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Before Wing Commander was ever an 'interactive movie' it already had a lead actress: Saranya Carr (2629-2688). Though she is barely ever seen, the story of Carr and her daughter Morgana is a constant in the background of Wing Commander's lore. Let's take a closer look…

Saranya Carr was created by Aaron Allston for the original Wing Commander's Claw Marks manual in 1990. She is a young actress who is the lead in what is implied to be a show-within-a-show series of film serials called Luna Jones, Jumpscout. Carr was introduced in the magazine's Comm Relay news section in a story about how the Terran Confederation Service Organization is sending her to the Tiger's Claw as part of a morale-building tour. We suspect her name, an Indian given name and a British surname, is intended to hint at a more blended human culture in the 27th century.

TCSO Show Scheduled

(Tiger's Claw, TCAFCN) - There’s good news for

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Demolition Man gets our seal of approval; it's not anything brilliant but it's endlessly fun and it really compares favorably to Judge Dredd. Our next movie will be Seven Samurai (1954) by Akira Kurosawa. Seven Samurai is regarded as a timeless classic and a film that has had endless influence on films since… so it will be pretty fun to see that and decide how it might connect back to Wing Commander! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along. Please note that the movie will begin one hour early (at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific) to accommodate the run time.

The Wing Commander universe has a sea of over a dozen stars named after the sci-fi authors that inspired the series, from Clarke to Niven. But there are only three named after directors: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas (both in the Enigma Sector)... and Akira Kurosawa in the Vega Sector. The system, sometimes spelled Kurasawa, first

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Alias|Wavefront (now a subsidiary of AutoDesk) is a company with a long history of developing industry-focused 3D rendering tools. Origin's FMV Wing Commander games used their PowerAnimator suite for their CG work and the team at Digital Anvil used Maya for working on the Wing Commander film. Every year Alias|Wavefront produced a VHS 'showreel' that was part advertisement and part thank you for their loyal customers. It would include dozens of clips of projects from the previous year and then some longer segments describing how some of the work was accomplished.

DMJC was recently browsing their 1996 demo tape and found a fun surprise: a clip from Wing Commander IV! It turns out that Chris Roberts was eager to have his team's work shown alongside film production groups like ILM and encouraged his artists to submit their best efforts… and guess what, they compare pretty favorably with the ones being

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Someone told us that it was already August, and that stunning revelation means it's almost time for another CIC Birthday Party! We're on the verge of turning 27 years old here at wcnews.com, and we'd once again like to celebrate with you in two weeks. Mark your calendars for August 16th at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT). The party takes place on the CIC Discord server, but we're also planning to have a live stream to go along with it. You can check out last year's stream to get a little preview. It should be a blast - see you there!

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Greetings WingNuts,

We'll start our look at Forbidden Planet with a gallery of the ship referenced on Wing Commander Academy, the United Planets Cruiser C-57D. It's simplistic compared to the kind of starships we know today but you can see the influence on the original Enterprise right off…

We'd show you a picture of the Krell, a name borrowed by Privateer 2 for a heavy fighter, but they don't actually appear in the film! All we ever see is their enormous underground machine.

Another enduring impact on science fiction is the prevalence of Altair as a location. Altair is a real star but the fact that it played such a major role in Forbidden Planet is the reason it appears constantly in other science fiction… including all over Wing Commander! The Wing Commander III 3DO port names one of the Confederation depots at Kilrah the TCS Altair:

The Wing Commander IV novelization makes Altair the planet Paladin

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Demolition Man and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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Today's your last chance to get those summer classics at half price! I couldn't put it any better than GOG themselves:

Relive those late summer nights spent with friends, battling through the games that defined your childhood. Reconnect with the classics you loved and the memories they carry - it’s time to play like you used to.

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Here's a little treasure: a Swedish magazine article about flight tactics in the original Wing Commander that has had a series of original maneuvering diagrams commissioned for it! They feature original 3D models of the Hornet, Dralthi and Dorkir (!) that seem to have been created for this purpose and not seen again. Even if you can't read Swedish, this one is worth a look! The article originally appeared in a 1993 issue of Datormagazin (Number 12, July 15 to August 11).

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The Wing Commander movie club survived our trek to Altair IV! Forbidden Planet was a pretty fascinating movie, a prototype for the modern 'serious' science fiction film… and a huge part of the DNA of Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and more. This week, we're headed back to Earth… the Earth of the near future! This week's movie is Demolition Man, an extremely fun action movie from 1993. So plan to order some Taco Bell and form on our wings for a modern… masterpiece, I guess. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The Wing Commander connection here is that music from Demolition Man was used during the production of the Wing Commander movie as a 'temp track'. Temp tracking is a process by which a film is given temporary music before it has its own score in order to show everyone a sense of what is being worked towards. In the case of Demolition Man, a Elliot Goldenthal track

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In 1994, Origin Systems recognized that they needed to cash in on the nascent first person shooter craze. For roughly a decade, Origin had been the star of the game development pantheon, known for pushing the limits of technology and making cutting edge games that had no comparison. The long running Ultima series had established the company's street cred and the surprising success of Wing Commander had made their mark legendary.

