Andromeda - the end

Just finished the show with James.

A very strange 5 seasons that. If you'd asked me at the start, had I seen it all once already, I'd have sworn on several volumes of Featherstone, Grant and Wise than I had. But we got to about the point in season 2 where the production company fired Robert Hewitt Wolfe, the main show runner, and I turned to Anne and said 'do you remember this episode, 'cause I don't?'...

There were episodes in the next 3 1/2 seasons I do remember, but equally there were episodes I know I SHOULD remember - in one specific case, the sequel to the stunningly brilliant Season 1 episode 'Star Crossed', which remains to this day one of my favourite episodes of any SF TV series. I was right, though: the plotting and the like go slowly downhill, to the extent that the Season 5 finale feels like someone took all the dangling plot threads, threw them together with string, sealing wax and superglue, stirred, crossed their fingers and hoped the result made sense.... My comment to Anne, and I don't think I'm being overly arrogant here, is that I think if you'd given me, or any number of people I know, the reins from four episodes out, we could have set up a better finale.

That aside? Andromeda touched, early on, on some SF tropes (AI, time travel, addiction, etc) and handled them really well. The show ended up with one of the most female-heavy lead casts of I think any (even if you accept that Doyle and Rommie start out as Harper\s wish-fulfilment), and was not afraid to be pretty gender-equal in its minor rôles.

And I am still of the opinion that Andromeda the ship is one of the most classically elegant ships in SF.

On to the next.

More SF TV - Andromeda

Time to continue James' education in classic (and maybe not so classic) TV - this time it's Gene Rodenberry's Andromeda, which the UK satellite channel Pick (or as it used to be known, Sky 3) is doing a rerun (of at least series 1) of at present.

It starts, in my mind, superbly - it's apparently an attempt by the series' showrunner (Robert Hewitt Wolfe) to develop a show based on a TV pilot of Roddenberry's called 'Genesis II' (with whom it shares the main protagonists name and a lot of plot elements, even if the setting moves from a post-apocalyptic Earth for Genesis II to space for Andromeda). The first season has some decent hard science, a stunning and very different theme tune with many layers of electric guitar by Rush's Alex Lifeson, and the potential to be brilliant. The dialogue includes some snark that Joss Wheedon would be proud of, and for once it's a Rodenberry show with a male lead who's actually a bit of a dick on occasions.

During season 2, sadly, Wolfe got into a disagreement with the studio, who, predictably, wanted "more aliens, more space battles, and less internal conflict" and evidently less decent plot. Oh, and let's replace the brilliantly different theme music with... oo, I know. There's a stack of library music - how about 'Generic Orchestral Sci-fi Theme One'...?

I'm not in the least bitter about the theme music. Not a bit. At all.

"I'm a warship, and I don't like running
away from a fight."

Wolfe quit. Things went, to the mind of people with brains and taste, sadly downhill, and Season 5 was just downright weird.

But there is some brilliant stuff in season one - my favourite character is still Lexa Doig as the three representations of the ship's AI - the on-screen face, the hologram and the gynoid, Rommie - who in some cases end up arguing with each other. It'd be all too easy (translation, from season 3 on) for Rommie just to be a kick-ass brunette in tight leather, but there's a lot of stuff early on that actually explores what a warship's AI with the capability for human emotions would be capable of...

It started out well. It could have been so much better.