Wing Commander Academy

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Wing Commander Academy was an American animated series released in the 1990's as part of the USA Network's Saturday Morning Cartoon lineup. Based on the Wing Commander series of video games, it featured several of the games' characters, most of them played by the actor who portrayed them in the later games, and filling in backstory on The Kilrathi and Admiral Tolwyn. The plot centers around a group of cadets going on their final cruise before graduating from the Military Academy.

Character info can be found on the general Wing Commander universe sheet.

Tropes used in Wing Commander Academy include:

• Exclusively Evil: Averted, the Kilrathi are actually portrayed as practical and pragmatic, and are stated to never take actions without sound motivation, though said motivation may not always be readily apparent, and occasionally rely on alien reasoning.
• The Anime of the Game
• Artifact Title: Strictly speaking, the title only accurately describes the show for one episode. While they are cadets through the entire course of the show, the Academy itself only appears in the pilot episode before they are transferred to the Tiger's Claw.
• Asskicking Equals Authority: The Kilrathi.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Commodore Tolwyn. See Back in the Saddle below.
• Back in the Saddle In one episode, the Tiger's Claw is attacked while most of her fighter wing is away. Because his remaining pilots are badly outnumbered, Commodore Tolwyn decides to climb into a fighter to personally take part in the fighting.
  • Also Inverted in at least one episode, where Tolwyn has Maverick stay aboard the Claw and supervise from the bridge while the rest of the fighter wing goes to fight the Kilrathi, in order to teach the cadet what it means to be in command, knowing that others might die following your orders.
• Badass Boast: Upon being informed during a briefing that they will be going up against a Kilrathi Dreadnought, which nobody in Confed has been able to defeat in combat yet, Maniac declares "If the Kilrathi can find a way to build it, we can find a way to blow it up!"
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Maniac and Archer seem to make quite a few abortive attempts to get each other to open up. Almost universally results in them bickering, or on one occasion, Maniac getting tossed across the room by a woman who must have been half his size.
• The Brigadier: Commodore Tolwyn, also a Four-Star Badass
• Calling the Old Man Out: In the final scene of the series, towards Tolwyn, who everyone has come to see as a Blood Knight with a vendetta against Prince Thrakhath. Of course, they don't know that Tolwyn is himself dealing with a chain of command who refuse to give him reinforcements and who keep sending the Tiger's Claw into high-risk operations alone.
• The Chains of Commanding: Several episodes focus on the weight and responsibility of leading people in combat, and the certainty that some will die following your orders. This trope is also used to give Commodore Tolwyn some Character Development to balance against what we see of him in the games.
  • To clarify on how the trope affects Tolwyn: Most of the cadets see him as an all-powerful flag officer who makes things happen by ordering them to be so, when in reality he is just as restricted by the orders his superiors hand him as the cadets are by his orders. So when he requests reinforcements for a major operation and is told they can't be spared, the cadets simply see him as a glory hound willing to sacrifice their lives to achieve his goals. This leads to a Medal of Dishonor moment when Blair refuses a medal since he is outraged to learn he was used as bait on a suicide mission.
  • In another episode Tolwyn explains this problem to Blair. He then tells Blair that his decision to ram the enemy flagship, which was blockading the jump point, was not a bluff. It was the only chance for escape and if the flagship had not moved then both ships would have been destroyed.
• Character Development: Several characters, but especially Gwen "Archer" Bowman's arc where she starts hesitating in combat after having to shoot down another cadet. On the other side, Kilrathi captain Garahl nar Hhallas gradually grows disillusioned with his Prince's motives for prosecuting the war.
  • Also, outside of the books, the series is the source of almost all of Admiral Tolwyn's character development.
• Chekhov's Skill: The payoff to a Running Gag where Maniac keeps wanting to try and attack the Kilrathi carrier by flying into its hangar bay and gut it from the inside. Turns out, Maniac really is that good. Prince Thrakhath's dreadnought is crippled when Maniac finally gets to try this.
• Continuity Nod: The Battle of Repleeta gets depicted in a flashback. Repleeta was occasionally referenced in the manuals as being a particularly drawn out and brutal battle over a planet nobody really wanted, both sides fighting simply to spite the other side and keep them from gaining it.
• Cross Through: The USA Network's 1996 Saturday morning cartoon lineup had a storyline on November 16 about "The Warrior King" (voiced by Michael Dorn), a man chasing an "Orb of Power" through various dimensions. After an expository intro, he confronted M. Bison in Street Fighter ("The Warrior King", Season 2, Episode 9) and battled The Fiend in The Savage Dragon ("Endgame", Season 2, Episode 8), both of whom attempted to abuse the Orb's powers. From there the Orb landed in the hands of Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat Defenders of the Realm ("Resurrection", Season 1, Episode 9; the Warrior King only makes a cameo as a shadow), after which Raiden tossed it to the universe of Wing Commander Academy ("Recreation", Season 1, Episode 9), where the Warrior King's quest ends and he flies off into the stars.
