Retrovirus

In the opening credits for the updated version of The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton, author of the 1969 novel, is listed as "J Michael Crichton." This made me wonder if he's trying to put some symbolic distance between himself and this new outing.

Truth be told, I went into the miniseries with a chip on my shoulder.

I LOVED the original novel and Robert Wise's very faithful 1971 film. I wasn't sure how it could be brought into the twenty-first century without losing something in the process.

After seeing part one, I don't think that they've succeeded.

The Andromeda Strain was very much a product of it's time.

We had just landed on the moon and the world still held all things space and science related with a bit of awe. I remember in 1969 an undercurrent of concern that the returning astronauts might bring back some sort of alien moon virus that could infect the planet.

Crichton's novel, as he would do almost ad nauseum with every subsequent effort, showed the flip-side of the technology coin as a military satellite brings back an unearthly microbe that causes instant death in living organisms through massive blood coagulation.

Enter Wildfire, a secret, underground government lab that exists in constant "standby" mode for the sole purpose of springing into action once a biological emergency (presumably alien) has been declared.

Fighting Andromeda turns into a race against time where luck is equally important as mankind's less than godlike technology. The new Andromeda Strain is less a statement about unchecked scientific advancement and more clearly a product of September 11th and the Iraq war.

As I suspected, in the hands of the Scott brothers, Tony and Ridley, the new effort feels the need to add gratuitous violence and pyrotechnics. They also, a la Alien, pull the military biowarfare conspiracy, originally a backstory, more front and center.

Frankly, I lost interest after seeing the forth head explode from close range gunfire.

At his best, Crichton keeps his plots very grounded in plausibility. He seamlessly lets the morality tale unfold through a straight forward presentation of the actions or inactions of his imperfect protagonists.

The new miniseries is more heavy handed.

The initial scenes establishing Dr. Stone's (Benjamin Bratt) strained (no pun) domestic situation felt like a bad Lifetime Network movie.

The conference room discussions between the Wildfire team (now wearing form fitting outfits that look unintentionally close to the uniforms worn by the crew of the Enterprise in another Robert Wise effort, Star Trek: The Motion Picture), start out as scientific discussions about the crisis at hand (which seem to be intended to bring the audience up to speed) before mutating Andromeda-like into barb trading arguments about the ethical implications of it all.

Rather than advance the story, the dialog struck me mostly like the banter one would hear in a bad Law and Order or Boston Legal episode.

Sure, the original Andromeda Strain, with it's green screen monitors and sometimes slow pacing is a bit dated.

But this new effort is far from a cure.