# Starship Troopers could never have been a good movie (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 11, 2013, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988 "2013-10-11T15:45:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2013, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/81 "2013-10-17T19:06:15Z")
Tastes vary, Sam, but I think that was the scene that didn’t work for me (granted it’s been 16 years since I read it). Did the skinnies use weapons? How did they fight? John Scalzi is sometimes described as Heinlein’s heir, especially for books like Old Man’s War, and I quite enjoy how he writes action. Heinlein’s action just left me cold. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2013, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/82 "2013-10-17T21:44:55Z")
It’s been a good fifteen to twenty since the last time I read _Starship Troopers_, too, but I remember the battle scenes pretty vividly. I thought it was an excellent job of showing a “grunt’s eye” view of combat - chaotic and confusing, with no clear idea of how the battle is progressing overall, just how it’s shaking out in your small corner of it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2013, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/83 "2013-10-17T22:39:01Z")
IIRC, the Skinnies are described as being “basically like us”, so presumably they do use weapons. The specific ones Rico encountered mostly didn’t, but that was because they were mostly civilians, not because of any limitation of their species. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2013, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/84 "2013-10-17T23:59:22Z")
I’d be interested if someone can post an excerpt from the book including a description of the skinnies and their combat methods. Maybe I’m misremembering; maybe I was too harsh on the book. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/85 "2013-10-18T02:46:09Z")
The skinnies did use weapons. The reason Rico decided to go through the next building instead of jumping over it was because he got grazed by some sort of beam that gave him a numb tingling feeling, and he speculated that if he hadn’t already given his suit the command to jump he would have died right there. He then realized that Skinny gunners had him zeroed and would probably burn him on the next jump. Also, one of the skinnies he burned had some sort of hand weapon. And of course Flores was killed in the attack. Heinlein also went to pains to show that the whole reason the ‘smash and run’ tactics worked was that the cap troopers went way out of their way to hide their position by expending X amount of their ammo on targets outside their perimeter so their operational area couldn’t be analyzed. They also hit fast and hard and got out of Dodge before the enemy could regroup. It was basically “shock and awe” that got them through. Every minute extra they spent on the planet was an extra minute the enemy had to bring its forces to bear, which is why recall happens fast and on a tight schedule. The bugs also had sophisticated weaponry. It was Verhoeven’s stupid movie that came up with the idea of bugs attacking with flaming poop, claws and halitosis. In the book they were a space-faring race with lots of powerful weapons - powerful enough to destroy Pluto and smash Buenos Ares. In the movie their flaming poop was apparently capable of faster-than-light speed and remote targeting across light-years of space. Gah. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/86 "2013-10-18T03:51:51Z")
First encounter with Skinny weaponry was during the drop: > [@Starship Troopers](#): > > I noticed a dash off to the right at about my altitude; some unfriendly native down below had burned what was probably a piece of my egg. So I fired my first chute at once, intending if possible to jerk myself right off his screen as he followed the targets down in closing range. I braced for the shock, rode it, then floated down for about twenty seconds before unloading the chute – not wishing to call attention to myself in still another way by not falling at the speed of the other stuff around me. > > It must have worked; I wasn’t burned. The second is just after an atomic rocket detonated several miles away, as Rico was landing from a jump. He describes the flash and how his gear protected him from it, but any locals caught unawares would be temporarily blinded: > [@](#): > > So I merely blinked hard – opened my eyes and stared straight at a local citizen just coming out of an opening in the building ahead of me. He looked at me, I looked at him, and he started to raise something – a weapon, I suppose – as Jelly called out, “Odd numbers! Advance!” I didn’t have time to fool with him; I was a good five hundred yards short of where I should have been by then. I still had the hand flamer in my left hand; I toasted him and jumped over the building he had been coming out of, as I started to count. A hand flamer is primarily for incendiary work but it is a good defensive anti-personnel weapon in tight quarters; you don’t have to aim it much. Then he discusses the Skinny defenses starting to come online: > [@](#): > > We had started with the enormous advantage of surprise, reached the ground without being hit (at least I hoped nobody had been hit coming in), and had been rampaging in among them in a fashion that let us fire at