Display MoreIt's all Greek to me! Christopher Nolan's movie adaptation of Homer's epic poem The Odyssey is due out this summer next month and the usual assortment of culture war idiots are already raising a fuss about… something? But for us Wing Commander geniuses, it's an opportunity to remember who else was a fan of the story… Christopher Blair! If you look carefully at his introductory scene in the Wing Commander movie you can see that the book he's reading is, indeed, The Odyssey:
Or at least he was a fan of the first six books. It's not totally clear in the movie itself but his copy is actually hollowed out to allow him to hide his Pilgrim Cross. Here's an image of the prop itself from the frontispiece of The Confederation Handbook where you can see exactly where the book ends. So while he seems to be reading the book in the movie he's not going to make it past Athena influencing Nausicaa to aid Odysseus. (If that, the closeup shot of Blair's reading is only on the first page of book six).
Thanks to the visible text we can tell that Blair is reading Samuel Butcher and Andrew Lang's 1879 prose translation. This version of the book was a popular choice for roughly the first half of the twentieth century but was eventually eclipsed by Samuel Butler's version. Today, prose rewrites are less popular in favor of versions that maintain the poetic structure of the original. The Butcher and Lang version is probably best known as the version James Joyce grew up with, forming some of the inspiration for his Ulysses. This translation has long been in the public domain, so you can read it for free via Project Gutenberg. All of this is to explain this exchange that occurs shortly after on the Diligent's bridge:
Maniac: What's a Scylla?
Blair: Ulysses sailed between the whirlpool Charybdis... and the island monster, Scylla. She snatched six of his men and ate them.It is odd that he says Ulysses, though, since the translation he's reading uses Odysseus. Additionally, the part of the story he's eagerly explaining was cut out of his book. Scylla and Charybdis are from book twelve!
Do you want your own copy of Blair's edition? Based on the pagination and what we see of the boards, it is specifically the version published by Macmillan in the UK from the late 19th century through at least the mid 1920s. We can't narrow it down to a specific year without seeing the actual prop but we picked up a 1922 version for just $8 which matches perfectly! Check eBay for +Odyssey +Macmillan and look for a copy with blue binding. Be sure to avoid the similar vintage "pocket" edition which has different pagination.
References to Greek mythology and the Homeric world have been common in Wing Commander starting with the Iason in the original Claw Marks… but they reached a fever pitch with the writing Chris Roberts was involved with in 1995: Wing Commander IV and the Wing Commander movie. Almost every star system in Wing Commander IV is referencing the era (Peleus, Callimachus, Tyr, etc.) and the movie itself is also full of such nods (the Ulysses corridor, Pegasus station, Charybdis and Scylla and so on).
