New Wing Commander IV Timeline!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We've created a new timeline that shows you almost day-by-day (sometimes hour-by-hour!) what happened in Wing Commander IV! Since 2025 and 2673 have the same 'layout' of a year this means we can track Wing Commander IV 'as it happens' starting at the end of July. You can study the new timeline in Spreadsheet form here or read below for notes about how it was created and why it is different from previous attempts.

A New Approach

The issue determining a coherent day-by-day timeline for Wing Commander IV has always been the need to fit the events of the story into two weeks. This requirement derives from Paladin's line in the introduction: "...The Assembly looks forward to the results of your investigation. We shall decide a course of action within a fortnight…" The issue is that when the obvious time references in the novel are collected and the other references in the game are pinned together that everything takes a little bit more than two weeks.

As it turns out, the two week requirement was actually incorrect. The ellipses and the fade out cover how the novel continues the Assembly scene: "We shall decide a course of action within, ah . . . a fortnight of your completed report." The vote (the story's climax) will occur within two weeks AFTER Tolwyn completes his report. This matches the game exactly: Tolwyn is not delivering his report at the end of the game, he's being promoted. The novel goes on to establish that the report itself is two weeks away:

Tolwyn made a show of gracious acceptance. Taggart knew Tolwyn had gotten what he wanted, and now could afford to be gracious. Tolwyn turned slightly. Taggart was certain he did it to be better seen by the cameras. He raised his voice slightly, enunciating clearly for the journalists. "Thank you, Paladin. When you served under my command I knew I could always count on you," the admiral said. "I accept your vote of confidence on behalf of the Strategic Readiness Agency, and we shall endeavor to match your timetable for action."

"Two weeks," Taggart said, convinced Tolwyn was playing him, annoyed at Tolwyn's pointed reference to his once having been subservient to him. He searched for some sign of smugness or victory in the admiral's eyes, and saw nothing. Tolwyn's expression remained cool and still.

The admiral gave him another small smile. "Two weeks."

So the report is two weeks away and then the vote will occur within two weeks of that report. With this recognized what we will find is that the timeline of the novelization matches that of the game exactly! There are several points in Wing Commander IV where amounts of time are mentioned (ie, Eisen being gone for 46 hours or the vote being in five days), the novel adds several others and everything comes together perfectly!

Just One Day

Origin's impressive Wing Commander IV PlayStation promotional website included an Easter egg in which you could click on Captain Eisen's computer and read an e-mail from Dr. Brody. This is our day-by-day timeline Rosetta Stone: it is dated 2673.219, which gives us a specific day (August 7) where Blair and Eisen are both aboard the TCS Lexington. The message claims that "arrangements are being made if you require sanctuary." This is not an absolute lock but I am confident that the intent was for this to be the e-mail that Captain Eisen is hiding in 0480 which directly precedes the Tyr 4A/B briefing. From this we can extrapolate dates for most of the rest of the game!

Game Time References

To construct the new timeline, we began by collecting all of the references to the passage of time from the script, game and novelization. This gives us a set of 'rules' (most easily followed) from which to form the logic for our timeline.

Game

• "Flew off the TCS Liberty for 20 years." (0010B)
• "Maybe after putting my life on the line day in and day out for twenty years, hearing the crunch my feet make on real dirt is what I want." (0010D)
• "For months now, an undeclared war has been waged against us: acts of terrorism, piracy, sabotage." (0200A)
• "New school year, they're all excited." (0480A)
• "For weeks now, we have been experiencing an increasing harassment of legitimate Confed space operations." (0640A)
• "Confed had to maintain control for 40 years." (0640B)
• "We have reason to believe he's been feeding information to Border Worlds Intelligence these past weeks." (0800A)
• "I met Dominguez 40 years ago, during the Venice Offensive." (0890A)
• "For the past few days, I've been collecting mission data, coded transmissions, tracking fleet movements." (0890A)
• "Don't take offense sir, but how can you make jokes? An hour ago, I was a Confed pilot. Now I'm shooting them down." (1100A)
• "I spent seven years fighting the Kilrathi." (1221A)
• "Border Worlds Command has sent a marine detachment our way but they won't get here for another 16 hours, and we can't afford to wait for them, what with that Confed base down on Orestes IX." (1310A)
• "A Declaration of War with the Border Worlds has been put forth in the Assembly, the vote to take place in seven days." (1620A)
• "We've got less than a week before the Assembly's vote." (1720A)
• "You may recall that just a few years ago, you had the chance to kill me ... and didn't." (1750A)
• "It's just I haven't had much chance to sleep in the last few days." (1760A)
• "Forty years of service. " (1770A)
• "Sidetracked. Operation in the Lennox System. You know how thin our resources are. They'll be there within the hour." (1770A)
• "We expected you hours ago. / Things got a little hairy in Lennox." (1860A)
• "I stole a year ago from a Confed testing site, when no one was looking." (2490A)
• "46 hours. … How long it's been since Captain Eisen left." (2510A)
• "The Assembly votes in 5 days..." (2510A)
• " I could rig up a few in a week or so--" (3410B)
• "The Kilrathi understood this: they endured for millions of years and so shall we if we continue fighting!" (3510U)