• Deadpan Snarker: Dr. Kyle, of the medical ship Pleiku. Commodore Tolwyn as well.
• Dead Star Walking: Blizzard, Ragitika as well.
• Death From Above: Several episodes featured air strikes on ground targets, but the last episode, notably, featured this trope being invoked with Prince Thrakhath's own flagship being dropped on the temple which was concealing his troops, and presumably the fighters he had parked around it.
  • Visually invoked in several episodes, where fighters attacking enemy ships are shown "diving" down at their target, even though there really isn't strictly any "down" in space.
• Downer Ending: Several episodes, and arguably the whole series. Even in victory, war really sucks.
• Dramatic Irony: Due to its original conception as a tie-in of sorts to Wing Commander III, we already know the fates of several of the characters, and how their relationships will develop. That is to say, Maniac and Blair will become even more antagonistic towards each other, and Tolwyn's respect and mentoring of Blair won't last past the intro of Wing Commander II.
  • Most particularly, players of Wing Commander IV know that Tolwyn and Blair will end up as enemies on opposite sides of a war.
• Dramatic Space Drifting: One episode focuses on a pilot who went renegade and his squad. The squad gets wiped out towards the end of the episode, leaving shattered wreckage floating in space, including a destroyed helmet.
• Drill Tank: In a flashback scene involving Grunt's time as a Marine on Repleeta, the Kilrathi use one to dig up into human rear areas.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Several of the pilots who don't get introduced until later episodes have non-speaking cameos in the earliest episodes.
• Enemy Mine: Subverted. Sometimes, the other guy just plain hates you and will stab you in the back after you help him out.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Justified, as the show is about the characters still technically being in school.
• Expy: Garahl nar Hhallas, who's basically the same as the games' Rhalga "Hobbes" nar Hhallas prior to defecting.
• Fake Irish: Maya McEaddens, complete with being a green-eyed redhead with a brogue. Played by Lauri Hendler, an American. A green-eyed redheaded American.
• Foe Yay: An occasional element of Maniac and Archer's UST.
• Genre Savvy: Grunt.

Grunt: If there's one thing I learned in the Marines, it's never to volunteer for anything! Tolwyn: Spoken like a true veteran. Grunt: Oh, thank you, sir!

• • Dangerously Genre Savvy: Karnes.
  • Genre Blind: The Dolosians.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: In the episode "Invisible Enemy", Maniac is on the outs with the rest of the crew because they think he abandoned his wingman in favor of racking up more kills. In the mess hall, he complains to Maverick that it "Seems like I'm about as popular around here as chipped beef on toast." This dish is more commonly known as shit on a shingle.
• Green Eyed Red Head: Maya McEaddens. Payback is definitely a redhead whose eyes are a much paler shade of green.
• Heroic BSOD: Archer suffers from a recurring form of this every time she has to pull the trigger, after being forced to kill Blizzard. Earns her a What the Hell, Hero? (see below).
• Heroes Want Redheads: Blair towards McEaddens. And the redhead definitely wants him back.
• High School AU: Oddly enough, the original premise of the show was basically the characters of Wing Commander III transplanted into an Academy class together, with Tolwyn as their instructor. Most of the changes that occurred (Many of the younger characters from WCIII are replaced with Expies to better justify them actually being in school together, for starters) can be chalked up to this being a Pragmatic Adaptation. The setting change gets weirder when you consider that they spend almost no time at all doing anything you associate with being a student, and everything you associate with just being a combat pilot.
• Honor Before Reason: Subverted: The fact that the Kilrathi pilots in one episode launched a suicidal attack against the Tiger's Claw for no readily apparent reason is a clue that something is wrong in one episode.
  • Played straight in other episodes though, sometimes even resulting in disputes between characters on either side who differ on how Honor should best be pursued.
• Incoming Ham: "Hey Maverick!"
• Ink Suit Actor:
  • Commodore Tolwyn is a dead ringer for Malcolm McDowell. (McDowell had previously played the character in the live-action cutscenes of the video games, so the resemblance was already established.)
  • Payback and McEaddens, played by Lauri Hendler, are both redheads with eyes in varying shades of green.
• Ironic Nickname: Maverick, who is in fact notorious for being a stickler for the regs and knowing them inside and out.
• Irony: Pretty much the only time Archer doesn't hesitate to kill a Kilrathi pilot was when she unknowingly killed Bokh Nar Ragitika, who Blair was on the verge of turning to the Confederation. The only Kilrathi she faced that she shouldn't have killed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Maniac. Although he'll never admit to it.
