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fiat_knoxI'm watching the Danny Dyer Boyle film right now on C4 for the first time. I'm becoming a fan of these TL 8/9 pre-warp "realism" spaceship movies.
The fantasy is still there - the ships make noises, they cannot move unless the engines are on full burn and there's gravity perpendicular to the direction of acceleration, oh and there's a telepathic alien in Pod 4 in "Defying Gravity" - but they are trying to capture the environment of life on board an interplanetary spaceship.
And despite them getting the crucial science wrong, it's still good to have these kinds of shows around. If it encourages people to think about going out there for real, so be it.
The fantasy is still there - the ships make noises, they cannot move unless the engines are on full burn and there's gravity perpendicular to the direction of acceleration, oh and there's a telepathic alien in Pod 4 in "Defying Gravity" - but they are trying to capture the environment of life on board an interplanetary spaceship.
And despite them getting the crucial science wrong, it's still good to have these kinds of shows around. If it encourages people to think about going out there for real, so be it.
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Date: 2009-11-30 02:39 pm (UTC)Defying Gravity
Date: 2009-11-30 03:40 pm (UTC)The narrator is Donner Lennox, who along with the mission Commander Ted, once worked together on a Mars mission which ended in disaster - Donner was forced to launch during a dust storm, leaving two of the Mars crew behind. That had been several years previously.
The story is told from three vantages: on board the Antares, CAPCOM and in flashbacks to training and the astronaut selection programme five years previously.
There are some strange mysteries on board the ship. The crew are hallucinating. Donner keeps seeing visions of the two dead Mars crewmen, and he and another astronaut, Zoe Barnes, keep having the same recurring dream: Zoe floating, pregnant and naked, out of an airlock while he works outside in a suit.
And CAPCOM are keeping secrets, including lying to the members of the crew, telling them that their contraceptive implants (HALOs) are contaminated with psychotropics. However, they know the truth - the entity in Pod 4, which has had its own agenda all along.
As of last week's episode, the entity, known as Beta, has finally made itself known to the crew. It has the power to alter the biology of those with whom it is in proximity, such as the crew. Why it needs this particular crew - Zoe had aborted a baby and now hears an auditory hallucination of a baby crying, and Donner sees visions of the crew he abandoned on Mars - I have no current idea, but it might have something to do with resolving their guilt for mistakes they made.
Oh, and next week I think they finally get to Venus at last.