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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

In honor of last week's premiere meeting of the Wing Commander Movie Club (name pending) we've decided to start posting after action reports talking through what the group thought about and discussed with each movie. If all goes according to plan we'll run them in the news on Fridays alongside the reminder posts! Now what did we think about The Dam Busters…

In general, we found the movie to be extremely dry… especially the first half, which focuses on the development of the bouncing bomb and the training for the attack. Audience sensibilities have changed a lot in sixty-nine years: the thought of starting a war movie with old men talking about math and then not getting to an actual air battle until the very end would be unthinkable now. That's not to criticize the movie itself, it's just very difficult for a younger viewer to connect with today. Along the same lines, it's

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club has traveled to distant galaxies and lived through some of the most deadly warfare in human history… and now we can add surviving high school in Los Angeles to our list of accomplishments! Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a movie that never quite comes together: it's endlessly promising a slightly better film that you sincerely wish you were watching. It's perfectly pleasant and certainly plenty of fun… but you come away wondering why there wasn't just a little more there.

As previously noted, the Wing Commander connection is slight: the original introductory story for Privateer included a character named Jake Rubio, a sketchy privateer who attempts to take advantage of the player when he is just starting out as an independent operator. Rubio's appearance was to be based on actor Paul Reubens' appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Reubens plays vampire

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club has explored Los Angeles of the… recent past… and if there was ever any doubt, we all love Blade Runner. It's an incredible movie whose aesthetic grabs you from the first frame and carries you through even the film's weaker moments (which include the meat of the climactic third act fight and in the theatrical version we watched the well-intentioned-but-poorly-done narration.

The big story when it comes to Wing Commander is Blade Runner's connection to Privateer's New Detroit environment. We thought it would be fun to walk you through exactly how we go from one of Syd Mead's stunning concept paintings to the finished animation in Privateer.

And here's how that concept was realized by director Ridley Scott:

Here is an excerpt from a March 18 1992 art list by Privateer's lead designer Joel Manners. He describes the planet, then known as New Chicago instead of

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

After Action Report: Battlestar Galactica

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club has returned from the Twelve Colonies and we're here to report that Battlestar Galactica remains fairly impressive! It can't hold up to Star Wars in terms of narrative or world building but boy do those special effects come close. It's obvious that it's a TV pilot turned into a movie but everything is still pretty satisfying… although we probably spend a little bit too much time on the casino planet.

And Battlestar Galactica's reputation as a major source of inspiration for the early Wing Commander games is well deserved. From Ferrets and Dralthi to Hunter and the Tiger's Claw, it's all in there to some degree or another. We'll start with the takeoff scene that Denis Loubet has noted as an inspiration for the one in the original Wing Commander. We've got both the red-tinted 'closing the cockpit' scene and a launch

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

Let it be said of Battle of Britain (1969) that it ws no An American Werewolf in Paris. We joke a lot in this series about boring war movies and... boy was that a boring war movie. The thrilling air battles that enchanted us as children aren't quite as spectacular today and Battle of Britain's 'character adjacent' war story seems pretty plodding. But you can see the bones of why it enchanted so many once upon a time: the air battles, a mix of real vintage aircraft and exceptional model work, are impressive and the entirety of the very long production is full of impressive quality sets and costumes. It's a great culmination of the kind of movie The Dam Busters kicked off fifteen years earlier... but it sure seemed slow as we got through the second hour!The obvious connections to Wing Commander were also a little tough to pick out. The biggest influence on the movie must have been the

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Apollo 13 is essentially a flawless movie, so much so that it almost feels too slick to be real. But breaking it down into component parts–like the score, used in part to temp track Wing Commander–you begin to appreciate the sheer amount of artistry that went into every part of the thing. There's not a lot to share in this report; you can find the music used in the Wing Commander temp score in the initial post.

We were also curious about the scale of the Apollo spacecraft compared to familiar Wing Commander ships. I made this quick-and-dirty chart which mostly just highlights how poorly scaled the Wing Commander III ships are.

Sully can make a round cat fit into a square box like nobody's business.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

An American Werewolf in Paris was kind of a surprise: it really was a 'so bad it's good' style movie, which are actually a rarity! We all had a great time watching it swerve in crazy directions with awful CG werewolves and crazy jags of slapstick comedy followed by untenable gore and weird sex. A terrible movie that contained multitudes, there's no doubt! Kind of like another film we love…

We will skip some of the funny coincidences–like a character who clearly would've been played by Freddie Prinze Jr. were he available, a climatic 'here me baby, hold together' and the fact that it also concludes with the French female lead being attended to on a stretcher in favor of a couple of fascinating real connections, but there was a lot to watch for for imaginative Wng Commander fans! (I will mention one memory was that the movie came out on Christmas in 1997… a day many of us remember

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club is pretty universal in this one: Aliens is as close to a perfect movie as you can make! We greatly enjoyed revisiting it last week and it's such a good film that we could probably do it again soon.

