Sadly, this TV-series is nothing like the book. I mean, that's an exaggeration, but a mild one. I just recently finished reading the Crichton novel, and it's a sad homage to what is a fine piece of sci-fi literature, at least to me. I enjoyed reading it. I did not enjoy watching this tear to shreds what is a very good story. Do yourself a favor, and read the novel instead.There is also a movie from the 70's which I have not yet seen, but have downloaded to watch. I sure hope it's better than this modern version, which to it's tribute, has good visuals. Pretty good CGI. But please, writers please, producers, those on top who dictate, do NOT get in the way of great authors. Respect, please.

I have enjoyed watching the 1971 Move "The Andromeda Strain" Starting Arthur Hill, James Olsen, Kate Reid, Mark Jenkins. many times. I read the book years ago, and I have watched the movie every few years and, though I know the plot and a lot of the dialog, it is an interesting and engaging story which had been nominated for 2 Oscars. It was an interesting, thought provoking film with some fairly tense moments in it. I found the 'new' version yesterday, recorded it, and my wife and I watched it today. As the plot of the film is being developed, somewhat differently than in the original, it becomes clear that something is likely to happen to greatly influence the progress and outcome of this version. Just when the excitement and interest start to ramp up, the story switches gears, A related incident in a town near the affected area of the virus/bug/whatever we are fighting escalates the problem. An unwise decision to proceed with an nuclear weapon meant to 'wipe out the bug' is prematurely instigated. Then the attack appears to be stopped just in the nick of time and in a few seconds, the movie is over. It was just as if there were to be one or more sequels to finish or redirect the story to conclusion, but it just quits, leaving the viewer asking 'Did I fall asleep and miss the ending? I cannot think of a single movie ever that I saw where the movie quit rather than ended. I don't think this was an ending that was supposed to send you home discussing the outcome for days.....Perhaps there is/are sequels I do not know about. If there is no sequel or followups, there are a number of side issues developed that have no meaning at all now.

When I first heard that A&E remade the sci-fi classic The Andromeda Strain as a four-hour miniseries, I immediately made it a high priority for this week's viewing. I read the book repeatedly as a boy, so much so that my father still jokes about it. The original movie followed the book rather closely, but it dragged; except for the first 20 minutes and the last 30, the pace could cure insomnia.After seeing part 1, I can say that the producers have cured that problem, but at the expense of making the story almost unrecognizable. As in the original, the plot involves a covert effort by the American government to find biological material in space that could be used as a weapon on earth, but unlike the original, we know that immediately. In attempting to cover that up, some members of the government try blaming the North Koreans for infecting the damaged satellite, even though as one character finally points out, why would Pyongyang spend all the money to send a biological weapon into space hoping an American satellite would come close enough to it to hit it and trust that said satellite would hit the US? The character who says that points out that Homeland Security can't be bothered to inspect most shipping, leaving that method wide open.And that brings us to some of the other updates. Everyone has personal problems in this remake; the Head Scientist has a bipolar wife, the Nosy Reporter has a cocaine addiction, three of the main characters have unresolved personal conflicts from the war. It's all very Lifetime Channel in that sense. Worse, though, are the little zingers that the writers of the remake put into the script about the current war and administration. When the Utah National Guard gets mobilized to quarantine the area, the Nosy Reporter tells his television audience that the UNG expects the call-up to be brief and says with a smirk, "Where have we heard that before?" One character postulates that the US supplied Saddam with all of his biological weapons, and so on. These pop up on a regular basis about every 20 minutes during the first installment.At the end of the first episode, the political correctness had pretty much run amuck, or so we thought. In the finale, we got even more than I thought could be crammed into a four-hour show. A crisis over "vent mining" on the ocean floor turns into a terrorist crisis, but that's not the end of that subplot. Two of the doctors fall in love when they're supposed to be saving the world. The one military doctor turns out to be gay, and since he's the key man, it gives him an opportunity to say, "It's ironic. The one person the military most fears turns out to be the one they trust to save the day." Even those of us who think don't-ask-don't-tell is hypocritical rolled their eyes at that development, which had nothing to do with anything else in the movie.But that's just the beginning of the stupidity. It turns out that Andromeda is a messenger from the nearby wormhole. The message? "Don't mess with vent mining". The entire infection comes from our future, where vent mining apparently turned out worse than what the hysterics fantasize about pumping oil out of ANWR. Humanity send Andromeda and its packing material back to the past as a message, based in binary code hidden deep within the molecular structure, to tell us to leave Mother Earth alone.Of course, no one bothers to ask why Future Earth does this in a way that would kill every living organism on Past Earth. No one in the script conference that created this bothered to ask why Future Earth wouldn't just send a metal plate through the wormhole that said, "HEY! STOP VENT MINING! LOVE, YOUR GRANDCHILDREN". Wouldn't that have been more effective and a lot less likely to, say, kill all of Future Earth's ancestors? Maybe we could send a message back that said, "HEY! WE'LL STOP VENT MINING WHEN YOU QUIT PLAYING WITH KILLER ORGANISMS! LOVE, GRANDMA AND GRANDPA". We can send that with some influenza as payback.The ending provides the biggest unintentional laughs. The military doctor has been designated the key man, the one who has to stop the self-destruct sequence of the laboratory that will provide unimaginable power to Andromeda for mutations. Unlike in the novel, he dies when he falls in the tunnel into a pool of water used by the nuclear reactor, just as he hands off the key that will stop the sequence to the project leader. Unfortunately, the key sequence requires the military doctor's thumb for identification, which leads another doctor to do a Mr. Spock (Wrath of Khan) and go into the water to cut off the thumb. He then throws the thumb straight up for two stories to the project leader who's hanging on the side of the wall, complete with a close-up, slo-mo sequence of the thumb tumbling towards the hero as the self-sacrificing doctor dies in a pool of water that wouldn't be radioactive anyway.It provides a perfect analogy to the entire movie. The only way this mess should get a thumbs-up is if a reviewer cut one off in protest and threw it in the air. The rest of the ending is fairly anticlimactic, with a few assorted assassinations as everyone starts covering up the government's role in the affair. Everyone's loved ones suddenly finds themselves free of the personal problems that plagued them. The President declares that he'll continue vent mining despite the strongly-worded memo from the future, which makes sense; I'd try to kill Future Earth too, after a stunt like Andromeda.What a shame. It could have been interesting; instead, it gives a peek into the mind of the politically-correct paranoids who produced this dreck.

I would have given this entertaining movie 8 stars instead of 10, but I'm giving it 10 stars to "balance out" the reviewers who are giving it 1 star just because the scientists include minorities and a gay man. By the way, out of 3 hours, there is 7 seconds where we learn that one scientist is gay and then it is never mentioned again. And apparently some reviewers are shocked, SHOCKED that a Latino or an Asian-American or an African-American or a gay person could be a scientist. Of course, that says nothing about minorities, but says volumes about the intelligence of the bigoted reviewers. That said, the movie, while very entertaining, is about an hour too long. They could have left out the "CNN-type" reporter (played by a straight actor who used to play a gay character on a sitcom-----Oh No!!! Another "gay" connection! Horrors!). Almost all of his scenes were unnecessary and cutting those scenes would have made the movie better and only 2 hours.