Annihilation Earth

Annihilation Earth is a 2009 made-for-tv science fiction movie starring Luke Goss, Marina Sirtis and Colin Salmon. It follows the attempts by an energy scientist to determine the causes of a deadly explosion at a particle collider and mitigate its aftereffects. It premiered on December 12th, 2009.

The film's original working title was Doomsday.

Plot

The film opens as a man and his team of scientists wander through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. As the team leader calls for help on a remote device, they come upon the ruins of a city.

Forty-eight hours earlier, David Wyndham (Luke Goss), the scientist seen leading the team, is being informed by his superior from the UN, Paxton (Marina Sirtis) of a security breach involving another scientist on their project, David's friend and colleague Raja. An unauthorized access of the project's mainframe was made the previous night using Raja's access codes, and as a precaution he has been removed from the project; however, David suspects a more sinister motive.

Paxton briefs a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland AbOUT their project, codenamed "EVE," which has provided most of Europe's energy for the past ten years beginning in 2010. The project utilizes three high-power particle colliders, one located in Geneva, one in Barcelona, Spain, and the third in Orleans, France. With the project's continuing success, Paxton expresses enthusiasm that the technology can soon be shared with the world. David, forced to go along with Paxton's claims at the briefing, confronts her afterward about his suspicion that she has no intention of sharing the technology with the Middle East, which she verifies.

Outside the meeting hall David receives a mysterious phone call, then is approached by a strange reporter, whom he dismisses with a handshake. The reporter furtively removes David's fingerprint from his hand using a piece of tape and stores it in a case.

At this point in the film a countdown appears on the screen, presently reading "84 Hours to Extinction."

At his home, David receives a visit from Raja (Colin Salmon), whom has arrived at the same conclusion about Paxton's plans for the technology. Raja believes he is being scapegoated for the security breach at the Orleans reactor because he is the only Arab scientist with level five clearance on the project, but when David is not very receptive to his claims, he angrily leaves.

That night, the "reporter" that accosted David at the briefing dons a lab coat and fake ID badge to sneak into the Orleans facility. After using a recording of David saying his name (from the bizarre phone call) and the fingerprint to get into the main lab, he begins entering codes into the system's computer. When he is accosted by another employee he uses a pre-loaded, silent dart gun to kill the man. A short time later, after The Mysterious Man has gotten far away from the facility with his men, it explodes catastrophically, destroying much of France, including Paris.

As he tries to sort out what exactly happened in Orleans the next day, David meets with Raja again. Raja reveals he has been named the top suspect in the attack and is on the run from French police. Unbeknown to him, he is also under watch from Paxton's men, which David learns later from Paxton herself. She shows him photos of Raja apparently meeting with the man, who is a known [...] named Aziz Khaled. Though stunned by this revelation, David insists that Paxton let him go out to ground zero with his team to investigate the explosion before judgments are made.

Later that night, Raja, being pursued by both Paxton's men and the French police, attempts to board a train before being chased and cornered in an underground station. A sudden earthquake allows him to escape. Paxton, watching in her office, nearly cries when the worst hit area by the earthquake is the Middle East, specifically Bahrain, with its famous towers collapsing. The next day, Raja places a phone call to David near the France-Spain border, revealing that because the earthquake happened one day after the blast and hit where the EVE grid was absent the hardest, some external force must be acting on the tectonic plates. He deduces that someone has discovered the Doomsday Equation, which David explains to Paxton as a set of codes for each collider that, if deliberately entered, could destroy the world.

David and his team travel to Orleans via helicopter but the craft crashes, [...] the pilot and setting up the movie's opening scene. They scan the area and find evidence that a magnetic field has formed over ground zero, confirming Raja's suspicions. Meanwhile, Raja's electric car runs out of power at the border of France and Spain, leaving him helpless, and a few hours later he is abducted by Khaled and his men. David, meanwhile, attempts to escape France with his team in a Humvee sent to rescue them (only traditional gasoline-powered cars will work, as the electromagnetic pulse in the area disables electronics) only to be caught in a sudden meteor shower. To his horror the "meteors" are actually falling satellites, and his team barely escapes with only one casualty.

Khaled takes Raja to the Barcelona facility. After executing all the workers and ordering his sidekicks to get as far away as possible before the blast, he attempts to force Raja to give him the Doomsday Equation for Barcelona; Raja steadfastly refuses. David, meanwhile, after returning to Geneva, is kidnapped by Paxton's henchmen and taken to the facility in that city, where his family has already arrived. He has concluded that the surviving colliders are feeding the magnetic field, and asks Paxton to order a full system shutdown.

After having enough of Raja's firm resistance to his persuasion, Khaled shoots him in the kneecap, but does not see him readying a pen to use as a weapon. Raja stabs Khaled in the leg, stunning him, then shoves him into the reactor's shaft to kill him. He then returns to the computer and opens an instant message to Geneva, revealing to David that his suspicions about the Doomsday Equation were right - and that the only way to save the world is to increase the system's energy output and choke the field out of existence, otherwise it will expand and create a black hole. Still believing Raja to be a [...], Paxton orders the connection cut, and a tearful David finally carries out the system shutdown.

The system informs David that the full shutdown will take twenty seconds. He rises from his chair and walks with his family to the window overlooking the reactor, and assures his son that things will be okay now that he's fixed the problem.

Twenty seconds later, the Geneva facility melts down in an explosion exponentially larger than the Orleans disaster. A view from outer space shows shock waves from the blast radiating throughout the Earth's surface, and a massive fissure forming in Europe. Finally, the Earth's core is breached, and the planet explodes violently.

The film concludes with a shot of the bits of what was once Earth floating through space, followed by a blank screen reading simply, Extinction.

Setting

Annihilation Earth takes place in Europe in the year 2020. It explores themes of [...] and racism in an era where global communication and trust are paramount. The consequences of racist actions are reflected in the ending, where Paxton's racist distrust of the Arab Raja results in his suggestions being ignored, therefore causing the end of the world.

Errors and Plot Holes

The film contains many plot holes and errors. Among them:

• Particle colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider, do not provide energy as depicted in the film. They merely smash particles together at high speeds, experiments which may one day lead to new energy sources. The "colliders" in the film are more akin to nuclear reactors, which is supported by the presence of mushroom clouds when they explode.
• The cause of the earthquake that destroys the Bahrain Towers is never fully explained.
• Likewise, Raja's apparent meeting with Khaled is not explained, as when he is kidnapped by the terrorists later in the film, he speaks as if he has never met Khaled.
• In one scene, Paxton tells an aide, "Get me the President." Though the events in the film happen in Europe, presumably meaning she'd be contacting the President of the European Union, the film was produced before that office existed, meaning that the filmmakers were guessing at its existence. No aid from any "President" ever appears in the film.
• Raja consistently warns of a black hole forming if the magnetic field is not eradicated, but the world is destroyed by an explosion in the ending instead.

Cast

• Luke Goss ... David Wyndham
• Marina Sirtis ... Paxton
• Colin Salmon ... Raja
• Velislav Pavlov ... Aziz Khaled