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Andromeda: worth the time?

Ragitsu

Ragitsu

Commodore
Commodore
Good evening.

I remember watching bits and pieces of the first Season whenever reruns would come my way (when the stars aligned, basically). Keith Hamilton Cobb turns in a good performance as Tyr as long as he isn't written as a cartoonish villain. Kevin Sorbo's Dylan Hunt is so-so...acceptable at best; there are moments when I can't decide whether the vaguely smug attitude of Hunt should be pinned on the character, the actor or Sorbo's then-burgeoning religious awakening.

Anyhow, does this show go places? Is there a point where it's best to jump off or should the entire experience be viewed?
 
I'm in a third group that watched the first episode and thought it wasn't worth watching more episodes as it seemed to be absolute pants. That's actually not quite true. I later accidentally caught bits of other random episodes but I never saw anything that convinced me that my original response was incorrect for me. The same goes for Lexx, ST Enterprise, ST Discovery, ST Lower Decks, and The Orville. I got farther with some than with others before giving up. Some shows I like more than other people do, for example Babylon 5 and The Expanse but it's purely down to personal preference. In the end, they're just TV shows meant to divert and entertain, but mainly to make money through subscription, advertisements, or buying physical media (well, apart from those that are trying to hammer home The Message™).

If you feel something isn't for you, you're not being paid to do it and it won't potentially benefit you by persisting, my advice (for what little that's worth) is to give up and do something else. If you try it and like it, fine. Don't let anyone else dictate what you should or shouldn't do - unless it's illegal or age inappropriate.
 
I did say that people who like it fall into two groups, I could say generally fall into two groups.
 
For those who like it, I don't disagree. I'm just not in either of those two groups. I believe one should try something oneself rather than relying on other people's opinions - unless the overwhelming consensus is that something really is pants. However, even mass opinion can be judged incorrect with hindsight - for example, John Carpenter's version of The Thing. I liked it ever since I first saw it on VHS in the early 80s.
 
Count me as another who watched the pilot and called it quits. I saw bits and pieces as the show progressed.

IIRC once Robert Hewlitt Wolfe was booted and Sorbo took more "creative" control, the already half-baked show took a hard nosedive into a level of awful not often explored. It got so bad, Jammer stopped reviewing at the end of S2. It tested the resolve of even the most zealous fans on the now-defunct SlipstreamBBS .

The series bible released before the show went into production was pretty impressive, though.
 
Season 1 is worthwhile for the stories if you can stomach the cheap production values. Season 2 is mostly good but declines in the latter half. (RHW was let go midway through, but had a hand in the writing or at least the development of all but two season 2 episodes.) Season 3 is awful except for the episodes by Zack Stentz & Ashley Edward Miller; they were still writing the same intelligent show they wrote in seasons 1-2 while the other staffers were writing a totally different, immensely dumber show. But they were gone by season 4, and so was I, mostly.
 
theenglish said:
There was just a recent thread on this, but basically people who like it fall into two groups. Those who liked it and watched the entire series and those who liked the first season and a half and then stopped watching.
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Group 2 for me. Although "liked" is probably a bit strong.

Pity the idea of a ship out of time re-establishing the Federati...sorry, Galactic Commonwealth wasn't recyced into another post Roddenberry show.
 
I say one should watch the first 2 seasons or some of season 2. Once you reach the zombie episode then it's best to just stop at that point.
 
I made it into early S3 IIRC, and might have made it further, but my recollection is that the show started getting preempted and/or jumping around on the schedule, and the narrative cohesion fell apart. Some of that was definitely inertia or optimism on my part though, as I'd noticed the quality drop after RHW's departure.
 
DonIago said:
I made it into early S3 IIRC, and might have made it further, but my recollection is that the show started getting preempted and/or jumping around on the schedule, and the narrative cohesion fell apart.
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It was syndicated, so any given local station's pre-emptions or schedule moves would've had no bearing on the show's own production. I just checked the release schedule, and the only interruptions in season 3 were the same standard hiatuses as every other season, a 7- to 8-week gap after episode 8 or 9 and a 6-week gap after episode 15 or 16.

Probably what happened is that your local station started kicking it around the schedule as its ratings fell. A lot of stations did that with syndicated shows that underperformed. Unlike broadcast network shows, which can be cancelled midseason, syndicated series are sold a full season at a time, so a station that buys a season is obligated to air the whole thing. But if a syndicated show got bad ratings in prime time, it would often get bumped to a less important time slot like late night or a weekend afternoon.
 
Short answer: No. I do not recommend anyone check it out.

For context, I think I saw most of the first two seasons, and like three episodes into season 3 before calling it quits, and even then I'd say I gave it more of a break then it really deserved. Remember of course back then there wasn't as much choice in terms of genre TV shows as there are now (not even close!) It was pretty much SG-1, Enterprise, Farscape and this (BSG was still a few years out IIRC . . . I think Lexx was out around the same-ish time but that's kind of a wildcard of a show) Honestly if it came out today, I wouldn't have stuck around for more than three episodes.

The initial premise was an interesting idea, which in terms of world building, writing, production design and even casting was inconsistently executed (to put it mildly.) it could have been the kind of "switch your brain of" mediocre that made it just about tolerable if you're into cheap pulpy nonsense . . . but then it somehow got so much worse, very quickly. Like the kind of show that actively dislikes it's viewers and wants them to suffer.

A similar thing happened to Earth Final Conflict just a few years prior, but that took a little longer to fully disintegrate, and it started from a better place in terms of the quality of writing.
 
Christopher said:
It was syndicated, so any given local station's pre-emptions or schedule moves would've had no bearing on the show's own production. I just checked the release schedule, and the only interruptions in season 3 were the same standard hiatuses as every other season, a 7- to 8-week gap after episode 8 or 9 and a 6-week gap after episode 15 or 16.

Probably what happened is that your local station started kicking it around the schedule as its ratings fell. A lot of stations did that with syndicated shows that underperformed. Unlike broadcast network shows, which can be cancelled midseason, syndicated series are sold a full season at a time, so a station that buys a season is obligated to air the whole thing. But if a syndicated show got bad ratings in prime time, it would often get bumped to a less important time slot like late night or a weekend afternoon.
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It may have been that I didn't realize there was going to be a hiatus, and then lost track of it and didn't realize when it came back, especially if it didn't come back in its prior timeslot.
 
There's bad shows, and then there's "this is giving me a headache" shows, and I'd argue Andromeda hit the latter point more frequently than I'd prefer. Also, it was kind of heartbreaking seeing a show that had some really good moments and seemed to be trying to be a good show end up tilting into the things that made it worse, not better.

My opinion, of course.
 
I watched the pilot, actually I won a competition and got the first two episodes on VHS, certainly a year before it was expected to air down here... Panned it, except for the "he's like some sort of Greek God" line, which will always be funny, then a year later I was given a CD with Stargate on it that I wanted to watch, and the last couple episodes of season one where the Magog homeworld tried to eat everyone, which despite all else, was epic, so I decided to go back, not that I could literally go back, but Andromeda was in syndication on cable, and I just had to stop actively avoiding it, but randomly watching out of order episodes is hardly a fair shake.
 
Seen bits of it when it appeared on TV. As a kid, I was excited to see Kevin "Hercules" Sorbo again.
The ship looks cool. Would buy a model if Eaglemoss made one.
 
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