will without fear of hitting each other while they stood a big chance of hitting their own people in shooting at us – if they could find us to shoot at, at all. (I’m no games-theory expert but I doubt if any computer could have analyzed what we were doing in time to predict where we would be next.) > > Nevertheless the home defenses were beginning to fight back, co-ordinated or not. I took a couple of near misses with explosives, close enough to rattle my teeth even inside armor and once I was brushed by some sort of beam that made my hair stand on end and half paralyzed me for a moment – as if I had hit my funny bone, but all over. If the suit hadn’t already been told to jump, I guess I wouldn’t have got out of there. … > [@](#): > > There was something on the horizon in the direction of their spaceport – administration & control, maybe, or possibly even a starship. Almost in line and about half as far away was an enormous structure which I couldn’t identify even that loosely. The range to the spaceport was extreme but I let the rocket see it, said, “Go find it, baby!” and twisted its tail – slapped the last one in, sent it toward the nearer target, and jumped. > > That building took a direct hit just as I left it. Either a skinny had judged (correctly) that it was worth one of their buildings to try for one of us, or one of my own mates was getting mighty careless with fireworks. Either way, I didn’t want to jump from that spot, even a skimmer; I decided to go through the next couple of buildings instead of over. So I grabbed the heavy flamer off my back as I hit and dipped the snoopers down over my eyes, tackled a wall in front of me with a knife beam at full power. A section of wall fell away and I charged in. And backed out even faster. > > I didn’t know what it was I had cracked open. A congregation in church – a skinny flophouse – maybe even their defense headquarters. All I knew was that it was a very big room filled with more skinnies than I wanted to see in my whole life. > > Probably not a church, for somebody took a shot at me as I popped back out - just a slug that bounced off my armor, made my ears ring, and staggered me without hurting me. But it reminded me that I wasn’t supposed to leave without giving them a souvenir of my visit. I grabbed the first thing on my belt and lobbed it in – and heard it start to squawk. As they keep telling you in Basic, doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later. > > By sheer chance I had done the right thing. This was a special bomb, one each issued to us for this mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): "I’m a thirty-second bomb! I’m a thirty-second bomb! Twenty-nine! . . . twenty-eight! . . .twenty-seven! – " > > It was supposed to frazzle their nerves. Maybe it did; it certainly frazzled mine. Kinder to shoot a man. I didn’t wait for the countdown; I jumped, while I wondered whether they would find enough doors and windows to swarm out in time. The Skinnies were an advanced civilization with star travel and heavy weaponry - after this raid, the Skinnies switched sides from the Bugs to the Federation and helped them fight the war. The bugs were also technological - on "planet P’, listeners could hear machinery sounds underground, and Rico mentions that the best way to tell a worker from a warrior is that the warrior will be armed with weapons. And the book mentions that the bugs had starships. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/87 "2013-10-18T03:58:46Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Most of the book comprises Rico’s musing and monologue about _what military service is and what it means_. It’s great stuff and eminently readable, but how could you faithfully film it? Actually, that sort of intellectual exposition **is** possible on the stage or screen. You just have to work the monologue into dialogue (or, skip dialogue and leave it as monologue and work it into a one-man show) and have characters expound it. See [_Mindwalk,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindwalk) or Shaw’s [_Man and Superman_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_And_Superman), or, for that matter, Plato’s dialogues, any one of which could be staged (and some have been) as a peculiarly highbrow sort of play. ---
**Author:** ![Glazer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a88e57/32.png) [@Glazer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Glazer)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/88 "2013-10-18T04:11:35Z")
Does anyone remember the Starship Troopers animated series? I never got to see more than a couple of minutes of it at a time. It would be on in the morning while I got ready for work. This was back in the nineties or early oughts. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/89 "2013-10-18T04:18:05Z")
> [@Glazer](#): > > Does anyone remember the Starship Troopers animated series? I never got to see more than a couple of minutes of it at a time. It would be on in the morning while I got ready for work. This was back in the nineties or early oughts. _Roughnecks_. Pretty good, for what it was. Borrowed a lot from the Colonial Marines in _Aliens_, which was to its credit. Netflix was streaming it a while back, but I don’t know if they still have it. IIRC, they had the raid on the Skinnies in the first season, and in the second season, a Skinny actually joined the squad. ---
