. He is the reason Ralgha, whose previous interest was freeing Ghorah Khar at Hassa's behest, chose to join the Confederation military and continue fighting against the Kilrathi. It's even right there in the character description published in the Wing Commander I & II guide: "Years later, when Hobbes was working undercover on that planet for the Confederation, he helped the young man escape." Ralgha had no concerns in about slavery in Freedom Flight and would not have yet met Downtown… and Ellen Guon knew this!
The reason this is not at all clear is because of the reworking of the Wing Commander II story mentioned above which drops some of the background references originally spread throughout conversations with Hobbes and Downtown. The confusing point is that Wing Commander II tells the story very broadly in its final form: "The existence of human slaves is a shame to the Empire. That is why I joined the Confederation to fight against my own kind. But enough of that." The idea is not that Ralgha defected over Downtown; rather, when he returned to free Ghorah Khar (an event that occurs 'a few weeks' after Blair's trial in the intro) that he encountered the situation where Downtown was to be killed by a Kilra'hra and this is what caused him to turn against the Empire's practice of slavery. This is touched on throughout Wing Commander II but never in context; rather, Paladin and Hobbes make specific mention of their adventures freeing Ghorah Khar but don't tie it to Downtown. ("Hobbes: I was on Ghorah Khar when the local Kilrathi rebelled against the Empire and joined the Confederation. I had some small part in the action." - Ghorah Khar C) So Freedom Flight (set in 2655) didn't include Downtown because the incident hadn't happened yet! (In fact, armed with knowledge of Freedom Flight and its details about Ghorah Khar, there's a non-zero chance that the commoner in the story was intended to be Jakhai, Ralgha's rival and a kil the book makes a point of introducing as a Kilra'hra.)
Issue: How Old is Downtown?
Hobbes refers to Downtown as having been "a human child" when they met, although his judgement in the matter may be questionable as he also refers to him as "a human cub" when he dies ten years later. The series licensing bible refers to Downtown at the time of his rescue as a young boy but this was changed to young man when the material was published in the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide. Both versions, however, agree that he is in his "mid twenties" in Wing Commander II which suggests the intent was that he was a teenager when he was rescued from slavery. For further confirmation of this, the original, pre-rework outline for Wing Commander II notes that he "spent most of his childhood as a Kilrathi slave on Ghorah Khar." However, this is thrown into question by the Kilrathi Saga manual, which includes a document introducing four of the new pilots for Wing Commander II. While it contains some pretty important never-before-published information (like Downtown's full name!) it also has some issues.
Here we are told that Downtown is 26 in 2656, the year Ghorah Khar was freed. This would mean he was 35-37 in Wing Commander II and not a particularly young cub. The document is dated 2656.120 which is roughly three months after the destruction of the Tiger's Claw (though the same Kilrathi Saga manual incorrectly lists this as much later in the year in another article). The issue here seems to be that they have taken Shadow, Stingray and Downtown's ages from their internal character descriptions for Wing Commander II without remembering that Wing Commander II takes place ten years later. None of these pilots should have been transferred to the Concordia in 2656 (and in fact Shadow was never transferred to the Concordia; she flew a single mission aboard her before returning to Caernarvon). In fact, the earliest reference to the Concordia being in service is otherwise 2661 (from Tolwyn having commanded her for seven years as of Fleet Action). 2656 seems very unlikely given the published established fact that it takes five years to construct a new carrier and the Concordia's keel-mounted Phase Transit Cannon was developed from the wreckage of the Sivar recovered only the previous year.
If this document is correct prima facie then it is most likely referring to an earlier Concordia, either the movie's Concordia-class supercruiser or another otherwise uncited ship bearing the name. The rest could, for the most part, also technically be true. Shadow's original internal character description even allows that she could have served a tour on the front lines years earlier: "Capt. Bethany Norwood served a tour of duty in the navy when she was younger, and after retirement joined the Reserves." Could Downtown be a newly minted lieutenant on 2656.120, perhaps weeks or days after his rescue from slavery? Only if he had some unknown backstory along the lines of Wing Commander Academy's Grunt. That's not impossible but it's certainly not the intent of the original Wing Commander II authors. The other possibility is that only the date is wrong and it should refer to pilots transferred to the Concordia in 2665. That eases some issues but does nothing for Shadow (who was certainly never transferred to the Concordia as an InSys pilot) and means that Jazz's age is wildly incorrect somewhere. Jazz's age is problematic in either take though far more slightly in the first. The 32 is taken from the Super Wing Commander/Sega CD Claw Marks which means that it's two years off; if he was 32 in April 2654 then he should be 34 in May 2656. But if he is 32 in Wing Commander II then he's only 22 in Secret Missions II and can't have had his established nine year career (though Freedom Flight doesn't acknowledge this either; at one point he tells Hunter he has flown two combat missions… though that could just be at Firekka!). One element that does argue in favor of intentionality from this document is the fact that Downtown is listed as a lieutenant rather than the captain he appears as in Wing Commander II though the other three characters do have their final ranks.
