Display MoreThe Wing Commander movie club made it through Seven Samurai! Wing Commander never had a 'team up' style story like Seven Samurai... but it ALMOST did! The sequel to Wing Commander Secret Ops was intended to involve a team of seven (six plus the player) elite mercenaries who operate outside the military chain of command. The project went by a number of names and was briefly formally announced as Wing Commander Strike Team... but it's best known as Shadow Force. You can read the original pitch document here. But I thought I'd pull out the character bios for the mercenaries so everyone could get to know them and think about what could have been! The character art was by a young Feng Zhu, who went on to an extraordinary career. (I do have to call out Sliver's "as sleek and lithe as panther, she uses her sexuality as a weapon" as especially goofy; how would this impact space combat? I guess it was the 90s!)
Codename: PRIME
Real Name: Quinn Kyle
Confed Intel ID: 0922
Designation: Command
Special Skills: As leader of the Contact Team, not only does he command Cerberus., but with a background in formal Confed Military and Intel training, he bridges the gap between light and dark as he receives and divines their orders.
Codename: TURK
Real Name: Eric Lightman
Confed Intel ID: 3488
Designation: Combat Tactics/Navigation
Special Skills: Combat-trained Marine. Skilled in covert tactics, field deployment, insertion and recovery. Decorated extensively for bravery before “being recruited” by Intel.
Codename: FURIE
Real Name: Jessica Dern
Confed Intel ID: 8821
Designation: Arms Expert/Intelligence gathering/Non-Human Culture and Protocol
Special Skills: Expert in Kilrathi Martial arts and weapons. In combat, her bloodlust is source of her strength, which she keeps it in check with her training. Intelligent and Dangerous.
Codename: HARDWARE
Real Name: DELETED
Alias Used: Victor Koonze
Confed Intel ID: 6025
Designation: Sciences/Decryption/Communications and Covert Insertion
Special Skills: Hybidized Tech-enhanced Human. His “natural” ability to infiltrate classified and military files on both sides of a war is a source of pride for him. He is brilliant, mercenary and since he had “limited choice’ in joining Intel, has lots of attitude.
Codename: SLIVER
Real Name: Jana Lilith
Confed Intel ID: 7953
Designation: Stealth/Political Assassination
Special Skills: Clean, effective, silent. As Sleek and lithe as panther, she uses her sexuality as a weapon. She is an expert in covert assault weaponry. She favors bladed weapons and prides herself in her ability to “surprise” her prey in more ways than one.
Codename: PRIEST
Real Name: Winston Quaid
Confed Intel ID: 0902
Designation: Mechanical/Philosophy/Archeology/Non-Human Technologies
Special Skills: Well educated and restrained, but ironically, an amazingly gifted fighter. Good at field stripping enemy machines and cannibalizing the partsI also thought it would be fun to pull out some of the general references to Samurai in the Wing Commander canon. Which start all the way at the original Claw Marks where Spirit talks abut how she does not consider herself to be a Samurai.
The 24-year-old ace explains, "I did not join the armed forces for revenge. I have no fantasies of personally gunning down the pilot who killed my father. It is a matter of tradition and duty. The tradition is my family's, and the duty is to the Earth...I am often asked if I think of myself as a modern samurai. The answer is no. I am a military pilot, not a feudal retainer. But there is nothing to keep a modern pilot, Japanese or not, from trying to adhere to the best elements of the warrior-codes of the past: The code of the samurai, the code of the knight-errant, any code of honor and service.
Even the Tri-System apparently had samurai in their history… as evidenced by this in-game commercial for a TMNT parody, Mutant Cosmic Thunder Samurai Newt.
If your child hasn't got a Mutant Cosmic Thunder Samurai Newt...
Then you shouldn't be a parent!
In fact, if we discover that your offspring doesn't possess at least THREE of our posable figures with optional accessories, plus at least one of our horrendously overpriced poorly manufactured ThunderKillaCars, then we're going to send the Social Department round to your habitation...tomorrow! Buy one today, or your child could be in the care of deranged individuals of dubious sexuality and religious denomination by next week.
Crecheco. We care.
Wing Commander Action Stations has a scene where a human prisoner has a conversation with a Kilrathi lord. The character, a history teacher named Abram, compares the Kilrathi to samurai.
Abram laughed. "You know, Harga, I actually do like you. You remind me of the stories of our old Earth, the samurai of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Trained killers, but killers educated in the arts, music, poetry. I only wish all you Cats were that way. Hell, we might even have found a way to get along."Samurai was also the watchword for the infamous Wing Commander movie Kilrathi. There's not much graceful movement in their finished form but with the concept art you can easily see the goal. Here's Chris Roberts and the designers in the April 1999 issue of Cinefex:
Roberts instructed Nik Williams of Animated Extras to avoid viewing any Kilrathi developed for past Wing Commander games. "Chris' original brief for us was to create feline Samurai," said Williams. "Descended from cats, the Kilrathi had since lost their facial hair and learned to walk upright. The principal challenge with the Kilrathi suit design which was developed by Pauline Fowler and Julian Murray, who sculpted several third-scale alien prototypes over a like-sized figure - was to disguise the human form within:' Towards that end, the Kilrathi warriors sported stylized armor with an exoskeletal shell, which served to mask the points at which a human performer's knees and elbows bent. The costumes were constructed largely from fiberglass, with a chain-mail-Iike, foam-lined fabric providing flexibility in the midsection, hips and knees. Knee and ankle joints were hinged mechanically, with stilts utilized to make the performers both taller and mobile.And here's the team that created the Kilrathi in issue 33 of Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models:
SF&F: Animated Extras’ main contribution to the film was the construction of the cat-like alien race, the Kilrathi. Were you also involved with the design of these creatures?
Nik: Yes, we were. Chris had worked on the motion sequences on one of the Wing Commander games, where they had had feline-like Kilrathi. However, this time Chris wanted something that had never been seen before, and asked us not to look at the CD-ROM game for reference. Dave masters produced several designs and then it went quiet! We assumed by this that we didn’t have the project, then around Christmas it came up again. Our original designs for the Kilrathi utilized a combination of African and Japanese samurai warrior influences. Chris, however, wanted them to be more feline, but still wanted to keep the samurai aspect.Here are two of the Samurai-style Kilrathi concepts so you can see what they were going for in the film. The first one is 'canon', too! The Handbook includes it in an in-universe article about the Kilrathi and captions it "Famous artist Mariano Diaz’s rendering of a Kilrathi General in full armor."
The Samurai's flag was a major part of the story as we followed its creation and then as it served to mark the passing of the various heroes. It can be a little hard to pick out in the final Wing Commander movie but all the Kilrathi have banners they wear like Samurai. The Confederation Handbook says "these banners indicate clan lineage or affiliation— all members of the crew of a Kilrathi space vessel belong to the same clan, with officers chosen from the families of clan leaders. The vessel would then belong to that clan, and a united force is achieved only when the clans unite to fight a common enemy."
Here's a closer look at some of the flag props themselves:
Finally, the fact that the village elder is referred to as 'Old Man' in the captions reminded me of a neat trick in the Wing Commander IV novel: at varying points early in the book, both Blair and Seether think about the phrase "come to Jesus". Blair says it's a favorite of Tolwyn and Seether quotes 'the old man'. He then refers to the mysterious leader of the Black Lance that way… so if you're a very close reader you can figure out the conspiracy extra early! (Action Stations also refers to Admiral Banbridge as 'the Old Man' capitalized; I include that here only because I don't know what to do with it.)
Sully was all worn out after a three and a half hour movie! Don'ot tell him Heaven's Gate is coming up…
