Airwolf is somebody else's, probably Universal's or Bellisarius', and I freely admit that whoever's it is, I'm borrowing their show and they retain all rights, etc. I'm a big fan of Donald Bellisario's work; Magnum, Quantum Leap, JAG, NCIS but my favourite is undoubtedly Airwolf. Presumably you (the reader) like Airwolf too as you've navigated the website to find this story and so you probably know the show well, will get the in-jokes and already have a view about the characters and their history. If you want to, you can skip straight to the story in the next chapter…
However I am going to use this intro to explain my interpretation of the show, timeline and its characters and what I intend doing with the story before I jump in. Like I said, if you want to skip it you can. If you have stumbled into this category by some kind of interesting mistake, hopefully this will provide some interesting background material and I would encourage you to stay anyway as my stories do not assume detailed prior knowledge of the show.
Airwolf is often categorised as an action/adventure series centred around its namesake, a technologically advanced helicopter capable of mach speed. It had four seasons, three with the original cast of characters and a fourth with a new cast, production team, network – well, pretty much the whole deal. In all seasons, each week the Airwolf crew would be sent on/stumble across a mission which usually ended with the bad guys being shot out of the sky in an aerial battle and truth, justice and the American way being upheld. However, for me, the real story underpinning the show takes place in the first three seasons and revolves primarily around the main character; a pilot named Stringfellow Hawke.
Hawke is no shallow, cardboard cut-out hero but someone with real depth and nuance. He is an unmatched pilot capable of extraordinary feats in flight and aerial combat but he is also a man who has suffered great personal loss time after time; parents, fiancée, friends (and in the pilot episode just to underscore this theme of constant tragedy in his life, his lover Gabrielle). After so much loss, Hawke has retreated to a mountain cabin choosing to spend his life alone except for the company of his dog and an eagle. The one small hope he has is that his elder brother, Saint John is still alive despite being listed as MIA following the Vietnam War. At its heart, I believe that Airwolf is the story of Hawke's search for his brother. The pilot sets this up brilliantly as, having recovered Airwolf after she is stolen, Hawke makes a deal to fly her on missions of national importance whilst the FIRM (the shadowy intelligence agency that was responsible for building the machine) searches for his brother, returning her to them only when he is found.
My interpretation of Hawke is as a multi-layered character. He is usually surly and belligerent with people he doesn't trust or know, a defence mechanism both due to his tragic past and his own cynicism over people's motives, but once he knows and trusts someone, he is almost a different man; warm, compassionate, playful with a dry sense of humour. He is a quiet loner by nature but he values the relationships he does have enormously and is very loyal friend. He is also an honourable man with a profound sense of right and wrong, often impatient with the politics and intrigue that colour the intelligence work he finds himself embroiled in. He is skilled as a field operative, resourceful, intelligent and savvy with a highly developed sense of intuition. His major weakness though is his brother; he will risk everything to find him and bring him home.
In the 1st season Hawke has two relationships which provide him with the support he needs to complete his Airwolf missions; his only close friend, Dominic Santini and Michael Coldsmith-Briggs III codenamed Archangel, the deputy director of the FIRM. Dom was his father's best friend and raised the Hawke brothers when their parents died. He is the only other person Hawke initially trusts to back him up in Airwolf. Dom is a brilliant pilot and engineer with an air service, Santini Air, which keeps them in legitimate employment in between Airwolf missions. On the surface, a gruff, proud and grumpy older man, Dom has a generous heart and a joie de vivre. Dom is clearly still a father figure to Hawke and he provides the other man with much needed comfort, protection and stability. They can disagree with one another but they share the same values, trust each other implicitly and are deeply loyal to one another.
Michael (Archangel) is the spy who requests Hawke's help in recovering Airwolf and who ultimately makes the deal with him. Michael has highly honed skills in intrigue, politics and strategy. Whilst he can be ruthless and expedient, he has his own code of honour and underneath the political motivations can be well-hidden personal ones. He operates in a high-risk business that can result in failure with real human cost; he loses the use of an eye and permanently injures his leg because he trusts the wrong person. One person he trusts absolutely is his aide Marella, a strong, intelligent agent. Whilst their relationship is constrained by employee/boss boundaries, she provides Michael with the same loyal, unquestioning back-up that Dominic provides to Hawke (until she disappears in Season 3). At the beginning, Michael is someone Hawke has worked for rather than someone who he would call a friend but their relationship slowly moves from one of mutual use to a deep friendship as they gain renewed respect for each other's abilities, begin to trust each other beyond their professional duty and are pivotal in saving each other's lives. The relationship between Dom and Michael, whilst continuing to be abrasive at times, also progresses from mutual dislike and antagonism to respect.
