A for Andromeda (2006 TV Movie) User Reviews

An uninspired remake

[stuart_poore · 4/10 · 27 March 2006]

** 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.

Bland remake of a SF classic

[JRmf · 6/10 · 5 April 2006]

A small group of scientists contracted to develop a super electronic eavesdropping system for intercepting possible terrorist communications stumble across a signal of extraterrestrial origin, coming from the Andromeda galaxy, some 2 million light years from Earth.

The signal contains the instructions for building a Computer far in advance of anything humanity is yet capable of. The device is constructed and begins to issue instructions for the development of artificial life. Andromeda, created in the image of a team member who died in mysterious circumstances associated with the Computer, is born.

The machine seems to offer so much - the possibility of curing all human diseases - but does it "know" too much, especially about how to manipulate humans in pursuit of what they desire, to achieve its own ends?

Poor

[nwoodhouse · 4/10 · 17 May 2006]

I thought this was a very poor drama. The setting - a radio telescope station in somewhere remote like Yorkshire was well done, but how come it was able to turn into a fully working molecular biology unit with containment facilities? Ludicrous. And as other commenters have mentioned the completely unrealistic communication with Andromeda. Two characters die with no real explanation. The characters were stereotyped scientists - the geeky one with glasses, the geeky one with a beard, the driven icy female. Oh and the girl, who clearly wasn't qualified to work there, let alone operate the computers. I assume they were all wearing lab coats to show that they were proper scientists - people operating a radio telescope don't usually wear them. It was just silly.

Vapid remake.

[sisyphus-imdb · 2/10 · 27 March 2006]

This pointless remake of the 1961 classic adds nothing to the original. Apparently "updated" to 1970's production (and score), 80's graphics and the occasional 90's technical term, it doesn't even qualify as an homage to the era.

The characters have no depth and less credibility. The one dimensional depiction of Dawnay (Jane Asher) blindly pursuing the holy grail of genetics is an affront to anyone who has ever entered a laboratory. The essence of the scientific method is to question everything, and no scientist with more than half a brain would take the course of those portrayed here. Even the initially gullible Hardy (John Fleming) is unrealistically slow to develop a conscience and realise the potential issues raised by his actions. This is the kind of portrayal that gets scientists a bad name.

Equally insulting are the scenes that portray the destruction of monitors and keyboards as integral to the destruction of the alien computer. How many people are actually stupid enough to believe this nowadays? Regardless of familiarity with the original version, the plot is 100% predictable from the first few minutes right up until the last five. In that last five minutes is the most dramatic plot point of the entire film. The turning of the creature against its creator, the examination of humanity vs. the alien, the very human moral dilemmas, freedom and pre-destination, all take place in under two minutes. There is no examination of the conflicts faced by the creature or their resolution. (It feels suspiciously as if there was a large edit here.) Similarly, throughout the film any opportunity to explore morality, the role of technology, or cloning is passed by. According to Richard Fell (BBC4 web-site), one of the key questions addressed is "How complex does a computer have to be before we consider it to have some kind of human qualities?". This has been under constant examination since 1950, and Alan Turing's paper "Computing machinery and intelligence" (available on-line). This adaptation adds absolutely nothing to the debate, even failing to acknowledge that for over twenty years there has been a growing opinion that it doesn't actually matter.

Sadly the film isn't even bad enough to be amusing.

If you're interested in the ideas of the film then read Crichton's original "Andromeda Strain", although the plot of this version is actually closer to Sagan's "Contact" (more investigative, and perhaps even more worthy than Crichton's). {Edit: Oops. That should have been "the original 'A for Andromeda' by Hoyle/Elliot", of course. Not "Andromeda Strain".}

I enjoyed this film

[alanr-2 · 7/10 · 28 March 2006]

I thought this was a very enjoyable piece of BBC Sci-Fi drama. Yes there were flaws, it was even patronising at times but I liked the look and feel of it. I found the idea very scary and plausible. The idea that life is a code and as such can be downloaded and that it can even even behave like an internet Trojan. Very scary!

A previous user has stated that it was heavily flawed scientifically (realtime communication with Andromeda). But there is no real time communication. They build a computer from a signal originating 2 million years ago. The interaction they have is with the computer once built not with Andromeda.

Not a great film but definitely a great story.

What a load of rubbish!

[gray4 · 3/10 · 28 March 2006]

This is a totally pointless remake of the 40 year old TV series that launched Julie Christie. No such luck this time round. The film opens with a completely irrelevant rock-climbing scene and then deteriorates. There is just enough to hold some interest in the early scenes, set in an unrealistically empty government research laboratory, with just four scientists - evidence of BBC cost-cutting? All the cash seems to have gone on one special effect.

But when the military appear, the whole storyline collapses. Even the acting is wooden, with good actors such as Jane Asher and Tom Hardy unable to rise above the poor material they have to perform with. The risible debates - good scientist against wicked soldier, human against alien, risk-taking biologist against cautious computer scientist - are couched in the crude terms of a 1950s American B-movie. Before the end - no spoilers but utterly predictable - the only question I'm left with is "why am I wasting my time watching this rubbish?"

A for "A for Andromeda"!

[Stargazer59 · 7/10 · 27 March 2006]

What a pleasant change to see science fiction being treated seriously and played straight! Hot on the heels of the Patrick Stewart vehicle "Eleventh Hour" comes a remake of the seven-part 1961 serial "A for Andromeda" as a follow-up to last year's BBC4 remake of "The Quatermass Experiment". Richard Fell was given the task of updating and condensing astronomer Fred Hoyle and John Elliot's original, and actress Kelly Reilly, starring alongside Tom Hardy, Jane Asher and David Haig, became the third actress to play Andromeda, following in the footsteps of Julie Christie and Susan Hampshire.

