Netflix’s Stowaway has garnered a wide viewership, but many audience members may not realize that the film draws direct inspiration from a 1954 science fiction story and re-ignites a long-held debate in the science fiction community. Stowaway follows four characters, portrayed by Anna Kendrick, Shamier Anderson, Toni Colette, and Daniel Dae Kim, making it an intimate and intense space drama. The film depicts a three-person space mission to Mars intending to investigate the possibility that the planet can sustain life. When the mission’s commander discovers an accidental stowaway trapped, unconscious, in the walls of the craft, the lives of everyone aboard are put in danger. When it comes time to make difficult decisions, the crew are at odds as they struggle to resolve a seemingly impossible problem.
Stowaway shares its skeletal premise with the hard science-fiction short story “The Cold Equations,” written by Tom Godwin and published in the August 1954 issue of Astounding Magazine. The story follows a pilot named Barton as he travels to deliver life-saving medical supplies to a human settlement on the planet Woden. He discovers a teenage girl named Marilyn stowed away onboard who hopes to visit her brother on Woden and incorrectly believes that the only penalty for sneaking aboard will be a monetary fine. Unfortunately, regulations dictate that all stowaways must be killed and ejected from the ship, and Barton eventually decides there is no choice but to kill Marilyn. She is framed as naive and foolish for her stereotypically feminine motivations: emotion, love, and family. The story is intended to represent the unforgiving nature of space and science but ultimately blames Marilyn for her own death, condemning her naivety and emotional nature as fatal flaws destined to be crushed by a cold, indifferent universe.
“The Cold Equations” initially received a great deal of praise, but later faced criticism both for its sexist undertones and for its shaky plausibility. Stowaway offers a less misogynistic and more scientifically realistic take on the story, which frames the loss of human life as a tragedy rather than an inevitability. Flipping the script of “The Cold Equations,” Stowaway features a male stowaway and a majority female crew. Mission doctor Zoe Levenson emerges as the story’s hero, and it is, in fact, her emotional nature that drives her to find a solution and eventually save the crew. Zoe's actions are in stark contrast to Barton's who, though he searches for a solution, ultimately concludes that there are no possible solutions that don't defy the laws of science and physics.
Stowaway also takes care to explain the ship’s lack of resources and the story’s high stakes in a more logical way than its short story counterpart. Rather than imply that the potential death of a crew member is some kind of scientific inevitability, the film implements plausible roadblocks and mishaps that serve both to ratchet up the tension and raise the stakes to the point of life or death. Though the ship was well-equipped for its three person crew, a critical life support system is damaged when Barnett discovers and rescues the titular stowaway, Michael. After this accident, the now four-person crew is left without enough oxygen to survive and seemingly no means to generate more.
After several attempts to remedy the problem, including the sacrifice of mission biologist David’s life’s work, Zoe and David attempt a space walk to siphon excess oxygen out of a remote part of the ship. Though the EVA is nearly a success, a last minute technical problem renders it a failure. Zoe is the only uninjured crew member capable of making a last ditch effort to save Michael and the remaining two crew members, which she does. While one could argue it’s problematic that a woman still dies in Stowaway, the film views her sacrifice not as an inevitable consequence of physics or the universe or a punishment for her femininity, but as a heartfelt and heroic decision. Stowaway provides a vital update of the problems set up in “The Cold Equations,” exploring the moral dilemmas that come with the danger of space travel, without punishing its female characters or blaming them for its tragic outcome.