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We aren't going to sugarcoat it for you: it turns out that Ishtar was not a good movie. Nevertheless, the Wing Commander movie club marches on! We decided to vote for a science fiction film specifically and after a big tie and a second round our choice for next week was Sphere (1998), one of the newest movies in the pool. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Sphere is the second of three movies we will be looking at that was explicitly referenced in the Wing Commander movie's famous introduction sequence. The first was 1492: Conquest of Paradise, which we watched earlier this month. The after action report contains a thorough look at the paintings used to create the introduction. Sphere had its own clear impact on the style of the intro and especially the flashes of Kilrathi art; we'll take a closer look on Friday!

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

Sphere is

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AD has come upon a pretty fascinating vintage article that had not been in our community consciousness. It's a preview of Origin's product lineup from the April 1991 issue of The One, an Amiga-focused computer outlet. It includes a very early description of Wing Commander II and some rendered images of ships in progress… including one we've never seen before!

We asked Wing Commander II director Siobhan Beeman about the unknown ship and she was kind enough to think back so far to figure it out:

Vaguely. Early drafts of the story had more capital ship engagements, which is why torpedoes were introduced and why the Concordia is a strike carrier with a spinal-mount weapon. I believe this art is for a frigate or destroyer class that would have shown up with multiple names.

Awesome! You can certainly see how a frigate with this design would fit right alongside the Gilgamesh destroyer and Waterloo cruiser in

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut event happening on Discord this morning! Join us at noon EST/9 AM PST for a fun filled morning of television... that all connect to Wing Commander somehow! We'll enjoy two episodes of MST3k that have deep connections to Wing Commander III, specifically. You can find details on the shows included as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. Be sure to download the episodes so they're ready to play with the group!

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The Wing Commander movie club has kicked off October right with a spooky horror movie: the 1968 classic Rosemary's Baby. We found it to be a stunningly well made movie full of visual texture and nuance. The story is maybe more relevant than ever again, an allegory about society's belief in its right to control women. Now: the Wing Commander connection here was always slight, so we're going to lean right into it and try and collect everything we know about the character named after Rosemary's Baby's controversial director Roman Polanski.

In the 27th century, Lt. Adam "Bishop" Polanski is one of the veteran wingmen aboard the Tiger Claw in the Wing Commander movie. He was played by veteran British actor Mark Powley, best known for a long running role on television's The Bill. He is a Rapier pilot and flies ship number 35. He has been aboard the carrier for about seven months at this point in the

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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 Ishtar (1987) 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!

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

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Verman has been experimenting with some technology to bring some of Feng Zhu's unused Privateer Online concept ships to life! They write:

It's been a long time since I contributed anything to the news, I still visit the site often and have quite a few projects for Wing Commander going on at the moment (along with a million other projects too). Well I decided to do some tinkering with 2D image to 3D Modelling AI, using a site called Meshy. I always loved one of the ship concepts for Wing Commander Online so I thought I would test out how good the AI was just using that concept art to produce a 3D model and also the textures from the artwork. I attached some screenshots.

I also made it freely available on Sketchfab so people can download it and make it better or use it in any projects or just study it...

I have also done a couple of the other models but I haven't had time to get them uploaded to