What an incredible waste of time. That’s pretty much all I can say about this Miniseries aired on ABC over the last two Sundays. This movie reminds me of one of the many really bad SyFy Saturday night movies. Let me explain…
Let me start with the science. Or the total lack there of. We start with the biggest meteor shower in over a thousand years. Ok, I can handle that. However, there is a chunk of super heavy Brown Dwarf star in the mix. Why the meteors don’t just clump together with the Brown Dwarf is not even hinted at much less explained.
This chuck of Brown Dwarf hits the Moon causing the Moon to alter it’s orbit into a very strange elliptical orbit. Instead of one of the Earth being at one of the focus points of the elipse, it’s in the dead center. Another completely impossible situation. The reason for the altered orbit was this super dense Brown Dwarf’s mass. The “scientists” finally calculated that the Moon’s orbit would decay in less just over 30 days in such a way that it would collide with the Earth.
Then there is the distance the Moon is away from the earth. In the second part of the miniseries, the government attempts to “destroy” the Brown Dwarf by firing 88 nuclear missles at it. Those missles only take about 10 minutes to get to the Moon. Now mind you, the Moon was getting so close that it’s tidal pull was strong enough to cause a negative gravity in certain areas of the Earth. This caused trains to fly into the sky, cars to also take flight, people to lift off the ground, etc… It also caused all kinds of electrical problems. The final attempt to save the Earth was to send astronauts which also seemed to take just a few hours to fly there.
More problems with this miniseries comes when they land on the Moon to attempt to push the Brown Dwarf away from the Moon (it’s currently embedded deep in a crack that was created due to the impact. I guess they don’t believe in craters and have never heard or read about how the Moon was created in the first place) by using a device that creates anti-gravity (the first piece of SF they discussed in the miniseries). They claim that the Moons gravity is now twice that of the Earth due to this Brown Drarf fragment in the Moon. So they land a new Lunar lander on the moon with no problems at all. No mention that they would have to totally reconstruct a lander that could handle the gravity change or that the amount of fuel that would need to be used to land and take back off would be way more than a normal Moon landing.
I’m sure there were more foibles in the science of the miniseries, but those were the worst. Then there was the continuity that was totally killed. Having Germany, England, Japan, and New York all be dark (night time) at the same time. The Moon always being full in the sky even though over 30 days pass in time. Showing the Moon and Earth as if the Moon was orbiting in a Geostationary orbital distance. Then other times, the Moon was at an apparent distance that was pretty much normal. Oh sure, the images were pretty, but very hard to swallow. They pretty much just picked what made the scene look good instead of what made sense.
Of course, they also had to have sound in space too. Rockets that made rocket sounds while on the Moon and in space. I realize that pretty much every movie ever made has sound in space, but still…
As far as the acting went, it was OK. I’ve seen way better, but I have seen way worse too.
Over all, I would have to recommend staying as far away from this one as possible. It’s not worth the 4 hours it takes to watch. I was really hoping for something way better than actually aired. It’s no wonder that Science Fiction has such a bad wrap when such bad SciFi like this is created.
Dave M.
