Sunday, February 2, 2014

Stranded (2013)

After their base is hit by a meteor, Ava volunteers to repair the damage. But going to the crippled section of the base will require opening a door which will let carbon monoxide into the rest of the base.  Doc mentions that this may cause visual and auditory hallucinations, and if anyone has any to let him know.  No one shall ask who the Doctor should tell if he suffers from hallucinations.

When Ava returns to the safe part of the base, she brings a piece of the meteor which she believes has spores on it. Good god, woman!?!  Why the hell would you bring a spore ridden meteor into the base?!  Nothing good can come from this, especially when they've lost communication with Earth and there are only a total of four people on the base.

After Doc takes a sample and gets the meteor into a holding tank, he notices part of it is changing structure.  Ava decides to help Doc with his research and ends up cutting her finger on a broken test tube. So you just know she's going to be riddled with spores.

Soon Ava feels terrible and has an extended stomach resembling a late term pregnancy. But Doc thinks it's probably just a cyst. Do cysts really get that big in less than a day?  Damn it Doc! She's going to have a spore baby!

The Commander wants to isolate her but Doc says she needs care. So we get the typical conflict between the Commander who is responsible for the safety of the ship and it's crew vs. the Doc's compassion for the sick.  But one thing you can't argue about is that for a containment area, everyone  sure wanders into it a lot. There's only four people on the ship and they've gone in to talk to her or see what's happening so many times, that if she's afflicted by anything contagious, then they're already screwed.

This is fairly slow paced by the book scifi.  It's nothing new and it's similar to many other movies, and probably 1960s Star Trek plots.

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