Bohbot Kids Network (aka BKN) airs a show on cable and in broadcast syndication that should be seen at least once by every fan of sci-fi and anime. Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles is a follow-up to the movie, "Starship Troopers" and, clearly, a next step in animation.

Roughnecks is animated using Computer Graphics Imaging (CGI), a 3-D rendering technique that brings new life into animation. Characters move with life-like ease, scenes have sweeping pans and zooms that are more "movie-ish" than "cartoon-ish." The fast-cut editing of Roughnecks only adds to making movie comparisons and is totally appropriate to the wartime action scenes that make up most of each episode.

The enemy is everywhere. Walking, stalking, hacking, flying, flaming bugs appear throughout each episode, brought to the screen with movements and texture rendering that rival the movie CGI bugs. Likewise can be said for every explosion, flame and laser-blast. It is a feast for the eye that should not be missed.

Sure... this is the first of the next generation of anime. A step above Reboot and others. As such, it is bound to garner "oohs and aahs" from viewers. But it is not perfect. Facial expressions are next-generation, but still missing some characteristics. The result is that every close-up is a reminder that this is still a cartoon of sorts. The same can be said for the thin plot-lines of each episode. This is not Space: Above and Beyond. The visuals are meant to carry the story, and interest, in this series.

We can thank several production houses for those visuals, not the least of which is Foundation Imaging, the primary animation company known for the TV special effects in Star Trek:Voyager, Star Trek:Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5 and Sci Fi Channel's 'tween show visuals, just to name four projects. The company is also working on the new Buckaroo Bonzai series pilot.

Other production houses involved include Flat Earth Productions, Hyperimage, and Rainbow Studios. you'll find links to them all below.

CGI technology might be dazzling, and perfected enough to make the series possible, but it is not without its problems. Sub-contracters for SONY originally had difficulty meeting deadlines to produce more than a handful of episodes in 1999. The result was that the Sci-Fi Channel, cable/satellite stations, and many syndicated broadcast stations dropped the show about a month after it began airing. But SONY successfully re-farmed out the work. Now there are 40 episodes back on Sci-Fi Channel and on many, but not all of the original, broadcast & cable stations.

Surely, Roughnecks, like the Web's Whirlgirl and gaming's Lara Croft, points the way of the entertaining times ahead - times when it is even more difficult for human actors to find on-screen work. This summer's full-length theatrical feature, "Titan AE" will likely generate further interest in creating more animated products using CGI techniques.

But don't take our word for it. See for yourself. Below are some thumbnails for you to click to view some images from Roughnecks, followed by several links so you can learn more about the show, CGI animation and "Titan AE" We are happy to bring them to you (ain't the Web great?!)

"Roughnecks" Images (Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized image):

Links Of Interest:

What is wrong with those networks and cable channels, you ask? There are a bunch of new science fiction and fantasy shows each season and most of them keep getting cancelled!! They don’t give most of them a chance. Don’t "they" know "we" are all watching these shows? It’s inexplicable. It’s frustrating! It’s infuriating!

Actually, it only seems so because you want your tube time to be based on your preferences. Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s based on all the viewers and all the viewers aren’t that enthralled with a steady diet of sci-fi and fantasy.

How do "they" know what the collective "we" watch? Internet hits at a web site? E-mail? Chat groups? You know the answer. "They" use the ratings. Ratings actually translate to the number of viewers in a given time slot.

And, if you thought that some sf/fantasy shows are doing very well in the ratings, think again. Here are some examples to show you what we mean. To make matters clearer, we’ve taken the liberty of translating the ratings into the number of millions of viewers that the ratings represent.

These are the Nielsen Media Research ratings for some of the top-rated shows during the mid-February, 1999, sweeps, along with the three highest-rated sf/fantasy shows:

It should be pretty apparent that the best-rated sf show, The X-Files, doesn’t hold a candle to E.R., Friends or Frasier. The X-Files had 11.7 million viewers the week before, but actually had fewer viewers with its part 2, BIG episode that "explained it all." Ouch! Even in rerun syndication, The X-files attracted fewer viewers than repeats of Seinfeld and Frasier and was little more than half that of Jeopardy!

Deep Space 9 had actually been gaining viewers for the year previous to the above stats, but its first-run episodes still can’t top The X-Files reruns. DS9's audience was less than 40% the size of Wheel of Fortune's!! And all of your other sf/fantasy favorites (the ones you like, or liked before they were cancelled) have (had) ratings much lower than the top three sf/fantasy shows shown above.

We’ve tried not to mix the apples of network-distributed shows with the oranges of syndicated- or cable channel-distributed shows. That said, notice that cable’s WWF Wrestling attracted nearly as many viewers with their "first-run" story lines as Deep Space 9 (and much more in the ratings since.) The highest figures above represent upwards of 30-40% of all households available to view a given time-slot. Compare this to the fact that, in February, 1999, the most watched Sci Fi Channel episodic shows didn't even reach 1% of the households.

If you think these is are "old" examples, think again. Here are more recent network ratings from the beginning of the 2001-2 season. Each HHR (Houshold Rating) equals just over a million viewers:

When all is said and done, the most-watched shows on television are network shows that attract between ten and twenty million viewers each and every week.

So you have to ask yourself: Is it unreasonable for networks, cable channels and local stations to be happy settling for shows that attract one-quarter, one-eighth or a much, much smaller fraction of the audience available? The answer, sad to say, is obvious.