`10.5's whining characters will have you rooting for the quake.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Glenn Garvin

MIAMI _ Omigod, they were right _ cloning really "is" a dangerous Frankenstein technology that perverts science to monstrous ends. Just watch NBC's "10.5" tonight and see the lumbering goonlike movie that resulted when insane NBC producers were allowed to tinker with the genetic code of the movie "Earthquake."

Like its 1974 ancestor, "10.5" wraps a few delightfully nihilistic moments of special-effects destruction in hours of madly boring soap-opera drivel. "Un"like "Earthquake," which lasted a mere two hours (and included a weird gimmick called Sensurround that vibrated movie-theater seats, diverting the audience with fears of gastrointestinal catastrophe), "10.5" is a miniseries that drags on for two nights and will have laid waste to billions of innocent American brain cells before it's over.

"10.5" is based on a piece of pseudoscience popularized 30 years ago in books like "The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California," which prophesied that a deep, undiscovered superfault stretching down the West Coast from Seattle to Baja California would someday flex its muscles and turn Las Vegas into beachfront property.

So "10.5" opens with the Seattle Space Needle going over on its side. Go ahead _ laugh, hoot, gape. Argue about whether it's God's wrathful vengeance on Bill Gates, Starbucks or Courtney Love.

But don't be fooled. In order to see the Golden Gate Bridge plummet into the bay or the Hollywood sign topple from the hills, you've got to sit through hours of children whining at their parents, wives whining at their ...