FAQ

Screamers' protagonist, Colonel Hendricksson, has a sidekick, Private Jefferson. His presence lightens the mood of the film's first half. In "Second Variety", the protagonist, Major Hendricks, travels alone.

Screamers occurs in the distant, future; "Second Variety" occurs in the 1950s.

The war in Screamers is fought between the Alliance and the New Economic Bloc over a natural resource. In "Second Variety", the Cold War degenerates to open war, between the United Nations and the Soviet Union.

Early in the movie, Jefferson is given a device called a "tab" and told that from then on it will work only for him. The device is said to broadcast his heartbeat out of phase, thereby flatlining it and making it undetectable to screamers. But later in the film, Hendricksson tells a group of people without tabs to "stay within two feet of me and Jefferson," and not long afterward Jefferson uses his own tab to protect Ross.

The latter part of the film makes clear that, in the world of this film, the technology exists to code a device to the biosignature of a specific person so that only that person can activate it. The most likely explanation for the "tab" issue is that the tab can be activated only by its wearer, but once activated it will flatline all heartbeats within a short range of it. (It's no harder to flatline two heartbeats than one.) So when Jefferson is told that the tab will work only for him, he's really being told that it's coded to his biosignature for activation and it won't turn on for anyone else -- and probably that it will turn off after a short time if he removes it; we appear to see that happen in the middle of the film as well.

No.