**Author:** ![Glazer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a88e57/32.png) [@Glazer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Glazer)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/90 "2013-10-18T04:26:56Z")
Thanks I see if I can find it. I can’t do Netflix on Linux though.☹ ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/91 "2013-10-18T04:32:19Z")
Just checked, and looks like they’re not carrying it anymore. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Glazer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a88e57/32.png) [@Glazer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Glazer)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/92 "2013-10-18T04:36:39Z")
Looks like Youtube has it at least the first episode. But first Elementary just finished downloading.🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/93 "2013-10-18T13:37:05Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Actually, that sort of intellectual exposition **is** possible on the stage or screen. You just have to work the monologue into dialogue (or, skip dialogue and leave it as monologue and work it into a one-man show) and have characters expound it. See [_Mindwalk,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindwalk) or Shaw’s [_Man and Superman_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_And_Superman), or, for that matter, Plato’s dialogues, any one of which could be staged (and some have been) as a peculiarly highbrow sort of play. I imagine so - I mean, you could perform the work with a very high level of fidelity by treating some parts as an interview-style monologue, some parts as voiceover monologue over scenes such as slow-motion battle or training ground (or even within the orbital drop capsule), and other parts as straightforward action (action in the broader sense of acting, not just explosions). But I think anything that would satisfy the purist fanbase of the book would probably not be popular or successful in the mainstream, and vice versa. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/94 "2013-10-18T13:48:23Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > The book did not, but it’s a very Heinleinian concept. He would have enjoyed the scene, I think. But of course he did not include such things as co-ed showers (or female MI troopers) in a book written for children in 1959. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/95 "2013-10-18T13:51:01Z")
Y’know, the thing that bugged me most of all about the film was what it did to the Bugs. In the book, no one had any doubt that the Bugs were sentient. They flew in spaceships and used nuclear weapons and negotiated with the humans over POWs. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/96 "2013-10-18T13:53:18Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > But at least it wouldn’t be a movie with the exact opposite point of view as the book. The book’s basic POV is that peaceful coexistence of different sentient species is not an option, that life in the Universe is a never-ending struggle for _Lebensraum_ and genocide is the natural fate of the losers. I think the movie got that part spot on, at least. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/97 "2013-10-18T19:59:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Y’know, the thing that bugged me most of all about the film was what it did to the Bugs. In the book, no one had any doubt that the Bugs were sentient. They flew in spaceships and used nuclear weapons and negotiated with the humans over POWs. Absolutely. The bugs were a very interesting premise - what would an utterly alien spacefaring civilization look like? How would we negotiate with it? How would we understand it? We know that insects are often social creatures and can create amazing structures and sophisticated behaviors as a group while the individual creatures are dumb as dirt. What would happen if they were just a little smarter and evolved technology? That’s a cool idea, and Heinlein handled it reasonably well. The movie turned them into stupid, large insects that used excretions as weapons that they could somehow shoot through space. Guh. > [@](#): > > The book’s basic POV is that peaceful coexistence of different sentient species is not an option, that life in the Universe is a never-ending struggle for Lebensraum and genocide is the natural fate of the losers. I think the movie got that part spot on, at least. That’s not the point of the book at all. After all, they _did_ make peace with the Skinnies. The book was in part a story about what real diplomacy is: The art of saying “Nice Doggy” while you look for a big stick. In other words, diplomacy isn’t about ‘understanding’ each other. It’s not about appealing to your opponent’s good nature or shared humanity. Diplomacy is always about finding what your opponent wants and fears, and then using carrots and sticks to make the other side cooperate with you. The skinnies could be negotiated with because they shared enough common frames of reference and goals with humans that humans could deal with them on that level. The opening attack in the book is a _diplomatic mission_ of sorts - the troopers were under strict orders to limit the damage, and they were used in the first place (instead of nuking the planet from orbit) as a show of _limited_ force. Bloody the nose of the