The story opens with a listening station picking up a signal from the Andromeda Galaxy that turns out to be instructions, in binary, detailing how to build a super-computer. Once active, the computer kills one of the scientific community, Christine, and creates a living being, with all the machine's knowledge, in her image. The themes of mankind's arrogance, humanity's inability to self-discipline, and the self-sacrifice of the Andromedan android, making her more human than human, have undoubtedly been done to death over the past 45 years but probably seemed fresh to a television audience in the early 60s.

References to E-mails and Firewalls, early on, placed the story in the modern world as did the now seemingly-obligatory popular culture reference, in this instance to "Deep Space Nine", though in a much less heavy-handed fashion than crowbaring three lowbrow game shows into the penultimate episode of last year's season of "Doctor Who"! Ultimately, like the mid 70s' "Doctor Who" story "The Brain of Morbius", "A for Andromeda" is a reworking of "Frankenstein", a morality tale warning us of the error of playing God. There are a further two opportunities to see the production this coming Friday, again on BBC4.

Absolutely awful pseudoscience and wretched acting

[paulj-murphy · 1/10 · 27 March 2006]

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...

Decent TV Si-Fi

[mrg106 · 7/10 · 1 April 2006]

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...

A is for "awful"

[carloz46 · 1/10 · 13 May 2006]

It's hard to believe this film was (re)made in 2006. OK, it's a low-budget production shot on video for TV, but the production values aren't really the problem - plenty of shot-for-TV-on-a-shoestring stuff is watchable without cringing embarrassment. Nor is the plot, per-se, the problem - as Sci-Fi goes it's a respectable enough premise, and it ought to have been possible to make a decently entertaining film out of it.

No, what staggered me was the incredible way in which even the most basic appreciation of contemporary science and technology seems to have eluded the writers, script editors and director.

I know this is a common complaint about sci-fi adaptations, and sometimes seen in artistic circles a churlish and unfair criticism - after all, these are "creative people", not "cold-fish scientists" (as the stereotypes go) - but this film is scarily Luddite to the point, as I said, of embarrassment. The most self-consciously "arty" of my friends and acquaintances have a better grasp of basic technology than the writers involved in this turkey. I have to wonder if the makers of this film are the ones featured in all those myths you encounter: Folk who think covers on their wall sockets stop the electricity dribbling out; people who use their computer CD ROM trays as cup holders; those who try to copy floppy discs on a photocopier or staple documents to their computer screen by way of e-mail attachments.

Here, it seems a real pride has been taken in ensuring that most of this film's potential audience, who in 2006 might be assumed to be vaguely technically literate, would suffer tooth-gnashing agony every three to five minutes.

So given the above, I hope it's meant to be a parody.

Taken as a parody of the genre it fares a bit better, but it's still deficient insofar as it's not so much funny as painful, and badly paced at that.

To steal a phrase, this movie fills a much-needed gap.

Flawed, but intelligent and enjoyable

[chriscoates · 8/10 · 21 June 2006]

This is a fine example of British science-fiction. Necessarily wordy due to its low-budget, successful British SF has always had to rely on strong concepts, strong writing and carefully created atmosphere. In the same vain as Quatermass and Dr Who much of the action consists of people in a room talking about abstracts. Some will be bored to tears; but those with an imagination may find this story of predeterminism vs personal will and morality very engaging. If there's a flaw then it's that some of the, very real, science is over-simplified to an unbelievable degree. An audience is able to accept the idea of an alien transmission containing instructions on how to make a malevolent supercomputer. But the idea that these scientists are also experts in genetic engineering and quickly have all of the expertise and equipment necessary for their task stretches credibility too far. It's a shame because these problems could have been easily avoided with a little more creativity. At heart though this is a good, old-fashioned, morality play with some impressive performances and a rare intelligence.

Serviceable and intelligent first encounter movie

[robertemerald · 7/10 · 16 April 2019]

A For Andromedia has a great story and good script, it is a work of intelligent science fiction. Science Fiction fans will have no problem getting through this work. The movie itself suffers for its low budget. The story needed to be projected forward in time. It's premise is on much safer ground in today's computing world than 2006, and would be even safer years from now. The movie needed a budget that reflected that. It comes across as a sort of play (or at least it did for me) which required my imagination and understanding to make it work. Face it, it's an intriguing idea for a movie. Working really hard are the cast, which is appreciated. One also has to appreciate the BBC, whom in this project, put their faith in cerebral sci fi. It certainly works, but could have had a better visual dimension, and if this story ever does, I'll certainly sign up for the reboot.

Wow - Just for Kelly Reilly

[struan11 · 7/10 · 2 April 2006]

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).

i enjoyed it

[a_ross84 · 10/10 · 30 March 2006]

unlike everyone else here, i enjoyed it thoroughly. granted, i am not old enough to remember the original, i believe this to be an advantage. i had nothing to compare it to. on its own it is an excellent piece of British SCI FI. i enjoyed it a lot i am going to find the original now and watch that. but i will not compare them. like Battlestar Gallactica. you cant really compare them, so why bother. i know it is a remake but it doesn't mean have to compare them does it. secondly who cares about some minor holes in the science of it. does it detract from the enjoyment of the show? there are so many shows that don't follow the science of today so why should this?

all in all i really liked this. well done the BBC.

i liked it

[learnersnation · 9/10 · 23 August 2021]

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 =)