Andromeda: Does anyone have this as their favorite show?

[tmc_6882]

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=235285

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=237157

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It was definitely a lower-budgeted production than the Star Trek shows that ran at the same time. But it had its own charms, despite being uneven, for about a season and a half. Then a lot of behind-the-scenes turmoil that I won't go into, but will surely get well and thoroughly covered by the time this thread is over, pretty much doomed the show to mediocrity (in its best hours) and unwatchablility (the rest of the time).

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It was ok, I guess. I didn't get to see it on a regular basis, so it was hard to get into. The premise seemed a little Buck Rogers-ish to me, but maybe that was what Gene was shooting for. I didn't get the Rev Bem character at all. It just seemed like GR liked the Bug Eyed Monster thing so it was just stuck in there.

I liked the avatar concept, but the android seemed redundant. Especially when they introduced the Doyle character. I don't know what the deal is there.

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Yeah, same with me. Andromeda had neither the intelligence of Star Trek or the fun of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. If you've exhausted all other decent live action science fiction shows it's worth a watch, but that's not high praise.

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For the first season and a half, Andromeda was excellent. Then the head writer was forced out and the show was deliberately dumbed down by Kevin Sorbo. I quit watching after an episode where all story sense and character integrity was sacrificed for a CGI extravaganza.

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I really liked and closely followed Andromeda for its first season and a half, and I came to TrekBBS via the SlipstreamBBS. Probably one of my favorites at the time. I kept watching through part of Season 3, and came back for S3's penultimate episode because of who wrote it, but it was so much worse overall after the aforementioned behind-the-scenes trouble.

I still really like the characters overall, and Andromeda herself was a really cool idea. It's worth checking out up through the episode "Ouroborous," and then scattered episodes afterwards.

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Show went downhill quick once Robert Hewitt Wolfe left. I remember him after the show ended I think he released a bible on what his direction for the show would have been.

I think some elements of his plan were sort of kept by the writers who stayed on, but ended up modified.

For instance Trance Gemini in the show is revealed as the Tarn-Vedran sun which was modified and made into a weapon to battle the Spirit of the Abyss and Trance was the 'avatar' of the sun.

RHW's plan I believe had Trance as an avatar of a sun, but it was of a different sort where Trance was part of a group of beings which sought chaos/change and fought against order/stagnation. The war they fought resulted in a victory which caused the Big Bang. Those beings then became suns in the new universe.

Trance was supposed to be a sun in the Gemini constellation (hence the Gemini) and her beings and their battle ended up being the story of heaven & hell since her side were the 'devils'. Although sort of like the ending of the Evangelion anime the side fighting for chaos/change are the good guys because the side wanting harmony basically takes away free will to create perfect order.

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Even though I'm not 100% sure how the whole thing with Sorbo went down, but I agree with the assertion that the first season and a half was great television before going down hill.

As for Trance, they turned her into Seven of Nine when they gave her the new paint job. She is suddenly the pope of the universe of something and she loses all the mystique and interest in her character.

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It also followed a model of another Trubune sci-fi show, Earth Final Conflict. And like EFC, the Show had an interesting concept season 1, changed in season 2, but season 4 of both seemed to try & get back to the original season...and then season 5 was complete drop in budget - and quality & continuity with the previous 4 seasons.

Two good things about Andromeda: some of the coolest Starship names...and great supporting actors.

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Although Andromeda took a different direction for awile, I think it worked together overall alright. As a whole, watching in a marathon, several episodes a night, I actually enjoy S1 - 4. I

I'm OK with Trance's S5 Arc, but, yea, being grounded didn't help the creativity for much of the rest of the writing for S5.

To me, it actually felt natural that Dylan had built the 50 Commonwealth Worlds, and turned them over to a Democratic Government and was kinda made obsolete and able to "run Loose" for awhile, and that Government screwed it all up, and he had to take control back again

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IIRC one reason I stopped watching is that that arc never seemed to flow organically. Like, one minute Dylan can't get anyone to join, the next he's got 48 systems signed up, then all of a sudden a new Commonwealth is in place...

Clearly the show must have been a fantasy, because real governments -never- move that quickly.

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I think the only post-Season 2 episode I actually enjoyed was "The Unconqourable Man".

After all, it did made me wish that Steve Bacic/Gaheris Rhade had been the show's actual main protagonist all along instead of Kevin Sorbo.

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I agree with the general opinion here that the first season and a half or so is pretty good stuff, and then it is a bit of a slog with occasional bright spots thereafter.

The bitch of it is that Andromeda could have been a classic if:

1) they'd left Robert Hewitt Wolfe alone to do his thing, and
2) the show had an actual budget.

