Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles Vol 1 DVD

Roughnecks is the computer-animated TV spin-off from director Paul Verhoeven's live-action sci-fi shoot-'em-up Starship Troopers. Verhoeven had already seen his Robocop movie spun-off into animated television with mixed results, so when it came to Starship Troopers he wanted Roughnecks to be a little different (the director acted as Executive Producer on the series). The style of computer animation here recalls, if anything, the little green soldiers from the Toy Story movies. Backed by an unending techno-based score (despite which the series has won several awards for sound editing), the 20-minute episodes are like viewing brilliantly conceived "cut scenes" from computer games. The series concept begins by taking the movie's characters, giving them different origins, and then forgets about a bug home-world in favour of a mobile threat that can appear anywhere.