Andromeda Angers Fans

The new Gene Roddenberry-branded science fiction series, Andromeda is nearly upon us (at least, it is if you live in the USA, where it'll be syndicated from October 2^nd), us Brits will just have to wait for the BBC to fight Sky for the rights.

Andromeda has already attracted a mixed bag of criticism and excitement from fans. Excitement to see what the studio is going to come out with. Anger that the Roddenberry name is going to be stamped on another series so long after he had died.

"If Roddenberry scribbled a shopping list before his death, you can bet some studio executive would be looking at it and trying to reinterpret it into a twenty episode series about a time travelling police squad," said one fan, in a sly reference to Roddenberry's recently discovered ChronoJump note-pad.

"Earth Final Conflict failed to gather a mass audience," said the fan. "Which isn't to say it was bad. On its own terms, it was quite good. But it wasn't the mass success that Star Trek proved to be … it never broadened its appeal beyond a hard-core SF fan audience."

"Look at what Gene contributed to this series. Did he write any of the scripts? No. Did he have a detailed proposal? No. Was the title his idea? No. Did he even create the universe? No. This was resurrected from some notes on a couple of the characters and the situation they were in. The rest of the material is plot-new from staff at Tribune Entertainment and their freelancers."

Andromeda is said to be very different from Trek, though - with the main thrust of the plot focusing on the characters trying to rebuild the shattered remnants of a fallen empire, the Systems Commonwealth.

Kevin Sorbo's casting as Captain Dylan Hunt has led fan to carp that they are going to get Xena In Space, rather than a series with the depth, pathos and popularity of the Federation universe.

Other fans have pointed out that the fall of the Commonwealth will mean the series will be able to draw out lots of analogies and morality plays from the Earth's present current affairs.

What with the removal of the Superpowers, and the collapse of states from Africa, Asia, South America to the Balkans and the associated horridness of humanity towards each other; there's plenty of grist for the mill to recreate some of the original Trek moralising about Vietnam war, Black civil rights, and what it means to be human.

Main hero Dylan Hunt is loyal to the High Guard, the Jedi Knights of the Commonwealth, who have fallen on hard times with the onset of the new Dark Ages.

His ship is the Andromeda Ascendant, which has itself taken a lot of flack from Farscape fans, since it was announced that the warcruiser is sentient and communicates from multiple pilot-like puppets; although the Ascendant's remotes vary from Metropolis influenced female droids to human clones (as well as a host of little bots that roll around fixing her hull from battle damage).

While the Farscape fans scream 'Moya', we think this might be a little disingenuous. There's a long and noble history of this kind of thing in SF. We could point fans back to a Marvel comic strip published in the 1970s called StarLord, in which the main character had a similar ship … one that could morph into different shapes to boot.

Ultimately, we will all have to wait until the series airs to draw our own conclusions. After all, for every example of a hack soulless cash-in series, there's an example of fine entertainment being rendered under the same terms.

Look at James Bond, the franchise is still going strong under Pierce Brosnan - and the only thing that author Ian Fleming contributed to the movie GoldenEye was the name of his cottage in the Caribbean - GoldenEye.

Now that's what we call a tenuous contribution by a creator!

By the way, if there's any US 'Nest readers who want to send us in their thoughts on the new Andromeda series and more details of the episodes, drop us a line at feedback@SPAMMENOTsfcrowsnest.com - we'd love to run your thoughts in a future issue.

By the way, remove the SPAMMENOT text from the e-mail address to get it to work, we've had to do this as we've been spammed of late with crap like 'become a millionaire NOW' and 'increase your penis size'. Ho hum. If any if you are suffering a similar problem - spam, rather than small penis size - we'd recommend signing up with http://www.spamcop.net , which is an automated service you can feed in your junk-mail to, and it then automatically contacts the ISP of the offender and gets their email account cancelled. Revenge is ours at last!

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Paul Kerr. 01/10/2000
Great, just what the world needs, more Trek-like junk to pollute the SF slipstream with its sugary, meaningless, rote, paint-by-number plots. How about some original stuff? How about, gasp, giving living artists a chance to create an original science fiction TV series?

Simon Riat. 01/10/2000
This series bears all the hallmarks of the Rodenberry brush of genius. I'm looking forward to it, and if you ain't, that's what the remote control is for. Duh.

Trish Kirchenbauer. 01/10/2000
Kevin Sorbo, you are my hunk-god. I hope this new series IS Hercules in Space, as we'll get to see more of one of the greatest actors in America.

Allen Lane. 5/10/2000
I just got done watching the first 2 episodes of Andromeda - what a disappointment! The concept is weak, the plot is incredibly dull and, worst of all, the characters are horrible.

Not one of the characters has any depth to him or her - they are all complete Sci-Fi cliches. The acting is abysmal (yes, even Kevin Sorbo, who is probably the best of the lot, still seems stuck in his role as Hercules at times).

By the end of the 2nd episode you realize that you really don't care about any of the characters (at least I didn't) which doesn't bode well for the series. The look of the show varies from great (the exterior shots of the Andromeda and other ships) to ludicrous (the insect pilot and ship robots look like they just stepped out of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - rubber suits and all).

I had high hopes for this show (espcially since they have a 44 episode commitment before even the first episode has aired), but it looks like just another run of the mill show. Shows like Farscape have shown us that there is still room for originality. Andromeda, on the other hand, is providing us with what looks like Galaxy Quest II (except that we are supposed to take it seriously).

Hopefully the show will change a bit over the course of the first season and actually turn out to be something good. However, if the show continues to center around Sorbo saving the day every episode then it'll never be more than Hercules in space.

Arun Shankar
Just caught the first episode and found it quite enjoyable. Sorbo was completely unconvincing (I liked the 'built like a Greek god' joke though. I'll try and watch the next couple of episodes to see how it progesses but it will have to improve if I'm to be a regular viewer.