They had an amazing amount of really spiffy background material worked-up for this series, too: http://www.saveandromeda.com/allsystems/

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It isn't my favorite show ever, but it is highly underrated IMO.

The first couple of seasons are great. Yes, turmoil happened, and it started going downhill fast. However, it was still very entertaining for me, at least. Until the last season (S5), that one should just be ignored and never happened.

I found it a fun romp, and never ever took it seriously, as it should not be taken, it is pure entertainment, that's it.

I loved some of the technological concepts in it. For example the awesomeness of the Andromeda AI. IMO, this is where the future of computing is going, and IMO I always thought Star Trek needed a stronger sense of computer AI. Andromeda hits on this perfectly. I also like the idea of the Trio nature, Android AI/Holographic AI/Display AI and all three having their own personalities. I love it when all three get into arguments But seriously, this future of computing seems to be headed down that path.

And the ability to travel to other galaxies in seconds is pretty darn cool too, their idea of how Slipstream works is very unique.

OH, and Andromeda is one of the coolest looking ships in SCIFI IMO. In fact, all the Highguard ships are uniquely designed, I love their design, it's very cool.

I also like the fact the universe isn't perfect, and as good as the Highguard were (analogous to the Federation) they fell. I also like the fact there aren't transporters and such, just seems a tad more realistic, even though it's much farther in the future than Star Trek was. Dylan Hunt is from like the 49th Century. Andromeda the series takes place in the 50th century.

I cannot get me enough Lexa Doig, mmmmm my favorite warship.

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The first season and half where OK, not great but not bad. But it went downhill from there. Oddly enough events behind the scenes occurred around that time. Coincidence?

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Robert's version of this show could have been glorious had he been given true reign to accomplish it with the help of the terrific writing staff he had assembled at the start.

But as it was, there were simply moments of greatness amongst the budgetary and production issues.

Looking back, I'm glad I was there at the beginning with all its promise and not the end.

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I watched most of the first couple seasons and really enjoyed it, but after a while I started to loose track of it. I only caught some episodes here and there after that, and I still enjoyed most of what I saw of season 3 and 4, but season 5 was just weird and made no sense. I admit a lot of that was probably because I didn't see every episode, but from what read about what I missed it sounds like seeing every episode probably wouldn't have helped S5.

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Post Season 2:

I like, Tyr Anasazzi's Arc, Trance's Arc, The Magog World Ship Arc, Alan Scarfe, Stave Basic even standing around just looking sexy, Andromeda Split Personalities, Seamus' fear of children and The Commonwealth being pissed away by the Mucky-Mucks and the revitalized fight to rebuild it again.

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Andromeda is a terribly cheesy sci-fi show... but I love it. It's not my favorite show, but I can always watch it. I enjoy the inventiveness, and I liked the no-consequences seat of your pants adventure. Tyr was also incredibly funny. Until Season 3/4, when things changed and the show went downhill.

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Andromeda never really clicked for me as a series.

I've probably seen 45% of the entire run (Most of it the early seasons), but it never made a lot of sense to me after RHW was run out of town and Rev left.

Anywho, to answer the OP...

No, Not a Favorite series and it wouldn't rank in my Top 100.

Andromeda as a concept had potential, yet as a series it was flawed.

Popcorn at best.

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I wouldn't call Andromeda my favorite show, but I do rank it among my top ten. But I never looked at it as being more than a weekend/late-nite sci-fi actioner with lots of laser gun & spaceship battles, stuff being blown up, and sexy people in leather. I think "Hercules in space" is a fit description of the series, but then Hercules was another Kevin Sorbo series I liked.

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One thing I never understood, and I've seen in mentioned on other sites, is the constantly appearing and disappearing crew of Andromeda. In the later seasons, some episode there would be tons of people wondering around the ship, and then in others the main characters seemed to be the only people on board. Was there an explanation for that somewhere?

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=235285&page=4

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The only problem with this would-be original series rundown is that it sounds like the entire crew gets separated in the later seasons. So you'd have a Dylan/Rommie story, a Tyr story, a Rev story, a Harper story... sounds incredibly expensive. You'd have to have four separate sets and casts! And they didn't have any money to begin with!

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I'm sorry but Kevin Sorbo was awful and the man has an ego the size of the Andromeda galaxy itself. He ran Andromeda into the ground.

I will never forget some of the interviews he gave that articulated how he felt about the show. I remember one where he exclaimed that "we're not making The West Wing here…its science fiction!." As if quality drama and scifi could not go together.

In another he proclaimed that he "hated the Commonwealth plot." He was sick of trying to restore the Commonwealth and wanted to "just restore it and move on with more exciting things." Nevermind that that was THE WHOLE POINT OF THE DAMN SHOW! That is why the restored Commonwealth seemed to come out of nowhere in ONE episode. I think that episode broke my brain because I watched it and realized that I had no idea what just happened.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=235285&page=5

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I watched all five seasons of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda during it's first-run on television. It was enjoyable and felt like a reboot of Buck Rogers.

