They're gathered to go to the super-secret lab, and we are then put through an artsy, slo-mo decontamination sequence that is ridiculously long and only there to show peek-a-boo shots of the guys with no shirts and 3/4 shots of one of the female characters topless (cough, PG, cough).Īs opposed to the original film, they find the source of the virus almost immediately but then the questions are how is it spread, how does it mutate, where did it come from and what exactly is it. There is WAY more backstory laid with the characters than we even remotely need, and I'm a big fan of character development, mind you. There's also Eric McCormack as drug-addicted reporter Jack Nash. Jeremy Stone, Ricky Schroder (yeah, he's going by 'Ricky' again) as Major Bill Keane MD who also happens to have some bad history with Stone. When a couple of army guys show up to retrieve the satellite, they die instantly.Īlternately we're introduced to the cast of characters, including the super-calm Benjamin Bratt as Dr. Very soon thereafter everyone in town is dead, except for an old disheveled guy and a crying infant.

Brilliantly, the redneck loads it into the back of his pickup truck (aren't satellites like, really heavy?) and takes it back into town. What appears to be a meteorite streaks by, but turns out to be a satellite crashed to Earth. Well The Andromeda Strain 2008 managed to live down to my expectations.įirst off, I'd like to know how the heck A&E managed to get a TV-PG rating on a show that explicitly shows a woman setting herself on fire, a guy getting shot point blank in the head and a guy cutting his own head off with a freaking chain saw for crying out loud!Īnyway, the show opens with what look like a couple of under-twenty-years olds parked out in the desert, with the guy dropping below the camera line telling her he's 'going where no man has gone before' (yet more PG-rated fun). I was suspicious of the A&E version when I first heard about it, even though it had names like Ridley Scott attached to it. I remember watching the original movie version of Michael Crichton's story The Andromeda Strain and being riveted to the screen. There's nothing like taking four hours to tell a story that would fit into two.

Watch the andromeda strain movie