Movie:
Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles is a CGI TV show that debuted on TV in August of 1999. Based on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein that inspired the movie, Roughnecks adds more anti-bug campaigns than were featured in the movie, effectively filling in some gaps and adding some character development. Fans of the film will recognize Rico, Flores, Ibanez, Jenkins, and Razak (spelled differently than in the film). This DVD contains episodes 1-5 of the show, which is the entire Pluto Campaign.

Alpha Team is one of SICON's most valued roughneck squads, due in part to the excellent leadership of Razak. Alpha Team's current assignment takes them to Pluto, where their mission is to ensure the safety of a team of scientists there. To help in this, two rookies join the team – Rico and Flores. Things aren't quite as easy as they sound at first, however, as Pluto is populated with over one million bugs. The roughnecks preserve and succeed, but their next tasks are quite harder: they have to find and capture a baby plasma bug for Intel's research and destroy bug city.

Throughout the course of these episodes, viewers can see Rico begin to develop into the leader he is at the end of the film Starship Troopers. The series does change a few things from the film that I thought were important to mention. Occasionally the roughnecks use Marauder suits – think high tech battle suits – to eliminate the bug armies. Also, you won't see thousands of roughnecks fighting bugs as in the film: Alpha Team consists of only a handful of troops, and the story focuses on them.

Due to its often weird time slots, I missed Roughnecks on TV, though I always wanted to see it, as I really enjoyed the film. All five episodes are meshed together: they're not selectable individually, nor are there breaks between episodes for credits. I think that it works, though sometimes the episodes don't flow that great into the next. I really enjoyed the show: the CGI is incredible and in some shots, it looks just like a movie. While it's rumored that another campaign will see the light on DVD, I really hope that the whole series eventually shows up, as it has made a fan out of me.

Picture:
Roughnecks is presented in 1.33:1 full frame, as it originally aired on TV. As mentioned above, the CGI is fantastic, way beyond anything I've seen on TV lately. The episodes do occasionally have a soft or grainy look to them, but this may be intentional. It's not that distracting though, and besides that, the episodes look terrific.

Sound:
Roughnecks is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Surround 2.0 in English, French, Spanish, and Portugese. The 5.1 track was fairly impressive for what was originally a TV show; you can feel the thuds when the plasma bugs move in several scenes. The front surrounds are used quite effectively, with voices, ships, and fighting. The music, which is terrific, is likewise front-based. However, the back surrounds are mostly only used for ambient noise, which I thought was rather disappointing. Dialogue throughout the film is crisp and clean, with no distortion that I could detect. Subtitles are also available in English, Spanish, French, Portugese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai.

Extras:
Extras include a 33 item gallery of concept art, sketches, and a poster, and five trailers for other films, which include: Godzilla 2000, Karate Kid III, Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, and 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up. I was rather disappointed that there wasn't any production notes, TV spots, or even an episode list.

Summary:
Roughnecks is, at the very least, a required rental for fans of the movie - its that good and should not be missed. Though the DVD is short on extras, the audio/video quality is excellent for a TV series and fans of the show will not be disappointed with either. Highly Recommended!