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The Andromeda rule of thumb:

When Trance changes color, it's time to go.

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I really enjoyed this show, even the much-maligned fourth season. However, I got tired of Hunt's womanizing pretty quickly. He's worse than Kirk and Riker put together.

[tmc_6882]

http://www.agonybooth.com/tv/Gene_Rodde ... eview.aspx

The start of the 21st Century brought us a series which, by all rights, should have become a classic. That series was Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, which ran in syndication from 2000-2005.

The show was based on notes left behind by Star Trek creator Roddenberry. It focuses on a spaceship captain in the far distant future named Dylan Hunt whose ship, the artificially intelligent Andromeda Ascendant, gets caught on the outskirts of a black hole just as a war erupts involving his Federation-esque interplanetary society the Systems Commonwealth. The ship’s proximity to the black hole causes Hunt to be frozen in time for the next 300 years, until a crew of mercenaries then pulls the ship away from the black hole, reviving Hunt. It’s a rude awakening, however, as he realizes that not only are his rescuers intending to loot his ship, but the Commonwealth has fallen during his long nap. Eventually, he recruits said mercenaries to help him restore it.

Roddenberry’s name was added to the title to make it more viable for TV, but Andromeda wouldn’t become a reality until Kevin Sorbo, then hot off the success of playing the title character in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, agreed to play Hunt and also serve as one of the show’s producers.

The show gained more attention when Robert Hewitt Wolfe was hired on as the show’s main writer. Wolfe first gained fame by writing the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “A Fistful of Datas”. He then became a writer for Deep Space Nine until the end of that show’s fifth season.

Not surprisingly, there were lots of comparisons to Star Trek prior to the show’s premiere. Sorbo, in particular, seemed eager to compare Hunt to Captain Kirk. Perhaps this was an omen for how the show would end up sucking big time.

The show’s first two episodes, “Under the Night” and “An Affirming Flame”, do an okay job of setting things into motion. In these episodes, Hunt and his ship’s AI, represented by a holographic avatar (Lexa Doig), are ambushed by a race called the Nietzscheans, who are an offshoot of humans in the same way that Romulans are an offshoot of Vulcans. Hunt’s crew is evacuated and/or killed, and he has to contend with his traitorous Nietzschean First Officer Rhade (Steve Bacic). Hunt manages to kill him just before he and the ship are frozen in time.

Jumping forward 300 years, a ship captained by Beka Valentine (Lisa Ryder) is preparing to pull the Andromeda out of the black hole’s rim at the request of the unlikeable Gerentex (John Tench). Beka and her crew, spiritual Rev Bem (Brent Stait), bubbly Trance Gemini (Laura Bertram), and sarcastic engineer Seamus Harper (Gordon Michael Woolvett) manage to get onboard the Andromeda. And wouldn’t you know it, they come upon Hunt, who intends to hold onto his ship.

Gerentex counters by revealing that he stowed a group of Nietzschean hunters aboard, led by Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb). As they attempt to take the ship from Hunt, Beka and her crew begin to realize that Gerentex is too crazy for even them to deal with. When Gerentex attempts to send them all back into the black hole, Beka, Tyr and the others agree to join forces with Hunt to defeat him.

“Flame” ends with Hunt declaring his intention to restore the Commonwealth, and asking Beka, Tyr, and the others to help him on his mission. They agree, on the condition that they remain on a first-name basis.

The remaining episodes of the first season were not great by any means, but the moments of discontent and conflict between Hunt, Tyr, and Beka provided some entertainment. It was this occasional tension which allowed us to forgive clichéd-filled episodes such as “To Loose the Fateful Lightning” (in which annoying children attempt to take over the ship) and “Star-Crossed” (the inevitable “Andromeda falls in love with another AI” tale).

The first season finale, “Its Hour Come ‘Round at Last”, was also entertaining. That episode involved Andromeda going berserk and sending the crew into a fight with Rev Bem’s people, the Magog. The season ended with the ship crippled, Tyr and Harper captured by the Magog, Rev going off to find them, and the rest of the crew down for the count.

The second season premiered with “The Widening Gyre”, in which the crew is reunited and escapes, but not before Hunt uses a nova bomb, which is powerful enough to destroy a sun, on the Magog World Ship, a massive spacecraft that’s actually made up of interconnected planets. This damages the ship, but doesn’t destroy it, and as Hunt notes, this makes a restored Commonwealth all the more necessary in order to combat it.

Alas, all of this development was rendered moot afterward. This is because, like Star Trek: Voyager, Andromeda basically jettisoned its premise by its second season and was content with simply being an action show, with an ineffectual captain to boot.

