Roachia Series

Sentinel Fanfiction
Title:	Roachia Series
Author(s):	Cindy Combs
Date(s):
Length:
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	The Sentinel
External Links:	online here
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Roachia Series is a Sentinel series by Cindy Combs.

The Stories

• Before Dawn
• Home by Sunset
• Under the Cover of Darkness
• Harry's Promise

From the Author

Weeelllll, it's not so much a matter of specifically choosing a crossover character. Usually it's a situation or a particular character that helps me grow my main four (and now five) characters. For instance, Weardian and Witans was how I explained where I was taking Blair after the diss disaster, and having the Stargate and Sentinel worlds collide provided a good backdrop. Other times, it's just a matter of needing to fill out characters in a story, and someone (or a group of someones) pops into my mind. A lot of the characters in the Roachia series came in that way. And sometimes they just get pushy and invite themselves to the party. But usually it's a matter of simply where the story is going. I don't wake up and decide 'I'm going to do a crossover'. It's a story first, then if it's a crossover, so be it. Let's just say my mind is a very strange place.

Reactions and Reviews

I like SF, I like TS, and the two fit quite well in this SF action adventure with sentinel senses. Humans are fighting the insectoid natives of the planet their ship crashlanded upon, and they're loosing, when an untrained sentinel brings the humans back an advantage they have long thought to be extinguished in the Roachians attacks... Put like that, it sounds a bit like a 1930's pulp magazine, but it is certainly a fun action-adventure in the spirit of TS. You have explosions, fight scenes, great characters, sentinel senses, all in a solid SF setting.

AU. During a losing war on an alien planet, an untrained sentinel hopes that an injured young man will help unlock his talents to save their colony. And another AU, one that is very involving and brings in characters not only from TS, but from several other shows as well, creating a tale well worth reading.

I love AUs with big, juicy, plots. I adore well-written stories where an author creates such a convincing world that you are simply glued to your computer screen until the end of the story and then you pray that there's a sequel and rejoice when you discover there is one.

Roachia is an AU set in the distant future. Settlers looking for a better life leave the overcrowded Earth in search of a new home and they find it on Roachia. Unfortunately, Roachia is populated by large bug like creatures. The Roachians want the land the humans occupy and the humans have no where else to go. War ensues. In an act of terrorism, the Roachians destroy Mountain Center, which was the training center for Sentinel and Guides. Every day the humans lose a bit more ground.

As the story starts off, Captain James Ellison and his team have been captured by the Roachians while trying to get civilians out of the occupied territory. They are placed in a basement where they find a tortured young man. Evidence indicates that they were trying to extract information from him, but what could they want from someone so young?

This may not be a crossover in the true sense. The author has taken a lot of known television characters, kept their personalities and put them in this world. It's a great deal of fun trying to pick them out.

While this story is not slash, you owe it to yourself to give it a read.

[Dawn]: The first story of an alternative universe where Jim, Blair, and a heck of a lot of other people, are nth-generation colonists on the planet Roachia. I must admit, I found it hard to keep track of all the characters, when all we had to go by was names, with hardly any descriptions. About the only ones I kept straight were Jim, Blair, Simon, Rafe, Henri, Joel, and Jack.

As an AU TS story it was enjoyable. As a straight SF story, there were annoyingly niggly holes. Why did they call the planet Roachia when it sounds like it was named after the cockroach-like Roachians? How could Jack so casually have cigars in wartime? If the Roaches wanted to exterminate humans, why bother with work camps? Not to mention the, um, secret weapon that they used in this story.

I also hit a bit of a culture-gap: what does "having a cow" mean? And I found it rather disconcerting that folks were protesting about a "teenager" of 18 years of age being asked to go undercover, when 18 years old is the age of majority in my country, and therefore, from my point of view, the fellow was an adult.

But, on the up-side. it was nice to see a big, protective Jim (and a small protective Blair). I liked the oral history thing - and that even in a world where Sentinels are known and accepted, and they think they know all about them, extraordinary people can still break the mold and write outside the lines.

This story was nominated in the 2000 Cascade Times Awards in the "best AU story" category, and this series was nominated in the "best AU series" category. This was also nominated in the "favourite alternate universe series" category in the 2001 Cascade Times Awards.