A for Andromeda

I don't remember the original, so the plot was all new to me. It may have looked like it was derivative of other stories, but that all depends on which one came first.

Unlike more modern programmes that have 2 - 3 stories running in them this one was an old fashioned Sci Fi story from the golden age of Sci Fi when the PC was nowt but Sci Fi itself, and Aliens were all bad guys, so the Beeb had to try and Jazz it up a bit with the addition of a spy sub plot, but hey it didn't really detract from the story too much.

If you like your Sci Fi old school then this is for you, but if you want multi layered complex story lines move on.

The truth of the matter is that the acting was brilliant, and in particular the beautiful Miss Reilly kept this old sci fi buff watching through to the end. Well worth the watch. 10 out of 10 for Miss Reilly(she is a stunner).

Its wonderful creative work under minimal budget, i don't think most of the people will understand and like it. Some of us will love it who good imagination =)

Despite some of the disparaging comments on here, I gave this a go and I think it was more than worth an hour and a half of my time. I enjoy Si-fi that's more based on ideas than SFX, and this was a prime (if somewhat truncated) example. I agree they could have done with more time but I didn't see anything wrong with the acting, Tom Hardy being particularly good. All in all very watchable stuff, which deals with issues from the more interesting end of science fiction..

p.s, paulj-murphy, I know you probably wanted to look smart but they didn't send any messages to Andromeda, they only conversed with the computer, which wasn't millions of light-years away after all...

Any schoolboy would be ashamed of the scientific mistakes in this. For example, the team send radio messages to Andromeda and get immediate replies! Andromeda is millions of light years away and so any radio signals would take millions of years to get there and back! Also, at one point in the story a technician saves a genome or record of the entire genetic code of a human being on a single floppy disk! Fred Hoyle would be rotating in his grave.

The acting is equally bad. The two male leads are the "geekiest" type of anoraks one could possibly hope not to meet, and they are as wet as they come. Neither speak their lines clearly. And the Army General is about as nonmilitary as you could get...he looks like your average window cleaner.

Please please please just go back to making them the way they originally did in the sixties, BBC...

** Contains minor spoiler**

Despite being a remake of the 1960s BBC series, this comes across as an uninspired cross between Contact and Species. It is filmed using the typical cheap BBC Sci-Fi manner i.e. dull, grey, overcast and in a quarry. They spend the budget on the one "special effect", which is, of course, destroyed at the end. The story is unconvincing and the basic science is badly flawed (real time communication to Andromeda anyone?)

It tries to pad out a thin story line with the addition of a few extraneous few subplots, namely a love triangle, some espionage and the oh so stereotypical "government subverting science for evil" thing. Even Jane Asher can't drag this up from being a long, slow, and predictable hour and a half.