Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Back in 2024, we made an interesting discovery: we identified that the 'pin up' poster briefly seen in Lieutenant Blair's quarters in the Wing Commander was made from a stock photo that had been reused in other places! This conclusively disproved an old (and already very unlikely) piece of IMDb trivia that it was a photograph of Sarah Michelle Gellar and it brought us to a new question: who was the stock photo model?

As unlikely as it seems, we now have an answer... because she stopped by the forums to tell us herself! Her name is Rae Cline and a portfolio shoot made it into a stock photo collection way back when. Here's her story:

Hi Bandit LOAF. The woman is me. Yes, it is from stock footage. The photographer is Jack Cutler. You can find him on IG @jack_cutler_foto. You can find me on Instagram, too, @raeclineauthor.

I never received any royalties for the stock photo in Wing Commander, of course, but

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Local authorities across several Imperial and Federal colonies have confirmed a sharp rise in pirate activity, coinciding with the military confrontation surrounding the HIP 87621 enclave.
Traders report increased interdictions along previously stable shipping lanes, while independent miners have warned of sustained harassment at long-established extraction sites. System security offices acknowledge that patrol coverage has been reduced, citing the redeployment of forces toward strategic objectives elsewhere.
A spokesperson for the Imperial Internal Security Service commented that "temporary pressure" on border systems was inevitable while major forces remained on standby around HIP 87621. Federal officials echoed similar sentiments, stressing that order would be restored once current campaigns concluded.
Independent pilots have voiced growing frustration, describing a lack of response to

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's time for another thrilling edition of the monthly Wing Commander cartoon party… with a real cartoon included this time! This month we'll be stepping back in time to 1992 to imagine what it was like when Wing Commander: Privateer was being made… and we'll be enjoying some of the truly ridiculous nonsense television that defined the era.

Back in 1992, Origin couldn't settle on a name for their space trading game. The developers wanted to call it Free Trader in honor of the Traveller tabletop game that had greatly inspired them, but legal could not clear the name. It went through dozens of suggestions before being announced as the tepid "Trader Commander" and finally being changed to the not-quite-definitory Privateer. The game's storyboard artists riffed on the situation by labeling their work with the names of notorious media including films, TV shows and albums. We've already watched three of the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We have seen the horrible future of THX 1138 and said… hey, a world where the government keeps you drugged, happy and working maybe isn't that bad. For next week we've chosen the (current) lone romantic comedy in the queue: a Dean Martin film called Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957). You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

So what could this possibly have to do with Wing Commander? Look closely at the poster: the female lead is none other than Anna Maria Alberghetti, who will in roughly 700 years have a space cruise liner named after her! And then due to the events of Secret Ops quickly NOT have a space cruise liner named after her. Ms. Alberghetti was a singer who started perforing professionally as a child and then became an actress as a teenager. Ten Thousand Bedrooms is her 'best known' movie and so we thought we'd take the opportunity to try and find out… why did they name a spaceship

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The SR-51 Seahawk is a three-engine Terran Confederation carrier-based Airborne Early Warning/Airborne Warning and Control Ship (AEW/AWACS) which operated in 2681. They are commonly referred to as an "SWACS" (Spaceborne Warning and Control Ship). It is a specialized spacecraft intended to gather data, translate it using its onboard computers and then transmit it back to a carrier. They are also used as command and control centers, extending the range at which orders can be relayed to other fighters and sometimes guiding friendly ships to targets during strike missions. While performing an essential role, Seahawks are not a preferred assignment for Space Force pilots.

The Seahawk's most distinctive feature is its triangular radar dome which can rotate about its X-axis at up to 60° per second. The radar is an active surveillance system which scans space in three bands. The Seahawk also carries an

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a weird one! Check out this brief mention of Wing Commander for the SNES from the October 1992 issue of Nintendo Magazine System (No. 1), a Nintendo-focused (well, duh) UK-based gaming magazine. Now look at the screenshot: it's not from the finished game! You can tell from the cockpit gauges that this is the redrawn SNES Hornet cockpit... but it's not QUITE right. Even more clear, though, is the blue ringed planet. Wing Commander I does have such a planet but it's green in every port... and it only appears in the Gimle and Dakota serieses, which means it'll never show up in a Hornet. This must be a never-before-noticed pre-release image!