Recent viewings

The Cold Equations (1996). This television adaptation of Tom Godwin's well-known and controversial short story is competently produced on a low budget. Unfortunately, the scriptwriter has overlaid Godwin's starkly simple plot with a framing story about a court-martial, a pennypinching corporate government, and labor issues. This has the unfortunate effect of reducing Godwin's short story, which in its original form is as terse and compact as a diamond, into a kind of extended flashback sequence supporting the scriptwriter's story.

The problem is understandable. The short story, strictly adapted, would barely stretch to make an hour-long television show. In fact, IMDB and Wikipedia indicate that the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone did just that. Perhaps the makers of this extended version would have been well advised to let the Twilight Zone version of the story be the final and definitive audio-visual adaptation. Unfortunately, neither Netflix nor any local library deign to acknowledge the third season of the 1985-1988 revival of The Twilight Zone, so the question will remain forever a mystery to me.