• Large Ham: Maniac.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Justified and Invoked by Commodore Tolwyn in he first episode. Maverick and Maniac are very competitive with each other, so they are chosen to lead opposing teams in a combat simulation. Subverted by The Mole, who sabotages the fighters, giving them full-powered weapons and reprogramming the flight computers not to register shield damage.
• Loose Lips: The Confeds might not have figured out why the Kilrathi were on Oasis if a Kilrathi warrior hadn't slipped up and invoked I Know You Know I Know and decided to just dispense with the falsehoods altogether. Maniac knew they were up to something, and figured he could get the Kilrathi to get mad and slip up by, well, being Maniac.
• Love Confession: Blizzard to Archer. Because of the epic levels that he takes being The Stoic to, his low-key, understated stating of his affections for her is correctly interpreted by Archer as being a complete emotional breakdown on his part, leading her to realize that there is something wrong with him.
• Military Academy: The show being titled Wing Commander Academy should be a big hint. Several different academies are also mentioned in the game manuals and novels.
• Military Maverick: Maniac is infamous for this. Tolwyn's liberal interpretations of his orders and criticism of his superiors are what got him his current assignment. Amusingly enough, Maverick is very much not an example.
• Nakama: Blair and Maniac really don't like each other that much, but they make a hell of a team when the going really gets tough.
• Nom De Guerre: Maverick, Maniac, Payback, Archer, Jazzman, Viking, etc.
• One-Hit Kill: Discussed Trope in the first episode. The Kilrathi warship can destroy a Scimitar fighter in one hit. Justified in that, well, it's a full-on warship and carries more powerful weapons than the smaller fighters can.
• Plot-Driven Breakdown: The computer running the flight simulator crashes before Maniac can complete his run on a carrier that massively outguns the Hell cat he's flying, so we never get to see him make a fool of himself (or not).
• Pragmatic Adaptation: The show's original premise was basically how everyone in Wing Commander III went to school together. Many of the character changes (quite a few Expies popped up) were likely to avoid the Fridge Logic that would happen with a Lieutenant Colonel in the games being revealed to have been in the same academy class as a pair of lieutenants.
• Ramming Always Works: Bizarrely, ramming always works when you use an Ejection Seat to ram the ship with. It just seems to completely throw the Kilrathi off their game. Probably because they assume that the humans have packed the ejection seat full of explosives or something that might actually harm their ship, and thus freak out and get themselves killed in some other fashion.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: The reason that the famed Commodore Tolwyn is babysitting a bunch of cadets on their middie cruise.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Payback and Archer (Red and Blue), as well as Maniac and Maverick to a lesser degree.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: The fate of The Mole in the Premiere episode, "Red and Blue". In a subversion, the "reward" isn't because he was a traitor, but the reason for the betrayal not being "noble" by Kilrathi standards, as mentioned below.
• Running Gag: Maniac really wants to try that hangar-bay attack, but nobody will let him.
• Semper Fi: Grunt, a former Space Marine who became a Space Fighter pilot after a battlefield injury got him discharged.
• Shout-Out: A space pilot character played by Mark Hamill, captured by primitives, spending some time hanging by his arms and legs from a pole, then convincing the primitives to join the fight against the bad guys? Hmm...?
• Shown Their Work: You do have to hand it to the production team, some real effort was made to be true to the source material.
  • The major characters were played by their original actors, when getting some unknown soundalikes would have been cheaper and even almost expected in Western Animation.
  • Confed uniforms resemble those from the games
  • Ship designs were close enough to the in-game ones that you could recognize Hellcats, Broadswords, Scimitars, and Dralthi fighters.
    • As well as Arrows, Longbows, Sabers, and numerous other ships used in minor roles, giving the idea of a military that used a wide variety of ships rather than the small handful the heroes appear to be checked out on. The Kilrathi similarly use a wide variety of fighters from the games, with the Dralthi (AKA the "Flying Pancakes" being only the most easily recognized.
  • Cockpit instrument panels resemble the ones from the games closely enough that a regular player could assess the characters' tactical situation from the instruments
  • The cadets flew Scimitar medium fighters. At first this would seem an odd choice. Shouldn't cadets get light fighters or even dedicated training craft to fly? But many who have played Wing Commander believe that the Scimitar was by far the worst fighter in the game, so most in-universe pilots would probably spurn them, making them the only fighter in plentiful supply for cadets to train in.
• The Shrink: A mix of all three Types, actually, but mostly a Subverted Type 2. The cadets don't like him, and given his personality, they probably wouldn't like him even if he didn't have the ability to get them dropped from the pilot program due to a bad eval, but he does have considerable authority in regards to pulling them from combat duty, and has the ear of their commanding officer regarding matters of morale. In short, obviously he cares about the cadets and the ship's crew, but the rest of them don't particularly care for him.
