In the short story, as I recall (SPOILERS AHEAD)....
The pilot, despite trying everything, realizes he can't save his stowaway. She has time to send a message to her brother on the planet below, and then sacrifices herself by going out the airlock. The pilot is shaken but continues with his mission.
How's the movie end?
Same, except he also ditches the cargo (with reasonable justification) as part of the unsuccessful attempt to save her. And there's a surrounding pseudo-legal framework which continues a year later -- sort of a review board into the entire event. Works better on film than it sounds here.
share"Works better on film than it sounds here."
Respectfully disagree. They wanted so very much to come up with a backstory to explain how such a terrible thing could happen, and to make the female lead a "real" character... but they made bad decisions on both counts.
The essential point of the story is that it does not matter how innocent, nice or well-intentioned you are; the laws of nature will not be broken on your behalf. How much more awful to have the girl* go meekly to her death, knowing that despite the best wishes of a decent man, she had put herself into a situation where nothing could be done to save her?
Instead we get a "spunky" heroine who engages in a STUPID physical fight with the only person who can fly the boat, and a fascist corporation to distract the audience into futile outrage. The author deserved better.
*Careful word choice -- in the original she was more child than woman.
I didn't see the end of the movie, so why didn't the abscence of the cargo allow her to stay on board (well, I know why, because then they would have completely changed the story, but what was the excuse)?
"--in the original she was more child than woman."
Maybe they made her character that way in the movie because they were stupid enough to hire an adult to play a teenager who looked more like a child. I don't know why they couldn't just hire someone around 17. If they hired someone who was the exact age, they would've looked younger on film anyway.
For those who haven't seen it or did not get to finish it, it is now available on Joost on the Alliance Atlantis channel. While not award winning, it was worth the couple of hours of sleep I lost after I got interested.
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I got the movie off Amazon really cheap.
shareYou can buy the movie on DVD
Also, Poppy Montgomery was about 20 years old when the film was produced,
I think she can pass for someone who was 17
I also thought the twist involving the cargo was a good way to make this version of the story different than the orginal
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