A&E's Andromeda Strain miniseries

[Ardbeg... innit]

The A&E cable channel has dug up Micheal Crighton's novel The Andromeda Strain, dusted it off, brought the context and technology into the 21st century, and appears to have pulled it off.

Crighton has always been a favored author, especially his early work, and The Andromeda Strain (1969), to me, is his best work. It was made into a movie (1971) that was fair, honest to the book, but poorly acted. This mini-series glows by comparison. Face it, no one watches sci-fi for great acting, but the headliners Benjamin Bratt, and Ricky Schroeder are pretty decent in their lead roles.

If you have never read the book (watched the movie), the Andromeda Strain is an alien lifeform (thats being generous, think bacteria or virus) that collides with a US satellite, knocks it out of orbit, and crash lands outside a small town in Utah. Within a few minutes of opening the satellite the virus has escaped and killed the entire community EXCEPT for an old man and an infant girl. The 'forensics' team has to find out what this organism is and how to treat it before predicted Santa Ana winds blow the organism into Los Angeles.

From that point on its all CSI. In fact there are a lot of cinematic parallels between the CSI-LasVegas show and this miniseries.

The entire production so far has been very faithful to the original novel and I look forward to seeing the remainder.

The second half of the miniseries aired last night on A&E, and the entire 4 hours will broadcast again on Saturday 5/31 starting at 8pm.

Link

[Merlot Joe]

Seen the previews and it looks good. I forgot to DVR it but will do so on Saturday.

Thanks for reminding Gordon.

Joe.

[Merlot Joe]

I finally seen this yesterday. It was well done and yes it does follow the novel very closely.

The acting was good and worth the 3 hour watch. Much better that the original move.

Joe.

[Ozmale]

I watched this the other night (god, you have to love the torrents!) and liked most of it but they ruined it for me with what I perceive as a really dumb mistake in an attempt to increase the drama and tragedy.

When they are trying to climb up the central service shaft we see and a couple of people fall/get in to a pool of highly radioactive cooling water at the bottom of the central shaft. Now I do have an engineering background, but must admit have never built secret underground biological testing facility or even a simple nuclear reactor BUT would you put an open pool of radioactive water at the bottom of a service shaft that carries air and all other services to each level of the facility? (And mind you one sooooo radioactive it killed the guy who climbed in to it in seconds).

I mean the first guy to die could have just fallen down the shaft and gone splat or got impaled on something and the second guy could have been killed by falling debris to achieve the same end....

Ozmale

[Ardbeg... innit]

Have to agree Oz. I recall in the book, the central shaft had all sorts of failsafes built in, essentially to prevent lab animals from escaping. I believe that the drama in the book around that particular scene was built around the character having to overcome a nerve agent to reach the next level before passing out and dying. That could easily have worked well on TV.