  • He also shows shades of being an Open Heart Dentist, being knowledgeable enough in other fields to know how they might affect human behavior and psychology, such as how reports of fried electrical systems in a group of fighters leads him to conclude that the pilots had their heads screwed up by the same electrical storm that fried the electronics. Up till he came across that information, he just assumed that the pilots' behavior was just them being stressed out hormonal young officers. You know, normal.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Inverted. When an argument between Maniac and Blair is about to escalate to Maniac throwing a punch, Archer restrains Maniac this way. Before throwing him across the room. Worth noting, Maniac is pretty much the biggest human character on the show, appearing to be close to twice Archer's mass and considerably taller than her. After he lands, he snarkily comments that she must be fun on a date.
• They Called Me Mad: The Mole states his reason for treason was he washed out of the academy after failing a psych evaluation for being "unstable". He rants and raves and really gives the impression his evaluators were on to something when he admits this.
• This Is Reality: "Hey, this isn't a game you know!"
• Thrown Out the Airlock: What happened to The Mole, above.
• Title Drop: Maniac to Blair, "Oh come on, you know you wanna be Wing Commander"
• Tragic Hero: Tolwyn. Not so much in the series itself though. The Expanded Universe in general tends to build Tolwyn's backstory so that he comes off as more of a Tragic Hero in the later games, rather than an Anti-Hero. Or, as of the fourth game, a Fallen Hero.
• Universal Driver's License: Played straight, but limited. The cadets mostly only ever fly Scimitars or Broadswords, though many other fighters and bombers are shown. They do occasionally fly other ships, but it seems that the Confed ships all have standardized controls. The few times they ever fly a captured Kilrathi fighter, it's specifically stated that only a handful of the pilots have any experience with them, and a Kilrathi pilot who manages to get into a Scimitar isn't able to do much against a Confed pilot except be a gunnery target.
• Veteran Instructor: Commodore Tolwyn
• War Is Hell: As much as a mid-'90s cartoon could portray, anyway. The show is not at all shy about the death and occasional moral ambiguity of war, on both sides.
• We Have Reserves: Subverted: The cadets gradually begin to think that Tolwyn looks at them this way. While he tries to look after the cadets, he is a commander in time of war and recognizes that some of them will die in combat.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Several, aimed at several different characters throughout the series.
  • Archer gets one from Maniac and Payback because she always hesitates before pulling the trigger, out of fear that she will unnecessarily take an innocent life (What Measure Is a Mook? hits her hard after being forced to kill a comrade who had gone insane, humanizing all of her potential enemies in her eyes). They rightly point out that in a dogfight, if she hesitates, even for a second or two, she or one of her wingmen could be killed by an enemy who will not hesitate.
  • Payback meanwhile gets one from Blair because of her excessive Blood Knight tendencies, wanting nothing more than to kill as many Kilrathi as possible, at one point violating direct orders and endangering herself and Blair on a recon mission.
  • Blair gets the occasional low-grade one from his fellow cadets who suspect that he is benefiting overly from favoritism by Commodore Tolwyn, as well as one from a Kilrathi defector after he believes Blair reneged on their deal to work together against Thrakhath, although it was Tolwyn who made that call, not Blair.
  • Tolwyn finally gets one from Blair because he believes Tolwyn willingly lied to Blair about the planned Marine assault and sacrificed the Cadets' lives just to pursue his vendetta against Prince Thrakhath. He doesn't know that Tolwyn had requested reinforcements for the operation, but was ordered to go it alone by his higher ups. Similarly, Archer gives Tolwyn one or two in private. Commodore Tolwyn seems remarkably inclined towards taking these lectures from his cadets in stride.
• Wrench Wench: Maya McEaddens.
• What Could Have Been: The Series Bible indicates that later seasons would have had a Kilrathi pilot joining the crew, with all the tension that would bring, and the show's plot would run right up to the beginning of Wing Commander III, incorporating plot elements from the second and third games.
• What Measure Is a Mook? and What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Viking and Archer both become extremely uncomfortable with taking a life in combat. Viking drops out of the Academy and leaves the military after The Mole's sabotage nearly causes her to take the life of a classmate. Archer finds herself hesitating in combat after circumstances force her to intentionally take the life of a classmate to save the Tiger's Claw.
• Wing Man: A given, since it is a show about fighter pilots. Maniac and Maverick have an ongoing argument over who gets to be whose wingman.
  • In one episode, nobody is willing to fly with Archer because of her hesitation to kill the enemy. When the Claw is attacked with very few pilots aboard to defend her, Commodore Tolwyn declares that he is her wingman.
  • In a later episode, Maniac's wingman is taken out by a prototype Kilrathi stealth fighter. Everybody accuses him of abandoning his wingman in combat. Maverick ends up teaming up with him to hunt the stealth fighter later on when he is similarly disgraced.