Director – Ernie Barbarash, Teleplay – Alex Greenfield, Producers – Juan Mas & Tony Roman, Photography – Maximo Munzi, Music – Jonathan Snipes, Visual Effects Supervisor – Ryan T. Smolarek, Production Design – Scott H. Campbell. Production Company – RHI Entertainment/Alpine Medien/Larry Levinson Productions.
Cast
Marla Sokoloff (Imogene O’Neill), Billy Campbell (Detective Jack Crowe), Jason Alexander (Dr Nate Chetwyn), Stacy Keach (Sheriff Crowe), Michael Rooker (Calvin Stark), Ernie Hudson (General Brasser), Christopher Lloyd (Dr Daniel Lehman), Erin Cottrell (Dr Chelsea Hapscomb), Mimi Michael (Jenny Crowe), Carmen Argenziano (Commander Murphy), Kenneth Mitchell (Russ Hapscomb), Camille Chen (Lieutenant Quigley), Jimmy Jax Pinchak (Michael Hapscomb), Stephen Bridgewater (Dwight)
Plot
At an observatory in Baja, Mexico, Dr Daniel Lehman detects that the asteroid Kassandra has been knocked off its path by a comet and will strike the Earth within 48 hours. His warnings are dismissed by Dr Nate Chetwyn, his superior in the US, so Lehman decides to drive there with his assistant Imogene O’Neill and show Chetwyn his calculations in person. As they set out, harbingers (advanced debris from the meteor) start to impact. Chetwyn is called to the government-appointed Meteor Task Force headed by General Drasser. The military want to fire nuclear missiles to deflect the meteor but Chetwyn is aware they have outmoded codes and need the correct calculations from Lehman. However, Lehman is killed along the route from Baja and Imogene must proceed on her own. Her journey is filled with problems – she walks into the midst of a prisoner breakout at a Mexican police station and then must try to cross the US border after losing her passport. Meanwhile, police detective Jack Crowe’s partner Calvin Stark has snapped and turned murderous. He is determined to abduct Jack’s daughter Jenny and so Jack sets out through the increasing chaos to stop him. Jack’s father, a small town sheriff, is in charge of organising the townspeople into a survival shelter amid the panic and destruction. Elsewhere, Dr Chelsea Hapscomb is working at the hospital overwhelmed with the injured when her son Michael is brought in, only for them to be trapped as debris from the meteor strikes the hospital.
The disaster movie began in the 1970s – I have a detailed essay on the genre here at Disaster Movies. During the 1990s, this gravitated towards the mini-series and from the mid-2000s onwards there has been a prolific output of low-budget disaster movies usually for the Syfy Channel and featuring various increasingly contrived exotic menaces. Meteor was a TV Mini-Series from RH1 Entertainment, the successor to Hallmark Entertainment.
There have been quite a number of Disaster Movies devoted to Earth under threat by oncoming asteroids and meteors, beginning with the tv movie A Fire in the Sky (1978) and the big-budget Meteor (1979), no relation to this Meteor, back during the original disaster movie fad. Others have included Asteroid (tv mini-series, 1997), Doomsday Rock (tv movie, 1997), Armageddon (1998), Deep Impact (1998), Judgment Day (1999), Deadly Skies/Force of Impact (2006), Impact (tv mini-series, 2008), Meteor Apocalypse (2010), Meteor Storm (2010), Asteroid vs Earth (2014), Impact Earth (2015), Meteor Assault (2015), Asteroid-a-Geddon (2020), Greenland (2020), Meteor: First Impact (2022), Doomsday Meteor (2023) and the hilariously satiric Don’t Look Up (2021)
Canadian director Ernie Barbarash had emerged as a producer with American Psycho (2000) and its sequel, had produced and written Cube2: Hypercube (2002) and then made his writing/directing debut with Cube Zero (2004). Barbarash went on to direct other genre works such as Stir of Echoes: The Awakening (2007), They Wait (2007), Hardwired (2009), Ticking Clock (2010) and Abduction (2019), along with assorted action films, and romance and Christmas tv movies.
Billy Campbell and Marla Sokoloff(l to r from second left front) Camille Chen (seated), Jason Alexander and Ernie Hudson at the Meteor Task Force
Meteor feels about as generic as they come in terms of disaster movie plots. There’s the impending disaster; the lone individual (Marla Sokoloff)’s struggle to get through the chaos with vital information; the discredited scientist who is proven right with their dismissed theories; and the nail-biting to-the-second countdown to launch the strike that will defeat the oncoming menace.
In between this are the assorted human dramas – Marla Sokoloff’s journey across Mexico and wandering into a prison escape at a police station and being held up at border checkpoints because she has lost her passport; small-town sheriff Stacy Keach trying to keep the peace while dealing with a redneck troublemaker (Stephen Bridgewater); doctor Cottrell Erin trying to find her son after a cave-in from a direct strike on the hospital by advance debris; and Billy Campbell whose ex-partner Michael Rooker has gone psycho and chooses the occasion to decide to abduct Billy’s daughter. These plots transpire with a passable but unexceptional drama. None of the special effects of the meteor are particularly special.
The mini-series has a solid cast. Christopher Lloyd, despite third billing, is killed far too early into the show. Stacy Keach provides hard-headed solidity as an aging sheriff trying to keep order, while Ernie Hudson makes for a reliable general. Marla Sokoloff, someone I had only seen in lightweight roles before, mostly as the chirpy secretary on tv’s The Practice (1997-2004), holds her own well. Even Jason Alexander gives a solid performance as the scientist overseeing the astronomical side of things.
Full mini-series available beginning with Part 1 here
