Part 66: Cast of Characters

Voting seems to be running heavily towards Blair being skeptical of what Confed tells him; I'll leave that open until I record the videos and the mission update, while will start in about 12 hours time, around noon GMT/UTC, but I'm not expecting a change.

I figure this LP is going to be story-heavy enough that we could probably do with a cast page. I'll update this post as we meet new characters, though they'll also acquire these bios in the updates where they first appear. Since we've got a bunch to start out, I thought it was probably best to put them in a new post.

I'm starting out with the non-wingman Confed characters for now; future updates will do each wingman as we fly with them and the Kilrathi as and when I get around to it.

Terran Confederation

Colonel Christopher Blair

Callsign: Still customisable at this point (it's never actually used except on the killboard), but according to the novels, "Maverick". Given to him ironically due to being ridiculously straight-lcaed at the Academy.
Played by: Mark Hamill (these links go to IMDB)
Current role: Commander, 36th Fighter Wing, TCS Victory
Previously: Commander, Fighter Wing, TCS Concordia. Enigma Sector, Special Operations Division. Insystem Security, Olympus Station, Gwynedd System. Pilot, 88th Fighter Wing, TCS Tiger's Claw

Us. Blair's the protagonist in Wing Commander III; and by this point in his career he's already widely known on both sides of the conflict as one of the Confederation's top aces and most highly decorated officers. Despite this, his relationship with Confed's top brass has been somewhat frosty for some time. Blair was held responsible by a court-martial for the loss of the Tiger's Claw when attacking a Kilrathi space station in 2655; his defense involving a Kilrathi cloaking device was not believed at the time (a traitor to the Confederation had prevented there being any evidence) and he spent ten years doing nothing very much on a backwater space station until events conspired to allow him to clear his name and return to duty aboard the TCS Concordia. While he did manage to establish a working relationship with Admiral Tolwyn onboard the Concordia following his being cleared, Blair still retains a large amount of bitterness over the lost years and lack of support he recieved during that time. Conversely, Blair remains very close to those who supported him during that time, particularly Colonels Jeanette "Angel" Deveraux, with whom he became romantically involved on the Concordia, and Ralgha "Hobbes" nar Hhallas.

In terms of the WCIII storyline, it's somewhat hard to nail down the role Blair plays in it because the player controls so many of his responses. Overall, Wing Commander III is a story about how war affects us, as people and to some extent as a society. It's not a particularly deep or insightful analysis of it, but that's certainly the theme. The late stages of the Terran-Kilrathi war are an extremely nasty conflict, with Kilrathi honour and Terran compassion both eroded into life-or-death struggle. The final straw on both sides was the false armistice - the cats lost all respect they had gained for humanity for being stupid enough to fall for it, and on the Terran side the eradication of all life on Sirius Prime, with around two billion dead, made it clear that this was a fight for the survival of the species and the gloves were well and truly off.

Blair, along with Eisen, Hobbes, Maniac and to a certain extent Vagabond, represent the generation of veterans who've been fighting the war for their entire adult lives, while the younger crewmembers on the Victory grew up with the war but haven't actually been fighting all that long themselves. They haven't, therefore, had the time to evolve the coping mechanisms the veterans have, and that difference will be explored in various sections of the story. Blair's two sets of reactions to dealing this problem (as the fighter wing CO, it is mostly his problem) could broadly be labelled as "schoolmaster" and "middle management"; what the player is largely deciding is how attached he is to the subordinate officers under his command. As to the effect that has...I'll explain the morale system later.

Admiral Sir Geoffrey Tolwyn

Callsign: Unknown. Tolwyn has flown fighters on enough occasions to actually have one, but I don't believe it's ever been mentioned.
Played by: Malcolm McDowell
Current role: Commander, 3rd Fleet
Previous roles: Commander, 14th Fleet. Commander, TCS Tiger's Claw.