enemy to show him that you can hurt him, but restrain yourself to show that you can also be merciful and would rather cooperate than fight. There’s a large section in the book that discusses this. Part of the strategy with the bugs was to find out what made them tick and what they wanted so that diplomacy could be applied to them as well. The problem the Terrans had was that the bugs were simply so alien that they had no common points of reference from which to start diplomatic relations. This is what the book had to say about the raid on “Planet P”: > [@](#): > > However we were not buying real estate to live on; we went there because Bugs were there – and they were there on our account, so Staff thought. Staff told us that Planet P was an uncompleted advance base (prob. 87±6 per cent) to be used against us. > > Since the planet was no prize, the routine way to get rid of this Bug base would be for the Navy to stand off at a safe distance and render this ugly spheroid uninhabitable by Man or Bug. But the C-in-C had other ideas. > > The operation was a raid. It sounds incredible to call a battle involving hundreds of ships and thousands of casualties a “raid,” especially as, in the meantime, the Navy and a lot of other cap troopers were keeping things stirred up many light-years into Bug space in order to divert them from reinforcing Planet P. > > But the C-in-C was not wasting men; this giant raid could determine who won the war, whether next year or thirty years hence. We needed to learn more about Bug psychology. Must we wipe out every Bug in the Galaxy? Or was it possible to trounce them and impose a peace? We did not know; we understood them as little as we understand termites. > > To learn their psychology we had to communicate with them, learn their motivations, find out why they fought and under what conditions they would stop; for these, the Psychological Warfare Corps needed prisoners. There’s nothing at all in the book that says different races or species cannot learn to live peacefully with one another. In fact, the whole point to the existence of the MI in an age where planets can be turned into glass from orbit is to be able to apply limited force so that you retain the ability to make peace with your enemies. Sgt. Zim says it well in the book, when a recruit asks him why they bother learning to fight hand-to-hand when they can just nuke people from orbit: > [@](#): > > There can be circumstances when it’s just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is _controlled_ violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence. > > But it’s not your business or mine to decide the purpose or the control. It’s never a soldier’s business to decide when or where or how – or why – he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people – `older and wiser heads,’ as they say – supply the control. Which is as it should be. That’s the best answer I can give you. This is the kind of nuance that seems to have blown past the people who thought that the book was just a glorification of killing, or a fascist wet dream or something. That’s what Verhoeven thought it was, which is why the movie went so horribly wrong. The very scene I just posted was reduced in the movie to Sgt Zim actually stabbing the recruit in the hand with his knife, for no apparent reason but to be sadistic. It completely flipped the point of that passage upside down. The society in Starship Troopers was not fascist. The military wasn’t revered by the citizenry - it was looked down upon. It was true that you had to do federal service to get the vote, but the other part people miss is that the government was _small_. It was more of a libertarian society than anything. There was no conscription, and many people chose to simply ignore the government and their franchise and live with as little contact with the state as possible. Heinlein didn’t intend to glorify all things military - he had plenty to say about the idiocy of the higher-ups and the stupidity of some generals. He believed strongly in civilian control of the military, as is pointed out in the passage above. What he was doing with this book, aside from exploring real SF themes such as what a first encounter with a truly alien race might look like, was glorifying the “poor bloody infantry” - the people who put their bodies between war’s desolation and their loved ones at home. The people who are forced to pay the ultimate price when diplomacy breaks down. You have to consider the times the book was written in - WWII was a recent memory, and the cold war was nearing its heights. The military that had sacrificed so much to win WWII had been largely dismantled, and many of the people who fought did not adjust well to civilian life and were ignored or forgotten. The U.S. had gone from a military large enough to control the world to one so small that was overextending itself just to fight North Korea, in a mere five years. And the Korean war was the first ‘bad’ war in which the actual soldiers were forced to fight with unrealistic rules of engagement, supply lines for the North Koreans were intentionally put off limits for diplomatic reasons, etc. That war had just ended as Heinlein started writing this book, and the treatment of the soldiers both in the war and after was probably on his mind. Heinlein was fond of Rudyard Kipling, and one of Kipling’s poems that he had quoted