‘Medusa’s Child’: Bomb’s Away on a Jet

“Vivian, listen to me: He’s insane,” an anguished character says of the evil genius who sets the plot of “Medusa’s Child” in motion. “No, he’s brilliant. Don’t confuse the two,” the other replies.

The same debate might be held over the ABC execs responsible for unleashing this two-night, four-hour movie for the November ratings sweeps. It’s based on a novel by the same author who wrote “Pandora’s Clock,” which became rival NBC’s highest-rated November miniseries in five years when it aired last fall. But will “Medusa’s” high-tech mumbo-jumbo and elaborate revenge plot capture the viewing public’s imagination in the same way? Or will it turn out to be as big a bomb as the thermonuclear device that drives its story?

Given the preposterousness of this airborne tale--which is riddled with plot holes big enough to fly a 737 through--one might assume the latter. But considering the appetite for movies such as “Speed,” “Air Force One” and any of the half-dozen other shows that this suspense movie resembles, perhaps not.

Like “Pandora’s Clock,” “Medusa’s Child” involves a plane that can’t land because of a suspected agent of mass death aboard. Instead of the virus in last year’s John J. Nance adaptation, however, it’s a bomb that could vaporize whatever’s within a 50-mile radius and set off an electromagnetic pulse that would melt everything with a computer chip in it. That means America, and possibly much more of the world, would be deprived of its ability to compute, communicate, transmit electricity or use any electronic circuit. Or something like that.

The characters include a steel-nerved pilot and owner of the cargo plane the device is aboard (Vincent Spano); the earnest ex-wife of the bomb’s developer, who has been duped into accompanying it to the Pentagon (former “NYPD Blue” regular Gail O’Grady); and the evil mastermind (John Glover), who’s determined to punish the government that once abandoned his project at a critical stage, as well as the wife who left him.

As a hurricane rages on the ground and government branches lock horns in a senseless turf war, the plane is kept in the air with the bomb--which looks like a giant, metallic acorn squash--counting down and the mad genius’ videotaped face taunting from the device’s built-in computer screen.

Ellen Weston’s adaptation, directed by Larry Shaw, maintains a fairly steady level of tension, and the actors--notably the heroic Spano--acquit themselves as admirably as possible. But what to make of the story, riddled with its warnings about our overdependence on computer technology? Best to just turn off your brain before it melts down trying to make sense of it all.

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* “Medusa’s Child” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday and Thursday on ABC (Channel 7). The network has rated Part 1 TV-PG-SVL and Part 2 TV-PG-VL (may be unsuitable for younger children because of sex, violence and language content).