It was during this season that Tribune Entertainment, which distributed the show, decided to give Wolfe his pink slip. Sorbo personally explained that this was because Wolfe’s scripts were too intelligent. He also said the show would become more episodic, claiming that this was closer to Roddenberry’s original vision. Also, to better ensure that the show would be a copy of the original Star Trek series, Sorbo announced that Hunt would be getting more love interests, citing how Kirk always had a love interest. (Never mind that Kirk-as-ladies-man was just one aspect of his character, and not the whole reason he was such a heroic figure.)

Coincidentally, Brent Stait left the series during the middle of the second season, because he was developing an allergic reaction to the Magog makeup he was wearing.

Sadly, fans’ fears that the show would go south after Wolfe’s departure proved correct, as the show became a mindless hour of action each week. For example, the second season episode “Lava and Rockets” had Hunt pretending to be Kirk by engaging in an arbitrary romance. But that’s where the Kirk similarity ends, as Hunt does nothing heroic in that story, unless you consider hijacking innocent vessels heroic. In addition (and here’s where the comparison to Janeway comes in), Hunt’s crew clearly views the man as a god. Though I guess at least that makes Hunt different than Hercules, who was half-god.

A worse offender is the later episode “The Things We Cannot Change”, in which Hunt is rendered unconscious, but in his mind he’s living a happy family life. In other words, this episode was basically the great TNG episode “The Inner Light”, but with none of the power and nuance of that tour de force.

Oh, and the original premise of rebuilding the Commonwealth was quickly resolved in the second season finale “Tunnel at the End of the Light”, in which a new Commonwealth is formed and Hunt turns down the offer to lead it, because it would be too much work and prevent him from sleeping with lots of women. We also get new aliens attacking our heroes with, you guessed it, no consequences for the rest of the series.

Sure, there was still the occasional mention of this new Commonwealth, as well as that big-ass Magog ship. But that became just as much of a footnote as showing Voyager struggling to survive, because we can’t allow anything to overshadow heroics such as blowing up crap and bedding women, can we?

The emphasis on how awesome Dylan Hunt is led Keith Hamilton Cobb to leave the show after its third season, even though Tyr would later return to randomly sleep with Beka and then randomly get killed. In his place, we got the return of Steve Bacic as a descendant of Rhade.

Not surprisingly, the show, again like Voyager, lost viewers with each passing season. In fact, the show was originally supposed to end with its fourth season finale “The Dissonant Interval”. That story proved that Hunt was indeed Captain Hercules, when it was revealed that his father was a god-like being while his mother was mortal (even Janeway couldn’t make that claim). Also in this episode, most of the characters are supposedly killed off, but because of a deal Tribune made with the SyFy Channel, the show inexplicably got a fifth season in which, surprise, the crew was still alive.

I’d go into what happened in the show’s final season, but it’s just as nonsensical as the previous three years. Not that it mattered much, since most viewers gave up on the show by this point anyway.

Regarding the other cast members, the only one who managed to stick out was Cobb, because (for the first season, anyway) he played the only character willing to stand up to Hunt. One could call him a cross between Worf (in that he’s a warrior) and Garak (in that he has his own mysterious agenda). So it’s not surprising that Cobb elected to jump ship once he realized that his character was starting to become as much of a Hunt-worshipper as the rest of the crew.

In fairness, the seeds of this Dylan-worship were sown from the beginning, when it was revealed that Andromeda herself was in love with Dylan. What she sees in him, I don’t know, as he’s downright rude to her on plenty of occasions.

Needless to say, none of the other cast members were particularly noteworthy. I mean, even Voyager had Robert Picardo’s Doctor and Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine to occasionally give things a bit of a spark. Speaking of Seven, this series’ version of her is the title character, in that she wore revealing clothing, but unlike Seven, didn’t have much personality.

After Andromeda was put out of its misery (and ours), Sorbo changed career directions by starring in Christian-based movies, such as God’s Not Dead. Fine, but what irks me is that he eventually said that removing Wolfe from the show was a mistake, which begs the question of why he championed it so much when it originally occurred. In recent years, Sorbo has also claimed that Hollywood stopped giving him roles because he’s a Christian, and the fact that he’s simply a lousy actor has nothing to do with it.

To draw another Voyager comparison, the few fans Andromeda still has claim that the show was good for what it was. But this excuse raises the question of why the show would go through all the trouble of establishing a unique premise if said premise was just going to be tossed out and replaced with never-ending emphasis on explosions, nonsensical adventure, and how awesome the captain is.

It’s sad that the first science fiction series to premiere at the turn of the millennium held such promise, but eventually became something only Sorbo could love.