The world overpopulates and sends a ship of thousands of people to a distant planet to start over. But in the midst of the hyperspace sleep, some of them come to and realize that there are creatures hunting and killing survivors around the huge space ship. Turns out these creatures are some of the original passengers, who were accidentally mutated by being fed strange nuclear chemicals and turned them into predator monsters. Pandorum refers to the psychological state of coming out of hypersleep and becoming so disoriented that you go crazy and do things like killing everyone on board by jettisoning their pods into space. Of course, this is what happens to the captain who argues with the hero at the end about destroying lives on board. The captain who becomes a villain in his pandorum state says, “It’s easy when you free yourself from the chains of morality.” The theme of survival versus sacrifice and these mutated creatures are pure predators and the humans must save the rest of the hypersleep passengers on the ship by resetting the nuclear reactor on the ship. The story seems to be comparing pure survival and predatory nature with a moral approach to being human.
