The Andromeda Strain



""There's a fire, sir.""

- Capt. Morton (film version)

The Andromeda Strain is a novel published by Michael Crichton in 1969 about a team of scientists who investigate a deadly organism of extraterrestrial origin that causes rapid, fatal blood clotting. As the novel opens, the microorganism has killed an entire town save for two individuals, an old man and a crying infant. The team races to find the common link between the two survivors before the rapidly mutating organism can find a way out of containment and cause a deadly epidemic. The team is whisked away to an underground research installation called Wildfire, located in a remote part of Nevada. A lot of the book and the 1971 movie spend considerable time showing the process they have to go through to be decontaminated and able to work on the problem.

The novel has been adapted into movie form twice; the 1971 film starred Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid, and David Wayne and followed the book closely, while the 2008 miniseries is a re-imagining of the original story.

The Book

 * Computer Voice: The computer in the Wildfire secret underground base plays pre-recorded messages spoken by a pleasant female voice. It is revealed that the voice, which one scientist describes as "luscious," is that of a woman in her 60's, turning it into in-universe Fetish Retardant.
 * This is in-universe Fan Service, as the book points out that the most sexy voice the military could find is used for voice reminder systems on the theory that men will pay more attention to it. It turns into in-universe Fetish Retardant when the same voice also announces the  Stone finds this extremely infuriating.


 * Disability Immunity: the titular Strain kills an entire town save a baby and an old man. Turns out that the contagion is actually extremely sensitive to abnormal PH levels. The old man was a nutcase who drank alcohol jury-rigged from canned stove fuel, resulting in somewhat acidic blood, and the baby had colic, and had cried himself into alkalosis.
 * Hidden in Plain Sight: The top-secret WILDFIRE facility is hidden underneath a real agricultural research facility studying corn crops.
 * Magic Countdown: Subverted in that Hall disarms the nuclear self-destruct with more than half a minute to spare. Double Subverted in that the lowest level of the facility is evacuated of atmosphere thirty seconds before detonation to increase the yield of the nuke - the researchers were only seconds from being suffocated.

1971 Movie
"Ruth: There were eight seconds left. Hardly exciting."
 * ASCII Art: The computer graphics - hot stuff at the time.
 * Avengers Assemble: When Code Wildfire is declared the movie cuts to scenes showing the military coming to collect the four scientists, often interrupting them in mid-work.
 * Chekhov's Gun:
 * Dr. Hall is repeatedly told about Wildfire's nuclear bomb Self-Destruct Mechanism (which will go off if a disease escapes containment), how he's the only one who can stop it from detonating and how important it is that he be able to get to one of the deactivation terminals quickly.
 * A fighter jet experiences a severe malfunction when it flew past Andromeda -- all of its plastics dissolved, leaving him helpless as the jet crashes.
 * Convulsive Seizures
 * Creator Cameo: When Mark Hall is ordered to stop a surgery he's about to start, one of the doctors in the back of the operating room in the 1971 film is Michael Crichton.
 * Decontamination Chamber: The 1971 movie has a long sequence in one of these while they are entering Wildfire, done to prevent any outside contaminants from getting inside. (There is a similar long sequence in the book.)
 * Dramatically Missing the Point: When the scientist is given the key to prevent the nuclear device from arming, he for a moment thinks it would be his job to initiate it.
 * For Want of a Nail: A simple piece of paper prevented the notification bell from ringing.
 * Gender Flip: Leavitt was a male in the book, but was changed to a female in the film.
 * Hot Scientist: Noticeably averted. The lone female is in her fifties and overweight.
 * Just in Time: The coutdown is stopped with time to spare.

"Dr. Mark Hall: [Removing the pants of the dead doctor] Have a look at his buttocks. Dr. Jeremy Stone: That's not funny. Dr. Mark Hall: Not meant to be! Normally, blood in a dead person goes to the lowest points. There should be marks of lividity, right? Do you see any purplish marks on his butt? Dr. Jeremy Stone: No..."
 * Media Classifications: This Movie is Rated G for General Audiences "But may be too intense for younger children". It would receive a higher rating today, no doubt. A town full of dead bodies. A dead child. A dead hippy girl with bare breasts. Cutting the bodies open. A woman mentions that an experimental farm would be a "great place to grow pot". Lab animals "dying" on camera. A woman has a seizure and foams at the mouth. Released as G today would unleash a firestorm of What Do You Mean It's for Kids?
 * Pixellation: In the men's ultraviolet scan, their privates are blurred.
 * Spy From Weights and Measures: The Wildfire biological research installation is buried underground, below a Department of Agriculture crop research facility
 * This Is No Time for Knitting: In the opening, the pair in biohazard suits are investigating the corpses littering the town:


 * You Can See That, Right?: Ruth to Dr. Stone while they're examining the green stain on the meteorite.