Script

• "Several years since the end of The War with the Kilrathi..." (0010A)
• "the two men appraise each other, silent. it has been, after all, some time since their last encounter -- and they share two decades of tumultuous history." (0200A)
• "lt. colonel "gash" DEKKER opens his eyes. they're the eyes of a man who's seen a lot of bloodshed in his 30+ years; eyes that are sharp and hard, like the rest of his face. his voice is deep and cool, but he is definitely somebody you don't want to cross." (1860A)

Novel

• "He had survived twelve years of fighter combat against the Kilrathi, and two more of rough-and-tumble peace on the frontiers." (Chapter One, Part 1)
• "The Kilrathi War was less than two years over, and it seemed to him that the navy was already busy forgetting everything it had learned in three decades of conflict." (Chapter One, Part 1)
• "Otherwise, she would be dismissed at year's end for 'excessive time in grade.'" (Chapter One, Part 1)
• "He kept politely tapping for several minutes, then reversed the hammer in his hand. The second sweep crossed the hour." (Chapter One, Part 2)
• "We shall decide a course of action within, ah . . . a fortnight of your completed report." (Chapter One, Part 2)
• "'I accept your vote of confidence on behalf of the Strategic Readiness Agency, and we shall endeavor to match your timetable for action.' ... 'Two weeks,' Taggart said, convinced Tolwyn was playing him, annoyed at Tolwyn's pointed reference to his once having been subservient to him." (Chapter One, Part 2)
• "It was a delayed telecast from the Assembly Hall on Earth, and only two days old." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "Two years on the farm, however, had softened the hard edges and put a gloss of time over the hurt." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "The walls had no decoration other than old two-dees of comrades (many long dead), his framed citations and promotions, and curios picked up during twenty years of war." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "It was only nine a.m., local time, but the temperature was already up over 42 degrees centigrade." (Chapter One, Part 3)
• "Eleven-thirty, and the place was already packed." (Chapter One, Part 4)
• "I flew off the ole Liberty for nineteen years." (Chapter One, Part 4)
• "I haven't killed anybody in a week, Mr., uh, Seether, and I'm due." (Chapter One, Part 4)
• "In the last several months, Colonel, we've suffered a series of escalating attacks." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "I'm told the vector mechanics are tricky and it takes the ore a couple of years to get here, but we get most of the iron we need for durasteel for a few centi-credits per ton." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "Two years grubbing in the dirt in Nephele to bring in a crop and fighting with the Farm Bureau had broadened his horizons in ways he'd never expected." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "His own uniform had been in a box in the quartermaster's stores until twelve hours before." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "I've booked you in the Arrow simulator at 1900 hours—to get your certification up to date." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "The unity that held us together through three decades is fraying now that the Kilrathi have faded." (Chapter Two, Part 1)
• "We'll get you checked out on our inventory tomorrow." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "We pulled a shore leave at Gonwyn's Glory about three months back." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "I got about six hours in an Arrow simulator yesterday, enough for a provisional rating,'" (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "The operations briefing'll be at 0600 hours." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "Yes, you'll need to recalibrate your watch for our eighteen-hour ship's day." (Chapter Two, Part 3)
• "His sleep, when he finally collapsed into his bed, gave him no rest." (Chapter Two, Part 5)
• "We'll be beginning the briefings for tomorrow's move to the Tyr system in about twenty minutes." (Chapter Three, Part 3)
• "It was his first serious combat mission and live carrier trap in two years, and both he and the ship had survived the experience intact." (Chapter Four, Part 3)
• "This good man was a prisoner on the ship he had commanded less than an hour ago." (Chapter Four, Part 5)
• "A full diagnostic would take almost half an hour, long enough to make him late for the reception." (Chapter Four, Part 6)
• "I've got the ready group this week and I know you need the flight hours." (Chapter Four, Part 7)
• "'I've served the Confederation for twenty years,' he said, 'regardless of what it's cost me.'" (Chapter Five, Part 2)
• "'We have just fought a tragic thirty-year war,' Paulson said, his hard edges softening as he tried to make peace." (Chapter Five, Part 4)
• "Blair knew his own reflexes and thinking speed were fast, fast enough to survive two decades of often hellish combat." (Chapter Five, Part 4)
• "We begin the next phase of our operations tomorrow, Colonel, so why don't you go get some shuteye." (Chapter Five, Part 4)
• "He thought back across his two decades of service, remembering all of the tests and tribulations of holding a commission in the Fleet during the war." (Chapter Six, Part 1)
• "He looked at his clock. Two-thirty." (Chapter Six, Part 1)
• "He'd been asleep a little more than an hour." (Chapter Six, Part 1)
• "That's the second unexplained surge in two days, so Paulson ordered it torn apart." (Chapter Six, Part 2)
• "The launch proved rough and his clearing turn slow, the results of having been away from the big ships for two years." (Chapter Six, Part 2)
• "He hadn't done a real eyes-only landing in a decade, and that had been in a fighter a lot more maneuverable than the Thunderbolt." (Chapter Seven, Part 1)
