Andromeda Strain, The (TV)
When a satellite crashes near a small town in the US, a young couple finds it and decides to take it home with them. When little later an army patrol arrives in the town, following the satellite’s tracking system, almost everyone is found dead and seconds later also the two soldiers in the vehicle die.
The military immediately gather a team of specialists under the lead of Dr. Jeremy Stone who are assigned to investigate what happened and find possible solutions. When the team enters town with hazmat suits, the find only two survivors: a man with an alcohol problem and a newborn baby. They bring both back to their base and start their investigation but it quickly becomes clear that time is running out as whatever killed the inhabitants in the town is spreading and a global pandemic with the possible extinction of mankind as result is becoming a very plausible scenario.
Sound and Vision:
This miniseries comes with decent image and sound quality although you have to keep in mind this isn’t some big budget movie or TV show. Certain scenes have some grain present but overall things look pretty good for a show like this. The sound does its job nicely too with some mild use of the surround speakers and clear dialogues coming from the front center speaker.
Extras:
None
Conclusion:
The Andromeda Strain is a two-episode miniseries that starts out with a huge potential. The concept of an “alien” attack by means of a highly adaptive and almost unstoppable virus is good and the way it’s worked out for TV in the first part of the series is definitely well-done. Unfortunately, toward the end things start to fall apart pretty drastically. The storyline becomes inconsistent, the acting quite bad and the entire “think of the environment” agenda that pops up is just over the top. Add to that a happy ending that’s completely overdone (dead grass suddenly becomes green again when the virus dies) and what was carefully built up at the start is completely torn down.
Those that want to check out The Andromeda Strain, based on a novel by Michael Crichton, might do best to check out the movie that was made in the early 1970s. This mini-series completely gets lost towards the end and is due to that a big disappointment.
4.0