Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles

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This CGI animated series was aired by in '99 and I don't remember if I watched it exactly then or the next year when it was on UPN, but I still watch re-runs of this show and I think of how cool it was. It is based mainly on the book by Heinlein of the title Starship Troopers, which the movie also was, but the series takes a few elements of the movie as well, though sparingly. I consider this to be the best animated show I've seen.

My brothers and I enjoyed this show back in the day . . . hell, my younger brother got the DVD collection of it for my birthday a few years ago. My only problem is that once the bugs get to earth, the series ends after a few episodes (Earth being the 4th campaign).

The only way in which that rather horrid movie could be said to have been based on Heinlein's novel is the fact that some of the characters had the same names (except that, for instance, Dizzy was a male, and died in the first chapter - Rico and Jelly almost missed the return boat because they were making pickup on his body). Heck, a character named "Juan Rico", whose household spoke Tagalog, was played by Casper van Diem...

I understand that what actually happened there was that Verhoeven had an anti-war film he wanted to make with vague sci-fi trappings, and someone noticed similarities to Starship Troopers - so rather than ask the Heinlein estate if they minded (I rather imagine Virginia would have given the okay, because the similarities were so very tiny), agents for Verhoeven purchased the movie rights. Reportedly, after the movie came out, Virginia was so incensed that she revoked all other movie rights to her husband's works - which is disappointing, as rumor has it that Disney was working on an adaptation of The Star Beast.

Never saw the cartoon, but I would hope the writers actually took the trouble to read Heinlein's novel at some point...

They adapted some of the elements of the movie to the cartoon, such as the character of Dizzy Flores, women having hair instead of being shaved bald which I remember the character of Rico saying that he had to get used to (in the book). It's been a while since I read the book, but they do have jump suits and powersuits, they have an ally turned enemy turned back into ally of the Skinnies in the Tophet campaign.

See for yourself what you think: http://www.youtube.com/show?p=rzDK6m3JihA

I used to love the series as a kid. i began watching bits and pieces not too long ago.