Moon

Caveat: we gave up after half an hour of boredom.

Sam Bell is coming to the end of his three year contract, single-handedly running a Helium-3 mining operation on the far side of the moon, when weird stuff starts happening.

We didn't see the weird stuff -- the Web implies it's some sort of spooky cloning operation. But before we got that far, the tedium forced us on to other things. The premise is ridiculous: having a lone person in such a hostile environment at all, let alone for three years , is nuts. Is the accident we see Sam having the first one of its kind? (Maybe that's the basis for the cloning story? Cloning after every accident is cheaper than a maintaining second backup buddy? But that would be ridiculous.) Why is the base so big for one person who occasionally has to gather a small cylinder from the automatic mining machines? (If it's to support the cloning operation, why isn't Sam suspicious? If it isn't, where is the cloning operation supported?) Why is the gravity six times stronger than it would be on the moon? Why is the base interior all white and plastic like something from a 1970s Space 1999 set? Why does the computer sound spookier than HAL?

But mostly, why is it (at least in the first half hour) so unimaginative ? And why is it so slooooow....?

It got great reviews! It won a Hugo! Good grief!

Rating: 6

[ unmissable | great stuff | worth watching | mind candy | waste of time | unfinishable ]

reviewed 31 December 2012