Deftones

See this is how stupid this show made me. I called him Sun instead of Jin. He didn't fall into it. He climbed down to it. Unless that water is boiling hot or super cold I don't see how it could kill him.

Geofferson

Agreed -- that was hilarious.

Miniseries was a big let-down overall, imo.

mnementh

I'm a fan of cheesy movies but I want my 4 hrs back. Or at least two; half of the subplots seemed pointless.

Officer Cartman

I was wondering the same thing..

gmanca

At first it was alright, but the subplots were very badly handled.

From what I remember, the issue with the water was that there was a heat and radioactive issue with the water, but it wasn't fully explained.

To the whole assassination scenario, the NSA director told Ferris? that Manchik? had to be killed because he was not going to tow the line. But because Ferris was connected to the director, he had to be killed so that the whole Barton family kidnapping didn't get back to the director.

With the whole space shuttle thread, it looks like the future had encountered Andromeda, but because of vent mining, they could not harvest the bactilis infernus and decided to just throw it back in time through a wormhole.

That space station at the end was not in the future, it was from the present as they were holding the virus in space in case of release. The NSA director was the guy at the laptop, watching the whole thing go down.

At least, this is how I saw it and how it made sense to me. There is the whole issue of the sample logging number being the same from the present and future.

I would think that the Scott brothers would have done a better job with screening the script and editing the final product. It had the right tone for an update, but it was totally broken with the plot.

Strafe

Sometimes I really enjoy the cheesy scifi 'b' movies they create for the sci-fi channel. This fits right in with them.

DarkestPhoenix

Man, this movie blew blue balls and made little to no sense. First of all, why in the hell do they make the damn thing come from the future? They could have kept it as a modern day satellite and it would have been just fine. Also, I thought in order to harvest the bacillus they may have to deal with the ecoterrorists, but that whole sub-plot was just dropped, mirroring a million others. How in the hell did that black chick survive...last I saw her, she was covered in the virus. Never explained what in the hell it was, either...bacteria, man-made virus, what?? Also, never explained how in the world those two survived and what the hell that had to do with the cure or trying to prevent others from dying. Not to mention accent-free Jin's death, that sucked, and throwing the thumb was equally dumb. What the hell, was the virus also breaking steam pipes in faces? I thought it was supposed to be 'the virus', but that was stupid as well, because why didn't it just kill him, then? Anyway, it could have been salvaged, but shitty acting, open loose ends and dangling plot threads made it teh suck.

Jadzia

I watched it and I was kind of enjoying it until the completely unnecessary subplot involving Viola Davis' family. I like that actress and I liked that character and that whole part was just stupid and came out of nowhere. The show rapidly went downhill from there.

I thought it was hilarious how they dragged out the ending with Benjamin Bratt struggling oh-so slowly to turn off the reactor. They bled that scene to death, when the real effort to kill the virus outside was basically forgotten save for a quick scene with Andre Bragher in the helicopter going "Yay! We got it!" Reminded me of that Xander-centered Buffy episode where the rest of the Scooby Gang was saving the world in the background.

I actually have never watched Will & Grace before, but did the director forget to tell Eric McCormack his character wasn't supposed to be gay here? Because his character was hilariously, unintentionally flamboyant. (And I know EM is straight so I wasn't sure if that was an artistic choice or what.) His character made me miss Marc Singer from "V", which was what I think they were trying to emulate here.

I have never seen the actress before who played the love interest/scientist, but damn her voice was annoying. I kept thinking she should have been played by Kelli Williams. Benjamin Bratt was basically playing the same guy as he did in E-Ring, except with some science knowledge.

I agree about the lame eco-terrorist subplot. Why was that even necessary? When they first showed the news footage of the dead protestor, I thought I saw those spider-veins on their face and I figured the virus had spread to them somehow, but that didn't happen. I can appreciate the fact that they brought up the vent-mining controversy to make a point later, but the whole hostage situation was silly and extraneous. It was rather funny when the President was dealing with the killer virus that is about to destroy America and his aide was bugging him about what he is going to do about the protestors.

