Given that the 1961 original was lost in one of the great BBC tape purges of the 1970s (to make way for Match of the Day, no doubt), it’s unsurprising that I’ve never seen A for Andromeda. Rather more embarrassingly, I’ve not read any of Fred Hoyle’s novels.
and I watched the live remake of The Quatermass Experiment that BBC Four showed last year; I enjoyed it, but I didn’t think that the plot had dated especially well, and the pacing required of a live production with outside broadcasts felt artificial. I’ve just seen BBC Four’s remake of A for Andromeda, and I have to say that I was really rather impressed. Good dialogue, and an intelligent script – what more could one want? The closing quotation by Carl Sagan was a deft, if slightly in-jokey touch, considering the considerable conceptual debt that Contact (written 1985) owes to A for Andromeda. I shan’t deign to comment on the similarities between AFA and the execrable Species.
In other news, I’m back from Sofia, and will possibly write something about that tomorrow.