The "one man" who Paladin tells Blair he can't live his life for the approval of, in the prologue. Admiral Tolwyn's characterisation is a bit all over the shop, but I'm going to try and make the best sense of it I can. He's been Christopher Blair's commanding officer, either as captain or admiral, for almost all his combat career (ie, not when he was on Olympus Station) and also his final year as a cadet. Their relationship has been somewhat mixed. Tolwyn doesn't cope well with failure (his career's not really had much of it) and blamed Blair for the loss of the Tiger's Claw in the Second Enigma Campaign, under his command. While he was far from alone in this at the time, Blair has never really forgiven him despite Tolwyn's having revised his opinion of Blair during the Third Enigma Campaign (and reversed his court-martial demotion from Lt. Colonel to Captain). Blair commanded the fighter wing aboard Tolwyn's flagship, the TCS Concordia, for three years, but their relationship remains somewhat frosty.

Tolwyn's place in the plot is to represent the brutal pragmatism and absence of most of what we'd recognise as humanity in what has become a war of extermination. Commanding the Terran fleet in the False Armistice campaign (see Standoff) he saw the Kilrathi destroy all life on several Terran colony worlds, including Sirius Prime with its population of over two billion. He now sees things in terms of victory and defeat, and doesn't particularly care much about the people (he was never the warmest commander even before the peace) that make up a fighting force - just the end result. As the highest-ranking officer in the game and also part of a powerful Terran family, Tolwyn is presumably presented as the representative of the "establishment" position taken towards the prosecution of the war; as the avatar of "High Command" he is, naturally, as cold and impersonal as they are.

General James Taggart

Callsign: Paladin
Played by: John Rhys-Davies
Current role: Head, Covert Operations
Previous roles: Covert Opertaions, Enigma Sector. Pilot, 88th Fighter Wing, TCS Tiger's Claw

Paladin is the carryover character from the previous games whose appearance changed the most. He used to look like this:

Umm...yeah. The only thing I can think to say about this is that since the guy is heavily involved with Covert Ops, his appearance might plausibly have been surgically altered at some point between WC2 and WC3. Fortunately, somebody seems to have imposed it upon him to actually wear his Confed uniform while he's aboard Navy carriers, (or possibly John Rhys-Davies refused to wear anything like his WC2 clothing) so we're spared any more sartorial adventures. In any case, Paladin's been a friend and part-time mentor of Blair's since his first days on the Tiger's Claw, and one of the people who stuck with him after its loss. He exists in the story partly to allow the plot to advance when it needs an external actor to make something to happen, and partly as a counterpoint to Tolwyn, in order to point out that not all the Terran flag officers are total jerks.

Captain William Eisen

Callsign: Not a pilot
Played by: Jason Bernard
Current role: Captain, TCS Victory
Previously: Communications officer, TCS Victory

The Victory's commanding officer, and the only person senior to us aboard the ship (apparently, anyway. Hobbes has been a Colonel longer than we have, but this never seems to be particularly important whenever we're working together on anything). Eisen's not someone Blair's worked with before, but they get on well enough. He has a fairly relaxed manner (the word "grandfatherly" is probably overused, but it seems fairly appropriate in this case) - Jason Bernard played a fair few somewhat indulgent authority figures in his (sadly shortened) career, it's clearly a role he's used to - but also a pretty sharp tactical mind, and if you stop to think about what's going on in many of the missions, it's impressive how well thought-out the Victory's plans are.

Eisen's primary role in the story is functional - that of an authority figure who is around to give the briefings and to chew Blair out should the player decide to be a moron, and his usually indulgent manner has obviously been chosen to accentuate the contrast with those occasions.

Lieutenant Ted Rollins

Callsign: Rollins isn't a pilot, but as the Victory's comm officer he's always referred to as "Radio" Rollins.
Played by: Courtney Gains
Current role: Communications officer, TCS Victory
Previously: This is probably his first assignment.

Radio Rollins is pretty much summed up by the first encounter we had with him. Young, unused to the uncertainties of war, and given to filling in the gaps in what he knows with the worst scenario he can come up with. Rollins projects his insecurities a fair amount, meaning that he's pretty much a jerk to anyone he thinks he can get away with being a jerk to, which definitely includes you if you start failing missions. He makes up for this cocktail of failings by actually being pretty good at his job. Standoff's Lieutenant Freyers was pretty much a straight-up clone of Rollins, only with less screen time.

