TV Review: The Andromeda Strain

The Andromeda Strain
Directed By: Mikael Salomon
Produced By: Ridley and Tony Scott
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, Eric McCormack, Christia Miller, Daniel Dae Kim, Viola Davis, Ricky Schroder, Andre Braugher
Premieres: Monday, May 26 and Tuesday, May 27 from 9-11 PM ET/PT on A&E

I’ve never read Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain nor did I see the movie that was made so I had no idea what to expect going into the miniseries. The story centers on a military satellite that falls out of the sky and crashes near a small remote town in Utah. Shortly afterwards, everyone in the town dies and the government puts together a group of top-notch scientists to figure out what’s in the satellite that’s killing people and how to stop it before it spreads. They code name the virus “Andromeda.”

In the four-hour miniseries, the story is split between how Andromeda affects people and what the government and military are doing to stop it. A group of scientists are brought together to find a solution. It’s called the “Wildfire” project and their theories range from biological warfare to the virus possibly coming from aliens. The team of doctors consist of people all of whom have military or government backgrounds and an expertise in their field. Benjamin Bratt plays Dr. Jeremy Stone, an epidemiologist whose personal life is kind of a mess due to a divorce and a son who doesn’t think much of him. Stone is the chief designer of the Wildfire project. His team includes Dr. Angela Noyce (Miller), Dr. Tsi Chou (Kim), Dr. Charlene Barton (Davis) and Major Bill Keene, MD (Schroder). Andre Braugher plays General George Mancheck, a US Army Biochemical Research officer who runs Wildfire.

Throughout the miniseries we watch the doctors deal with being separated from their families and the outside world as they try to figure out what Andromeda is and how to destroy it. Meanwhile, above ground in the town of Piedmont, Utah, everyone is dead. If you’re into gore, the scenes involving the town and specifically, Andromeda are likely to strike your fancy. Andromeda seems to affect people three different ways. Some people freak out, scream and then after their veins bulge through their skin, they die. Others get suicidal (there’s a scene involving a self-inflicted death by chainsaw) and the rest get homicidal. Basically, Andromeda is horror at its worst (or best, depending on how you want to look at it). So if you like that kind of horror-film stuff, you’ll probably love those scenes. The gory parts are pretty spread out throughout the miniseries though so don’t expect one horror scene after the next.

Part of the story involves a reporter, Jack Nash (McCormack) ditching rehab to follow the Andromeda story after he’s tipped off by a source. Nash snoops around the quarantine area, putting his own life at risk to try to figure out what’s going on and how bad the situation is. The situation is bad. Because the local wildlife is unwilling to obey the quarantine borders set up by the military, Andromeda stands a good chance of getting out and making its way to more populated areas if those brainy doctors aren’t able to figure out how to kill it.

I only have a couple of minor complaints with regards to this miniseries. The first is that with the minor exception of McCormack’s character (the reporter), I didn’t really feel like they did a good job of developing the characters. Perhaps if they had stretched the miniseries out to include a third part, they might have been able to work in a better story for the doctors. The other issue I had was with the pace of the miniseries, especially in the second part. There’s quite a bit of build-up in the first half and it ends with a nice little cliffhanger that’ll definitely have you looking forward to the second part. But Part 2 loses its steam a bit partway through, then picks up again towards the end but by then the damage is done.

I think the range of enjoyment for this miniseries is going to vary based on how into science fiction viewers are. I don’t really consider myself a scifi person and as I said earlier, I’ve never read the book nor did I see the original movie so I can’t really review this version as an adaptation but as a miniseries, while I wasn’t blown away by the story, I did find it entertaining and very suspenseful at times.