"Andromeda"

ANDROMEDA
2000-2005
"I SURVIVED ANDROMEDA".
Gotta be T-shirts out there somewhere.
Yes, campers, i watched it all. 110 episodes. Five seasons. More than classic TREK and classic GALACTICA - combined. Millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars, swirling down a commode set on permanent flush. This article ends with a marathon, but do NOT take that as a recommendation to watch it. This show had everything you could want. Everything, that is, except...
Writers?
Yeah, that would have been a good idea. Hire some writers. Theirs was an unremitting failure on both levels...the story supervisor was the ultimate absentee landlord, and the script writers cranked out turd after turd after turd. I gutted out the whole series because of dedication to the genre, plus the first two seasons' tease of faltering promise, but mostly because of the Roddenberry connection. Gene's name was in the title (though his contribution was only a few scribbles decades before), and Majel Barrett (every TREK incarnation ever) executive produced...so the possibility of TREK actor drop-ins coudn't be ignored. Alas, Majel either didn't recruit them, or they had the good sense to go spelunking that week. The only ones to appear are John de Lancie (a fine job in a couple flaccid outings) and Tony Todd.
ANDROMEDA is the queen of unresolved threads. Again and again, they toss out characters and story arcs that peter away into nothingness, very often illogically. Sometime in the third season, it all settles into unwatchable dreck, as the only idea the writing staff has after the banishment of story developer Robert Hewitt Wolfe (STAR TREK: DS9) is "Let's have Dylan get his Kirk on!" The ultimate failure of the show was in never making us care about the characters. They never showed us why these people became dedicated to one another. None of the friendships resonate, and too many motivations ring false.
The directors descended to the level of the writing. Again and again, the blocking reveals the hand of someone who has no understanding of how people actually behave in tense moments.
The show always starts with a new quote...which often disappears before you have time to actually read it! What, are they afraid we'll see through the so-so writing? The title credits finally settle for good in season 3 with a voiceover that begs to be mocked with a Crocodile Hunter "danger, danger, danger". The end-credits music is so grating you'll rush for the pre-emptive stop button every time. The blasters make a noise every time you activate them, which is perhaps the most unrealistic prop choice in the history of sci fi. And the performers?
KEVIN SORBO
-Dylan Hunt (110 episodes)
Executive producer Sorbo has the requisite presence for a series lead. It's a shame they couldn't find one for him. His costuming choice after the first few episodes feels a little "casual Friday". It's not as bad as the "Members Only" season of BUCK ROGERS, but it does make you go there. And is it possible i know more about Kevin's taste in women than i should? CASTING NOTICE: seeking females - tall, statuesque, caucasian, and ever-so-faintly horsey.
LISA RYDER
-Beka Valentine (109 episodes)
Passable.
LAURA BERTRAM
-Trance Gemini (109 episodes)
A delightful presence, almost masochistically defaced. Her original look, all blue with a fun tail, turned into a visual downer that mirrors her character's decline. Her final look reminds one of a second-rate Data from FIRST CONTACT.
GORDON MICHAEL WOOLVETT
-Seamus Harper (109 episodes)
Disastrous. Inconceivably, he usurps Michael Shanks (STARGATE: SG1) as the worst sci fi actor of all time. Imagine Neelix in the hands of a hack. Horribly overacted, yet somehow the writers kept thinking he was essential. You'll just want to walk through the screen, boot the director back to community theater, and tell Gordon, "Let's do another take, but this time give me less." Then you'll give the same direction for another take. And another. Sometime tomorrow, you'll have a usable performance. How much of the blame should be laid at his feet, is a good question. Certainly the writers thought they had him nailed, but they painfully didn't - nor were they able to produce lines that made us believe he's as intelligent as advertised. It takes 109 episodes to finally produce one scene that doesn't make you cringe.
LEXA DOIG
-Rommie (109 episodes)
Tantalizing. So much potential. The one character you almost really care about. You want her android story arc to be fascinating, but like everything else, it peters off into tortured limbo. The romance you keep waiting for between her and Dylan never happens. It should have been one of the key threads of the show. Part of this is understandable, as it takes about four final season episodes to realize that she's only being shot from the head up because...she's pregnant! Apparently, sabatoging his own series wasn't enough for father Shanks. By the time she fully returns, there's too little time to salvage anything. They scoot her off in the final scene, to leave Dylan alone on the bridge. You'll silently scream "WRONG, WRONG, WRONG".
