Re: The Andromeda Strain (was Re: the latest splat)

Fri, 10 Sep 2004 22:10:47 -0700

Larry writes: "[Bell] even got some of the facts wrong about TAS:  The Scoop 7 return capsule was not torn open from an impact.  It actually landed successfully.  The problem began when some of the townsfolk in the little New Mexico community it landed in took the capsule to the local doctor, who unwittingly opened it and released the extraterrestrial microorganisms that wiped out most of the population."
 
Larry, my memory of the movie is hazy, but many reviews square with my hazy memory, referring to the landing as a CRASH-landing.  And what Bell actually writes is this: "A reentry vehicle from a mysterious military spacecraft lands off-course in a small desert town and is opened by a curious idiot. A deadly form of space life is released and instantly kills off most of the town's inhabitants .... The [Genesis] capsule was torn open in a manner reminiscent of the "Project Scoop" vehicle in the movie."  There may be no perfectly error-free interpretation of Bell's vague passage here, but then again, he's not writing a movie review, he's looking at a real crash in perspective.
 
"And I thought the scientists in the film acted like scientists would.. And I am not alone in this view: http://twtd.bluemountains.net.au/Rick/liz_as.htm"
 
Actually, the review you point to lauds the movie for providing a close approximation to scientist behavior by usual Hollywood standards, but still criticizes it for lapses in characterization.  And she's got a point about how science doesn't make for good drama.  At age 16, I didn't know enough about scientists to see what this review is talking about.  At age 48, I think I now do.  I suggest reading The Double Helix and a corrective biography, Rosalind Franklin and DNA, to see what I'm talking about.  Watson had fictionalize Rosalind Franklin to make her an interesting minor character.  Actually, he was fictionalizing even at the time. He painted her as "positively anti-helical."  No, she was trying to use X-ray crystallography to determine if there were holes in the theory of double-helical structure for DNA, a tedious but necessary attack.  Science proceeds as much by disproving theories as by piling up evidence in their favor.  It's a gradual, repetive process that really is boring to people who aren't caught up in it, as the reviewer says.
 
I liked the movie at the time, even if some of it seemed ridiculous, and I remember having a huge argument with a friend who insisted that neither the novel nor the film were science fiction because, he said, they were 'too good to really be science fiction.'  He really had me there. ;-)  These days, I might say that it was "too good (as a story) to really be science."
 
I don't think Bell would have a "vendetta" against a film that he'd forgotten to the point of watching it all the way through again on cable.  Hey, if Bell didn't like the acting, then he didn't like it.  Can you scientifically prove that it was good acting? ;-)  At worst, he's guilty of retrospective judgment - the stereotypes he invokes may have found their initial templates in The Andromeda Strain, having only gotten worse over time, with TAS representing an initial peak in character development.
 
My main beef with what Bell really had to say is that he takes it to an extreme conclusion: because of space technology's problems with learning curves so often starting over from scratch, we'll never be able to reliably sequester samples containing possible Martian microbes.  So we'll never get Martian sample return, much less human beings on Mars, unless it's determined that Mars is lifeless - determined in situ (or someplace safe - definitely not on Earth).  It is a huge obstacle if he's right, though.  Maybe some of the chip-scale bio-assay technologies coming out these days would make sending huge payloads of lab equipment unnecessary.
 
 
-michael turner
 
 
 
 
 
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 12:05 AM
Subject: The Andromeda Strain (was Re: the latest splat)

I am rather surprised at Bell's dumping upon of the 1971 SF film The Andromeda Strain, which is one of the very few SF films I have ever seen that strove hard to get the science and technology right (for the early 1970s, of course).  And I thought the scientists in the film acted like scientists would.
 
And I am not alone in this view:
 
 
He even got some of the facts wrong about TAS:  The Scoop 7 return capsule was not torn open from an impact.  It actually landed successfully.  The problem began when some of the townsfolk in the little New Mexico community it landed in took the capsule to the local doctor, who unwittingly opened it and released the extraterrestrial microorganisms that wiped out most of the population. 
 
Bell just seems to have some kind of vendetta against the film, or decided to make it look bad to get his point across about the Genesis crash and the dangers of releasing cosmic debris upon Earth.  And of course he would have been bored with TAS as a child, since it wasn't aimed at children, but thinking adults; this wasn't Star Wars, after all.  I do miss the golden age of Hollywood film in the 1970s when they actually tried to be and do something different from the FX dreck we get now.
 
Rent and watch The Andromeda Strain for yourself and make up your own minds.  I would love to know what Bell, as a proclaimed retired space scientist, really found wrong with this film as opposed to just calling it names.
 
Larry
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 6:51 AM
Subject: Re: the latest splat

Jeff Bell is a bit depressed about this whole thing.
 
 
He slightly disparages mid-air helicopter retrieval, even though that seemed to be one of the bits of good news in this story: it can be done.
 
He also has some rather unkind words for Robert Zubrin, but I guess he's not exactly alone in that.
 
The main thing I got from his op-ed is that sample return really is an important capability - we should be trying to get it down to, well, to a *science*.
 
-michael turner
 
 
 

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