I have to apologize. I’m breaking my rules for “Cool Visions of the Future” with this article. Pandorum takes place in a future where Earth is destroyed. This version of the future doesn’t even take place on Earth but on the spaceship Elysium. I do have good reason for breaking my rules trust me. Although this is a sci-fi horror borrowing heavily from movies like Alien, Pandorum has many elements of hard science fiction, and explores the potential of space travel.
Corporal Bower wakes up from suspended animation to an abandon ship. A side affect of suspended animation, is amnesia. After reviving his superior officer Lieutenant Payton the duo realize something is very wrong. The previous flight crew should have been there to wake them, and inform them of the situation. Power is failing and morlock creatures lurk through the ship hunting humans. Fighting off space madness, mutant cannibals, ship malfunctions, the survivors need to figure out what went wrong on the ship before it’s too late.
Travel
Other sci-fi space travel movies employ warp drive, faster than light jumps, or folding space. These fictional methods of transit are based in some theory but are mostly fantasy. The Elysium is a space age Noah’s arc. It’s mission is to settle and terraform an Earth like planet called Tanis. It doesn’t have, FTL drives or a warp core, just regular engines. To compensate for the time it would take to travel most passengers on the ship are in sleeper pods. There are several flight crews to pilot and maintain the ship. Each crew remains active while the others sleep. In theory everyone will arrive on the planet by dividing the long haul divided up.
Space Madness
Corporal Bower worries that he is suffering for pandorum (hence the title of the film). Pandorum is a psychological condition which causes paranoia, hallucinations, and homicidal tendencies. The film states that the stress of space travel causes some people to go mad and loose touch with reality. Imagine being locked in confinement with the same people, the same food, and repeating the same tasks for years at time. Combine that with the stress of being responsible for the the lives of everyone around you, and its not a stretch of the imagination to think it could make someone snap. Scientist view this as a major threat to long term space travel. If personalities clash, someone loses it, or cabin fever sets in, the results could be disastrous. The Elysium is in bad shape because one of the original flight crew suffers from pandorum and subsequently kills his superiors. With control of the ship he develops a god complex and periodically releases sleepers to torture and manipulate them. When he is bored with them he banishes them to the cargo hold.
Terraforming and Colonization
We’ve spent millions of years evolving to the environment around us. There are very narrow boundaries for heat, pressure, gravitation, and chemical exposure we Earthlings like. Colonizing a planet is very different than colonizing a different part of the world. Pandorum discusses the astronomical odds of finding a habitable world. Tanis is Earth like, but still alien. Colonists have to bring with them an abundance of plants and animals to insert into the environment. They need enough of each species, including people, to create a stable gene pool. But terraforming the planet is only half the battle. People will need to be adapted. A recent article discussed how space travelers man need to be engineered to survive on others world. Gene therapy would alter the environmental extremes we are capable of surviving. In Pandorum, sleepers are given a chemical injection that “speeds up evolution”. Their offspring will adapt to an environment quicker than normal. The morlock mutants terrorizing the ship, are actually descendants of the people banished to the cargo hold. They adapt to the ship instead of Tanis. Forced to become cannibals they’ve evolved (or devolved) into monsters.
Survival of Humanity
Earth is gone. Elysium is the only chance at survival that any life has to continue. No definitive reason is given for the destruction of Earth, other than the characters theorizing that they could be a meteor, a plague, a natural disaster, or war. Through history there have been at least five extinction events wiping out most life on the planet, with several other smaller level extinctions. Not only do we have to worry about natural disasters, but man made disasters such as nuclear war could render the planet uninhabitable. Prominent scientists such as Stephen Hawking has stated that space travel and seeding other environments is one of the only ways to ensure the continuity of humanity.
So I may have broken the rules but Pandorum is still a good example of the possibilities and dangers involved in the future of space travel.