• "The Durangos were obsolete ten years ago!" (Chapter Seven, Part 1)
• "The generators were one of the few improvements the last couple of years had seen." (Chapter Seven, Part 1)
• "You only defected yesterday." (Chapter Seven, Part 2)
• "Most of the crew are pulling eighteen-hour-plus days to keep her from coming apart." (Chapter Seven, Part 2)
• "We served together during the Venice Offensive. That was three decades ago." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "'Electronic engineering,' Blair answered, 'but that was thirty years ago!'" (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "I've been on the admirals staff—one of the 'Black Gang'—for about the last two years." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "Within twelve hours I received a personal message from Tolwyn himself telling me to mind my own business." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "I passed on what they were selling, and within two hours my command override had been suspended." (Chapter Seven, Part 3)
• "The carrier would be out of action for a month, perhaps six weeks." (Chapter Seven, Part 6)
• "Seether was amazed at how much damage could be wrought during one three-hour nap." (Chapter Seven, Part 6)
• "They went over three days back. According to our telemetry, either Blair or Marshall torpedoed the Lexington." (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "'I'm supposed to present my biennial report to the defense committee tomorrow,' he said. 'I figured I'd best give it to you first.'" (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "The Vesuvius'll be ready for shakedowns in a week or so." (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "But we lost three-hundred thirty on the Achilles last week," (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "'No,' Tolwyn said, shaking his head, 'my aides tell me a resolution declaring war on the Border Worlds will be brought up for debate before the full Assembly within a week.'" (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "His cloak of office lay casually thrown over a chair back, alongside the gavel that marked his position as the year's Master of the Assembly. " (Chapter Eight, Part 1)
• "Sleep didn't seem to be an option." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "The two-day refit at Orestes had accomplished other miracles as well." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "He hadn't realized how good a steak and vegetables would taste after a week of breathing smoke and eating condensed emergency rations." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "They'd worked side by side the entire two days at Orestes and had been possibly the only two people other than Eisen who hadn't taken an eight-hour shore leave." (Chapter Eight, Part 2)
• "She'd fancied him no more than he had her, but she'd insisted they respect proprieties and had very specific ideas about where she should sleep. " (Chapter Eight, Part 5)
• "We have been harassed by unknown forces for the past 48 hours."; "We've got less than a week before the Assembly's vote." (Chapter Eight, Part 5)
• "Years ago, when I first signed on with Confed, there was a rookie pilot on my ship." (Chapter Eight, Part 5)
• "He was still worried twelve hours later while he waited with Eisen and a few well-wishers and watched a jump-capable transfer shuttle make a glass-smooth landing on the Intrepid's flight deck." (Chapter Eight, Part 7)
• "It's your first day on the job, sir." (Chapter Eight, Part
• "'We have had two similar incidents in the last forty hours,' he said." (Chapter Eight, Part
• "They'll be aboard in about an hour." (Chapter Eight, Part
• "Maniac was damned dose to exceeding the Hellcat's eight-hour endurance." (Chapter Nine, Part 1)
• "But I fought the Kilrathi for 20 years, and I'm a tough old bird." (Chapter Nine, Part 3)
• "You had to have ten years experience, minimum, and be able to relocate with no questions asked." (Chapter Nine, Part 3)
• "Four hours later Blair sat in his command chair, worrying a thumbnail and wondering if he had made a grave mistake in trusting Bean." (Chapter Nine, Part 4)
• "'Did Panther get her stuff?' ... 'About an hour ago, in fact.'" (Chapter Nine, Part 9)
• "The timing won't have to be that fine, not if we can hit all three within an hour or so."; "Otherwise, we go in twelve hours." (Chapter Ten, Part 1)
• "'What time is pilot's brief?' ... 'About four hours.'" (Chapter Ten, Part 2)
• "Blair took this as a subtle hint for him to get some sleep." (Chapter Ten, Part 3)
• "The destroyers were new, and hadn't appeared on yesterday's recon tapes." (Chapter Ten, Part 4)
• "'It's too bad you couldn't have been here yesterday.' (Chapter Ten, Part 6)
• "'They mostly pushed us aside when they came aboard—greenies, twenty-year vets, we didn't matter to them.'" (Chapter Ten, Part 6)
• "He had revisited his last conversation with Velina over and over as he'd tried to sleep. " (Chapter Ten, Part
• "Their groups suffered pretty heavily in yesterday's attack." (Chapter Eleven, Part 5)
• "We made landfall about five hours ago." (Chapter Eleven, Part 5)
• "It takes from sixty to ninety hours to run its course." (Chapter Eleven, Part 5)
• "If the rest of 'em don't ship out, they'll all be committing suicide in a year or so."
• "Blair dipped his head. He hadn't told anyone he had spent the night before tidying up his affairs and writing a short letter to Velina." (Chapter Twelve, Part 1)
• "'Twenty years ago,' he said conversationally, 'we ran an exhaustive computer analysis of the Kilrathi War.'" (Chapter Twelve, Part 3)
• "Phoenix wing will embark on the Vesuvius at zero-three hundred hours. Eagle's Claw wing will embark at zero-seven, together with the Marine battalion." (Chapter Twelve, Part 3)
• "Twenty years back, those on the project were already watching him." (Chapter Twelve, Part 4)

