Robotech II: The Sentinels

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Robotech II: The Sentinels

video cover
Directed by Carl Macek
Produced by Ahmed Agrama
Written by Carl Macek
Release date(s) 1987 (VHS)
2001 (DVD)
Running time 85 minutes (originally planned as 65 episodes)
Language English
IMDb profile

Robotech II: The Sentinels was an attempt by Harmony Gold USA to continue the original 1985 Robotech television series. Only an 85-minute pilot was completed after the project was cancelled in 1986. The aborted 65-episode Robotech series would have followed the ongoing adventures of Rick & Lisa Hunter and the rest of the Robotech Expedition during the events of The Robotech Masters and The New Generation.

Contents

[edit] Background

The feature-length pilot is comprised of the first three (and only) episodes that were produced for the series. It introduces the SDF-3 along with its crew and gives an overview of their new mission. The title refers to an alien resistance movement encountered by the Robotech Expedition that consists of races subjugated by the Robotech Masters or the Invid. One significant event is the wedding of Admiral Rick Hunter to Admiral Lisa Hayes.

Being a sequel/spinoff to the combined series, The Sentinels featured characters from all three Robotech sagas, including the Hunters and the Sterlings from The Macross Saga, Dana Sterling and Bowie Grant from The Robotech Masters, and Jonathan Wolfe of The New Generation. Among the newly created characters were young cadet rivals Jack Baker and Karen Penn, whose early love-hate relationship mirrored Rick and Lisa's; Vince Grant, brother of Claudia and father of Bowie Grant; and the Regent, the villainous leader of the Invid. Dr. Emil Lang, a supporting character in the Macross Saga, would return as a main character. The story also introduces a human adversary in the form of T.R. Edwards, who was first introduced in Comico's Robotech: The Graphic Novel.

[edit] Production history

The Tatsunoko Production animation studio assigned the first script drafts to writers Sukehiro Tomita (Macross, Mospeada) and Hiroshi Oonogi (Macross). According to director Carl Macek[1], the Japanese animators initially tried to relate the project to the original versions of Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada, until Harmony Gold explained the differences made in Robotech's adaptation with diagrams and charts. When the animators focused on new characters instead of Rick and the other characters derived from the original Macross, Macek ended up reassigning the scriptwriting to American writers headed by script supervisor Kent Butterworth to refocus the project.

Macek blamed the cancellation of the series on the crash of the Dollar/Yen exchange rate and lack of support by toy partner Matchbox.

[edit] Home video release

Subsequent efforts to petition the completion of this series have gone nowhere, but Carl Macek collected the usable footage from the aborted Sentinels project into a feature that was first released on VHS in 1987 by Robotech RPG publisher Palladium Books. Macek's own Streamline Pictures would release it again in 1992.

The Sentinels feature is currently included on DVD as an extra with the third volume of the Robotech Legacy Collection or the complete Protoculture Collection, from ADV Films. The disc includes the option of a voiceover commentary by Macek (mostly read directly from Robotech Art 3: The Sentinels) in which he disusses some of the aspects of the production.

[edit] Comic and novel adaptations

Despite its cancellation, Harmony Gold provided the unfinished Sentinels source material for adaptation by several different parties, resulting in several different versions of the same continuity. Macek's original outline and notes for the series were published in Robotech Art 3: The Sentinels.

Author Jack McKinney completed a series of novels of the Sentinels storyline in paperback. The Waltrip brothers adapted these novels into comic books, though they diverged from the novels as the story progressed. The Sentinels comics were published by Eternity Comics, then Academy Comics. However, the storyline abruptly ended when Academy was unable to renew their license with Harmony Gold. The comics license passed to Antarctic Press who published Sentinels: Rubicon, which draws its name from the title of the fifth Sentinels novel. However, the Rubicon comic, instead of completing the Sentinels story, is set years after the end of the Sentinels Campaign and was not illustrated by the Waltrips. It was not popular with fans due to the poor artwork and the lack of connection to Sentinels. It was cancelled after only two issues.

The elements of the last McKinney Sentinels novel was adapted into the Prelude to Shadow Chronicles comic miniseries, which in turn serves as a prequel to the 2006 film Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles.

[edit] Role-playing game

Palladium Books also adapted the Sentinels material into its Robotech RPG II: The Sentinels role-playing games.

[edit] The Sentinels Curse

Because of the consistent problems plaguing new Robotech releases, especially animation, there has been a joke among fans regarding a curse towards further Robotech projects.[citation needed] The curse has also applied to Sentinels-based works that ended prior to completion. Not included on this list is projects that were planned but never reached any stage of production such as Robotech III: The Odyssey which only existed as a vague idea in Carl Macek's personal notes during Sentinels production. It remains to be seen if Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles will break the curse.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Carl Macek, Robotech Art 3: The Sentinels, The Donning Company, 1988.

[edit] External links

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