Deus

A mysterious black sphere is discovered in the orbit of Mars. The Achilles is sent to investigate. After the bedraggled six-person crew wake from eight months hibernation, the Sphere is transmitting a single word in every Earth language ever known - Deus.

Well I suppose I ought to have read the cast list before shelling out £7.50 to watch this in a cinema. Had I done so, I would have probably been less surprised at just how poor this is. The is a sort of hybrid of "Star Trek V" (1989) with bits of "Stargate SG-1" thrown in too. The whole premiss centres upon a crew of astronauts who are sent to investigate a mysterious sphere orbiting the over-populated Earth and pinging out a coded message that suggests it might actually be God! Captained by MTVs very own Richard Blackwood, it is pretty clear that something nefarious is afoot. To solve that problem, we turn to Claudia Black "Karla" and her muscle-mate "Ulph" (David O'Hara) who are sent to investigate and, of course, it all goes a bit pear-shaped. Hovering above their investigation is their gazillionaire boss "Vance" (Phil Davis in a particularly scruffy -looking flannel/ill-fitting blazer combo) who adds precisely no menace to the proceedings at all. I never quite forgave Black for, in my view, totally trashing what had hitherto been an entertaining sci-fi series in "SG-1", she is a wooden and unremarkable actress who lives up to that description here. Admittedly, the dialogue is just as wooden and O'Hara only has the one gear which does all it needs to, but hardly challenges anyone. The plot is thin and the characterisations left largely on the page (or postcard) as the story lumbers on. The visual effects are easily the best thing about this otherwise derivative television movie that will be remembered next week by nobody.

Of all the movies I've seen in relation to the Earth being overpopulated and something needed to be done to cull the number of humans, this is one of the best ones (a much simpler plot than Thanos' master plan though). As someone that believes that the Earth IS overpopulated... I'm usually on the side of the villain. But Karla Grey convinced me otherwise this time. This was a great performance by Claudia Black. I enjoyed this movie way more than I was expecting, after reading the reviews on it. Definitely worth sacrificing ninety one minutes of our life on this one!!

Decent twisty sci-fi with some Elon convincing all the world to do something in the something or else the something will something. It's entertaining. I liked it.