I suspect these distinctly disillusioned effects go with endeavours to inject human interest into a basically mechanistic movie. Where the human interest leads is another question.

Filmed with the hype of the moon landing, Marooned is an average science fiction melodrama with very little science involved. Other than some nice cast, the film was fairly forgettable

It unfolds slowly, with realistic but often no cinematic purpose. As the last quarter of the film approaches, it regains its cinematic credentials and regains a tense, anxious air. It truly shines when understood in its timeframe, between the Moon Landing and Apollo 13 incident. It covers the same ground that many later Space Race dramas would cover, and often covers them with better humanity and thoroughness. An excellent window into this tense stage of space-travel... and if it fails occasionally as a film, it can be excused for what it lets us watch with a sense of authenticity and honesty.