She has had a 48 hour experience, yet she is told that there was some terrible malfunction and her space capsule in fact just fell through the centrifuge like space craft, taking barely a few seconds. The female scientist, astronaut returns abruptly to earth. The alien, in the form of her deceased father meets with her and tells her about the beauty of the universe. She travels through wormholes in this craft and meets a representative of this alien species. Our female scientist is the Astronaut selected. The aliens send blueprints for the manufacture of a spacecraft to bring a human to them. Well naturally, “Contact” is made with earthlings by highly intelligent life forms from a far distant part of the galaxy. This difference between the two leads to their break-up. The subplot is a romance between her (a staunch empirical scientist who requires extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims- and takes nothing on faith), and a young theologian who develops faith in God because of an inexplicable personal revelatory experience.

She and her team of scientists use radiofrequency satellite telescopes listening for sounds of life from the far reaches of the universe. On the surface, the film was about a young woman scientist’s often challenging search for extraterrestrial life in our vast universe. I had seen it once or twice in the past, and was just amazed that Carl Sagan had written the film. This weekend, I awoke quite early on a Saturday morning, perhaps 6 am, and turned on the television to find that the film “Contact” (1997) was just about to start.

Contact sagan