Now, that was changing. Young upstart Id Software's DooM had set the world on fire and everyone in the industry was racing to follow it up. Origin, now a corporate subsidiary of Electronic Arts, was starting to seem stodgy in comparison. DooM grew the PC gaming audience in leaps and bounds and at the same time conditioned them to expect a new kind of game. What specifically made DooM magic? The snappy gameplay, the clever level design, the aesthetic and its ultraviolence, the

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In our recent update archiving articles from Aint it Cool News there was a story which mentioned Wing Commander movie storyboards in the January 1998 issue of Ultimate PC, a UK-based magazine. I decided to look up the article and it is... something! It's an extensive and interesting piece on the merging of Hollywood and game development which includes both a focus on Wing Commander Prophecy and a fascinating sidebar interview with Chris Roberts (then in pre-production on the movie). It also features an extremely 1990s layout and what may be the least flattering photograph of Chris Roberts ever published! Most interesting of all, the media is clearly all sourced from the Wing Commander Prophecy EPK... which accidentally included the 'test' storyboards Origin developed for the movie while Chris was still putting it together there. So the AICN report is actually accidentally correcting that error and

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Back in 2020 we featured some of the Wing Commander fan art of EpytronOmega, who was working on ship models to mod into Sins of a Solar Empire. While looking through ArtStation and DeviantArt I noticed a few of his renders we didn't have in the archive -- enjoy!

Wing Commander: Arrow Class Fighter (ArtStation)

This is my lower poly model of the Arrow Class fighter featured in Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, as well as Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom.

Model built for a modification for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

3,483 Polies

Dralthi4 baked Textures (DeviantArt)

Here is some work that I have been doing with Baking textures. Not to bad if you ask me, hope for more to come.

Kilrathi Fighters (DeviantArt)

Shown here, from right to left, we have the Dralthi MK 2, Darket, Strakha, and Dralthi MK 4.

TCS Vesuvius (DeviantArt)

Here is the final mesh for the Vesuvius.

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Greetings WingNuts,

We weren't going to do after action reports for movies that were just referenced by Wing Commander… but there's so much we noticed in The Empire Strikes Back that we decided to keep it going and at least post what was referenced each week. Plus, we have to have a place for the weekly Sully picture!

Here's the "we found them" line that's quoted in Wing Commander Prophecy:

Hoth itself gets a nod on Wing Commander Academy. Mark Hamill again faces a snow cave in The Price of Victory:

And then there's the appearance of the Super Star Destroyer echoed in Prince Thrakhath's enormous dreadnought. Like the 22km Wing Commander ship, fans have spent decades bickering about the length of the SSD (it's 19 km).

Darth Vader famously executes an officer during the attack on Hoth. Dr. Forstchen first has Prince Thrakhath do the same in End Run…

“Now tell me this, Jamuka,” Thrakhath said quietly,

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Forbidden Planet and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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Movie news aggregator ScreenRant recently interviewed Freddie Prinze Jr. on a red carpet and asked him if there were any roles he'd like to revisit... and you won't believe his answer! "If Wing Commander would have made money then maybe that would be fun to do another one. But nobody saw it, so it'll never happen." Hey, you never know! Exactly the right amount of time has passed between the 1998 Wing Commander shoot so that Prinze is now the right age to play Commodore Blair in Wing Commander Prophecy. Let's make it happen!

Archived: Download

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Zorgon Peterson has confirmed that the Panther Clipper heavy freighter has entered full-scale production following two successful community-led support initiatives.
Independent pilots played a vital role in stabilising final-phase manufacturing, with critical commodities delivered to production facilities at Vespucci City. Security operations were also pivotal, with coordinated action clearing pirate threats and safeguarding high-priority convoys across the Aiaba system.
A spokesperson for Zorgon Peterson stated:
"We're proud to see the Panther Clipper launched on schedule. The response from the pilot community has been overwhelming, and instrumental, in making this happen. Early sales have been promising, and we're looking forward to seeing the Panther's impact on interstellar trade."
Pilots are now being asked to deliver aluminium, steel, titanium, and CMM composites to replenish Trailblazer

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If you missed out on the original GOG summer sale, fear not, because they've now kicked off sequel summer classics promo. The Wing Commander series qualifies and each title is marked down 50% to $2.99 per package. Improve your summer with just a few clicks!

Relive those late summer nights spent with friends, battling through the games that defined your childhood. Reconnect with the classics you loved and the memories they carry - it’s time to play like you used to.

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I'm always excited to discover a new piece of Wing Commander-related advertising... and we've got a big one today! Baen ran these unique magazine advertisements for Wing Commanders End Run and Fleet Action in Science Fiction Chronicle in December 1993 and January 1994, respectively. There's some pretty unique copy in here: "soil words from a soft Kilrathi mouth." (?!) It's crazy to think that there was a time when the two biggest Wing Commander novels came out just months apart; the Wing Commander universe certainly grew by leaps and bounds in 1994!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Zorgon Peterson has officially announced the release of the long-awaited Panther Clipper, with an initial run deployed for purchase amidst ongoing production issues.
The Panther Clipper is described as the largest and most advanced heavy freighter currently licensed for civilian use. With a focus on maximum cargo capacity and long-range endurance, it is expected to redefine logistics operations for independent pilots, corporations, and faction-aligned haulers alike.
Final specifications include a maximum cargo capacity of over 1200 tonnes, giving it the same capacity as a fully laden Type-8 and Imperial Cutter combined. It is also the first ship that can be equipped with the MkII cargo rack.
A spokesperson for Zorgon Peterson offered the following statement:
"This is a proud moment for our entire team. The Panther Clipper relaunches following decades of development and adaption to the growing

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There's probably no point in reviewing The Empire Strikes Back, but it's safe to report that we all loved it. This week, the Wing Commander movie club is going back to the 1950s to take a look at the beginning of our future. We'll be watching Forbidden Planet, a movie that spawned (among many other things) the original Star Trek! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Wing Commander Academy's Lords of the Sky opens with Tolwyn briefing the cadets. He shows a map of the Dioscuri system which they'll be patrolling and if you look very carefully you can see the background painters have added a number of labels to surrounding stars. One of them is a nood to Star Trek (M1701) and one is a reference to Alien (LV442). And at the top left of the image you can find C57D… a reference to the hero starship in Forbidden Planet, the United Planets Cruiser C-57D!

Privateer 2 doesn't just name ships