In addition to all the scientific malarkey discussed previously....the script is infantile, amateurish......can I be more direct.Where do they find these writers? The concept had a lot of potential as a real good suspense drama...but they had to put in lines like "it's really deep"...about the chasm. And the world is about to end but Mathew M and his partner scientist spend time re-connecting.....wow!!!An elite task force with automatic weapons is held off by two citizens with handguns. I know that they likely did not have the $ that a series like "24" has, but lord have mercy it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put together a realistic, mature screenplay. I could go on and on about the silliness of the script but I'm too ticked off about a potentially good story being wasted away by such infantile dialog and situations. Simply infantile!!

Its a shame someone like Mathew Modine was suckered into this. He is good as usual at keeping a solid character portrayal but thats where it all ends. After that this is probably one of the hardest things I have ever made myself watch. A real lousy implementation of VFX. The fact that his partner did not complain to someone is totally unreal. Let us not forget of course the complete misrepresentation of scientific fact. Finally what happened to the payback against secretary of defense and his sidekick. The ending is a complete let down. Who ever funded this must be regretting it now! Don't waist your time unless you wan to see how not to make a sci-fi. This is more like a bad drama.

My review is very unfair because I have only seen the first half. It is extremely formulaic - the only smart guy is in disgrace, and has a beautiful, plucky daughter (don't they always?); the ESTABLISHMENT is full of weasels who are interfering with solving the problem, and the science is beyond ludicrous. But hey, it's good dumb fun. I wouldn't wait in line to see it, nor make space in my busy schedule, nor pay extra, but as a filler after you need to "come down" from an episode of Breaking Bad, if you like B-grade sci fi and/or disaster movie stuff, it works just fine. Strangely, the acting isn't all that bad. On the one hand, there are rug-chewing villains (the slime literally rolls off the "Secretary" whose self-serving unwillingness to listen to scientific advice causes the catastrophe; the hero's ex-wife's new husband is an unrelenting sleaze, etc.) But scientist/hero Modine is quite good in his role, and the scientist who unleashed the disaster (under pressure from the "Secretary") is actually pretty good too, coming across as sort of a normal person (well, normal for someone who has just destroyed the planet). Anyway, in the "good dumb fun" category I give this high marks. Others have compared it to "Eve of Destruction" and like "Eve" I have only seen one half, but will gladly view the second halves when the opportunity arises.

Out of the four mini-series personally viewed in the past two weeks airing on the SyFy channel, CAT.8 is better than Ring of Fire(though at least that had Terry O'Quinn) and especially the irredeemably terrible Meteor with Christopher Lloyd. But of the four the best was Eve of Destruction, although that was a long way from great that looked reasonably good and at least four of the actors were convincing. CAT.8 also has some better-than-average acting, Matthew Modine is a commendable lead, and the production values(apart from some hokey effects) are reasonable, basic though with some signs of atmospheric. On the whole however CAT.8 doesn't work. What really lets things down is the story and the science. To say that the science is questionable is an understatement in itself, if anything it is a disaster, so bad that experts would feel tempted to bail out halfway through the first half. It honestly sounded like the writers were making things up with no research and it was very difficult to believe any of it. As a result the story was implausible and had little if any credibility. Unfortunately also for the story it didn't feel enough to sustain the three hours, so it felt like a thin structure interwoven with a lot of padding, ham-fisted melodrama/exposition, underdeveloped sub-plotting and an overlong length. If you think the first half takes too long to get going and is implausible, wait until you see the second half, like with the Meteor, Ring of Fire and even Eve of Destruction it gets increasingly dull and illogical. The script is underwritten, cheesy and very awkward, another one of those instances where it came through clearly that the writers hadn't properly checked to see whether what they'd written and given the actors made sense. The music is turgid and unmemorable, the pacing is pedestrian and stretches the story out too much, the characters are nowhere near developed enough which is inexcusable for a mini-series of this length and generally CAT.8 feels under-directed and characterless. On the whole, there is worse out there but this was rather poor stuff, the best assets are the production values and the acting but the story, script, pacing and especially the science bog things down considerably. 3/10 Bethany Cox