Tom Hardy and Kelly Reilly (as Andromeda) are two-thirds of a love triangle in the BBC’s 2006 remake.
was an Italian TV genre special- ist, with roles in JEKYLL (1969) and GAMMA (1975); both are available on DVD for the Italian- speaking fan. The RAI disc of A COME ANDROMEDA has no En- glish subtitles, though watching it soon after the A FOR ANDROM- EDA reconstruction (and with the original script PDFs and the novel to hand) it’s relatively easy to fol- low. The only extra is “C’era una
volta ¼ lo sceneggiato,” a short 2003 piece about Italian TV drama. The 2006 BBC A FOR AN-
DROMEDA was a follow-up to writer-executive producer Richard Fell’s 2005 remounting of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT as a live, feature-length drama. Though not laboring under the restrictions of live television, director John
Strickland is stuck with a précis of the serial, which feels at once cramped and rushed. Fell prunes Professor Reinhart, Judy Adamson and much else from the story, but is compelled to add a love triangle between Fleming (Tom Hardy), Bridger (Charlie Cox) and Chris- tine (Kelly Reilly); indeed, this ver- sion beefs up the minor character
of Christine to such an extent that Andromeda—the same woman but with permanently wet hair and distant look—is almost an anti- climax. Some discreet updating has General Vandenberg (David Haig, too like the comically per- fidious politicos he has played in THE THICK OF IT and YES, PRIME MINISTER) now wanting Androm- eda to develop a bio-weapon rather than missile defence. The alien computer is a bizarre spheri- cal construct which is more plau- sibly dangerous to work with. Fell and producer Alison Willett, who appear in an interesting making- of extra (“Another Girl, Another Planet”), may not be in a position to get the best out of the material handed to them (budgets are tight as ever at the BBC), but they cast with something like brilliance. Supporting Jason Flemyng’s Qua- termass were David Tennant, Mark Gatiss, Indira Varma, An- drew Tiernan and Andrew Scott (all now UK TV genre fixtures). A FOR ANDROMEDA not only man-
ages the coup of casting Jane Asher (who began her career as a child in THE QUATERMASS
EXPERIMENT and later starred in Kneale’s THE STONE TAPE) as a slightly predatory Dr. Dawnay (very different from the brusquely pixieish Morris) but is an early showcase for Hardy and Reilly, who have since become major stars. Here, Hardy’s bearded, mercurial Fleming is alienated and unsympathetic from the start, and there’s a strange effect as Reilly’s glowing, enigmatic Andromeda seems to humanize him—though what actually happens at the cli- max is vague. The interview with Hardy in “Another Girl, Another Planet” is especially revealing in the light of his later work (he’s as interested in building character from costume as Peter Cushing was in playing with props). The creatives raise the possibility of delivering an ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH, but Fell went on instead to RAN- DOM QUEST, a remake of the John Wyndham story previously filmed as an episode of OUT OF THE UNKNOWN and the feature QUEST FOR LOVE. The DD Home Entertainment disc runs to substantial viewing notes by Marcus Hearn.
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