Here’s my revision of the script
We rewrite the Bruce Dern Character of Freeman Lowell (rename the character, Freda Lowell) as a woman. She is a Botanical Geneticist, and she is assigned to the crew of a freighter (one of many) in deep orbit near Saturn.
The freighters were pressed into service to support Bio Domes at the onset of a biological disaster affecting most of Central and South America. The freighters have been in service for 50 years, and Freda has just arrived on the Valley Forge to relieve a crewmember (Nigel Howard)who has finally found a way to reverse the damage on Earth, and must be sent back to support the efforts to re grow the habitats of Earth that were damaged.
She learns about the monotony of life on the Valley Forge, and discovers the amazing differences that have been created by the botanist in space. She befriends three service drones with advanced AI, and begins to call them, Rock, Paper, and Scissors (after the variations of the drone’s unique abilities).
The crew of the Valley Forge reveals that strange signals have been received by deep space probes in orbit near Neptune.
One by one the rest of the Crew of the Valley Forge is relieved, but Freda was the last Human scientist to be sent to the Valley Forge, new replacements for the crew are lower functioning Drones with poor AI (these drones begin to have conflicts with R, P, and S). Freda receives a distress call from the Berkshire, but cannot do anything to help them, and she believes the remaining freighters have been destroyed.
Eventually Freda learns that the Earth’s Governments have determined (due to the deliberate misinformation given to them by Nigel) that the Bio Domes must be destroyed, because they contain specimens that if returned to Earth will upset the delicate balance required to re grow the Earth’s Habitats (but in truth, Nigel wants to reproduce his discoveries on Earth, and take credit, solely, for their creation, thus making himself a billionaire). Freda Discovers the plot when she learns that all of the other crew members who were relieved have disappeared and that no official order to relieve them was ever given, and then the low functioning Drones begin to work to destroy the Valley Forge itself (not just the Bio Domes) in order to cover up Nigel’s crimes.
Freda Reprograms the three service Drones to be able to defeat the other Drones (Paper is destroyed while fending off the bad drones while Rock and Scissors help a wounded Freda escape a fire in the main engine room).
It becomes clear to Freda that the mysterious signals from deep space are from an Alien Race, desperately asking for assistance in repairing their crippled craft. With the Valley Forge now drifting closer to Saturn’s rings, Freda realizes that she has only one chance to survive and expose Nigel. She bids a tearful farewell to Rock, who she sets drifting back toward Earth with the information about Nigel’s treachery, while she and Scissors board a second dome, with the most unusual of the newly created life forms, and uses the explosion of the Valley Forge as it comes into contact with the Rings of Saturn to propel the dome she is in toward the mysterious signals.
The story ends with an unconscious Freda being treated by an Alien race that has managed to repair their ship using the parts of the crippled Dome, and by using Scissors as a functioning Navigational Computer, the Aliens show Freda that they are now in route to Earth, with the remains of the Dome in tow, and as they approach she receives word that Nigel’s crimes were exposed upon discovery of the Dome she sent, and the remaining freighters are found to be in hiding, their crews managing to fight off the evil drones, and their bio habitats are shown to be easily modified for to support life for the Aliens who turn out to be refugees from an intergalactic catastrophe that occurred many hundreds of light years away.
