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It's time for March's 'cartoon' marathon and this is one a number of folks have been waiting for: we're beginning a study of how Star Trek influenced Wing Commander! The original Star Trek and Star Trek The Next Generation were both enormous influences on many aspects of Wing Commander and we've planned an event spanning two months to study some of them!

Star Trek - The Cage (s1e00): The first connection to Wing Commander is a simple one but since it's a direct call out to the very first Star Trek pilot we thought that was a great place to begin. Secret Ops veterans who played through the actual episodes as they came out may remember that the very first winning password in the game was "Talos IV", a reference to the dangerous planet that Captain Pike and his crew visit in The Cage.

Star Trek - Space Seed (s1e22): The introduction of Star Trek's greatest villain, Khan, has a very literal connection to

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Mobile Suit Gundam proved to be pretty popular as the Wing Commander movie club was busier than ever last week! Next time we're going to see if hard hitting action is as popular: we'll be screening Hard Target (1993) next week. Hard Target is an over the top action movie from the legendary John Woo, his first film made for Hollywood. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Why the interest in John Woo movies? Because the Wing Commander III team loved them! Wing Commander III's executable contains a hidden 'quotes' file from the development team full of in-jokes and shoutouts to what sustained them through a hard development cycle… and John Woo movies are mentioned twice! Hard Target would've been in theaters while Wing Commander III was being made. Below is a reproduction of the entire file; there's a lot of inside baseball here but it also paints a wonderful picture of who these

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Earlier this year we suggested everyone catch up on Majuular's excellent (and lengthy) series of Ultima retrospectives. I hope you took our advice, because it's time for the next one: a three plus hour deep dive into the controversial Ultima VII: Pagan and the history around its development. The story naturally includes quite a bit about Wing Commander and it's all very fascinating.

I even noticed a Wing Commander nod I hadn't before: after summoning Pyros, the Lord of Flame, the Avatar is told "I will feast upon your entrails first, manling!". That's a callback to a common Kilrathi taunt... and it's spoken here by Origin's Ken Demarest, who voiced Bluehair in Wing Commander II. Here's the audio from Ultima:

The taunt first appeared in the original Wing Commander where it was "I shall feast upon your offspring." Secret Missions 2 updated it to "I shall feast upon your entrails!" and a tradition was

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Last time we checked in with Tyrel Lohr they were building the Super Wing Commander Snakeir (aka the Wing Commander Armada Shiraak). Now they've moved on to the rest of Wing Commander Armada's too-rarely-seen... armadas. We've got everything from the hated Phantom to the mighty Goran in the works, which you can see below. You can purchase their models to print yourself through Cults!

Thought I would share the in progress shots of the Wing Commander Armada Kilrathi 3d models. Shiraak and Shok'lar have already been test printed, the rest will test print later this week. Have to do the Goran still.

Kilrathi Wing Commander 3d printed pics of the painted 3d models I did of the Shiraak light fighters and Shok'lar fighters. I still need to do some more touch ups on the Shiraak and paint some more paneling details on the bottom, but they are all pretty much table ready now. (Skeet)

Suffered from a bout of

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War never changes but it's certainly interesting to see how its portrayal in the media does! The Wing Commander movie club found that while Go for Broke! certainly isn't some brilliant film that it was a pretty fascinating look at a war story that we don't know enough. The film itself is by the numbers–lots of shooting and characters learning dramatic moral lessons–but it's not quite like a Dam Busters or a Longest Day. It was fascinating to see actual Japanese-American veterans getting to tell their own story just a few years after it happened. !

Here's the movie's title, which as we noted in the previous post was the real motto of the 442nd Infantry Regiment. One of the movie characters explains that "it's Pidgin English for shoot the works" which… actually feels like a more arcane saying, but who knows! It definitely matches Wing Commander II's history of interestingly-named friendly capital ships.

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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 Mobile Suit Gundam I (1981) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!