This was billed as "Science fiction", but frankly it's just "Fantasy". There isn't the slightest attempt to involve any actual science - the scriptwriter just keeps saying outlandish things and the actors struggle to make it seem like they believe this is how the world works.
In the minute or two before the beginning titles, for example, we are told that "the biggest meteor shower for (X) years" is about to happen. We cut between crowds of people gathered in fields all round the world, every one with a telescope on a tripod, peering into a dark sky.
1) Meteor showers happen as the Earth passes through a particle cloud; they're only seen on the leading side of the planet, not the whole planet simultaneously.
2) Astronomers only gather in that way to view localised phenomena such as total solar eclipses, not wide-ranging phenomena such as meteor showers.
3) You don't use a telescope to look at a meteor shower. Ever.
4) With all these astronomers around, didn't anyone notice it was a bit odd that it was dark *all the way round the world at the same time*...? I would have thought the sudden and complete disappearance of the Sun would have provoked more comment than a meteor shower would.
And all this was before the titles.
Other things, like the fact there was a rock on the Moon that was one and a half times the mass of the Earth, yet the Moon only changed its orbit slightly (when, in reality, at that point the Earth would have, at best, been in orbit around the Moon...) were glossed over.
Or how they managed to fit five people, a huge "scanner", a 2-man rocket sled and a missile launch platform into the nosecone of a rocket that can usually only hold three people maximum, and they still had room to get in and out of their space suits? Oh, and the missile had huge stabilising fins and could manoeuvre in huge, graceful curves - in a vacuum. And despite being only about twice the size of an astronaut it had enough power to split the moon in two. Oh, and somehow it mysteriously dissipated the rock with 1.5 Earth masses, without any of it falling to Earth.
I've seen a few reviews saying the actors were "good". Well, they were "good" *for soap opera*, which is what the script degenerated to fairly quickly.
It was *almost* as bad as the movie "The Core". Almost.
In the minute or two before the beginning titles, for example, we are told that "the biggest meteor shower for (X) years" is about to happen. We cut between crowds of people gathered in fields all round the world, every one with a telescope on a tripod, peering into a dark sky.
1) Meteor showers happen as the Earth passes through a particle cloud; they're only seen on the leading side of the planet, not the whole planet simultaneously.
2) Astronomers only gather in that way to view localised phenomena such as total solar eclipses, not wide-ranging phenomena such as meteor showers.
3) You don't use a telescope to look at a meteor shower. Ever.
4) With all these astronomers around, didn't anyone notice it was a bit odd that it was dark *all the way round the world at the same time*...? I would have thought the sudden and complete disappearance of the Sun would have provoked more comment than a meteor shower would.
And all this was before the titles.
Other things, like the fact there was a rock on the Moon that was one and a half times the mass of the Earth, yet the Moon only changed its orbit slightly (when, in reality, at that point the Earth would have, at best, been in orbit around the Moon...) were glossed over.
Or how they managed to fit five people, a huge "scanner", a 2-man rocket sled and a missile launch platform into the nosecone of a rocket that can usually only hold three people maximum, and they still had room to get in and out of their space suits? Oh, and the missile had huge stabilising fins and could manoeuvre in huge, graceful curves - in a vacuum. And despite being only about twice the size of an astronaut it had enough power to split the moon in two. Oh, and somehow it mysteriously dissipated the rock with 1.5 Earth masses, without any of it falling to Earth.
I've seen a few reviews saying the actors were "good". Well, they were "good" *for soap opera*, which is what the script degenerated to fairly quickly.
It was *almost* as bad as the movie "The Core". Almost.