In the treatment for the Wing Commander movie, Chris Roberts described it as being like Alien in that the character drama emerges from the fact that everyone is totally cut off from reasonable rescue or help. And he was right, both movies certainly do chase that goal… although the isolation you feel in Aliens is much more effectively delivered. Of course, Aliens' greater legacy to Wing Commander and across most science fiction was the colonial marines. James Cameron's mixing of future space warfare with Vietnam-styled American soldiers feels like a lightning bolt… they would be aped endlessly including in Wing Commander III, IV and Prophecy.

Here are the two

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

We all love Alien! Is there anyone that doesn't love Alien? It holds up so well today, despite how 'slow' the first half is compared to movies today. But you aren't bored slowly creeping through the Nostromo's empty rooms for minutes and minutes at a time… if anything, the quality of the visual world building around you makes you wish you could stop and look around. And then once the movie gets going, you're in.

The biggest connection to Wing Commander is that both Wing Commander II and the Wing Commander movie referred to the Ripley character in adapting Angel. In both cases, it's clear what they were trying to do… but making your love interest a stronger female character doesn't approach Alien's treatment of Ripley as the lead. In the case of Alien, the character wasn't gendered until casting, leaving her the sum of her actions. Wing Commander couldn't really get there!

Here's John

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club has slipped the surly bonds of Earth with Squadron 633! The movie was a very pleasant surprise: it represents a new kind of World War II movie that began to become popular in the early 1960s that was more focused on action than realism. The result is something less dour than The Dam Busters with plenty of thrills and dynamic characters… but not one so meaningless that its final note didn't bring home an important message about the nature of war! It also features absolutely stunning color aircraft photography showcasing extremely cool Mosquito fighter-bombers.

633 Squadron's score, by British composer Ron Goodwin, was the big item we were looking at in terms of it connection to Wing Commander and we're happy to report that the relationship seems a lot more clear here than it did in The Dam Busters. 633 Squadron's theme sounds much more like Wing

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We had a great time following a universal classic with its weird but incredibly special legacy sequel. 2010: The Year We Make Contact is a fascinating movie and I hope everyone enjoyed listening to me go on about it for two hours. I could probably spend that much time just opining on the unusual choice of tense for the title!

Here's the Leonov, designed by Wing Commander Prophecy's Syd Mead! Eagle-eyed sci fi fans will notice that Babylon 5 later... borrowed... the ship for the Omega-class destroyer. Which in turn fascinated Chris Douglas during the making of Wing Commander III!

All three of our simple 2001 references also reappear! Here's HAL, the AE-35 and TMA-1 as seen in all three places (2001, then 2010 and then Wing Commander). The Tycho monolith is only seen in the slideshow of clips from the original movie that opens the film. By the way, we also see "Moonbase Tycho" as a Confederation base on

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We had a great time watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a cold and unforgiving movie, for sure, but it also contains multitudes. It's inspired a million other things and it's hard to imagine what both film and science fiction would look like today without it. So let's take a look at some Wing Commander references both real and imagined!

Here's one that was pretty easy to catch: HAL 9000 as he appears in the film versus his cameo in the SNES port of Wing Commander. For those curious he does not appear in the port of The Secret Missions because the takeoff sequence is completely replaced with a cool mode 7 treat.

The AE-35 antenna, referenced in Wing Commander Secret Ops as a winning password, is the McGuffin that HAL uses to eliminate Frank Poole.

And the other 2001 password is TMA-1, which refers to the monolith discovered on the moon and seen in the 1999 sequence. TMA stands for Tycho Magnetic Anomaly.

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I think every member of the Wing Commander movie club can agree that 1492: Conquest of Paradise was not the most thrilling film in the world. It's not that it wasn't well made but it just… sort of sat there with lavish production values that never seemed to quite live up to the story it was telling with characters that just weren't engaging enough for you to put your full head into them. But my philosophy is that mediocrity should be met with a little extra work to make things better… so we're going to use our viewing of 1492 as an excuse to really look at part of the Wing Commander movie!

We watched 1492 for a very important reason: its opening titles were a major influence on the ones Chris Roberts created for the 1999 Wing Commander movie (alongside Sphere and The Fan, which we will be viewing in the future). So technically our Wing Commander interest was over in the first four minutes but it was

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation Alert*
Aden Tanner, special military advisor to the Aegis project, has warned of the potential for targeted Thargoid assaults on key military locations.
Speaking during a recent graduation ceremony for the latest batch of Federal AX recruits, Tanner warned against complacency following the destruction of Titan Thor last month.
"It may seem that we have the upper hand in this war. There's no shame in taking pride in our accomplishments, and we're certainly in a better place than when the Thargoid invasion started."
"But the Thargoids are just as dangerous as they've ever been. Entering a conflict zone with anything less than full focus would be a terrible mistake. Think of how hard you'd fight if you thought the Thargoids were driving our fleets back a little further each day. That's the situation our enemy finds themselves in."
"In fact, while our forces push towards the

