Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles

Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles (vt Starship Troopers [1998]; not to be confused with Roughnecks TV series from 1994). Syndicated 1999; in Cincinnati area, WSTR, ch. 64. Audu Paden, prod., first episode dir. Other directors include: Chris Berkeley, Jay Oliva, Alan Caldwell, Sam Liu, David Hartman, Sean Song. USA: Adelaide Productions, Inc. (prod.) / The Sci-Fi Channel, Bohbot Kids Network (dist.). "Adelaide Productions, Inc. is the author of this film/motion picture" for legal purposes. Foundation Imaging and Columbia/Tristar logos displayed. Based on the novel Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein" (q.v. under Fiction, but see annotation immediately below). Fil Barlow, design of creatures and characters. Consult IMDb for other information.

Animation, CGI; the appearance is cyberpunk or "Industrial" action figures—dolls for boys—in heavy-metal space suits. Follows the Paul Verhoeven's STARSHIP TROOPERS (film) in many of the details but has a Johnnie Rico who could be Filipino, locates much of the action on Pluto and other planets not covered in the novel, and has troopers in "power suits," closer to Heinlein though still nowhere near as powerful as the novel's Mobile Infantry armor. ("Marauder" units, occasionally assigned to the squad, are more like power armor of the novel.) Unlike the film, where humans precipitate the war by entering Bug space, and unlike the novel, where the issue is ultimately irrelevant, the series has the Bugs invading the Solar System with their infestation of Pluto and intending the extermination of the human species. Picks up images from other films in the subgenre: "Imperial Walkers" and aerial sequences from the STAR WARS first trilogy, the enforcement droid from ROBOCOP (1987), combined with Imperial Walkers; interior shots of human colonies attacked by Bugs from ALIENS (film), the plasma globules of the weapons of FORBIDDEN PLANET—etc. In the episodes we have reviewed as of December 1999, the series has not gotten seriously into the politics of either the novel nor Verhoeven's film, nor explained how Pluto has an atmosphere for one species of Bugs to fly in. Note that warfare against the Bugs automatically limits technology to humans. With Cybernetic Humanoid Assault System—another parallel to power armor—we get an obstreperous robot, but the robot learns to become a team player, unto sacrificing himself for the squad (leaving technology still unambiguously neutral or good). Later episodes move some of the action to "the planet Tophet, a hostile but strategically important world, populated by both the Bugs and their allies, an alien race tagged, 'Skinnies,'" as in Heinlein, a humanoid and high-tech species. Still later episodes move even farther afield, to water-planets and jungle-planets, and move the Skinnies not just to our "co-beligerents," as in the novel, but allies, allowing introduction of a Skinnie member of the squad. [[category: drama]