Rollins is the first of the Victory's younger generation we meet, and they're all learning to cope with the war in different ways. Rollins' approach is pretty much unrelenting pessimism - continually expecting the worst means that he's not, at least, going to be surprised by anything in a bad way. He hopes.

Colonel Ralgha nar Hhallas

Callsign: Hobbes
Played by: John Schuck
Current role: First Officer, TCS Victory
Previously: Enigma Sector, Special Operations Division. Pilot, Fighter Wing, TCS Concordia. Kalrahr (Captain), KIS Ras'Nikhra.

Hobbes is another old confederate of Blair's, though not going back as far as the Tiger's Claw. Hobbes defected from the service of the Kilrathi Empire when Ghorah Khar rebelled, bringing the Fralthi-class cruiser KIS Ras'Nikhra and twenty Dralthi (which proved highly useful in the Firekkan campaign) to ask for Confederation support for the revolt. Blair's reputation in the Kilrathi Empire (which knew damn well it had stealth fighters) being substantially greater than it was in the Terran Confederation at this time, Ralgha took an interest in Blair when he came aboard the Concordia, and used his influence with Tolwyn and Confed High Command to keep Blair on that carrier's flight roster despite Tolwyn's lack of trust in him. While their relationship was intially strained (for predictable "he's a Kilrathi" reasons), Blair rapidly grew to trust Ralgha as they completed many dangerous missions together (allegedly. My experience of WC2 is that Hobbes ejects whenever you could really use having a wingman around, but whatever).

As a character, Hobbes is one of the war's victims. His family were killed in a Terran raid; this and other Kilrathi reverses convinced him that there was no glory in the (at that point) 20-year war, that a war fought with no prospect of victory did not, as far as Sivar was concerned, even count. He therefore joined the rebellion on Ghorah Khar and, later to gain support for it, the Confederation. Having taken this step he is obviously an outcast amongst the cats, but as the only Kilrathi in the Confederation armed forces he doesn't exactly fit in on this side of the border either. Whoever wins in this war, Hobbes loses.

As a wingman, Hobbes is pretty decent. Wing Commander 3's official guide gives him the following stats, which, being on a three-point scale (0,1,2), might reasonably be considered to be of the same general order of utility as chocolate teapots, especially since all your wingmen have 2s in Flying and Gunnery:

Aggressiveness......1
Carefulness ........2
Courage ............2
Flying .............2
Gunnery.............2
Loyalty ............2
Verbosity ..........1

What this basically says is that Hobbes basically always obeys your orders, doesn't take stupid risks, doesn't retreat or eject unless badly damaged, and is generally all-round competent. As such, he's never a particularly bad choice as wingman, though he's neither the most effective dogfighter nor the most effective strike pilot.

Lieutenant Winston Chang

Callsign: Vagabond
Played by: Francois Chau
Current role: Pilot, 36th Fighter Wing, TCS Victory
Previously: Most of his previous assignments seem to have been classified by some high-up in Confed.

Vagabond's history is apparently sufficiently vital to Terran security that somebody in the Confederation has classified it beyond Blair's clearance, which makes writing a character bio without including spoilers rather difficult at this point. We will find out eventually. Vagabond himself, despite the hidden past, is a very straightforward and open character; well, unless you're playing cards with him, anyway - he's got a solid reputation as the Victory's resident card shark. What we do know is that he's 38 years old, which is somewhat ancient for a Lieutenant, and therefore rather suggests that whatever his classified past was, it probably wasn't with the TCSF.

Vagabond's another reminder that war isn't pretty - precisely how he'll explain himself over the course of the game. I think he's one of the best-played of the supporting cast, though it's also true that Francois Chau had more to work with than most of the rest of them; Vagabond's a pretty well drawn-up character.

