Space Station Alpha
 

Space Station Alpha
by Tom Saville

Hey, another 3dmmer with an R2-D2 avatar. Put 'er there! * Remembers that Saville is retired * Darn.

I remember seeing this one when it came first came out on Dragon Films. Very nice.

Re-released as part of the 3DMM Preservation Project.

This is a really sharp film, every time I see it I'm newly impressed by how well directed and edited it is. It's so slick, it sort of becomes invisible. Tom had an amazing talent for cinematography (once you get past the squashed ships, anyway).

The ending raises a few thematic questions it doesn't seem prepared to answer - are we now at war with the Dacturi? Is this a rogue faction attacking us? Why did they help us in the first place? I always thought the mission was about discovering what happened and maybe preventing a war, but watching it again, it seems like they're just trying to rescue people aboard the station. They don't ask the one survivor what happened.

In my review, I thought the plot was about a group of people who go against the military on a leap of faith to prevent the war, then discover that the military was right, there's nothing else going on here. That was a bleak irony I kinda liked. But it seems like it's just a rescue mission. It's slickly done, but I'm not sure what it all means. Ah well, I still enjoyed it.

Also, going back through the archive, it's funny how many people relied on sound effects from FF Epic. I see it come up in the credits all the time.

Yeah. Without much of a back story it's difficult to figure out quite how it all turns out. I thought it would be a sort of race against time with the nuke, but like so many 3dmm movies, the last act gets rushed and squanders the build up.
Some weird sound gaps and inconsistencies, but otherwise well put together. Squashed ships remind me of a simpler time.

From what I remember, the editing/sound/music in this movie are the tightest I think I've ever seen in a 3DMM picture. It's probably the highest-quality sci-fi movie there is. Definitely need to watch this again when I get home.

I can't really think of a better 3dmm sci-fi then this.

I've never seen this before, but it was really well done. Great scenery, the plot was pretty cool, but I kinda got the feeling that it was made up as it went along. Major plot points occur without really letting us know the character's motives, and the tone of the beginning scenes tend to contradict the ending. I guess the twist is that there's no twist at all.

very enjoyable nonetheless

8.5/10

It's a lot quicker and the motives were more vague than I remembered them being. 'Slick' is definitely the right word for this, though. It feels like a real sci-fi movie condensed into a 3dmm film, for better or worse.