Alright, I disabled XMS for this test and got the same glitch. This is using DOSBox .74 with the default settings for everything except mpu401=uart and xms=false.
Here's two screenshots of what happens when I try to recruit a new pilot.
It starts like this:
And then it scrolls down until it comes out looking like this:
And in case anyone is wondering, I've also tried something slightly crazy - running each of these images through the TinEye reverse image search. 0 results in both cases.
I am going to try deleting the version I have and re-downloading, even though it seemed to come through fine, 7-Zip had no errors in opening it, etc.
UPDATE:
I believe it was either that the archive I first downloaded had an error, or, perhaps one of my settings was wrong: I usually use aspect=false, the game requires true.