Well I caught this drivel on Netflix. What was good about it had a good idea. Though it was done in slow motion mode. The plot is ludicrous. Eco terrorist do not want big business to succeed with their aim of giving the world free power without the use of fossil fuels. This is eco terrorists we are talking about. You would think they would be queueing up to help them get the project off the ground.So these naughty do something at a pivotal moment and mayhem erupts. A lot of the ideas behind this come from the reboot of the British TV series Doomwatch.If they had made it an hour and a half dropped some of the clichéd dialogue this might have been quite good fun. In the end it was a case of I have seen this done before better.

Episode 1 (87 minutes)From Netflix: "Scientists drill a hole in the universe to harvest a limitless pool of 'dark energy', but the experiment goes horribly wrong and wipes an entire city off the map. Now, the effort to save the world, becomes the ultimate threat that could destroy it."What could possibly go wrong here? Who sanctioned such an effort?Modelling assertion: Dark energy is 75% of the universe. The intention is to tap this.Billionaire Max Salinger has a big plans--feed the world with engineered plants; supply the world's energy needs with dark energy. His Proteus Group has eco-activist opposition, P53. They start with the plants, then move on to the dark energy effort.Sub-plot: Karl and his daughter Ruby's ongoing dysfunctional relationship; his not resolving the death of his wife ten years previous.Sub-plot: propagandizing by the activist group P53. Ruby gets sucked into this.Sub-plot: Ruslan was in Russia (living in Lhitiska) as a lineman. He witnesses his town being destroyed by lightning. He moves to America, around Denver, and gets another job as a lineman. His second marriage is not going well.Sub-plot: Max is sleeping with Chloe, and Max's man on scene orders her to keep mum, even from Karl and Rachel. So the tech leads are kept in the dark about hardware problems.The first full-on tests have problems. There's a breach in the accelerator's coolant system, and Ruslan witnesses phenomena much as he did at Lhitiska.There was a fatality from this, and the cover-up started. Max entreats Chloe to stay silent about the accident. David tries to comfort and silence the relatives of the dead man. Ruslan finds Karl and tells him about Lhitiska. Karl tries to confirm or deny Ruslan's story with an old friend, Ilya. So much lying, so little time. Ruby joins with P53, and provides access to the Proteus project. Sabotage ensues. She provides passwords. She provides a security pass to get onto the Proteus campus. She betrays everyone, in other words, and the huge damage that follows is her fault.After the security breach, another proving test is started, and the effects are immediate. The neighborhood Ruslan's American family lives ignites. The full test is yet to come.Episode 2 (87 minutes)Karl and Rachel argue about going forward. P53 plans further depredations. Max wants to go forward no matter what. Ruslan's friends deal with their house burning down, the wife's mom dying, and their son needing an operation.Max uses Chloe and David to cut Rachel out of the loop, and do the experiment anyway.Disaster results: everything that could go wrong does go wrong. The dark energy source is found, and keeps coming to us, even when power is shutoff.Will the surviving personnel have any chance of closing the hole in the universe?Scores----Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.Sound: 7/10 Some of the worst incidental music ever in the introductory credits. The spoken word is well done.Special Effects: 7/10 The visuals are good, but the incidental sound is goofy.Acting: 5/10 Steven Weber, Christina Cox, Treat Williams, and Aleks Paunovic are good enough, given what the screenplay had them say. Jessica McLeod, Colin Lawrence, Leah Gibson, and the P53 actors I could have done without.Screenplay: 6/10 Beginning, middle, end. Not so bad there. The P53 crew were not believable, which made the motivational parts hard to accept. Also, the amount of material here could have been compressed into two hours.

Look, there are lots of technical reasons to cringe at this. Especially if you are a trained film, script, or score editor. There are points where the storyline borrows almost completely from other SyFy series. There are may points that are completely derivative of movies from the last 20 years. Some of the film- workers are obviously not Russian or "terrorist" types. Music sometimes sounds stock, and at times overwhelms the dialog to the point of being ridiculous. Yes, it is really bad most of the time. But you don't have to pay to watch this other than your time and it has some entertainment value. Just watch the show if you like SyFy productions and decide for yourself. It is at least worlds beyond Sharknado.

Eve of Destruction does have its redeeming values, and it is definitely better than Ring of Fire that had nothing to recommend it apart from Terry O'Quinn. The setting in Eve of Destruction has a good austere atmosphere, and while not mind-blowing the photography is hardly what you call amateurish. The acting from the four leads is also better than average, Steven Weber is good as the father figure, Christine Cox does sympathetic believably, Treat Williams makes for a great slime-ball and Aleks Paunovic has a moody and sullen sort of character and he pulls it off nicely. The special effects do stick out like a sore thumb though, while the rest of the production values saw some decent effort put into it the special effects look like a rushed last-minute job. The music is not very memorable, has a tendency to plod and it is unimaginative. It wouldn't have mattered if the characters were clichés, what matters more is making them interesting and despite the commendable lead acting the characters are not developed enough. The secondary roles weren't as involving as the lead roles, they generally lacked personality and were bland as a result. The script is repetitive and resorts too much in random and overwrought melodrama, while the story has a decent concept that is executed with a lack of thrills and tension generally that gets increasingly dull, illogical and cheesy in the second half(Eve of Destruction is a little better paced than Ring of Fire this said, and is not as exposition-heavy). Overall, was lacking and is not that great but could have been much worse. 4/10 Bethany Cox