The Andromeda Strain
Good movie! In this 2 part series a team of scientists figure out how to fight some “seemingly” alien biological organism that grows at exponential speeds, mutates in 10 secs to increase the number of its potential carriers, and, can communicate with its disparate parts. It was a delight to see how the script was tightly woven around discussions on current theories in astro-biology, meaning of biological warfare, environmentalism, and sometimes, the philosophy of life, in general.
I loved the end of the movie where the whole worm hole theory turned out to be just a decoy.
But there’s one interesting fact that I noticed in this movie (and every other science fiction movie): the fact that the American president usually has no idea about the underground extra-terrestrial/exotic science researches. These researches are usually shown to be directed by a mysterious self destructible system of authority. e.g., In X files the smoking man and his group, and, in Independence day, there was that military area where they had harbored a captured alien and his ship that the president had no idea about.
Maybe it is, in reality, true: maybe most of the powerful and dangerous science and technological researches are happening under the authority of higher military powers. And while the president and the public are kept quaintly shuttling between mundane debates such as “should they include abortion in insurance policies or not”, scientists are churning out biological weapons and engineered diseases with no cure (as if Cancer and AIDS weren’t enough.)
Coming to think of it, it does make sense to make military the head of such tasks. This is because, one, if the president knows something, then the public has to know it too, and then the fake cover of “government transparency” would blow. But the military can be secretive in its actions and plans and can hide anything that it wants from people.
And two, all military training is designed to create a perfect secret keeping machine whose nuts and bolts are those perfect soldiers who do not question authority or their decisions, and ironically, care less about preserving life than about preserving order.
I am not sure where these script writers and novelists get their theories from, but if they are true, than people should worry more about what is going in these clandestine military bases than some politician’s personal life; because, the control of these dangerous technologies in the hands of people who see the whole world as nothing more than another simulation of “Art of Warcraft” would be ten times more dangerous and catastrophic than a single mother’s decision to abort.
