(Some Spoilers) Standard made for TV movie with Saturday morning cartoon special effects and a really monotonous and annoying soundtrack about a plague breaking out on a pleasure cruise luxury ocean liner, the Orion Star,on the high seas off the coast of Miami Beach.
After romping through the jungles of an out of the way Caribbiean island a passenger of the ship carried aboard the Orion Star a deadly airborne infectious disease that attacks the blood system much like the deadly Ebola infection. Within hours a number of passengers and crew members come down with the deadly illness and the ship is quarantined by order of the president of the United States Brian Dennehy.
It was just pure luck that one of he passengers on board is non other then Dr. Stephanie Tauber, Lindsay Wagner, a top specialist of infectious diseases at the US Goverments CDC offices in Atlanta Ga. Dr.Tauber taking control of the boat on orders of President Dennehy, to the shock and outrage of the ships captain Horst Bucholz, quickly begins to turn the luxury liner into a floating medical laboratory with a number of Navy Seals and CDC personnel coming aboard to maintain some sense of order in the mist of total panic on the part of the ships 1,800 passengers and crew.
Back in D.C Pres. Dennehy is being manipulated by his close adviser's Henry Northcutt and his sidekick Michael, Martin Sheen & Andrew Airlie,who want this emergency to be stretched out like the 1979-81 Iranian hostage crisis in order to have Dennehy thrown out of office, like President Jimmy Carter was in 1980, and get their guy who, like Northcutt said, will steer this country in the "RIGHT" direction.
Michael who seems to be the man in charge of public relations for the White House gets these paid off hacks and snake oil salesmen, masquerading around as world renowned epidemiologists, on every talk and discussion show on TV. Telling the American public that the virus on he Orion Star is so dangerous that if anyone is allowed to leave the ship and come onshore they would infect millions of Americans. This is part of Northcutt's grandiose plan to bamboozle and terrorize the population in putting pressure on Pres. Dennehy and keep the crisis going on for months if not over a year; thus seal his fate in the next presidential elections.
Feeling helpless and abandoned the ships crew led by hot head McBride, Michael Ironside, stage a mutiny and try to take over the Orion Star and both drive and beach it ashore on Miami Beach thus freeing themselves from the governments unforced quarantine. The revolt frizzles out with McBride and a number of his mutineers shot and killed by the Navy Seals and Dr. Tauber who sent McBride off the ship the one way he didn't want to leave it;in a rubber body-bag.
There's a stroke of luck in all this chaos when Dr. Tauber discovers one of the passengers Alex Reid, Steve Bacic, who was infected with the deadly virus had miraculously recovered. Dr. Tabuer quickly had a sample of his blood sent to the CDC labs back in the states and from it a serum was developed to cure the disease and in the end save the day and the lives of the remaining passengers of the Orion Star including Dr. Taber's teenage daughter Aly, Katharine Isbelle.
Decent film with a really standout performance by Martin Sheen as the creepy and back-stabbing presidential adviser Henry Northcutt who together with his "right-hand" man Michael tried to make political points, for their man in waiting, to take over the government by having hundreds of unsuspecting Americans die for what Northcutt & Michael deemed to be a high and noble cause.
Sheen's Henry Northcutt is eerily similar to another low-life political swine that he played in the 1983 movie "the Dead Zone" Sen. Greg Sillson who felt that it was his destiny to get elected president of the United States in order to bring about the long awaited battle between good and evil: Armagaddon. Thank God that in this film "Voyage of Terror", like in the movie "the Dead Zone", Sheen's character failed miserably.