KEITH HAMILTON COBB
-Tyr Anasazi (68 episodes)
Fine potential dribbled away. They had a chance to give us an insight into a different way of thinking, with this nietschean species. A race for whom self-interest is everything (overtly, not covertly like us). But instead of fleshing out that alternate paradigm, committing to it and making it consistent, perhaps imbuing Tyr with character growth...it all just piddles away.
STEVE BACIC
-Rhade (45 episodes)
A fine performance doomed by desultory writing.
BRENT STAIT
-Rev Bem (36 episodes)
A sweet performance of a well-conceived character. Allergies to the makeup ended his tenure early, but in the big picture, maybe his allergies were wiser than he.
BRANDY LEDFORD
-Doyle (20 episodes)
A last-season android fill-in who's not as awful as you fear.
NOT-WRETCHED-A-THON (season)
-The Sum of Its Parts (1)
Treading on well-trod ground, a pleasant enough meditation on matters of genuine science fiction - the crew receive an invitation from a supposedly-mythical collective of machines who live in the empty space between star systems. Their emissary assembles into sentience, and gets to know the crew. The collective's intentions are less munificent than advertised, however. The emissary circumvents its command to disassemble, and helps the crew escape. Guest star Matt Smith offers a lovely performance.
-Its Hour Come 'Round at Last (1)
This season 1 finale ups the ante, and the octane. Harper finds a lost file in the ship's A.I., which re-boots and perceives the new crew as intruders, while resuming an ancient mission into the heart of magog territory. The ship is boarded and the action is scorching, mostly because it imperils the cushiest conceit of all sci fi serials - the foreknowledge that no cast regular will die. But character after character gets creamed. On ANDROMEDA, this conceit is combined with the notion that a ship with a nominal crew of four thousand could be successfully run by six. Even though that first conceit will never feel more contrived than in the season 2 resumption, you may have to pick your jaw up after this one.
-Lava and Rockets (2)
The series' greatest burst of romantic/sexual chemistry, in an episode that features the three most resonant characters. Dylan is pursued by bounty hunters in an "appropriated" tourist barge with an outraged novice pilot (Kristin Lehman - JUDGING AMY). Under fire, the two of them come to appreciate each other. Tyr and Rommie search for them in the Maru. A little sexy, a little human, a little loosey goosey...
-The Lone and Level Sands (3)
Tight, compelling, and (most importantly) a sci fi serial idea that feels like something you've never seen...and you can't imagine why someone didn't think of it before. The Maru flees from pirates into deep space. They're rescued by a ship that Earth sent out centuries earlier, the Bellerophon. Equipped with the most powerful engine ever, of pre-slipstream design...meaning the faster-than-light travel comes with time distortion - to the crew, a journey of centuries has been measurable in years. The Maru unable to get home, they get caught up in a mutiny triggered by the knowledge that Earth is now a slave world. Rommie has a tantalizing romance with the ship's captain (TREK luminary Tony Todd - CANDYMAN, BEASTMASTER: THE EYE OF BRAXUS). A well-written story elevated by Todd's performance.
-The Unconquerable Man (3)
A passable little alternate reality exploration, as the original events of the story reverse, with Dylan dying and Rhade trying to resurrect the Commonwealth 300 years later.
-Day of Judgement, Day of Wrath (3)
An offering given the juice of sentimentality, in a marriage of STARGATE and ANDROMEDA (a second-rate series plus one that's sliding into third). Guest stars Michael Shanks and Christopher Judge play A.I. avatars in a death struggle. Not awful at all.
-The Heart of the Journey, part 1 (5)
Okay, actually kinda wretched. But it's worthwhile for feminist afficionados, as it's perhaps the only time in sci fi history that female regulars outnumber males on a starship crew. The writers play this up with an estrogen-enhanced slow-mo. There's also a blatant tribute to STAR WARS that would be sad if this series had worked, but in the context of a five-year failure, is kinda nice.