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Claims that Salvation was once a senior member of Azimuth Biochemicals who worked for INRA have led to a public outcry.
Political journalist Conrad Sterling reported on these developments for Vox Galactica:
"Information recently uncovered in the DG Canum Venaticorum system has been presented by Professor Alba Tesreau. It suggests that Salvation's real name is Dr Caleb Wycherley, former vice-president of research at Azimuth Biochemicals. According to Wycherley's personal logs, his team contributed to the development of the controversial mycoid bioweapon deployed by INRA during the First Thargoid War."
"Wycherley's logs also provide evidence that he gained the nickname of 'The Witch'. This figure has been implicated in the murderous attack on the Alexandria megaship in June 3307 and in Project Seraph recordings found in the HIP 26176 and HIP 22460 systems."
"Former Aegis leadership has demanded

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A recent behavioural change in the Thargoids has prompted urgent discussion among Aegis researchers and strategists.
Since the fall of the fourth Titan, Hadad, there are increasing reports that the Thargoid expansion efforts have been growing weaker. While Thargoids are continuing to expand outwards from the Titans, they are no longer reinforcing their spire sites. Further, independent squadrons dedicated to defeating the Thargoid threat like SNPX, AXI, and MUDD, have noted increasing ease in thwarting attempts to probe and invade systems.
Dr. Ivano Colombera, Imperial Science Academy's director of xenological studies and Empire liaison to Aegis, gave their view:
"I have heard the strategy reports touting words like 'weakening Thargoid presence', and I must urge caution. I hypothesise that this change signals a strategic defensive response, not an enemy on their last legs."
"I believe that

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Professor Alba Tesreau, Head of Aegis, has issued a warning for all anti-xeno fleets to remain on high alert.
The warning comes as human forces continue to push towards the last remaining Thargoid Titan, Cocijo. While victory over the Thargoid invasion force seems likely at this stage, Tesreau has urged defensive fleets not to become complacent.
"We have seen repeatedly that the Thargoid fleets are capable of surprising us when their defeat seems inevitable. The Proteus Wave incident in HIP 22460 is a perfect example of this – our confidence was such that Salvation's celebratory speech was broadcast across the core systems only moments before he was killed by a Thargoid counterattack, along with thousands of military personnel."
"Seo Jin-ae has - rather publicly - insisted that her recent medical emergency was the result of the Thargoids seeking to learn about her and, by extension, humanity

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Prototypes have been created of a new module designed to counteract the massive energy surge encountered by ships within Thargoid Maelstroms.
Professor Alba Tesreau made a public statement:
"Intense research into the Maelstroms by Allied, Federal and Imperial specialists has yielded practical results. We have designed a device to briefly insulate a ship against the overpowering effects of a Maelstrom's energy wave. Typically, the wave physically repels all human ships and disrupts onboard electrical systems."
"Combined with our caustic sink launcher, the Thargoid pulse neutraliser will enable access to the innermost regions of the alien clouds. My hope is that this breakthrough will reveal knowledge about the Thargoid invasion fleets that we desperately need."
Further details were provided by Ivano Colombera, the Empire's scientific liaison to Aegis:
"The Thargoid pulse neutraliser expands

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The organisation Aegis has expressed support for Utopia's offer to host a Galactic Summit for all three superpowers.
Aegis was jointly formed by the Alliance, Empire and Federation to study the Thargoids, and develop new methods of monitoring and combating their forces.
Professor Alba Tesreau, head of research at Aegis, gave this statement:
"Humanity's focus on petty internal conflicts has blinded us to the existential threat of the Thargoids. Their recent horrific attacks should be a wake-up call to the fact that defunding has crippled Aegis's ability to offer protection."
"We strongly entreat our founders to come together and channel resources toward Aegis, and particularly into research. There can be no hope of coexistence with this alien species unless we increase our understanding of them."
No official responses to Utopia's proposal have been made as yet. However, Prime Minister Edmund

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The anti-xeno agency Aegis has been officially reformed by the Alliance, Empire and Federation.
Aegis was initially founded in 3303 to centralise research into the Thargoids, as well as coordinate defence and rescue operations. It was disbanded in 3308 following accusations of incompetence in the wake of the Alexandria disaster and the subsequent findings of the Baumann Report. The recent escalation of the Thargoid War and calls for renewed collaboration between the superpowers have led to a reversal of that decision.
Professor Alba Tesreau will serve as the head of the revived organisation. She provided details at a press conference:
"Aegis remains humanity's best hope of ending this calamitous war with the Thargoids. Its priority is to better understand the alien species through scientific research, and to utilise those findings to improve our defensive and weapon capabilities."
"Each