At the beginning of the 2nd season, Hawke rescues Caitlin O'Shaunessy and the highly principled cop quickly leaves the force and joins Santini Air. She is feisty tomboy with a quick temper and compassionate heart, and is apt to act like she has more guts than sense at times. Whilst she is also a skilled pilot and engineer, she is initially naïve about the intelligence/military aspect of the Airwolf missions and definitely more idealistic (and youthful) than the worldly-wise men in the team. But she establishes herself as the third crew member demonstrating a keen intelligence and perceptiveness, despite the men's inclination to underestimate her. Her inclusion in the Airwolf team is a sign of how quickly Hawke comes to trust her. Significantly he seems to fall enormously in like with her from their very first meeting which translates into an instant friendship. There is also undeniable chemistry which develops a serious will-they/won't-they dynamic to their relationship. Whilst both seem attracted, and Caitlin even admits to an unconscious Hawke that she loves him, neither overtly pursues a romantic relationship with the other and they seem to settle for being close friends. For me though, romantic that I am, there is a real sense that these two, deep down, love one another.
Dom and Caitlin aren't initially comfortable with each other at all but eventually, he starts to take a paternal attitude towards her and she starts to become truly fond of him as they both come to realise that they have one very important thing in common; they both love Hawke. Her relationship with Michael develops much more quietly but they seem to develop a genuine fondness for each other.
Whilst having expanded for a while my view about the main character, his side-kicks and his relationship to them, their relationship with each other (a view I try and stick with in terms of characterisation and relationship history), let me return to the actual story itself and specifically timelines.
As stated at the start of this rather long exposition, it is Hawke's search for his brother that is the compelling story. It begins in January 1984 with Hawke's deal to find his brother and ends when he is finally reunited with him in the first episode of the 4th season. Airwolf fans tend to be very divided about the validity of the 4th season and you'd be right in thinking I'm not a big fan particularly as for me the story ends with the brothers' reunion but I don't subscribe to the view that it should be ignored completely in terms of the show's mythology. What happens after Hawke finds his brother is one thread that many try to continue but the immediately interesting and untold story for me is the vacuum between the end of the 3rd season and the beginning of the 4th season, (necessitated in reality by the original show effectively ending and the new show starting again with a different cast).
Briefly, at the end of the 3rd season, Hawke is still single, about to adopt a young boy (Le) who he believes might be his nephew; he considers Caitlin and Dom family and they are still flying Airwolf missions for Michael on behalf of the FIRM whilst working at Santini Air. At the start of the 4th season, Hawke is still apparently flying Airwolf missions but Hawke's contact changes in the first episode to an agent called Jason Locke, Michael having been summarily reassigned to the Far East. The FIRM has also seemingly been taken over by another agency called the Company. Hawke is also still working with Dom at Santini Air along with Dom's niece, Jo. Interestingly Hawke seems to have gotten married as he's clearly wearing a wedding ring but his ultimate fate is left ambiguous (he is badly injured in an explosion that kills Dom). The fate of Caitlin and his nephew, Le is not addressed at all. The differences all prompt a number of questions; what happened to Le? What happened to Caitlin? How and why did Jo turn up? When did the Lair get so much equipment? What did happen to the FIRM? The stories (note the plural – I'm not providing all the answers in just one – I'm trying for a 'lost season' so will attempt to write around 22 in total) will focus on effectively bridging the gap which brings us nicely to timeline…
It was important for me to establish a timeline as I needed to understand when the 3rd season ended and the 4th began to obtain how much time I would have to play with. Well, without being too anorak-ish about it…by my calculations and using the rare clues dropped within the series itself, the 1st season of Airwolf followed its release dates and assumed a linear timeline with each mission completed within a 7 day timeframe. It starts then in January 1984 and ends in mid-April 1984 (the date is actually stated in the last episode).
The 2nd season is trickier because my impression is that the episodes were shown out of order but for the timeline I assume that the order is correct and ignore Prisoner of Yesterday's subtitle suggesting it takes place in 1985. However, the 2nd season does not confine its missions to a weekly timeframe so I have worked out the approximate duration of each. Hence it begins around June 1985, (Dom notes a couple of months have passed since the events of the last episode of the previous season) and ends around the end of October 1984. This method places the episode Condemned as taking place around 8th September which fits with Severance Pay, where the events of Condemned are dated to around 9th September.
The 3rd season only has one clue to its dating; the climax of the episode Deadly Circle is stated as happening on 14th February 1985. Working back and using the same basis as the 2nd season (linear order and unique mission duration), the 3rd season begins in very early January 1985. It does mean that there are another couple of unaccounted for months between the seasons but given Caitlin's hair is much longer at the start of the 3rd than at the end of the 2nd, this does seem to fit. Working forward from the Deadly Circle, the end of 3rd season seems to finish around early June 1985.
There is one major clue to establishing the date of Blackjack, the first episode in the 4th season; the operation that Saint John is involved in (Storm Season) is noted in the files as terminating in July 1985 and the other remaining member of that team notes that it was a year ago. So Blackjack takes place around July 1986.
So in my first Airwolf story, I pick up the story in July 1985 and have a year to play with and on that note, the first instalment: Single Parent Hawke.