Michael Crichton’s orig­i­nal novel The Androm­eda Strain was first adapted into a fea­ture film in 1971, and now into a tele­vi­sion minis­eries from exec­u­tive pro­duc­ers Rid­ley and Tony Scott. This 2008 incar­na­tion is part feel-bad thriller, part wish ful­fill­ment. As we thrill to the spec­u­la­tive illus­tra­tion of how civ­i­liza­tion might sud­denly come to an end, we also can only hope the gov­ern­ment does in fact have such an elab­o­rate and high-tech pro­ce­dure in place for iden­ti­fy­ing and con­tain­ing new con­ta­gious dis­ease outbreaks.

Good times, good times

The orig­i­nal book is only nom­i­nally about a super­virus, evi­dently of extrater­res­trial ori­gin, that threat­ens the human race. It is actu­ally more about how intel­li­gent, well-meaning peo­ple can make sub­tle errors of judge­ment that may cas­cade into cat­a­stro­phe (Chrich­ton would also employ Chaos The­ory as a key theme in his Juras­sic Park nov­els). But the minis­eries com­pli­cates this inter­est­ing theme with added gov­ern­ment venal­ity (a basi­cally hon­or­able pres­i­dent is under­cut by a cor­rupt chief of staff), the media (a drug addicted reporter breaks the cover-up), and the envi­ron­ment (strip min­ing of the ocean floor leads to the cri­sis). To give but one exam­ple of the dimin­ish­ing returns: in the book, a sim­ple unno­ticed glitch in a sup­pos­edly per­fect com­puter sys­tem causes a dan­ger­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion black­out at the worst pos­si­ble time. It’s both more plau­si­ble and more sus­pense­ful than the minis­eries ver­sion of events, in which Gen­eral Mancheck (Andre Braugher) delib­er­ately cre­ates the black­out, to everyone’s mild and tem­po­rary frustration.

The book is not with­out its flaws, par­tic­u­larly an undra­matic end­ing in which the con­tin­u­ously adapt­ing virus even­tu­ally mutates into harm­less­ness. But the minis­eries dis­ap­points by giv­ing the virus a defin­i­tive ori­gin, indi­cat­ing it is expressly tar­geted towards humans, and show­ing its defin­i­tive defeat.

The cast checks in for the long haul

Mis­cel­la­neous other thoughts:

• Mikael Salomon’s direc­tion is very bor­ing and staid, except for a wildly over-the-top decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion pro­ce­dure that is filmed in a styl­ized, almost erotic fashion.

• The minis­eries is prob­a­bly one of the talki­est sci-fi movies and/or TV shows I’ve ever seen. The bulk of the action is set in a sin­gle inte­rior loca­tion, and nearly every scene com­prises heated con­ver­sa­tions in lab­o­ra­to­ries or over teleconferences.

• The minis­eries is laden with even more pseu­do­sci­en­tific bull­shit than Crichton’s orig­i­nal novel: wormhole-enabled time travel and nan­otech buck­y­balls from the future are the order of the day. The whole thing ends in the kind of tem­po­ral para­dox that typ­i­cally makes a plot point in shows like Doc­tor Who and Star Trek.

• The minis­eries updates the book’s euphemism of “unmar­ried man” into “don’t ask don’t tell” ter­ri­tory. It seems fab­u­lous Major Keane (Rick Schroder) is a friend of Dorothy.

• Spot the homage to Hitchcock’s The Birds!

• Why does the under­ground facil­ity begin to dis­in­te­grate dur­ing the run-up to set­ting off an atom bomb? Wouldn’t there just be a count­down and then an explosion?

• This Dork Reporter, a long­time fan of the TV show Lost, is happy to see Daniel Dae Kim in a star­ring role. But the Korean actor is unfor­tu­nately cast as a Chi­nese stereotype.

• Ben­jamin Bratt is really ter­ri­ble, giv­ing the prover­bial phone-it-in per­for­mance. He deliv­ers every line with the same into­na­tion, whether it’s say­ing good­bye to his fam­ily for pos­si­bly the last time or announc­ing humanity’s first dis­cov­ery of an alien life form.

Offi­cial movie site: www.aetv.com/the-andromeda-strain

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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