2008 Miniseries

 * Alternate Reality Game: What Happened In Piedmont is an ARG for the miniseries.
 * Death of the Author: Literally. The producers used Crichton's declining health to shove a Green Aesop into one of his seminal Panic Is Evil works.
 * Fan Service: Actress Christa Miller, naked during the sanitation sequence.
 * Green Aesop - Turns out the only way to kill the disease is
 * Green Aesop - Turns out the only way to kill the disease is

In General
"Guard: Howdy. Dutton: Howdy Doody. Guard: You got the time? Dutton: My watch stopped at 11:46. Guard: Darn shame. Dutton: Must be the heat."
 * Crazy Prepared: The entire plot concerns a U.S. government agency whose job it is to deal with obscure, virulent contagions. One character who is surprised that it is so readily funded find out later that the government is mainly concerned about More true to this trope, the WILDFIRE facility has a lot of redundant security systems,
 * Crying Little Kid: One of the survivors, an infant, is found by researchers who hear it crying.
 * Desolation Shot: Piedmont, New Mexico. Current population: two scientists, a baby, and an old guy vomiting blood.
 * Deus Ex Nukina:
 * Doubly subverted in the 2008 miniseries,.
 * Elaborate Underground Base: The Wildfire facility.
 * Encyclopedia Exposita: The introduction to the novel is written as an introduction to some official report of the events covered in the novel, and the end is a log of
 * Failsafe Failure: Also, a warning bell that is supposed to sound when vital information is being printed from a teletype machine is defeated when a loose shred of paper accidentally becomes lodged inside the machine between the bell itself and the striker, silencing it when it tries to go off. Thus, the team misses an important alert that costs them time.
 * Foreshadowing: In the 1971 movie,
 * Leavitt also doesn't look at a flashing emergency light when he is first picking up Dr. Hall to take him to Wildfire.
 * Hazmat Suit: Dr. Stone and Dr. Hall wear these when investigating the town of Piedmont. In the book, it's stated it makes them look ridiculous ("fat men from Mars"), and they're a bit less bulky in the movie.
 * The Immune: Central to the plot is the mystery of why a baby and an old man survived when everyone else died.
 * Indy Hat Roll: Attempted, but the character in question was too slow.
 * Inferred Holocaust: In the remake, humanity in the future sends a sample of a Nanobot virus dead set on killing with humanity with (very roundabout) instructions on how to beat it and (presumably) to keep some of that cure around for when it comes in the future. They stop the virus, but continue with the deep sea excavation that will cause the extinction of the only thing capable of stopping it; so the future is completely screwed because of us.
 * Info Dump: Most of the book consists of it.
 * It's the Only Way to Be Sure:
 * Leitmotif: The 2008 version gives Andromeda itself a guitar riff whenever it either adapts or spreads on camera.
 * Literary Agent Hypothesis: The novel is presented as a docudrama recounting actual events, complete with a bibliography listing relevant scientific papers (most of the citations are real, but some are fakes supposedly authored by characters from the book).
 * Lockdown:
 * Master Computer: WILDFIRE is run by one mega-computer.
 * Mundane Dogmatic: All versions although the 2008 mini-series is kind of pushing it.
 * Nuke'Em:
 * The Plague: The Andromeda strain itself.
 * Self-Destruct Mechanism: The Wildfire Lab was constructed on top of a nuclear warhead, which is designed to be activated (without human intervention) if any bugs escape. You know there's going to be a thrilling last-minute deactivation scene at some point.
 * Spy Speak: In the 1971 movie, Dr. Charles Dutton uses Variant #3 to enter Project Wildfire:
 * Self-Destruct Mechanism: The Wildfire Lab was constructed on top of a nuclear warhead, which is designed to be activated (without human intervention) if any bugs escape. You know there's going to be a thrilling last-minute deactivation scene at some point.
 * Spy Speak: In the 1971 movie, Dr. Charles Dutton uses Variant #3 to enter Project Wildfire:
 * Spy Speak: In the 1971 movie, Dr. Charles Dutton uses Variant #3 to enter Project Wildfire:


 * Time Bomb: The nuclear Self-Destruct Mechanism.
 * Trapped in Containment: Much the story is centered on this type of set-up. Near the end, one of the scientists is stuck within the contaminated area due to a failure of the lab's airtight seal.
 * The Worm Guy: Most of the researchers attached to Wildfire.