So in the end it's entirely possible to make this document fit but it also is also clearly not the intent of the authors of either Wing Commander II or the Kilrathi Saga manual. It's most valuable because it likely tells us exactly the ages (and names!) intended by the Wing Commander II team in 1991 for all four characters and we can work with that in many directions. And of course continuity is like that sometimes, sometimes what no one wanted ends up being the story going forward! In this case, three separate authors with only the ability to reference some of their predecessors' work have created a story none of them had planned. It's fascinating to see, through this material, that Ellen Guon had intended Jazz to be a brand new pilot in Secret Missions 2 (and Freedom Flight). The authors who updated Claw Marks for Super Wing Commander didn't have that background and decided he was 32 and established he'd been flying for nine years. And then the people compiling the Kilrathi Saga manual had access to all of this information and tried to manage it as best they could! (Or, did they? One thing to consider when trying to decode this history is that because of the rapid increase in hardware and operating systems people in the mid 1990s actually had a much harder time playing the original games than we do today; they also lacked the tools we have to access most Wing Commander information quickly!). And that's all fascinating. (Or: perhaps all the issues with ages in every manual are just tied to the characters regularly traveling faster than light… that's one to think about another day!)
Issue: Who Named Hobbes?
This is an odd one. Wing Commander II is very clear that Hobbes was named by Downtown. He tells you so himself: "The original Hobbes was a human philosopher. Downtown suggested the callsign, as he considers me to be very wise." The (pretty good) joke here is that of course Hobbes was so named because he looks like the stuffed tiger from the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip rather than because he has the wisdom of 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. (Interestingly, this was also the source of Hobbes the tiger's name. Bill Watterson says that he was "named after a seventeenth-century philosopher with a dim view of human nature [and] Hobbes has the patient dignity and common sense of most animals I’ve met.") BUT the Wing Commander III novelization, written three years after Wing Commander II, gives this story to Blair instead… and it makes the joke a little more subtle:
This is just a case of Andrew Keith not being familiar with deep lore buried in Wing Commander II. Working from the bible, he would be completely unaware that Hobbes' name already had an origin story. Perhaps Blair is just a jerk who has stolen his dead comrade's story! Or maybe he just figured out Downtown's joke and told Hobbes. (That said, his memory is being pretty gentle with himself: Blair also certainly didn't always find Ralgha cheerful, competent and capable, he hated the thought of flying with a Kilrathi when they met!). The Wing Commander III novelization has a pretty broad sense of Ralgha's backstory and references it shortly before, too: "Blair could hardly believe that more than ten years had passed since Lord Ralgha, a ship-captain of the Imperial Kilrathi fleet, defected to the Terran Confederation. TCS Tiger's Claw was in the squadron which helped him carry out his defection, and Blair (a junior lieutenant) had worn polish still fresh on his flight wings. Ralgha moved from supplying information to Terran Intelligence to serving in the Space Force, and he had remained in Blair's squadron for a time before new assignments took them down separate paths." This is all technically true (though odd that Blair is still a junior lieutenant at Firekka) but it's worded very oddly since it's describing a story that takes place not over a few months but thirteen years (that is, the "remained in Blair's squadron" refers to Wing Commander II and not something that happened on the Tiger's Claw).
Appendix: Behind the Screens References
The Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide
Series Bible (source)
Wing Commander II Characters document (source)
Wing Commander II Script Outline (source)
Wing Commander II Conversations with Downtown
Niven C
Ghorah Khar (Losing) C
Ghorah Khar B
Heaven's Gate C
Tesla B & Tesla (Losing) B
Tesla D & Tesla (Losing) D
Wing Commander II Conversations About Downtown
Ghorah Khar A
Ghorah Khar B
Ghorah Khar D
Enigma A
Ultimate Strategy Guide References
With the exception of the character description above which is used as an example in the Making Of section, Downtown is almost never mentioned in the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide. This is, in and of itself, an interesting character note! For posterity, here are the two times he is referenced:
"We needed to clear a path for the Concordia and, after the loss of Downtown, Angel would fly the patrol route with me in Broadswords." - Enigma A
"I think Spirit, Downtown, Bossman, and all the other pilots who had lost their lives were in the cockpit with me." - K'Tithrak Mang D
--
Original update published on December 11, 2024