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We'll just come right out and say it: RoboCop is great! This week's movie will be another classic from our youth: the classic time travel/not-quite-stoner comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989). You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

We're watching this one as part of a recently added rule for movie selections: we will pick one film to represent a real world actor… and that movie has to have been made before the reference. So Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is the movie for legendary comedian George Carlin, referenced in Action Stations! Here's the brief mention where he gets a star system named after him… the closest base to McAuliffe with a working FTL communications system.

"Target Vikyah?" he whispered, already sensing what the answer was.
"McAuliffe," Speedwell replied.
"How do we know that?"
"Because it reports our translight burst transmitter is down due to intense solar

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Far from Home (2634)

Repleetah is a small habitable planet located in an eponymous star system in the Isaac Quadrant of the Enigma Sector. Isolated from more traveled spacelanes, Repleetah is a bitterly cold world covered with ridged terrain and packed with snow and ice. At the outset of the Terran-Kilrathi War, Repleetah was occupied by research outposts from a variety of worlds including Terrans and Kilrathi. When news of the declaration of war reached the Repleetah, the Terran scientists voted to visit a Kilrathi research facility to establish their neutrality in the hopes that both groups could continue their research. The Kilrathi responded with a surprise biological attack which exterminated the human scientists. In response to the assault, the Terran Confederation and the Empire of Kilrah both quickly deploy marines to the distant system. The battle is soon joined with both forces fighting in

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October Consortium has announced that the research initiative to collect Radicoida unica bloom samples was a resounding success.
According to results reported from Exogene Sciences in HIP 87621, the number of Unica seed pods collected by Commanders has meant that research efforts will be helped significantly due to the increased availability of biological material.
The collected seed pods will now undergo detailed, multi-faceted analysis to further understand their unique properties in the hope of reproducing the pharmacological effects seen in recent studies.
A legal representative at October Consortium added:
"Our research and development projections will be greatly fortified thanks to the thousands of Commanders who took part in this initiative. All members of the October Accords will benefit from this outcome."
Contributing Commanders can now collect their rewards at Exogene Sciences.

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In 1994, Super Wing Commander reimagined the original Wing Commander for the new 3DO console. This included constructing over two dozen new 3D meshes for all of the ships in the game, some with radically different designs. We've shared comparisons over the years but we thought it would be informative to actually match up all of the sprites used in the two games. Viewed this way it's pretty interesting how similar some of the new ship designs actually seem! Ships in the 3Space games (Wing Commander I, II, Academy, Privateer and Super Wing Commander) store spacecraft as a collection of 38 different views that are angled and scaled in flight to appear 3D to the player. It's pretty interesting seeing them all laid out together at once!

You can access the 3Space Comparison page here. Where relevant we've also included ships from Privateer and Wing Commander II when some of their meshes were repurposed (or

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In the SFF world there are few writers more beloved or missed than Sir Terry Pratchett, the British author of the Discworld series and a host of other classics. And he wasn't just a famously warm person and brilliant writer… he also had great taste. You see, Terry Pratchett loved Wing Commander! We've found several interviews where he talks about our favorite series. Here's one from the October 1993 issue of PC Gamer where he's promoting an upcoming game adaptation of Discworld:

Do you keep many games on your hard drive because you play them so much?

I don't actually keep many games permanently on hard drive. But I have got a fair number of games at home. I bring a couple with me whenever I come back from the states. I've flown my way through Wing Commander, X-wing and, well, most stuff I suppose.

...

Is there a Terry Pratchett top five?

Let me think, because I've played a lot of games of one sort or

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The wing Commander movie club gives The Dark Crystal a thumbs up! It's an impressive, elaborately made production with visuals that continue to impress throughout. And it's distinctive part of a vanguard group of 'dark fantasy' movies from the early 1980s that aren't so directly influenced by Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons like many films today. It seems like what is essentially a puppet show with no human actors would drag… but it's quick run time vanishes quickly and leaves you wanting more.

And The Dark Crystal is certainly full of Skeksises! The strange bird/lizard/dinosaur creatures are the story's major antagonist and they are perhaps one of its most distinctive elements. In their honor, we've done a deep dive into their pair of namesake ships from Privateer 2! To that end, the PL03 Skecis-class medium fighter is as middle of the road as you can get; truly the midpoint in Privateer