several times was “Tommy”. This book is an extended, SF echo of that poem: > [@Rudyard Kipling](#): > > I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer, > The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.” > The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die, > I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I: > O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”; > But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play, > The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play, > O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play. > > I went into a theatre as sober as could be, > They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me; > They sent me to the gallery or round the music-‘alls, > But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls! > For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”; > But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide, > The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide, > O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide. > > Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep > Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap; > An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit > Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit. > Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, 'ow’s yer soul?” > But it’s “Thin red line of 'eroes” when the drums begin to roll, > The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll, > O it’s “Thin red line of 'eroes” when the drums begin to roll. > > We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too, > But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you; > An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints, > Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints; > While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”, > But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind, > There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind, > O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind. > > You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all: > We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational. > Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face > The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace. > For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!” > But it’s “Saviour of 'is country” when the guns begin to shoot; > An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please; > An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees! ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/98 "2013-10-18T21:47:48Z")
Nicely said, **Sam**. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/99 "2013-10-18T21:59:49Z")
Excellent post, **Sam**. One thing that caught my eye, though: > [@](#): > > The skinnies could be negotiated with because they shared enough common frames of reference and goals with humans that humans could deal with them on that level. The opening attack in the book is a diplomatic mission of sorts - the troopers were under strict orders to limit the damage, and they were used in the first place (instead of nuking the planet from orbit) as a show of limited force. Bloody the nose of the enemy to show him that you can hurt him, but restrain yourself to show that you can also be merciful and would rather cooperate than fight. There’s a large section in the book that discusses this. > [@](#): > > And the Korean war was the first ‘bad’ war in which the actual soldiers were forced to fight with unrealistic rules of engagement, supply lines for the North Koreans were intentionally put off limits for diplomatic reasons, etc. Aren’t these fundamentally the same military doctrines? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988/100 "2013-10-18T22:49:49Z")
Thanks guys. > [@Miller](#): > > Excellent post, **Sam**. > > One thing that caught my eye, though: > > Aren’t these fundamentally the same military doctrines? That’s a good point. Doctrinally they might be similar but there’s a difference between a smash-and-run raid and a long term battle. All raids of that sort are generally fought under tight rules of engagement. The difference in North Korea and Vietnam was that they were supposedly all-out wars, and yet the soldiers were often left exposed or compromised by rules of engagement set down by their civilian leaders. I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing - clearly, bombing China could have been a very bad idea, and even hitting the supply lines risked killing Chinese soldiers which could have broadened the war. But again, it’s the soldier on the ground who pays the price for that nuance. Actually, there is a better parallel in Starship Troopers - in the raid on Planet P, the MI are put at severe risk by the rules of engagement; their normal tactic would be to drop a bomb down any bug hole and seal it, but their orders were to let the enemy swarm out and attack them, so that specialists could then go down the holes and try to capture ‘brain’ bugs. It was presented in the book as sound strategy and the right thing to do, but again it was the Poor Bloody Infantry that had to bear the pain of that strategy. That’s what Heinlein was writing about. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/starship-troopers-could-never-have-been-a-good-movie-open-spoilers/670988.md?page=6)