How bad is Andromeda?
- Thread starter Neb Lleb
- Start date
Same, I didn't think he was amazing or anything but I remember enjoying Hercules and thought his casting kinda made sense. Seemed like a good choice at the time.
I remember it was pitched as a Star Trek series at one time. I would have said they should consider that again, but Discovery season 3-5 basically covered the core concepts. Jump to the future, set in future where the Federation/Starfleet is mostly in pieces, the ship's A.I. is self aware etc.
According to what the producers said on the fan boards, the issue was that Tribune's execs were driven by profit above all. They didn't want intelligent, thought-provoking shows with complex ideas, they wanted lowest-common-denominator action shows that were simple enough to be marketed internationally across barriers of language and culture, and thereby make them more money in global syndication. Also, they prioritized short-term money-saving over long-term gains, so rather than investing the money it would've taken to create a well-made SF future, they cut corners everywhere they could. And they fired experienced showrunners and replaced them with cheaper ones -- or maybe it's just that it was cheaper to fire producers after a year or two and hire new ones than to shell out the annual raises that veteran staffers would be entitled to (this is probably also why they had so many cast changes).
So it's not that they hated SF/fantasy, it's that they defined it differently, as a vehicle for action rather than ideas, aimed low to make a quick buck rather than aimed high to create something that would endure.
I remember Tribune releasing surveys asking what people wanted from Earth: Final Conflict, I think as early as the gap between seasons 1 and 2.
At the time I remember being impressed that they were reaching out to the fans that way. In retrospect I was too naive to realize that this was probably a warning that there would be a lot of meddling ahead.
For what it's worth, I loved Earth: Final Conflict season 1, felt it declined sharply in quality throughout seasons 2 and 3, and suddenly became very good again in season 4; then it turned into something that I felt disconnected enough from that I didn't bother to watch more than a few episodes in season 5, including coming back for the finale and the episode where they brought one of the original characters back for a send-off.
Perhaps @Christopher will appreciate why I've often referred to this progression as "the Sliders curve."
More on-topic, I hopped off Andromeda after season 2. IIRC it was already declining near the end, and then the news that Wolfe was gone and Sorbo would have more creative control sealed the deal. I remember being lightly horrified at the changes I heard were happening on-screen as well, but I haven't given the show enough thought in the past 20-25 years to be more specific than that.
Which could also explain why their fantasy stuff did better, since in general the concepts in fantasy tend to not be quite as complex as in sci-fi.
In some aspects of worldbuilding, maybe, but fantasy can be just as intelligent and challenging in its character writing or philosophical themes.
I don't think it's a difference between SF and fantasy, I think it's a difference between what Majel Roddenberry aspired to and what Tribune & Fireworks wanted. Most of the hourlong shows from Tribune and/or Fireworks were action-adventures regardless of genre -- Adventure Inc., Beastmaster, Mutant X, Night Man, RoboCop: The Series, F/X: The Series, La Femme Nikita, Highlander: The Raven, Queen of Swords, Relic Hunter. But only the Roddenberry shows aspired to a higher level of conceptual sophistication and intelligence.
Oh of course, I was purely talking about sci-fi shows getting deep into some of the higher level scientific ideas, compared to most fantasy show's magic, which tends to be a more straightforward and easier to anyone to understand.
OK, I get what you're saying now.
I watched and enjoyed the first two seasons. Life got in the way of watching the rest. I'm still thinking about going back to it at some point.
I think, maybe this show is getting hate because of Kevin Sorbo's politics. That doesn't mean the show is bad. You can enjoy a show and not agree with everything the actors think behind the scenes.
I think, maybe this show is getting hate because of Kevin Sorbo's politics. That doesn't mean the show is bad. You can enjoy a show and not agree with everything the actors think behind the scenes.
I didn't know what his politics were 25 years ago...
Yeah. Kevin Sorbo is a far-right nutcase nowadays, but Andromeda sounds bad because it just sounds like a true example of executive meddling and terrible writing wasting a perfectly good premise.
Nothing to do with it. An actor on TV is just an employee doing what other people tell him to do; his own personal beliefs and private life have nothing to do with the character he plays, unless he's also writing, directing, or producing the show to be a polemic for his views, which was not the case with Andromeda. I strongly disagree with Sorbo's politics, but I liked him as Hercules, and I thought he was reasonably good as Dylan Hunt in the early seasons where the writing was good and he had producers and directors keeping his self-indulgence in check. The show got worse once he gained more dominance as a producer and wrote to serve his ego, but that wasn't about his political views.
You hear all sorts of stories about actors who play the most vile, despicable villains being total sweethearts in real life. So it shouldn't be hard to understand that it's possible to like a fictional character even if the actor playing the character is a total creep in real life.
The first two seasons are good. I'm not sure about the rest.
I knew nothing of Kevin Sorbo's politics when I watched the show. I still didn't care for it.
We didn't know his politics back then. And back then it the differences between Republicans and Democrats didn't really affect whether you watched a television show or not. Politics knew its place in society.
Even then though, I felt he was the weak link in the acting on the show.
I never said an actor has to be smart but like you yourself said it did become a problem for Andromeda so hiring Sorbo was in fact a mistake.
Except they didn't develop the show and then hire Sorbo. Sorbo was attached to the new Roddenberry project before it was even decided what the project would be, and Wolfe developed it in consultation with Sorbo, Majel Roddenberry, and the Tribune & Fireworks executive producers from day one. As I mentioned, it was Sorbo's preference to do it as a space series even though it was based on Roddenberry's Earthbound Genesis II premise. So the show would not have existed as we know it if Sorbo hadn't been involved. It might not have existed at all, because at the time, Sorbo was just off Hercules and riding a wave of popularity, so his clout was key to getting the show approved in the first place.
Honestly, I wanted to like this show when it came out. I loved the concept, but the characters and terminology were fracking annoying. The Irish kid with the rash wore out his welcome before his first appearance was over - I hate the "quirky" characters that these shows have to put in (the Stargate franchise was filled with them). Character names like Trace Gemini and Rev Bem felt like Filmation Saturday morning TV show names. If the worldbuilding done before a single frame is shot feels lazy, then I tend to be overly critical at the jump. I had other useless bitches about it at the time, but it's been so long, I forgot them but don't have any interest in revisiting to find out.
Earth: Final Conflict at least started out extraordinarily promising. It felt like an updated "V" and I appreciated the initially interesting Taelon agenda and Boone being played by a low key introspective actor who was far from your traditional hero type. Probably why they replaced him, but I really liked Boone by the season finale, so when they killed him off, I lost a lot of interest. And once I saw Liam's creation and suddenly he's walking around fully grown and his attitude was like he's been around for 30 years, I checked out.
I did - however - see a lot of the 5th season because it was such a massive and cheap train wreck, it was hard to look away.
Earth: Final Conflict at least started out extraordinarily promising. It felt like an updated "V" and I appreciated the initially interesting Taelon agenda and Boone being played by a low key introspective actor who was far from your traditional hero type. Probably why they replaced him, but I really liked Boone by the season finale, so when they killed him off, I lost a lot of interest. And once I saw Liam's creation and suddenly he's walking around fully grown and his attitude was like he's been around for 30 years, I checked out.
I did - however - see a lot of the 5th season because it was such a massive and cheap train wreck, it was hard to look away.
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