The Andromeda Strain - SF genius or Xena in Space?

Four fans have a virtual roundtable about what they thought of the new Andromeda science fiction TV series which recently aired its pilot in the USA.

Fan 1. Loch Ness has his say

So I watched Andromeda... ..and came to five conclusions:

1. I've utterly lost interest in aliens with weird latex heads and/or pointed ears (yawn).
2. The person or persons who designed Andromeda's command center set clearly must've flunked high school physics at least twice.
3. Oh, yeah, like any male crew member is going to be paying attention to the tactical situation with that holographic cleavage floating in his face. Please.
4. Kevin Sorbo is roughly as convincing as a starship captain as Bill Shatner is as a rap singer.
5. Despite all that, the Andromeda premise is vaguely interesting (especially since there's not much else in that time slot that I care about), and I'll probably watch at least through to the end of the next episode. Pilots frequently suck, and it's possible they could make something of this as they start to get a better feel for what to do with the ideas.

Fan 2. Steven Orso lets rip

Sigh. I guess I've been spoiled by J. Michael Straczynski and Babylon 5.

Watching "Under the Night," the pilot episode of Andromeda, I realized that the halfway point, the moment at which the salvage crew made its first sighting of the Andromeda Ascendant, was the point at which a writer of Straczynski's caliber might have begun the episode.

Imagine what that would have been like: We would not have known immediately whether the chief protagonist of the series was going to be Beka Valentine, the captain of the salvage ship, or Dylan Hunt, the captain of the AA.

We would not have known immediately whether Hunt's defense of his ship was rational or irrational. We would not have known immediately the back-story of the ambush of the Andromeda Ascendent by the Nietzcheans.

Instead, we would have had to piece things together and make our judgements as clues appeared in later episodes. We would have been invited to think. Instead, we were led by the hand, step by step, because the script assumed that the viewers were stupid.

Every plot development was hammered home with the subtlety of a jackhammer, lest a feeble-minded audience miss the point. I was hungry for something better. Okay, it's only the pilot. You can forgive a pilot lots of things (wooden acting, cardboard characters, dialogue that tries too hard to be clever, ill-considered make-up, showers of sparks from control panels designed by engineers who never heard of circuit breakers, etc. while the writers find their collective voice and the actors find their characters.

"Under the Night" was shallow, condescending, by-the-numbers space opera. Let's hope the producers raise the bar, and their estimation of their audience, in subsequent episodes.

Fan 3. Bryan Lambert pipes in his report …

Well, looks like we get Andromeda at the end of the Happy Syndication Week, which means, assuming I care enough to, a week of avoiding spoilers followed by everything having been said.

That said, in general, the show was better than the awful three minute promo made it look like it was going to be. I didn't hate it. I almost wish I had, because then the show would have been responsible for inspiring an emotion stronger than mild annoyance in its first hour.

The show thus far seems to lack any kind of ambition whatsoever beyond being filmed and aired. There's no sense of vision, no sense of the show having anything to say. (Yet.) No spark, no magic, just another semi-competent hour of television for WB and/or UPN stations to use to pad the time between the weekend movies and the start of their networks' prime-time lineup.

I mean, when your most inspired moments are (a) giving Twiki tits, and (b) making the cocky, good-looking pilot a cocky, good-looking engineer, you know somebody's either phonin' it in, or has hit the glass ceiling of their artistic ambition.

I'll grant it points for:

1. The characters not being as annoying as they could have been from their fundamental stereotypes.
2. Throwing a bone to the science-minded by using "light-seconds", etc. as their unit of distance
3. Nice ship design, when it wasn't obscured by otherwise chaotic, confusing, external space effects.
4. Giving Spacer First Class Cronan Thompson a speaking role. That it was more than could be expected and less than many hoped for is not Wolfe's fault, and despite his other crimes against creativity during that first hour, he should not be crucified for this one.

Losing points for:

1. Character concepts. Even assuming it's impossible to come up with something new, aiming for archetypes rather than stereotypes should be the goal.
2. The Official Marcus P. Cole-Trane Extend-O Quarterstaff. Thanks to the unremarkable direction, I couldn't tell if this was the same device as the Magic Laser-Shooting Twelve Inch Dildo (With Optional Overloading Grenade Feature) or not.
3. Non-rectangular corridors to signify Futuristicosity are passe. As are wonky-shaped doors.
4. Aliens who, immediately after using a completely comprehensible "local" metaphor, then translate it into 20th Century American. Hell, there was even a double-translation ("buzzz buzzz" to "For the Hive", to "BANZAI".) That's treating the audience like a bunch of botched lobotomy patients.

Right now, it's in an advantageous timeslot, locally. But for me, the show only has until new episodes of Futurama start to give me a reason to make the effort to tape one or the other. I am... sceptical.

Fan 4. Allen Lane gets it on.

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 (especially 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.

So, there you have it. If any fans want to leap to the defence of this new series, then send in your stuff to us. At the moment the future is not looking too bright … but heck, it's early days yet.

Some of these conversations originally occurred in Newsgroups. All authors in said category and have given their permission to repeat their views in SFcrowsnest.

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Samantha. 01/11/2000
I haven't been able to catch this TV series yet, but it really does seem nobody has a good word to say about it. Oh dear.

The Peeping Tam. 01/11/2000
Well, I saw the first episode. I have to admit, it was fairly mindless stuff, but it was also very fun too ... just like Xena. Come on guys, not all SF has to be serious art, does it?

Gobber. 01/11/2000
There is a difference between serious art and serious suck. Andromeda, you will find, falls into the latter category.

Jen. 02/11/2000
I saw the first half of the pilot,and yes, I did want to see the second!! Let's face it, there is so little new sf of any description around that I'm quite prepared to sit thru Andromeda ... it has potential,anyway, and it definitely wasn't as bad as everyone makes out.

Marc Nash. 02/11/2000
I remember star trek:TNG had a very horrible beginning at firepoint station and took a season or two before coming into it's own. The level of technology for andromeda is more exciting because it more closely resembles technology we can fabricate or we feel should be able to fabricate in a couple hundred years.

I think they represent the commonwealth as this huge civilization that was wiped out too quickly. I would imagine that any civilation spanning six galaxies would not degenerate into nothing in 300 years. Surely quite a few techno-civilizations would still exist and perhaps even prosper and continue to advance their levels of technology, so far we've only seen the dark side of the fall of the commonwealth, with what looks like even more darkness to come.

I suspect this bleak view will get tiresome quickly unless Captain Hunt pucks up some allies soon. They also need a couple more crew members. Everyone seems to have two many different duties and are spread too thinly. If the ship has nano-technology, I don't know why we see these ship androids lumbering about.

Andromeda would just manufacture as many nano-bots to fix or regenerate parts of the ship giving a timeline of when the nano-bot will complete repairs forcing the crew to assist to speed things up. ( Surely with metal corridors any real android would be able to fly about like a mag-lev if they needed to get anywhere). I think the androids would make an amusing companion on an away mission, since they move so robotically. I wish the writers understood their technology a bit better it would greatly add to the series.

Andy D. 06/11/2000
Having seen 3 episodes it sucks and it sucks BIGTIME. Cardboard characters, half assed storylines - it has it all.

ST Mosaic. 06/11/2000
Andromeda seems to be every sci-fi show ever done.
1. Dual expanding weapon - Star Wars
2. Last ship of a civilization - Battlestar Galactica
3. Three century sleeper - Buck Rogers
4. Lliving ship"- Farscape
5. Noble warrior mans weapons - Worf from Star Trek
6. Holographic assistant - Seaquest
They need more originality. I'll watch, hoping it develops.