Ship Confusion: Caernarvon, Carnovean, Caernavon, Caernaven

Wing Commander II famously opens with now-Captain Blair being reassigned to an InSystem Security squadron at a base called Caernarvon Station. Caernarvon is an impressive space station but it's clear that Blair is now just a two-bit cop in a backwater system unlikely ever to encounter the Kilrathi. The story quickly expands beyond Caernarvon Station but its familiarity led a number of later stories to attempt to reference the location again… every time with some kind of error! In fact, it has been referred to by as many as four different names. We're going to look at the origins of the station and then each of these references to try and figure out exactly what's going on. It's a thrilling quasi-typographical space station adventure, today on the Combat Information Center!

Namesakes

The space station in Wing Commander II is named after Caernarfon Castle, the eventual form of a fortification established in the late 11th Century in Gwynedd, Wales. The connection with Caernarvon Station being located in the Gwynedd System should be apparent! The name itself derives from a Welsh phrase for "the fortress on the land opposite Anglesey." Today, there is a town by the same name near the site of the castle.

Before we introduce the confusion surrounding the name in Wing Commander, we should acknowledge that there are multiple spellings owing to its origin as a Welsh name. Caernarfon is the Welsh spelling and it is the name used today for the town and often the castle. The English adaptations of the word, Carnarvon and Caernarvon, are often used in older material (and sometimes to refer to the castle specifically today, as in Wing Commander II).

What about Gwynedd? Gwynedd is a county in north Wales whose name originates with the medieval Kingdom of Gwynedd which existed in roughly the same area. The origin of the name itself is debated but many believe it to have originated in Old Irish where it would have referred to the 'wild people' or 'people of the wood'. It is connected to the given name Gwyneth which is also how it is pronounced.

Wing Commander II - Caernarvon Station

Caernarvon Station is an enormous space station with six large drydocks for capital ships and a 360 degree flight deck for fighter operations. The main 'wheel' of the station is 2.4 kilometers across. The Wing Commander II manual identifies the design as a Star Base. We see a fair amount of the interior, including the flight deck and comm room, during the game.

The base design itself was inspired by Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Headquarters and Battlestar Galactica's Cylon basestar. If you're interested in learning more about the making of the design itself, we have a complete article about the station's inspirations and its interior.

The retelling of Wing Commander II in the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide introduces a great deal of lore about the station. We are told that it is "the most remote outpost in Terran-controlled space" and that its full name is Caernarvon Space Station. Later we find that it was constructed as a research outpost for the Intergalactic Science Council which relocated to another sector just before Blair arrived. The Terran Confederation Space Navy took over the base for monitoring and reconnaissance in the Enigma Sector. Most of Blair's work involved analyzing data from remote-space sono-buoys, tracking space probes and occasionally flying patrol missions. Here's an extended sequence covering his time there:

Caernarvon Station was the pits. It was one of the oldest active space stations and my quarters reflected its age. Looking back, it's hard to believe I made it through 10 years of the most boring duty in the Space Navy.

Caernarvon Station was originally designed as a research outpost for the Intergalactic Science Council (ISC), but in the year preceding my arrival, its scientific staff had been sent to a newer facility in another sector. When the TCSN took over, it was put into commission as a monitoring and reconnaissance station for the Enigma Sector of space.

Giving you a 10-year history of my years on the station would be the most boring reading since the Congressional Record during the latter part of the 20th Century. Suffice it to say that my responsibilities mainly involved punching keys on a computer, analyzing the data from remote-space sono-buoys, and tracking the progress of various space probes. Only an occasional patrol route in a light fighter broke the monotony until the year 2664. Until that time I never heard, sighted, or suspected the presence of the Kilrathi in our sector.

I tried to keep track of the war, the pilots I had known on the Tiger's Claw, and any new information on the Kilrathi through the computer network. It was, in some ways, my only direct connection with the war effort. I wasn't flying much any more, but I always scanned the databases for the latest dope provided by our intelligence services for combat pilots. If I ever did run into the Kilrathi again, I wanted to be ready.

In the last nine months I spent on the station, I discovered that, after a lull of almost nine years with only sporadic contact with the enemy, the action was heating up again. Of course, the new data from Intel increased at the same rate.

