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April come she… did. Which means that it's just about time for the next Saturday television marathon! This will be the second part of our look at Star Trek and it will start by finishing off the cliffhanger from last month's Best of Both Worlds. Will Riker really fire on the Borg and kill Captain Picard?! We'll find out!

Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Best of Both Worlds II (s4e01): We kick off with the very last episode of Star Trek TNG that aired before Wing Commander I went gold. The Wing Commander I team stopped work only to watch new Star Treks together, so this must have been quite an event after a summer of hundred hour plus work weeks… and wondering what was going to happen to Captain Picard.

Star Trek: The Animated Series - The Slaver Weapon (s1e14): We didn't forget the Kzinti! The Slaver Weapon is an adaptation of one of Larry Niven's Known Space stories which originated the Kzinti…

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And the verdict is… Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is a perfectly pleasant film! This week, we've voted on a movie that's absolutely less pleasant but that had a significantly greater impact on moviemaking and the culture in general: Pulp Fiction (1994). You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Pulp Fiction certainly helped establish the cultural zeitgeist at the height of the Wing Commander series… but why are we watching it, specifically? Believe it or not, it isn't because of director Quentin Tarantino's recent, unexpected row with Matthew Lillard! Instead, we're looking specifically at a reference in Wing Commander III's quotes file:

ADAM FOSHKO - Ad-man
The Man Who Knows Video, The Character Quentin Tarantino Wishes He Had

Who is Adam Foshko? He may be best known to fans as the director of Wing Commander Prophecy but he contributed greatly to all of the FMV games. In fact, he has ten

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Authorities are investigating a break-in at a fabrication plant in the LHS 1167 system, following the theft of hardware and components.
No group has yet claimed responsibility, but early evidence points toward an unfamiliar mercenary outfit operating across multiple regions of the Bubble.
Security footage recovered from the site shows coordinated ship movements and disciplined withdrawal patterns, prompting speculation that the perpetrators were neither opportunistic pirates nor local criminals. Reports of heavily modified vessels bearing unfamiliar insignia have since surfaced in neighbouring systems.
A spokesperson for the affected facility issued a blunt assessment to Vox Galactica:
"These weren't amateurs. The ships we encountered were exceptionally well-equipped and flown with precision. They absorbed punishment that would have crippled most raiders."
Local authorities have advised

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We've got a pretty cool discovery today: a YouTube account has uploaded a very early trailer for Wing Commander Prophecy! It has some spectacular footage of the game's engine much earlier in development, more than we've seen before. It's not clear where this was originally published but we suspect it dates to around E3 1997, possibly included in a press kit and released with an overseas magazine.

The resolution is low (it's from 1997!) but there are some good looks at Prophecy's early light including an early version of the Midway, early asteroids, a fascinating not-seen-before version of the UI and even an unreleased destroyer-style capital ship briefly visibile!

Thanks to some help from the original uploader we've learned the source of this trailer: the December 1997 cover disc for a Russian gaming magazine called Gameland. Gameland published extensive Prophecy previews in their November and January

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Wing Commander's pantheon of cheats is well known, from 'Origin -k' activating the finger of death to alswantsmoreships giving als more ships almost every game has had a hidden option used by the developers for testing but kept in for players to discover. That is, with the notable exception of Wing Commander Armada, 1994's wonderful multiplayer-and-strategy take on the series.

Until now! Thanks to some amazing research by--who else?--AllTinker, the process for accessing Wing Commander Armada's 'debug mode' is known! For the past few years we've known that an Armada 'cheat' existed but have had no idea how to access it or even what it really did. That's because one of the game's programmers mentioned in a Facebook comment that they were surprised that the team had kept their promise never to reveal it all these years (32 years and counting). But that was just an added challenge for AllTinker!

What

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Everybody loves RoboCop! It might have an earnest claim for the perfect all around movie. It can be light and fun or endlessly deep in the same viewing. Whether you're looking for spectacular action and endless gore or a meditation on the human condition, they're both perfectly formed right there… and neither diminishes or even begs for the other. Hurrah!

We already discussed the interesting history of the Righteous Fire "Enforcer" in our RoboCop 3 post but we thought it would be important to compare it to the original... especially RoboCop's unmasked face to the face texture used to create the Enforcer. What do you think, did RoboCop influence this fellow (if he is a fellow)?

Here are further comparisons with the different shots and animations used in the Righteous Fire introduction:

The wonderful ED-209 also brought to mind something hidden inside Wing Commander III's files: untextured meshes of two