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The Gathering isn't a great movie... or even a good one. But it's FULL of heart and in spite of its meandering, confused mystery plot you can see the bones that will be used to create a pretty distinct television show down the line. It's also extremely easy to see why Chris Roberts and the Wing Commander III team were so impressed: it has exactly the same kind of 'we can do it ourselves without the money!' attitude that was behind their project. Babylon 5 will never look as flawless and magical as Star Trek, but it does constantly remind you that there are people with heart doing a lot with very little to make it work.

Here's the biggest Wing Commander connection at this point in the show, the famous establishing shot of the Babylon 5 space station and how it compares to 'Babylon 6' in Wing Commander III!

None of the shared actors we mentioned in the announcement post appeared in The Gathering... but I

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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 Heaven's Gate (1980) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 6 PM PST/9 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time! Please note that the movie is starting one hour earlier than usual to accommodate its run time.

And don't forget our sixth Wing Commander Cartoon party is early tomorrow!

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Cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the famous Dilbert comic strip, passed away earlier this week. Mr. Adams had become quite a crank over the years and precious few people are mourning his passing... but we can take the occasion to mourn our youth! No matter how we might want to deny it today, Dilbert was a massive part of the pop culture of the early 1990s that produced Wing Commander. And the comic inspired the development of the series several times!

Dilbert began in 1989 and reached the height of its popularity in the early 1990s. The strip lampooned white collar office work and was celebrated by tortured engineers and creatives around the world for capturing exactly how they felt about their pointy haired bosses. Fridges, cubicles and offices everywhere sported favorite Dilbert strips... and Origin Systems was not immune. Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III describes art director Chris

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A few weeks ago, we mentioned wanting to post about the history of the 'green Salthi'. Well, that just made me realize that there were a LOT of interesting appearances of Wing Commander I's slightest fighter across the Wing Commander canon… and it would be fun to gather them all in one place! So here's a brief history of the Salthi, from its original appearance in 1990 all the way to novels, cutscenes, spinoffs and movies! Did you know the little ship was so versatile?

The Original (1990)

The initial Salthi light fighter was designed by Origin Systems artist Glen Johnson and modeled by Mary Bellis and Steve Spear. It made its first appearance in the original Wing Commander rolling demo shown at CES that summer before serving throughout the original Wing Commander and both expansions. It's perhaps best remembered for being the fighter flown by Kilrathi ace Bhurak Starkiller (Bhurak nar Caxki).

It's not

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Wing Commander Discord regular Justice recently acquired a 3D printer and over the past two weeks they've been sharing their progress putting together a fleet of Wing Commander ships for tabletop gaming! I've enjoyed following the little updates so much that I thought it would be good to post them in an update for everyone to see. Justice says "I intend to keep doing more ships, though I'll probably slow down a bit for now. Except for Voidfighters, the games I want to try with these are more capital ship oriented anyway, and for Voidfighters ideally I'd scale up the fighters and print them bigger." They are using 3D models available from Tyrel Lohr.

Came out not too bad considering how tiny these bits are, and considering that I still haven't installed a 0.2 nozzle. Gotta be more careful to not touch the teeny tiny fins on the Hornet. Or use a sturdier material. I only have sturdier filament in colors

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No one wants it to be 2026 but the fact of the matter is that it is... and we're halfway through January! Which at least means we can get together for another Saturday morning cartoon marathon. Which, once again, will include no cartoons. We're watching two movies with big Wing Commander references in them, both of which seem to indicate that the characters would rather be playing Wing Commander. And the difference is the point here, we're going to be going from a poorly preserved 1990s Lifetime movie to a pixel perfect HD sci fi story about space Nazis. No, not Wing Commander IV. We're watching:

Children of the Sun (1994): The lineup starts up with a 1994 made-for-TV 'Lifetime' movie that's about the trials and tribulations of children born allergic to the sun. We haven't watched the full movie before but reviews online are almost exclusively from people who remember being absolutely terrified of it