A for Andromeda

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...

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...

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).

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.

'A FOR ANDROMEDA is an example of what could be called conceptual science fiction', says producer Alison Willett in the 'extras' of the DVD of this film. She hoped the BBC would commission more of that, but it did not. They declined for instance to remake the sequel. This film was made in ten days on a low budget, but the result overcame those limitations. The casting was inspired. Jane Asher was superb as the woman professor, perfectly underplaying the role to make it more effective. And the irresistible Kelly Reilly plays both the young mathematician and her double, the space girl Andromeda. She has a way of mesmerising viewers, which was just what was needed. I have read some of the other reviews of this film and was shocked that some of them seem to have been so disappointed to see a thinker's rather than a thrill-seeker's sci fi movie. There are no exploding cars, machine guns, colliding stars, grey aliens, or terrifying ogres in this film, not even a single spaceship. When the initial TV series of this story was broadcast in 1961 (see my review), it caused a nationwide sensation in the UK. The astronomer and astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle's concept of a radio signal from another galaxy transmitting a code for the creation of an alien being blew the collective minds of the public. The usual BBC idiots wiped most of that series and only one whole episode, part of the final episode, and a few scattered fragments survived; a book of the story followed. The next year the sequel story was transmitted as ANDROMEDA BEAKTHROUGH (1962, see my review, as this series does survive in its entirety), and the book of that followed in 1965. The first series introduced the beautiful Julie Christie as the alien girl Andromeda; she did not yet know how to act, but everyone was dazzled by her looks. She was unavailable for the sequel, so the girl alien was played by Susan Hampshire. (I got to know her in the following year but she never once mentioned her recent adventure as a space creature.) To return to the newer film, another key ingredient was the well-measured and low key performance by Tom Hardy as the brilliant young scientist, who is the only one who can work the computer built according to the specifications of the signal. The film was excellently directed by John Strickland. The film is also a love story. And of course there is also some spying, an irate general, and an underground bunker. It all works, whatever some soreheads may claim. I knew Fred Hoyle pretty well. He shook the world up with his first science fiction novel, THE BLACK CLOUD (1957), which has suddenly become more relevant again in a surprising way. It needs to be pointed out that many of the aspects of A FOR ANDROMEDA have also become surprisingly relevant at the moment. I have no space to elaborate on this. But it all goes to show that Fred was decades ahead of his time in just about everything. And, by the way, there was no Big Bang. Fred was right about that too. The time is coming when everyone will be forced to admit it, no matter how much of a blow to their pride it may be to do so. Geniuses like Fred do not come along often enough.