To be fair for a short while I was quite taken with the sheer atmosphere of Sunshine. The ship, the location, the effects. Breathtaking.<br /><br />Still, it didn't take long for them to mess it up. Here they go again... The wheels started to fall off about the time the crew start having a brawl. I'm thinking, maybe the selection process should have focused a bit more on the maturity of the people saving the human race? Responsibility and all that.<br /><br />The story continues and we have a major catastrophe and the shield is damaged as a result of a human memory malfunction. Two observations:<br /><br />1. We have an intelligent (?) computer that will override their vital mission to fix the shield in a vital, life threatening way but it wouldn't bl**dy well make the one point something angle correction to the shield when they changed course in the first place! (Which thus also endangered the mission) Since when do we let computers make judgment calls? Why didn't they again use their codes to override the computer for the mere 30 seconds or so it would take to save the Captains life?<br /><br />2. There was a huge, inconvenient fire in the oxygen producing compartment. Now the computer tells the crew many useful things but did it mention there is a fire? Nope. Was there an effective way to deal with this risk? Again no. Unless you consider burning the oxygen you need to survive effective..... I might mention here that the implication is that the trees have created so much pure oxygen that the fire is particularly violent. Um, surely you have been feeding the trees CO2 or basically the same air everyone is breathing?<br /><br />Moving on...<br /><br />We have the space jump from the Icarus 1. Some guy, we really don't care who, ends up in the absolute cold of space behind the shield. Absolute cold of space being -273 degrees Kelvin we're told, so pretty rapidly he freezes. Now that's tough I guess but it's even worse, it's just wrong.<br /><br />If we assume there is no radiant heat coming from the shield itself here's the story. Space is a vacuum, a vacuum is nothing, so it is neither hot or cold. If, there is no radiant heat source present, then an object will radiate it's heat without gaining any in return until it's all gone. This occurs at absolute zero which is -273 degrees Kelvin. Good so far.<br /><br />The reason freezing instantly is rubbish is because the writers haven't realized that there is no heat loss by conduction (as in air) but only by radiation. This can be a very slow process. Which is why we put hot drinks in a vacuum flask to keep it hot, a vacuum is the best insulator. Basically freezing would be the least of your worries in space without a suit.<br /><br />A few more minor points too sharp to swallow<br /><br />- The shield has lots of moving parts, that don't appear to be useful... - If the plan all along was for the shield-bomb unit to fly into the heart of the Sun, what was going to protect the spacecraft on the return journey? What was going to protect the bomb when it entered the Sun and the heat could come from behind? - Why can you simply raise the, absolutely vital, mainframe computer out of it's coolant without any safety devices or alarms going off? (To override a mission saving action by the computer you need two people and security codes...) Once you raise it, although it turns off, in a while it will destroy itself, somehow. To service it the best way is to dive into freezing water and use a....spanner. The system that raises and lowers it has enough grunt to trap and maim a human being. - When the computer goes off the lights go out, there are no emergency lights... - You can ask the computer to allow so much heat and light in that it will kill you. What the...