Science victorious: finally, it is brainy analysis that is the only hope. The Andromeda Strain offers up science overweened and flawed - the satellite, the centre's self-destruct programme, the inept communication devices that hamper their progress - and This, not for the first time amongst the works of Crichton, makes a firm moral statement: science must be subservient to mankind.
There is a strange true-to-life dichotomy between the urgency of proceedings and the necessary meticulousness of the process creating an unusual and highly effective inner tension. It is also honest enough to depict the numbing tedium of scientific research. The team's approach is methodical and precise, a form of detective work on a hugely detailed level.
Director Robert Wise (a versatile helmer who also gave us The Day The Earth Stood Still and the first Star Trek movie) understood that it is vital we believe in the movie as possibility rather than escapism. What The Andromeda Strain does so well, and almost uniquely in film, is depict scientists as just that, scientists - rational, intelligent men and women striving to answer the call of a crisis (a fact assisted by the casting of quality unknowns rather than The final act reverts to something more formulaic as the strain breaks out in the research facility. Then to Project Wildfire and its mammoth, multi-levelled underground bunker and the stringent demands of decontamination (including the gastro-intestinal tract) and isolation of the bug - dubbed the Andromeda Strain - to discover a way to eradicate it. The first act, at the desolate Piedmont, reveals the devastation and mystery culminating in a horrifc powdered blood sequence. Worked in a precise three act structure, the tension sways between the depiction of intellectual pursuit and the thriller dynamic. In a remarkably focused manner the movie concentrates on creating dramatic tension from an unseen peril. Taken from the excellent novel by a young doctor named Michael Crichton, whose febrile imaginings of the perils and accomplishments of science were destined to make him remarkably rich, this is a cautionary fable of extra terrestrial invasion on a microscopic level. Curiously, though, a tiny baby and a booze-sodden old-timer have survived. So a team of expert scientists are recruited to isolate and contain the dreaded outbreak before it's thank you and goodnight for all concerned. And mankind is on the verge of the ultimate nightmare scenario - an alien virus that threatens the entire population of Earth. That satellite was part of project Scoop, designed to collect alien microorganisms from outer space.
The US air force have called a “Wildfire alert” - a satellite has crashed from orbit into the desert town of Piedmont, New Mexico, and now everyone is dead. “There's a fire.” Thus runs the simple call to arms for Dr.
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