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Friday, September 3, 2010

Fubar: Episode One of Trenches

Trenches is a 2008 SciFi webisode-series available via Crackle, and at Hulu, and at Trenches-online.  Unlike a lot of other webisodic efforts that have frankly bordered on the painful, Trenches manages to be rather enjoyable.  It's a good quality military SF series of web-broadcast episodes in the best tradition of Starship Troopers, which looks like the very real story-DNA that the writers stole pay respectful homage to in the first few episodes.  Later on, around Episode 5: Shallow Graves, it looks like they're diving for the Starship Troopers Two and Three direct-to-dvd franchise territory at times, but all-in-all it works. I really liked the first few episodes a great deal.  They are fun.  Grim, gritty and with loads of explosions and mayhem, but with a bit of that something special that makes it far more watchable than more pretentious crap.  The characters are promising.  Almost on a par with the Colonial Marines from Aliens in likability. It's not Roughnecks, nor even Space Viking, but it'll do for now and if Trenches gets some support, some viewers and a bit of feedback, especially now that it is being carried by Sony's Crackle, maybe the folks involved with this project will get a chance to deliver on some of the very promising potential.  It'd be nice to see just what happens next after the big reveal/cliffhanger at the end of Episode 10.  I just wish that Trenches, as with the Starship Troopers film(s) had brought in the powered armor, but maybe that's just me.  With the run-away success of Iron Man, maybe we'll finally get a real Starship Trooper movie...

Check out Trenches

From Crackle: Fubar


The Production Company behind Trenches has made a bunch of Concept Art, Stills, and other fun stuff available through the official Trenches website.  This is a very cool project.  I would like to see more of this sort of thing, especially in terms of developing fresh new science fiction, fantasy and Sword & Sorcery properties.  Maybe we'll see someone develop a credible and entertaining webisode series for Carson of Venus, Elak of Atlantis or Eric John Stark...that'd be a Lot of Fun.  Maybe with the Disney John Carter of Mars and the renewed interest in Buck Rogers, Green Hornet, and other classic/Pulp heroes/series, maybe that's just a bit closer to reality than ever before.