This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Grahamr Hey guys, can we give the DVD sequel it's own section? Because it was kind of In Name Only anyway. Here's the movie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Xo1a9NQ-A&feature=related
Bly: Can somebody please tell me where the quote at the top of the page is from? It sounds like the book, but I don't remember it.
- Benteen: It's from the book. Towards the end, when Rico's doing his tour as "temporary 3rd Lieutenant" as his "final exam" before commissioning from OCS. (BTW, not to pick on you but new discussion items usually go at the bottom of the page, not the top. :-) )
Benteen: Starship Troopers is a Take That! to critics of the Vietnam War? I don't think that's likely, since it was first published in 1959. Also, I'll note that while Heinlein was a civilian researcher in World War II, he was a 1929 graduate of the US Naval Academy, who served as a Navy officer for about 5 years or so before he was retired for medical reasons some time before World War II started. Heinlein took the civilian research job because the Navy wouldn't take him back on active duty, though he tried mightily to get back into uniform and assigned to a warship.
- Anonymous: I made a boo-boo and didn't check the Discussion before adding in both those points myself. The note about his Navy service and discharge in the main article could be removed (or that whole section edited), but the strike-through of the Vietnam War criticism vis-a-vis the halt on nuclear testing should stay. (Edit: someone made up for my boo-boo.)
- Benteen: Well, you made a boo-boo, but it wasn't not-checking-the-discussion, since I added the discussion page when I read the original assertion that Starship Troopers was a Take That! to Vietnam critics. I think the present revision is fair to Heinlein, which was my point about bringing up Heinlein's Naval service—you might not agree with the man's politics, but he wasn't a "chickenhawk" who was advocating militarism while ducking out of serving in WW II. If anything, the Navy's refusal to let him back into uniform during WW II was a major frustration for him.
- Anonymous: Whoops, confusion. The points I added in were (1) striking through the Vietnam War part and adding the test-ban part, and (2) adding the part in parentheses that read "(This troper notes[...])." I did not originally add the Vietnam part or anything about "chicken hawk;" if anything, I agree with your take. The "someone made up for my boo-boo" was someone (you, Benteen?) deleting the struck-through part on Vietnam and my parenthetical expression. No idea who put down Vietnam or chicken hawk.
- Dangermike: Both were my original booboos, but I object to the word Chickenhawk, which was never part of the original article. I never said or implied that RAH was one, I just pointed out that he never saw combat, and all his knowledge of infantry experiences was secondhand. As for the Vietnam screw up, whoops.
- Benteen: "Chickenhawk" was my phrasing. Coming to what you wrote entirely clean, I detected a implied note of criticism; if I misinterpreted your intent, my mistake, though I think you could have phrased what you meant to say a bit more clearly (I had no clue from your original if you knew that Heinlein had been a Naval officer).
- Dangermike: Yes, I knew, but the book is about grunt-level infantry combat, not the navy or research. It's not criticsm, just a distinction relevant to the book's subject.
Anonymous: I question the validity of the AllPlanetsAreEarthlike tag for the novel — it is explicitly stated that the humans and the bugs are "after the same real estate," so battles take place around and on the surface of Earth-like planets.
- Dangermike: No signifigantly non-Earthlike planets are shown or even mentioned, so regarding what's presented in-story, the trope still applies
- Bly: anyone here know if there's a site where the CGI series can be downloaded? I have the anime right now, and I'd like to get the CGI.
- Dangermike: No, but it's out on DVD.
- Bly: anyone here know if there's a site where the CGI series can be downloaded? I have the anime right now, and I'd like to get the CGI.
Benteen: note to binaroid; nice job on the graphics. The picture you chose for the "Novel" section isn't the cover of the novel, though, it's the box art to Avalon Hill's board wargame based on the novel. :-)
Janitor: Thta's fixed. I suppose someone familiar with the tabletop game could do a section on it.
Sean Tucker: Feel free to remove "The Other Anime" if it doesn't fit. The similarities are just too uncanny, though... I mean, it combines the Powered Armor and hard SF of the novel with the sheer brazen Refuge in Audacity of the movie.
Anonymous: I've removed a couple of tropes I don't think are correct: The planets we see are Earthlike, because those are the ones worth fighting over. It's explicitly stated that other planets (Pluto, Bug-infested rocky worlds) are dealt with using stand-off weapons. And "Planetville" is just plain wrong — since the story tends to deal with a single character in small-unit combat, you're just not going to see much of any given place.
