3022

I love it when Future Space People smoke plain old cigarettes. It may not be scientifically sound, but it makes a heck of a lot of sense. Cigarettes are not just cigarettes; they symbolize the protagonists’ ennui. Smoking is not just killing yourself; it’s killing time. It’s a habit you pick up for lack of something better to do. There must be long, uneventful stretches aboard the spaceship in 3022, just like there were in the Nostromo (that is, before the characters get to the point where they’d rather be bored than dead). The Pangea space station refuels spacecraft bound for Earth's first space colony, Europa One. Rotating crews from different countries maintain Pangea in 10-year shifts. Four American astronauts arrive to begin their term. They are Captain John Laine (Omar Epps), Engineer Jackie Miller (Kate Walsh), Dr. Richard Valin (Angus Macfadyen), and Lisa Brown (Miranda Cosgrove). Jackie and Lisa must really like space, if they’re willing to leave to an infant daughter on Earth and spend the better part of their twenties, respectively, on a space station. They certainly have no complaints for the first two years. By the third year, however, tedium begins to set in, which may partly explain John and Jackie's romantic relationship; sex being a reasonable substitute for tobacco. The first lustrum is wordlessly and effectively summed up in the opening montage, a series of vignettes accompanied by a piano and strings. The plot proper is set in motion when Richard is forced to diagnose John, who suffers from, among other things, night terrors, with space madness (or words to that effect). John is not mentally capable of continuing to captain the mission, which for some reason means that the rest of the crew must also leave their posts, which in turn makes Jackie fear for the future of their careers. These concerns will soon become irrelevant when they discover an asteroid field where the late, great planet Earth used to be. Epps, Walsh, and Macfadyen do a good job forging their own unique paths to madness. As for tasty little Cosgrove, she doesn't have time to do much more than use language that will shock iCarly fans. And then there’s the special effects, which run the gamut from a distractingly phony fire to exterior (so to speak) shots reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. 3022 is a much more modest effort, but a worthy one.