On TV

A For Andromeda (BBC4)

When 26-year-old Zahra Aboutalib was rushed to hospital with excruciating labour pains, doctors ordered a Caesarean. But the Moroccan woman refused the operation and returned to her village. After a few days the pain stopped and the baby stopped moving.

She went along with the local myth of a "sleeping baby", believing that one day her baby would wake up. Most would have dismissed this idea - until this Extraordinary People documentary came along. At the age of 75, Zahra finally had her baby, ironically by Caesarean, the procedure she'd rejected nearly half a century previously.

Doctors were equally surprised when they gave this grandmother, who adopted three children after her early experiences, a scan and found a baby inside her and not the ovarian tumour they were expecting.

The foetus they removed from its tomb was completely calcified - one of only 300 stone babies recorded in medical history. It weighed seven pounds, measured 17ins and looked like it was made of stone.

This story was extraordinary by any measure. The foetus was an ectopic abdominal pregnancy in which the baby developed and attached itself to the mother's vital organs before dying.

Just as remarkable was the story of Jane Ingram, who underwent never-before-performed surgery with a 60 million-to-one chance of all three of her triplets surviving. Two had developed within the womb, one in her stomach.

She beat the odds and is now the mother of three healthy six-year-olds.

In fiction, birth is just as complicated but the outcome rarely happy, especially in science fiction like A For Andromeda.

This was a remake of the 1960s TV classic that introduced Julie Christie to audiences. They should have left it alone as this new obviously low budget version lacked both conviction and excitement.

Boffins picked up signals from outer space and used the information to build a super-computer which looked like a dead female scientist. They were warned about playing God and even admitted: "We have no idea what we've created".

It was no good saying: "You can always switch it off if it gets out of control". That might work with a toaster or fire or an over-zealous sex aid but not with an alien computer presenting itself as the answer to all the world's problems.

There was much talk of chromosonal structure and DNA but with the Ministry of Defence taking over, you knew that the future of mankind was doomed.

Some did worry about the threat to the public from the machine, pointing out that "you can only open Pandora's box, you can never close it".

But Dr Jane Asher thought it worth the risk because it could bring advances in medical technology that could save millions of lives.

"Think of it as a curious kind of foetus," she added. Maybe, but not half as curious as Zahra's in Extraordinary People.