Bluehair and Shadow discuss their upcoming patrol, talk about how much of a waste of time it is — ‘There haven't been any Kilrathi sightings within 20 parsecs of this place for years." Mention that Bluehair and Shadow are two out of only six pilots on the station. The station (called Caernvarvon [sic]) is referred to disparagingly as a pre-fab communications platform.

Six pilots?! But I thought it had a 'full complement' of fighters, just like the Concordia. In fact, the Kilrathi Saga manual actually specifies that the Wing Commander II Space Station can carry 350 fighters!

Why is Caernarvon so large when it's supposed to be a backwater outpost or a communications platform? The answer is that the model itself was designed for an earlier version of Wing Commander II where it appeared only as the Heaven's Gate space station destroyed by Spirit. For this role it was designed as an imposing, enemy-occupied battlestation that it was supposed to be difficult for the Concordia crew to attack head on. When Wing Commander II was reworked, Blair's disgraced career was moved from the cruiser Robert Peel to Caernarvon Station and the artwork created for Heaven's Gate was reused. Note that based on the landing cutscene, the six pilots' equipment includes two Ferrets and two Sabres. There is also footage of a Rapier landing on a Space Station included in pre-release marketing material.

Wing Commander Fleet Action - Carnovean Station

The third Wing Commander novel, Fleet Action, makes the below reference to Confederation bases where the fleet is being shut down: Earth, Sirius and "Carnovean Station". Here's the full description:

The inactive fleet was therefore, at least for the moment, secured, the ships hooked to orbital bases for power and maintenance. Rodham, however, had agreed to the ship's crews being paid off and assigned to inactive reserves as a cost cutting measure, a fact which meant that hundreds of thousands of highly trained personnel were being pulled from their ships and demobilized as quickly as ships were pulled from the front and sent to the main bases either above Earth, Sirius, or out at Carnovean Station.

It's pretty clear that Dr. Forstchen is attempting to refer to Caernarvon Station, which is mentioned in the series bible he was provided. But because he's using a bible and not the game itself, the connection feels confused. It's extremely similar to how his nod to "Phoenix" (secretly Blair) in End Run was inscrutable. The station we see in Wing Commander II simply doesn't match what's being described here, unless things changed significantly between when we last saw it (two years prior to Fleet Action). And that's fair! Maybe the Third Enigma Campaign wound down there. The other issue is, of course, that the base in Wing Commander II it isn't named Carnovean Station. These two issues might just cancel each other out in a broader continuity, though: presumably Carnovean Station is simply something different from Caernarvon Station. And for the record, absolutely NOTHING is named Carnovean; it's a word that appears only in Fleet Action (which alongside the capitalization of Station further supports the idea that Caernarvon Station was the authorial intent)!

Victory Streak - Caernavon Station

… okay, what about Caernavon Station? The Wing Commander III manual, Victory Streak, features a letter to the editor which is reacting angrily to a previously written (in universe) article that criticized the uselessness and expense of "Caernavon Station".

DEAR ECS,
You’ve got to have cat-dung for brains if you think that anyone would believe that trash you wrote about Caernavon Station last week! You seem to think that because it was not designed as a military research installation, nothing that came out of it was worthwhile. You couldn’t be more wrong. My father spent his life trying to further the war effort there.

We didn’t know how the war was going to turn out in those years. No, they didn’t get any direct results from their weapons research. However, the advanced Kaplein Visual Radar Enhancement System that daily saves the lives of countless pilots was based on Caernavon studies. Capital ship waste hydro-recycling is another benefit. I would go on, but I would hate to take up your time when you obviously have so much background verification to catch up on!

dschrueders@victory.libr

We would give you our apologies, Lt. Schrueders, but we find nothing non-factual about the writeup on Caernavon Station. Having spent a year’s tour of duty there, we know all about the research that went on. Your father made many contributions in his time, including the Kaplein VRES system AND the hydro-recycling units.