As a wingman, Vagabond's solid. I like his comm calls, he doesn't get killed or forced to retreat easily, though he doesn't tend to pick up as many kills as some of the other pilots. The official guide gives him these stats:

Aggressiveness......1 (2)
Carefulness ........1 (0)
Courage ............2 (0)
Flying .............2
Gunnery.............2
Loyalty ............1 (0) [2]
Verbosity ..........0 (1)

The numbers in round brackets are his low-morale values - basically, he flies like Maniac when he's unhappy, whereas like most people he's more likely to obey orders at high morale. I don't give many wingman orders; pretty much just order a break and attack, so I don't really care about loyalty values that much.

Major Todd Marshall

Callsign: Maniac
Played by: Tom Wilson
Current role: Pain in the ass, TCS Victory
Previously: Commander, Wild Eagles squadron (test pilots). Pilot, 88th Fighter Wing, TCS Tiger's Claw

Yeah, he's back. Apparently somebody actually picked him up after Special Operations 2. I suppose leaving a more-or-less functional Morningstar out there would have been a bit of a waste really. Anyway, Todd Marshall was in the same academy class as Christopher Blair and they've had similarly up-and-down careers ever since. Maniac is the reckless hotshot, "Maverick" the by-the-book professional (at least in theory - since most players fly with the disregard for danger that can only be born of having infinite extra lives, I'm not entirely sure that really holds true). But Maniac's callsign isn't entirely because of his crazy flying style, much as he's tried to put that story around. Todd Marshall is highly strung and not all that well balanced, and his reaction to the unexpected can often be somewhat unhinged. Carl "Prankster" LaFong, another of Confed's top aces to have come out of the same academy class, takes up the story:


Marshall's somewhat unstable makeup has bitten on other occasions, too - his breakdown during Operation Thor's Hammer (the Tiger's Claw's deep raid to destroy the Kilrathi Sivar dreadnaught, aka Secret Missions 1), combined with his extremely self-centred flying style lead to his transfer off the front lines to a testing squadron, where he oversaw the development of the Morningstar heavy fighter - and actually did a pretty solid job, because the Morningstar's a good fighter. He wound up back on the front lines during the fracas which ensued following the Mandarin attempt to steal the prototypes (Special Operations 2) and has remained there ever since; Confederation losses not really giving them much of a choice in the matter. Tolwyn probably assigned Blair to the same carrier as Maniac on the grounds that it'd be unfair to give him to a wing commander who didn't know what they were getting in to.

As a wingman, Maniac is...well, he's Maniac. He doesn't do anything you tell him to, but he does kill a bunch of Kilrathi. Since I rarely bother with anything approximating to tactics in WC3, I'm largely just fine with that. He does get shot up quite easily though, so not generally the best choice on more hazardous missions. The official guide says:

Aggressiveness......2
Carefulness ........0
Courage ............0
Flying .............2
Gunnery.............2
Loyalty ............0 [1]
Verbosity ..........2

He's also perfectly happy to shoot through you to get at the enemy, but after having played Standoff that hardly seems unusual to me. He's a lot better pilot than he was in previous games, to the point where he's certainly no longer a liability most of the time. If you pick the right conversation options he even obeys orders, sometimes.

Lieutenant Robin Peters

Callsign: Flint
Played by: Jennifer MacDonald
Current role: Pilot, 36th Fighter Wing, TCS Victory
Previous assignments: Unknown, this may be her first tour.

If Rachel is an expanded-upon version of Sparks, you could argue that Flint bears a similar relationship to Angel (Blair even remarks on it, actually), or at least to how you imagine Angel might be if she was younger and less experienced than the protagonist rather than the other way around. Flint is a cautious, by-the-book officer who comes from a military family - she was taught to fly by her father and is very proud of him, but feels at the same time a lot of pressure to prove herself as a pilot, something which having a living legend as her CO does absolutely nothing to alleviate. Flint is probably the most detailed character in the game; she gets a lot of scenes and Jennifer MacDonald does a pretty good job with her, too. We'll learn a lot about her as the game goes on.