Another laughable moment was when Viola Davis' character was supposedly only alive due to hyperventilating and the other doctor started yelling at her to calm down.

The thumb scene was hilarious, and would have only been funner if Jin had yelled "Thumbs Up!" as he threw it.

mugwump

Mancheck had to die because otherwise he would have revealed the existence of the secretive government agency that squirreled away a sample of Andromeda on the space station. That sample sports the same number and symbol that were identified by the binary code embedded in the enclosure that was sent from the future. It's a never-ending loop -- the future sends back a warning and a sample that is in return the exact same sample of Andromeda that is to be unleashed in the future.

It's deep man, real deep.

Jadzia

Yep. I think the ending was trying to be a nod to the Terminator arm that they kept stored away, which essentially ensured Judgment Day would still happen.

Rogue588

I know they referred to her botoxing her face on Scrubs, but didn't they mention she had a boob job? If so, it either wasn't much or she had 'em taken out. They didn't look too big during the dramatic shower decontamination scene.

Anyways, this is 3 hours or so of my life that A&E owes me, dammit..

Rocketdog2000

Actually, it was fully explained between Benjamin Bratt's and Rick Schroder's characters. If you can stomach watching it again, you'll hear the conversation about it.

Other than that, I agree with you - it started out ok, but went straight to hell in the second half. Having just re-watched the completely superior original version in preparation for this, I was very disappointed in it overall. Way too much padding and needlessly added extra characters and plot lines just to fill out an extra 2 hours of story, that in the end took away from the urgency of the situation. The original works much better in it's taut pacing and unraveling of the mystery of what happened, and how to try and stop/fix it.

And again, the second act just killed the whole shebang for me.


It was worth seeing this once, just for a comparison to see what they would change/update about the story, and if they could actually improve upon it. Unfortunately, the latter point wasn't the case. If you've never seen the original, though, you really should, just to see how much better of a movie it is.

Numanoid

Watched the whole thing, and aside from a few tense moments in part 2, found it pretty laughable in the areas of acting, writing and especially special effects. That thumb moment pretty much sank the whole miniseries.

I'd like to know from someone that has read the book -- was all that military and political intrigue part of the book? If so, I can see why Robert Wise left it out of the film version.

And yes, the space station scene means that the government had gotten hold of a bit of Andromeda (the symbol with the interlocked triangles is actually what the virus itself looked like in the original film) and would one day unleash it somehow, only to repeat the need to send it back in time to stop itself. Classic sci-fi loop. The vent subplot is an indication that we are destroying our one chance to fight Andromeda off in the future, ala the humpback whales of Star Trek IV.

Jon2

I read the book (in high school back when the original movie was released, which I never saw until years later on TV) and... no, that stuff was not in the book. Neither was the notion of Andromeda as a sort of hive-minded aware life form. Nor the time-travel aspect.

A variation on the classic grandfather paradox of time travel stories. Or rather the conundrum of which came first... the chicken or the egg?

BTW, I suppose in could be seen as a variation on a theme, but in the original movie I think Andromeda had a hexagonal, honeycomb shape.

My biggest gripe (besides the put-me-to-sleep length) is that what was once a nice, tight SF thriller was turned into just another beat-us-over-head-until-our-brains-ooze-out-our-ears, chicken little, environmental message morality play that are becoming way beyond a little tiresome nowadays.

And I say this as a life long SF fan who cut his literary teeth on end-of-the-world SF.

It's hard to accept that this was made by the Scott brothers.

bretski

Was I the only one who kept waiting for Fletch to pop out?

"It's all Buckyball bearings nowadays. Now you prepare that bacillus infernus valve with some 3-in-1 oil and some gauze pads."

The thumb had to be one of the top 5 bad moments in TV history. Absolute classic cine-schlock.

Numanoid

Yeah, variation on a theme is a better description:

jack999

I think this production is an example of "we've got to make it our own." They had over 3 hours of running time to keep more stuff from the book in the movie. But nooooo. They've got to come up with their own crap. They could have done more with the characters but noooooo, they've got to add more BS.

They had a terrific source to work with, why ignore it?