But, did you know that for every successful project, at least five failed? Take in these stats – in 2058, the station spent 4.3 billion on vacuum fusion research. In 2060, they wasted almost the same amount on biological research – Meta-Analysis of Synapse Replacement, and the Incidence of Myocardial Infraction among Pre-Geriatic War Veterans. The total bill? It ran close to ©10 billion, enough to outfit an entire fleet and crew. So, Lieutenant, perhaps you ought to do some fact-checking for yourself.

IOH editorial opinion, we need to concentrate on making our young pilots better now, instead of waiting until they’re old ...

Again, this is clearly a spelling error in an attempt to reference Caernarvon Station from Wing Commander II. Here the lore much more closely matches that of the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide with the base having a scientific purpose and generally being disliked. But there's a bigger problem with this material: the fact that the dates listed are 600 years off! Is this a different station (presumably one in the Sol System) named Caernavon that has been doing this research for centuries? Maybe! Or maybe it's Caernarvon and 2058 and 2060 should be 2658 and 2660. Or maybe it's the same station and we somehow settle the Gwynedd System very, very early! (Which would, admittedly, jive with the claim that Caernarvon is one of the Confederation's oldest stations and cover the fact that scientists stopped using it before Blair arrived).

Wing Commander The Price of Freedom - Caernaven-class Frigate

Finally, there's the strange but mostly harmless fact that the Wing Commander IV novelization decided to name the frigate used by the pirates at the start of the game "Caernaven class". These frigates were first designed to serve as Paladin's headquarters in Wing Commander III but were cut from the game late because of a missile turret bug. The design was reused in Wing Commander IV and colored for all three of the game's factions. Here's the excerpt from the novel, which describes a pretty cool war book Blair can access to study enemy ships:

Blair yawed wide to the right, far enough to get a decent profile view of the ship. The targeting computer flashed a graphic over the ship, then listed a likely class identification in the targeting box. Blair sucked air in through his teeth as it selected Caernaven frigate. The Caernavens were an older, but still serviceable class.

He flipped to the tactical book again, this time to the Caernaven's page. He wasn't surprised to learn that the Confederation had stricken the ships from active service. Many were held in reserve status or had been mothballed. Others had been sold to the Border Worlds, or, stripped of their guns and weapon systems, to private concerns. The Kilrathi had even captured a few as trophy ships. Blair ground his teeth in frustration. The Caernavens were, without a doubt, as common as dirt.

The unusual thing about this description is the claim that the Confederation had stricken the ship from active service… because we see one of these frigates in Confederation colors in Wing Commander IV (see appendix below). Still, it's easy to assume it might be serving with some kind of reserve unit.

Appendix: The Way of Absolute Candar

Most of the ships that appear in Wing Commander Academy were created for Wing Commander II. The Star Base sprites are included but they are meant to represent a different type of base: Candar Space Station. Unlike most of the creative decisions referenced above, this was absolutely intentional: to allow players to create challenging defense missions, the game greatly reduces the armor, removes the phase shield and cuts the number of flak cannons in half. To explain these changes in-universe, the size of the base is also greatly reduced. Here's a comparison with the sprites scaled to one another:

It's extremely likely that the Wing Commander Academy team wanted to use the depot from Special Operations 1 but were not able to locate the correct mesh to create the new turnaround animation needed in the mission creation UI. This is also why the Crossbow turnaround has the original corvette textures once intended for the base game!

Appendix: List of Examples

Star Bases:

• Caernarvon Space Station - Gwynedd System (Wing Commander II)
• Heaven's Gate Starbase - Heaven's Gate System (Wing Commander II)
• Olympus Station - Ghorah Khar System (Special Operations 1)
• Pembroke Station - Pembroke System (Special Operations 1)
• Akko Station - (Special Operations 2)

• Candar Space Station - Simulated (Wing Commander Academy)

• Unnamed Pirate Frigate - Hellespont B1, B2A & B2B (destroyed)
• Unnamed Border Worlds Frigate - Orestes E1
• Unnamed Border Worlds Frigate - Circe KB
• Unnamed Confederation Frigate - Ella N1A (destroyed)

Appendix: Cheat Sheet

• Vengeance of the Kilrathi - Caernarvon Station
• Fleet Action - Carnovean Station
• Victory Streak - Caernavon Station
• The Price of Freedom - Caernaven-class frigate