Andromeda fans, front and centre.
POSTED BY: Cybersnark
UPDATED: Thursday, January 11, 2007 03:34
VIEWED: 6664
PAGE 2 of 2
First 2 seasons, excellent - rest not so excellent.
As others have said, having RHW leave didn't do the show any favours. It left it with moments of greatness, but nothing as cohesive as the first 2 seasons.
Probably having Tyr leave was one of the worst decisions. Having him onboard at least helped create some tension between the characters.
I also didn't like the way the characters developed. When they got Tyr back for a few later episodes, he acted totally differently to his earlier appearances (shooting defenceless women, etc.).
It could be that power had corrupted him, but he was a pale imitation of his former self.
Other than that, Dillon Hunt descended into 'James Bond' style farce, bedding the female guest appearance regularly. Got nothing against sex in SF, but at least make it part of a characters development.
And by Season 5, the rot had really set in. In some ways, you could almost view it as a parody of FF - stranded with no real technology to speak of.
And the characters changed too radically. Obviously, we were expected to believe that time had passed differently for each of them, which is fair enough. But after building the characters up for 4 seasons, I found little to relate to in S5.
Most of the characters acted only when money was involved, which tended to go against the previous 4 seasons, and some of the episodes were clearly played for laughs.
There are some good moments in S5, but you've got to stick with it to find them.
A real shame for a series that had showed so much promise, although I guess there were enough fans to give it a 5 season run.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Never really got in to this series as it kind of kept moving around the schedules over here in the UK. From what I saw, it looked like it was a complete reworking of a short lived Gene Roddenberry show from the `70`s called `Genesis 2`.
It looked like it had a number of good ideas going for it but seemed to borrow heavily from other sources. Is it worth checking out on DVD?
--------------------------------------------------
Flight Instructor: Son, know what the first rule of flying is?
Me: Don`t crash? 
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Definitely worth checking out on DVD - if only for the first 2 seasons. See if you can rent it though, as that's a whole lot cheaper.
I think the Sci-fi channel own the rights to show it at the moment, so don't know when it'll next be aired.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by Cybersnark:
Andromeda, which was hijacked, flown into the ground, then drawn out into a five-year trainwreck.
I have the mixed metaphor police on line 2, wanting to speak to you.
I watched the first couple of episodes of Andromeda but didn't see anything really caught my interest; the bits of other episodes I've seen certainly haven't turned that impression around. But it wouldn't be the first good series to be destroyed by behind-the-scenes power struggles and egomania.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Cybersnark, I love your description of Andromeda. The show was really shiny till about the middle of Season Two (ie until Robert Wolfe stopped writing the eps) then it was ruined and became a train wreck. I'm still asking myself why I watched Season 5. I think the answer is that I loved Seasons 1-3 (although I hate what they did to Tyr in Season 4) and Harper's my favorite character, but still they should have ended it with Season 4 and never made the disaster that was Season 5.
SimonWho, gotta agree about the egomania. Andromeda went from being a story about all the characters to the story of Dylan Hunt. The fact that Kevin Sorbo had to be the greatest thing on the show had a large part in putting me off the series.
"You're talking to Serenity. And Early...Serenity is very unhappy."
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by Dreamwalker:
Cybersnark, I love your description of Andromeda. The show was really shiny till about the middle of Season Two (ie until Robert Wolfe stopped writing the eps) then it was ruined and became a train wreck. I'm still asking myself why I watched Season 5. I think the answer is that I loved Seasons 1-3 (although I hate what they did to Tyr in Season 4) and Harper's my favorite character, but still they should have ended it with Season 4 and never made the disaster that was Season 5.
SimonWho, gotta agree about the egomania. Andromeda went from being a story about all the characters to the story of Dylan Hunt. The fact that Kevin Sorbo had to be the greatest thing on the show had a large part in putting me off the series.
"You're talking to Serenity. And Early...Serenity is very unhappy."
Definitely right about Kevin Sorbo having to be the greatest thing on the show. Could only take so many 'Hercules' in show gags - okay, there probably weren't that many, but they did detract from the show, lol.I think that's one of the reasons that Tyr's character was changed so much, so Kevin Sorbo could look like the real hero of the piece.
What bugged me most though, was that within the fledgling 'Commonwealth' in later series, we were led to believe that the ship was fully crewed.
But other than fleeting glances, we never actually saw much of the crew at all - certainly not on the bridge or anywhere critical.
Another thing that grated was the whole 'Paladin' issue - hope I've got that right, lol. Suddenly turning KS from an optimistic captain to a mythical 'saviour of the 'verse' type.
And S5 still remains to my mind, one of the worst finales ever for a Sci-Fi show.
Only highlight for me was the introduction of Brandy Ledford, but even that couldn't really compensate for the storyline.
It's just irritating to think that this could get 5 series, and FF didn't even get 1 whole series.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by Choo1701:
is it me or was Harpe a cheap Wash lookie likey?
Quote:
Originally posted by Cybersnark:
Actually, Wash was a cheap Harper look-alike (technically, since Andromeda was around first).
I'd watched the first season on DVD about a year before I discovered Firefly, and was kinda impressed by it, especially the performances of Lexa Doig & Lisa Ryder.
Couldn't believe how bad the creature effects were (Farscape spoiled me), though, but I really liked that an attempt was made at providing "Good Science"!
I just picked up Vol. 1.1 for $4.99, just to re-visit...
Between bouts of cringing from the music (Greg Edmonson spoiled me), I noticed Harper's Hawaiian shirt, then his disheveled blonde hair... "Hey! That's Wash... doing Kaylee's job!"
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed!
EDIT: I really like the episode D Minus Zero!
I love space stories that feature submarine warfare, like Balance of Terror in Star Trek: TOS or Wrath of Khan!
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
This is a very interesting thread.
After I finished firefly in early 2004, a friend handed me some DVD's of Andromeda and told me this:
"This show was alike to firefly in storytelling prowess until the end of the 2nd season. Then suddenly it turns into a craptacular adventure"
And wow was he correct. I loved the idea of a fallen commonwealth. A galactic dark age. The greatness is gone but there are fragments everywhere, some waiting for a rebirth, others changed into different things. I remember enjoying the ship's AI for "Clairion's Call" who had become a casino. Like he himself WAS the casino and his avatar was the general manager.
So after season 1 I wasn't sure how this show could go sour until I watched the season 2 finale and OMG, it was a total 180 about face. NOTHING was worth watching after that. I struggled to finish the 4th season and when I did I threw the 5th season out.
I'll be very interested to know what went wrong. The link you provided will hopefully shed light on this failed gem.
When ppl ask me to compare the failures of Firefly to Andromeda I always say that Firefly was attacked by outside forces and killed and Andromeda self destructed.
Do not fear me. Ours is a peaceful race, and we must live in harmony.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quick update: Jill has since stopped producing the book due to the extreme cost (both for her and for the people ordering it --the downside of vanity-press, you have to sell a prodigious amount of product to break even), but she's still keeping a list of interested people, and is exploring other means of production. There's talk of a tamper-proof .PDF, or some such. I'll provide updates as I hear 'em.
-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