Flint's too young to have been really affected by the war badly yet - which is a relative term, of course, in a war this long and this intense, but it's not something that she's really been forced to face through an adult's eyes rather than a child's. A lot of her plot is coming-of-age in various ways, and they're some of my favourite scenes in the game. In case you've not guessed yet, I really like Flint as a character.

She's also, for that matter, one of the best wingmen too. Cautious and competent, she can be relied upon to obey orders and not to get her fighter shot to pieces and thereby continue dividing the incoming fire for a lot longer than almost any of your other comrades. For that reason, she's generally a good choice on the toughest missions and is also a fine strike pilot. While she might be compared to Angel on the ground, behind a stick she's got more in common with Doomsday - assuming you treat her right, anyway, she's badly affected by low morale. The strategy guide says:

The other notable thing about Flint's caution is that she only fires off missiles and torpedoes when she's pretty sure of a hit, which actually makes her rack up more kills than a lot of other wingmen on Nightmare. And no, I have no clue where the hell "Flint" comes from.


Lieutenant Laurel Buckley

Callsign: Cobra
Played by: BJ Jefferson
Current role: Pilot, 36th Fighter Wing, TCS Victory
Previously: She's not telling. The Victory's flight wing is possibly her first assingment as a pilot.

Cobra is an interesting if somewhat under-used character. Fanatically hostile towards the Kilrathi, and fairly hostile towards everyone else. It's never entirely clear whether she dislikes Blair just because of his friendship with Hobbes, or if she's just defensive to the point of hostility around anyone she doesn't know well, since you only see her in conversation with others very rarely (I think once, with Rollins). When we get to learn more of her background, you'll see there's good reasons for that to be either way. The problem is, we don't find that out until very late in the plot afrer which there's not much time left to develop her any further, so Cobra is just an angry enigma for most of the game. I think in general that WC3 could have done with fewer characters each of whom got more development. Vaquero and Flash could both probably have been lost without really negatively impacting the story, and if that time had been spent on Cobra, Flint and Vagabond the overall story would have been richer. Of course, there's a problem with the decreased number of wingmen, but they got around that easily enough in the next game by adding redshirts, so I don't see why it couldn't have been done here.

As a wingman, she's...functional but unexceptional. Doesn't eject often, usually follows orders, never seems to get particularly many kills. I rarely use her, to be honest, playing the game by myself my most common wingman picks are Flint, Vagabond and Maniac, and Hobbes, Cobra, Vaquero and Flash get used more sparingly. The strategy guide gives her these stats, which suggests that under low-morale conditions she's probably even more unreliable than Maniac is:

Major Jace Dillon

Callsign: Flash
Played by: Josh Lucas
Current role: Pilot, 36th Fighter Wing, TCS Victory
Previous assignments: Test pilot, Excalibur Program

How the hell is Flash a Major? He seems to be barely older than Flint. The answer is probably nepotism, given he's also been given a plum assignment which keeps him a long way away from the front lines and then gives him the absolute best fighter the Confederation can produce when he gets anywhere near them, and even when that happens he's still not supposed to be engaging the enemy. It would fit with his personality, too, which is more spoiled than just outright egotistical. Flash wins a lot of points from me for actually honouring the bet he made with Blair - transferring out of his plush job and in to a unit that stands a pretty good chance of getting him killed is an impressive thing to do on a point of pride.

When he flies, as his stats bear out, he's like Maniac-lite. Less crazy, more loyal (though still pretty likely to blow you off), less likely to eject. This does pretty much mean there's almost no reason to take him - if you want to fly with Maniac, the real thing is available, and if you want someone who obeys orders, you've got Hobbes and Flint for that. It's a similar question with his role in the story. What does Flash do? It's set up as a story about the cocky young hotshot who's shown up by a veteran ace and has to prove himself again, but...it never actually goes there. It could be a story about a young man adjusting to the war - but we've already got Flint for that. Maybe because Flash is optional (you don't have to duel him in the sim, and if you don't he just leaves) the writers didn't want to make him too important to the plot, but with so many characters starved for screen and development time, you have to ask, why is he even there?