RogerBW's Blog

High Moon 30 November 2014

Some time in the future, two convicts working on the Moon discover something strange: a flower, blooming on the surface. Then things get weird.

Why would I be watching a Syfy Movie of the Week, you might ask? But only if you didn't know me very well. In this case, though, it's because this was made by Bryan Fuller, who's been behind a number of other interesting series. Originally it was going to be a TV series, later it became a miniseries, and finally all the footage that had been shot was made into this. Also, it's an adaptation of John Christopher's juvenile SF novel The Lotus Caves.

Um. Well. A loose one. There is the flower, there are the lunar caves and the suggestion of something strange down there that affects people's minds, but most of the rest is new. The convicts are lost in an explosion; the brother of one of them is an Air Force investigator who comes to the Moon to find out what's been going on. There are competing operations from different countries to mine Helium-3 (and the USA, at least, is so reliant on it that a day's shut-down in production necessitates power rationing). On the other hand, somehow a private company has got control of everyone's oxygen supply.

The assumption is that the Russians are up to something, though as it turns out they aren't. The Indians are definitely up to something that's done them no good, and this brings on one of the more psychedelic moments, since the entrance to the Indian moonbase is done in the classical Mughal style, with spires and turrets. For no apparent reason other than to look good. That's about the level of subtlety you get in this script.

And that's before the giant mechanical dinosaur shows up.

Unfortunately, while the overall designer of the series (Fuller) was clearly on something really very good indeed, the script-writer for this pilot (Jim D. Gray) did rather less of a good job. Nobody comes over as an interesting character, even though one assumes one of the goals of the script would be to get the audience enthused about these people and what happens to them; instead we just spend a tedious age after the initial action sequence getting people's backstories before anything happens again. The uniformly terrible acting doesn't help. How do you make a Russian-speaking bisexual double-agent robot spy boring?

The effects designers either weren't trying or had nothing to work with. There's no attempt at all to emulate lunar gravity, and very generic plasma-cloud animations replace pressure-suit helmets. The moon-buggy designs are impractical but pretty, though one can't help noticing that as they're traversing the rugged lunar landscape they go in dead straight lines without bouncing around on their suspensions.

Best enjoyed with beer and more beer. Though if you have a copy of the Ice Planet film, watch that instead, as it's much more barking.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1