IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 22 minutes of run time, rated 5.7 by 470 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
Verdict: Bland leading the bland.
The chic fashions of Eastern Europe1972 abound, whence space flight is routine as far out as the Third Ring. (I took that to be a reference to Asteroids, but I’ll never know.) Then a number of space ships bound for a space station disappear. (The actors say ‘acht‘ but the subtitles say ‘ten.’) No distress calls, no nothing. Well, a lot of nothing. Then the space station itself goes dark.
Back on Earth high command ponders in a plenary session where Asians and Africans are conspicuously numbered among the socialist siblings. On the one side is Belle who wants to stop all flights and send a rescue mission. On the other is Tubby who prefers to continue as usual and wait and see. She prevails. Stress that: the head of operations is a woman and in 1972 she prevails against a male colleague.
The rescue mission sets off with Belle on board. By luck en route they encounter one the missing ships and try to board it, but it rockets off; apparently it is not a ghost ship. They continue on to the vast space station, part refinery, part parking garage, part YM/WSA (Young Men’s/Women’s Socialist Association), part science lab. It is about the size of the IKEA store in Tempe, vast and largely uncharted.
They find only starving laboratory animals, but then half of the station is sealed off, that is, the parking garage. Belle and the rescue crew show no interest in what is behind that green door.
There occurs a comic interlude with a tin man that is completely superfluous and annoying.
There has been a sidebar with a bored space miner on asteroid who misses Belle. (Who wouldn’t.). Many flashback to the good old days on Earth. Many. Too many.
Among the flash backs are some with Tubby who muses about Eolomena, which is the name acolytes have given to a point of light that appears every twenty-four years in the starry night sky. Is it a signal? He wishfully thinks so for no discernible reason. Why that name and rather than, say, Light in Sky was not explained within my attention span.
Now back to the space station for the denouement replete with SPOILERS. Tubby has by unknown means convinced the ten missing space ship crews and all the space station personnel to take one-way tickets to Eolomea. They have been sanding the wheels on their space ship wagons in the garage getting ready to blast off, while their ostensible rescuers wander about in Space Station IKEA. When the bored miner is offered a one-way ticket, he forsakes Belle and goes along. (‘What an idijit,’ cried the fraternity brothers! ). So the numerous, lengthy flashbacks to their courtship come to naught. End.
It is mercifully free of any AgitProp, beyond that implied by the composition of the plenary session where the Third World members sit quietly waiting for the assistant director’s cue to vote for Belle.
Points of interest…are two. In 1972 it portrays two things unusual for the time. First and foremost is that Belle is in charge and stays that way. There are no demeaning asides from the chaps as there were in innumerable 1972 films. Nor is she riven by self doubts – scientist versus woman – that mar so much Hollywood and Pinewood tosh from the day. Full Ost Marks for that.
Second, asteroid mining is dreary, dull, and boring blue collar work. There is no glamour in space. When Ridley Scott made space flight industrial in Alien (1979) he hailed himself a genius, but it was old news.
But overall, there is zero tension in Eolomea. There are no equipment failures, but then there were probably no low-bid contractors in the script, to generate some tension. Meteors seem to have taken the day off because there are none of them either. The debate between Belle and Tubby is oh-hum. That Tubby has suborned all those people into a one-way mission is taken as Red without explanation. Bland is the word.