- Dangermike: You seem to be Completely Missing The Point of those two tropes. APAE still applies because only Earthlike planets are actually shown in the story. The R&R planet is even described as having native ferns. Just like non-Earthlike planets likely exist unmentioned in every Verse which uses that trope; but if the only planets actually used as settings are pseudo-Earths, it's APAE. Likewise, Planetville doesn't mean other things don't exist on the planet— only that the writer treats planets like towns or small communities in the narrative, which definitely does apply here. Deletion denied.
Peteman: Um... when did T'phai learn English from one episode to the next? He's seen constantly needing the translation device until after the Heel–Face Turn, and when he's joined the Mobile Infantry, he's spent months training at human boot camps.
- Dangermike: When (re-)introduced to the Roughnecks and offered a new TALCbox by the L.T., newly-enlisted Ape "private" T'phai explicitly says "It is not necessary. I have studied your language." The subject is then dropped and ignored for the remainder of the series. This is one episode after his control bug is removed, so yeah, "between one episode and the next". And it's "a month had passed" according to Higgins' narration— pretty quick to become an fully fluent in a totally alien language, especially while also undergoing the rigors of basic training. It qualifies.
benteen: Is this:
- Future soldiers in an endless Bug War are allowed otherwise-illegal drugs, including time-released cocaine, to keep them awake and alert during prolonged engagements.
a proper trope? If so, what's the reference to hyperlink it to? I'm disposed to remove this myself, so if someone else does I'm certainly not going to object. :)
- Dangermike: Where is that from? I can't recall it being in any of the ST adaptations, unless it's one of the movie sequels. As for it being a Trope, probably yes, Star Trek TNG used it in the backround (as a historic footnote about the post-nuke days, seen in The Outpost) and Berserkers and others have used drugs to hype them up for combat in Real Life.
- benteen Well, it's in the section on trope examples from the novel. I don't recall illegal drugs being used by MI in the novel (they did use some sort of stimulants, IIRC, but my impression was that they were legal prescription pharmaceuticals, or legal OTC drugs), but it's been a while since I last read it, and my life is so disorganized right now that I doubt I'll be re-reading it anytime soon. My initial point was that this passage wasn't linked to any trope when it was first added. That problem's been fixed, and I'm not going to do anything about it myself until I have a chance to re-read the novel and judge whether that example's completely accurate
- Dangermike: Where is that from? I can't recall it being in any of the ST adaptations, unless it's one of the movie sequels. As for it being a Trope, probably yes, Star Trek TNG used it in the backround (as a historic footnote about the post-nuke days, seen in The Outpost) and Berserkers and others have used drugs to hype them up for combat in Real Life.
bluepenguin: Uh, wow, can we tone down the hate for the movie? Some of us kinda enjoyed it, even if it doesn't bear much resemblance to the book — or because it doesn't bear much resemblance to the book, as the case may be. (Or maybe I'm the only one and I just have horrible taste, in which case never mind.)
- Dangermike: The movie is hated by many, many people on this site, therefore even if a small number do like it, the hate in the article reflects the general Troper response. Sorry.
- BonSequitur: I suggest splitting the pages. No point having them together when the connection between the two is so tenuous, and it just incites hatred from fans of the novel who hated the movie because it's a lopsided adaptation, while inciting hatred from fans of the movie because the book is basically a fascist tract. Alternatively, we could just clean up the mentions of the movie of hatred; I don't think it's appropriate to attack something so viciously when it's clearly in Your Mileage May Vary territory, especially when the same applies to the book to a certain degree.
- Dangermike: There's supposed to be a "reviews" section being added for opinions soon, according to the Forums. Until then, let's leave it as-is until there's a place to put stuff. But we should keep what's funny.
benteen: re the latest "Powered Armor" edit: let's not link to "tropes" ("Trope Popularizer", "Trope Confider") until/unless those articles have been written.
- Dangermike: Trope Codifier seems to split the difference between those two.
Dangermike: removed the part about acceleration, because if that was causing the Artificial Gravity then why is the gravity shown perpendicular to the acceleration? They look out the front windows to steer, not up at a skylight. Someone has a class to retake. Also, the ship was under acceleration in that first shot.