With these rules collected, we then created a master spreadsheet that lists every mission, book chapter, cutscene, jump and point that we know Blair sleeps. This let us get a great visual of how the four weeks of events needed to fit together.

From there, we used a set of "Rosetta Stone" events to tie different parts of the game together. For example, we knew that Captain Eisen left the Intrepid on "Day X" and that during the Speradon series there is a conversation with Hawk where it is established that Eisen had left 46 hours earlier and that the Assembly's final vote (ie the end of the game) was five days away. From here, we could fill out most of the rest of the game following the lines mostly established by the novelization for how much time took place between different missions and common events. The two passes at these connections are listed as the 'logic' fields in the spreadsheet.

Notes & Issues

Introduction

The convoy attack which begins the novel is necessarily a different event than the scene it adapts from the game. The ships and characters involved are different. It also claims that "the Kilrathi War was less than two years over..." which has prompted me to place it in 2671, well in advance of the rest of the story. Perhaps this was the very first test of the flash-pak! The game's convoy attack scene, similarly, can't be placed exactly because the specific attack is never mentioned again.

With knowing a nod to Chris Reid, I have to note that the novelization clearly thinks Wing Commander IV takes place two years after Wing Commander III. There are several other references (cataloged above) to Blair not having worn a uniform or done so-and-so for two years. The "less than two years" in the intro really locks its placement but the others can all be read as confirming that Blair didn't immediately muster out in 2669 (which honestly makes sense). Note also that the game itself does NOT think this; all references in the script are to WC3 being 'several' years ago.

Start Time

I have opted to go with the maximum amount of time (14 days for the report and 14 days for the debate). This leaves three days between Blair's departure from the farm and his arrival at Orion. It is possible to move the start date forward up to three days or to insert the days sightly differently (one could go between the farm and the cantine, for instance). Having two days travel time from Nephele to Earth at the very least feels appropriate given that the same chapter also establishes that that's the speed emergency news arrives.

Ending

Chapter 15 of the novel and the final cutscenes of the game do not have a specific date. Presumably Tolwyn's trial and appeals took days at the very least. I have placed Blair's time as a flight instructor after the goodwill tour he sets out on at the end of the novel.

Paths Not Taken

I have attempted to chart theoretical timelines for the major paths not taken. I have treated Circe as equivalent to Speradon and I have dated Vagabond's death based on the timetable for Decker's marines. It was not possible to date the earlier Orestes that followed the first defection opportunity missions specifically.

External References

I note for posterity that the "Japanese DVD timeline" lists Wing Commander IV as taking place from 2673.219 to 2673.233. This comes from assuming the Wing Commander IV PSX e-mail is the start of the game and that the game lasts 14 days. Additionally, Star*Soldier lists 2673.219 as the overall date for Wing Commander IV, again referencing the e-mail. Since the new timeline encompasses these spans entirely I do not think it is an issue worth further attention.

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