It is 1955 in an alternate, steampunk-ish world, and the "Second Hundred Years' War" rages on. As part of the war effort, Britain has established a chain of tiny, isolated outposts in Antarctica, where they monitor enemy communications and activity. Quite why a desolate, nigh uninhabitable wasteland would be a hotbed of military activity, I am not sure, but apparently it is.
Outpost 11 has a staff of only three men: a nervous conscript, an angry and emotionally abusive corporal, and an officer of some kind who doesn't seem to care over much about the war or their ill-defined mission. So there is a fair bit of tension in the place even before the red warning light of an imminent attack blinks on. So when it does, it's safe to say that things are going to get very bad indeed.
The 'alternate history' background of Outpost 11 is to my mind a distraction from the claustrophobic sense of tension the film is trying to establish. It would I think have been better to make this a cold war base in the 'real world' 1970s. A lot of the eclectic mix of technology could still have been explained in that context, and I wouldn't have spent half the film wondering what on Earth Britain and Prussia could have found to fight over in 1850 that they'd still be locked in a war over a full century later (you can't, after all, have a Second Hundred Years' War until it has lasted a hundred years ...).
That quibble aside, is this any good? Eh. The cast is solid, but the script is a bit weak. The characters are little more than flat archetypes, with little reason for us to care about them other than that they are on screen, and a number of the plot points don't feel 'natural' in the context of the situation, but instead like the writers forcing things to lead toward the outcomes they have in mind.
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