2036: Unknown Origin -- a review

Katee Sackhoff is a goddess.

There, I’ve said it. I freely admit to being a huge fan of this actress, whom I first came across in the Battlestar Galactica reboot that aired on the Sy-Fy Channel (back when it was more appropriately known as the Sci-Fi Channel). Her performance as a gender-changed Starbuck was superb; she brought such humanity and depth to a character that could very easily have been very one-note. After Battlestar Galactica ended, I followed Sackhoff’s career, watching her go on to play deputy sheriff Victoria ‘Vic’ Moretti on the enjoyable Longmire, and as the rascally Amunet Black on the most recent season of The Flash.

And that was why I happily settled down to watch Katee in the recently released 2036: Origin Unknown. A science fiction opus, 2036: Origin Unknown deals with a manned mission to Mars that goes horribly wrong. But this isn’t the mission that Katee’s character is on; instead, her father was aboard the doomed ship that crashed without warning, with the cause of its destruction remaining a mystery. Sackhoff’s character, Mackenzie “Mack” Wilson, is in charge of the follow up mission to Mars, and this one also develops problems right out of the gate.

Sackhoff gives it her all, doing a good job at playing a woman who’s under a great deal of pressure to find out what happened to her father, as well as the rest of the doomed Mars expedition, while wild and weird stuff starts happening around her, including a mouthy robot that must be a charter member of the HAL 9000 fan club. But the real problem here is the production values, or the lack thereof. 2036: Origin Unknown looks very cheap, with the entire movie taking place in one setting: the mission control room on Earth.

If you’ve seen footage of the real mission control from actual space missions, you know it’s a pretty crowded, busy place. But thanks to the extremely low budget of 2036: OU, Sackhoff holds court all by herself in a small room with an obnoxious robot making trouble for her. Events taking place outside the control room are handled with really cheap-looking CGI effects. And while the script tries to be big-minded, ultimately tackling grand science fiction themes that might make Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke proud, it all falls short because 2036 just mishandles these story elements very badly.

But despite the fact that her latest film is a let down, I still admire Katee Sackhoff as an actress. She’s already moved onto her next project, an SF TV series for Netflix called Another Life that definitely sounds more promising (at least with Netflix involved they’ll have a decent budget). I’m looking forward to it—but then, I’m looking forward to anything that Katee does, anyway. --SF

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