The Andromeda Strain [NEW]

While the scientists run their tests, the Andromeda Strain mutates into a new form that attacks rubber and plastics instead of humans. Outside the laboratory, this mutated strain is responsible for a plane crash. Inside the laboratory, the new strain begins to destroy the sealants that protect the scientists and isolate the organism from the rest of the world. The threat of contamination becomes real. Burton is exposed to the organism, but he does not die. Stone and Hall try to save Burton while Leavitt suffers from an epileptic seizure, a condition he hid from his colleagues.

The Andromeda Strain

The Andromeda organism is cleverly described as a life form based on an alien crystalline structure. After wiping out Piedmont, it apparently mutates to a form that no longer coagulates blood, but instead dissolves human flesh and certain similarly structured plastics -- reducing a jet pilot and his Polycron oxygen mask to bones and some metal fittings. Just being in our environment made the strain mutate, we're meant to understand. When Dr. Dutton is later exposed, it appears that he is spared because the virus specimen in the lab has also mutated to Andromeda 2.0 . It no longer kills humans, but it does attack the Polycron plastic of the lab's isolation seals, dissolving them as it did the pilot's air mask. But what about Andromeda 2.0's habit of eating human flesh? David Wayne looks pretty untouched to me.

PRESTON: No, no thanks? Anyway, what it is it's - let me describe it. It's a little small cylinder of transparent plastic, it's about the size of a peanut and it's honed down to sort of chiseled point. And right on the point, there is a black dot about the size of a poppy seed, and it's a sample of monkey liver. Now, as I said, it's been completely sterilized. The monkey liver was infected with Ebola Zaire virus originally, the hottest of the strains of Ebola - 90 percent fatality rate in humans.

FLATOW: What's also fascinating as always is the story itself, the story is the thing, and the unique ideas about trying to decide - this was one of the most fascinating things to me - the plot, where this Andromeda strain could have originated. And he says, you know, you might think it could come from outer space, like we, you know, something foreign. This one actually came from the Earth.

I mean, this is fascinating, you know, that the Earth somewhere maybe thousands, millions of years ago, a strain of bacteria got kicked up into the atmosphere, lived up there for a while, stayed up there, mutated, and came back and attacked us again. And sure enough this week, we saw a research that sort of talks about this not as Andromeda strain, but as a possibility for evolution.

Basically "Andromeda Strain" is good melodrama -- a mysterious crisis followed by several minor problems topped by an exciting if contrived climax. There's nothing wrong with formula when it works and it works with no strain in this movie. 041b061a72