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I don't know that we would say THX 1138 is a movie that you sit down and explicitly enjoy but it is pretty fascinating. As a work of art, it's superb. It follows in the footsteps of dystopian futures like the ones imagined by Huxley and Orwell mated with the same sort of 1970s washed out tomorrow you'd find in things like Logan's Run or Beneath the Planet of the Apes. There's very little handholding, either; you're expected to figure out the world and what's going on quickly and before the film gets too far away from you. It was also very interesting seeing how much of THX's future ends up in Lucas' Star Wars six years later. It's a bit like playing an early alpha of a beloved video game, in that respect!

The big literal connection to Wing Commander (and many, many other things) was the name of the movie and lead character, THX 1138. THX is played by a much younger Robert Duvall and the designation

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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, special for Valentine's Day, is Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957) 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!

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

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Distant Worlds 3 expedition has confirmed a series of key achievements as its diverse fleet continues toward an unexplored region of the galaxy.
Expedition control reported that the flotilla has successfully cleared inhabited space and completed its first major staging objective at Colonia, designated Waypoint One of the current route. Colonia served as the fleet's primary logistics and regrouping hub before the start of extended deep-range operations.
While the fleet consolidated in the Colonia area, many independent commanders carried out a hazardous surface insertion on a lifeless rocky world informally dubbed the "Monde de la Mort" by pilots. The landing has been cited by organisers as one of the most technically demanding surface operations of the expedition so far due to its dangerously close orbit around the white dwarf star of Spoihaae XE-X d2-9.
The fleet has since reached

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Here's a deep and useful look at some obscure gear: mkdud1 has posted a control map for the 3DO CH Flightstick Pro and a look at how to restore their potentiometers! The distinct CH Flightstick Pro is probably familiar to a lot of classic fans… but fewer know that a version was also released for the 3DO which was explicitly supported by Super Wing Commander and Wing Commander III! Tracking down (or emulating) a Flightstick Pro makes the 3DO Wing Commandering experience a truly beautiful thing. If you'd like to know more, you can find the original thread on Reddit.

Here is a map for the CH Flightstick Pro controls for 3DO SWC. I have updated this on 1-18-26 to include some of the hat functions; this is helpful during combat when you want to send a quick taunt during combat or a command to your wingman. The slightly hidden red printing for the right shift button reads "Right Shift with B = Brake to 0,

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The work continues! Our exploration of Wing Commander Prophecy's hidden mechanics has been taking longer than we expected but we are ready to premiere the WCPedia pages for the second series... along with a couple of fascinating discoveries! This week we are looking at the G'wriss Series which introduces enemy capital ships and gives you the first look at the multi-wing strikes that make a lot of Prophecy missions so cool! There are six missions in series C but you will only encoutner three of them in any given playthrough. C1 is the same for everyone and we've discovered some cool secrets there. C2 is decided based on how much damage the Midway takes in C1, with more damage meaning more NAV points to visit (just one in C2a, two in C2b and three in C2c).

You can find the individual pages for the first series missions below.

• C1: G'wriss - Convoy Rescue
• C2a: G'wriss - Alien Starship Encounter
• C2b:

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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