Casting was pretty bad. I couldn't buy Bratt as a leading scientist, and I don't dislike him as an actor, I just couldn't buy in. Christa Miller is great in Scrubs, but not here. She was out of place. The only convincing portrayal, IMHO, was the President. He had gravitas.

Speaking of gravitas, Arthur Hill has more of that then this entire cast. I believed he was a big time scientist who would be put in charge. The original is so much better and I was hoping for more from this production.

It's like they would only cast well known tv actors, be damned if they were right for the part.

Did we ever see even a drop of blood (not counting powdered) in the original? You don't have to be gory to be scary.

DarkestPhoenix

Are you really going to make anyone watch it again? Can you explain it?

Numanoid

The original was rated G!

Rocketdog2000

O.k. lazy britches. As it appears my attempt at humor went by you like the original explanation did, I'll just do all the work for you. (And subject myself to the torture for the benefit of everyone else who missed it)

Quoted form the movie - in the scene where Dr. Jeremy Stone (Benjamin Bratt), Major Bill Keane MD (Rick Schroder) and Dr. Angela Noyce (Christa Miller) have just gotten back from investigating the town, have arrived at the Wildfire station and are about to undergo the decontamination process...

Stone - "The Wildfire lab has five levels. All underground, grouped around a central utility core, at the bottom of which is our power source - a small water cooled nuclear reactor."


Keane - "And the pool hours are...?"

Stone - "Hey, at 5,000 to 8,000 rem , even a small exposure would result in disorientation or coma within minutes, but hey, knock yourself out."

...And from the IMDB site list of goofs, another reason why the death(s) scenes that happened regarding this annoyed me so much...

Factual errors: Pool-type reactors are not used for generating power, and human immersion in the pool would not be as rapidly lethal as the film implies. Dr. Keane probably died from deceleration trauma and subsequent drowning, not radiation poisoning; Dr. Chou stood with his lower body just above the critical fuel elements, and would have received a much higher whole-body dose of neutron and gamma radiation; however, even people who have had exposures to much, much higher dosages of radiation (like Slotin and Daghlian at Los Alamos) lived for days before dying in what can only be called a ghastly manner.

Rocketdog2000

But then again, so was the original Planet Of The Apes - and there's enough violence (and brief nudity) in that which would surely earn it at least a PG-13 rating today.

I'm sure the same might be true of the original Andromeda Strain if it were re-rated today. Guess once something has been given a specific rating it can't be changed, unless the content changes with it.

Aside form that, though I agree with jack999's original statement.

kenbuzz

The original is $9.87 at DD
Wait a few days for the 20% off sale, it'll be under $8

JTH182

It's been about 15 years since I read the book, but I believe all the complaints people have in this thread were things added to this version. They were not part of the original story.

If I remember correctly, they don't actually defeat Andromeda. Doesn't it just mutate and "go away?"

Like I said, it's been 15 years.

RoboDad

That's correct. In the book (and the original movie) the strain mutated into a harmless state. In the book it drifted back into the upper atmosphere. In the movie, it was allowed to drift over the ocean, and cloud-seeded rain was used to force it into the salt water, rendering it inert. There were no bizarre time travel paradoxes, conspiracies, or political intrigue.

The only real military angle on the original story was the fact that the satellite that accidentally brought Andromeda back to Earth was designed to gather microorganisms for germ warfare, and therefore considered to be classified information.

All in all, it sounds like I did well to miss the new mini-series. I still think that the 1971 version holds up well, and is very faithful to the book.

IamHydrogen1

Overall it was entertaining, but the ending was fail.

I like how the government's super-secret underground lab just happens to be conveniently located where the virus breaks out. Sure, they show the choppers loading up with the sulfur-bacteria-liquid-stuff from a pipeline to make it sort of vague.

I noticed someone else picked up on the similarity to "V". Its a sentient, alien, complex, communicating, evolving virus that can commandeer an F-16, but a little spritz of bacteria from the helicopter into the desert did the trick.

I also got a laugh at the completely unnecessary reveal that Ricky Shroeder's character was gay.