I vaguely remember watching Andromeda back in the day, gave up early in the second season, haven't seen it since.
How bad is Andromeda?
- Thread starter Neb Lleb
- Start date
Hmmm. I didn't really have that issue with B5, probably because while there were definitely some unaddressed pending issues at the time the series ended, I never really thought the series had been intended to address those issues either.
With The Expanse, to me, it felt more like things like the PM were intended to be addressed by the series, but then it got canceled or whatever (I don't know what happened), and they were just left blowing in the wind. The whole Laconia storyline is particularly unsatisfying because it ends just as it's beginning.
With all the revivals, and rebootings, they could potentially do bring this back. De-canonized most of season three and pretty much everything else afterwards, and try to fix the series set later in-universe with an older Hunt.
ICYW, The Expanse was a book series, and although Amazon MGM cancelled the TV show before it could adapt the last book, the people who licensed it out in the first place are still interested in exploring the universe through various multimedia tie-ins.
The last three books, actually. It's a 9-book series, so the TV show only got 2/3 of the way through it.
Also, the authors didn't just license the books; they were active writer-producers on the show, under their real names Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck instead of their prose pseudonym James S.A. Corey.
Although I didn't enjoy the last 2-3 seasons of The Expanse. They became way too much of a war story for my tastes, and the antagonists tended to be way too one-dimensionally evil. If they got the chance to revive the show and adapt the last three books, I'd be glad for their sake, but I'm not sure I'd be that interested in watching. Which is a shame, because it was one of the few TV series that satisfied my desire for (mostly) scientifically plausible and well-researched science fiction onscreen. (As was Andromeda in its first season and a half or so.)
That show was really ahead of its time, developed a cult following, and is worth checking out for anyone that missed it and likes spy-fy. Free to stream on Roku channel, but it's stuck in SD.
Rare early case of actually pulling off dark and morally ambiguous.
I caught episodes here and there back in the day when it aired, but never really watched it. I don't think I've ever seen the pilot. Thoughts about the pilot:
Why are random people breaking the fourth wall? The guy who slides down the ladder and looks right at us, like, "Hey, look at me, ma!" and the blue alien with tusks sticking out of it's face. The blonde ponytail girl getting into the escape pod, "Look at me -- I'm acting!"
The bad CGI for when the captain falls down the ladder shaft.
Comment from the video page: "I am surprised that, when he fell down the ladder shaft, he didn't hit anyone who might have been climbing. Pretty irresponsible if you ask me."
The faux hero music cheaply rendered with computers, that cheapens the whole thing.
Theme music: cheap, bland, forgettable, insufficient.
No chemistry. If it wasn't for Captain Herc, it would have fallen apart.
High school level dialogue writing.
Why is another ship's captain saying Hunt's ship the first she contacted? How about a general distress call asking for more help. One ship at a time -- really?
Oh, lord, the cheap plastic alien bug costume. We've Gorn back in time, Captain!
AND, if the green insect and chair is jerked around during slipsteam, why is everybody standing just hunky dory?
Why does the Andromeda just sit there and take hits and get swarmed? How about evasive/defensive maneuvers? And the "We can't maneuver, there are too many of them!" line is bullshit -- green bug had plenty of time to do that. And what about, you know, ramming them? Or letting them play chicken and get out of the way?
The werefolf/dog alien. So bad.
The exploding tactical station with the two officers, was pretty impressive.
Some of Hunt's fighting was also good.
The joke throw back to "Hercules: the Legendary Journeys" was humorous.
The defensive/offensive weapons of Andromeda inside, as spoken in dialogue, are good ideas and a nice touch. Would have been nice if Andromeda actually employed them when she found the betrayal (if she's A.I., surely they can self navigate even if she's offline).
Writing and chemistry greatly improved after the time dilation and new characters. Good enough to warrant continuing.
Why are random people breaking the fourth wall? The guy who slides down the ladder and looks right at us, like, "Hey, look at me, ma!" and the blue alien with tusks sticking out of it's face. The blonde ponytail girl getting into the escape pod, "Look at me -- I'm acting!"
The bad CGI for when the captain falls down the ladder shaft.
Comment from the video page: "I am surprised that, when he fell down the ladder shaft, he didn't hit anyone who might have been climbing. Pretty irresponsible if you ask me."
The faux hero music cheaply rendered with computers, that cheapens the whole thing.
Theme music: cheap, bland, forgettable, insufficient.
No chemistry. If it wasn't for Captain Herc, it would have fallen apart.
High school level dialogue writing.
Why is another ship's captain saying Hunt's ship the first she contacted? How about a general distress call asking for more help. One ship at a time -- really?
Oh, lord, the cheap plastic alien bug costume. We've Gorn back in time, Captain!
AND, if the green insect and chair is jerked around during slipsteam, why is everybody standing just hunky dory?
Why does the Andromeda just sit there and take hits and get swarmed? How about evasive/defensive maneuvers? And the "We can't maneuver, there are too many of them!" line is bullshit -- green bug had plenty of time to do that. And what about, you know, ramming them? Or letting them play chicken and get out of the way?
The werefolf/dog alien. So bad.
The exploding tactical station with the two officers, was pretty impressive.
Some of Hunt's fighting was also good.
The joke throw back to "Hercules: the Legendary Journeys" was humorous.
The defensive/offensive weapons of Andromeda inside, as spoken in dialogue, are good ideas and a nice touch. Would have been nice if Andromeda actually employed them when she found the betrayal (if she's A.I., surely they can self navigate even if she's offline).
Writing and chemistry greatly improved after the time dilation and new characters. Good enough to warrant continuing.
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Harper is hilarious. 
Out-washing Wash before Wash.
I don't know the trajectory the books take (they're on my wishlist), but I too noticed that there seemed to be a significant change in scope from the earlier seasons to the later seasons, and I guess I do wonder whether the books do the same thing. Marcos and what's-his-face on the colony planet before the Marcos arc takes center stage are distressingly mwa-ha-ha, and it kind of sucks that those conflicts seem to divert the series from tackling the larger issues, though the series seemed to be getting back to those issues just in time for it to end. :|
Just finished the second episode, which is much better. Had some issues like with the first half of the pilot, but not as many.
I think there was a missed opportunity for a funny line: when Tyr said he had worked for a great many many of fools, it would have been funny and inline with his character if he had said, "I suppose one more won't hurt."
I think there was a missed opportunity for a funny line: when Tyr said he had worked for a great many many of fools, it would have been funny and inline with his character if he had said, "I suppose one more won't hurt."
Yeah, that's the thing. They started opening up the scope to become this interstellar saga, and then they regressed back to Solar System politics and war for two whole seasons.
My impression is that the show follows the books pretty closely, although it took more than a season to cover book 1, and book 2 was split between season 2 & early season 3, with all of book 3 covered in the rest of season 3. Ever since, it's been one season per book.
It was pretty fucking shocking.
I think I watched a bit of early season one and had the hots for Steve Bacic, and it felt low budget even then. Then I watched a bit of season two maybe and found a few episodes sort of okay.
But then they started doing something that so many sci-fi shows love to do: tinker out of desperation. It's not a good look. Like completely reinventing one character. Didn't they even cut off her tail?
I'm not saying a tail is the best look in the first place, but mutilating your characters in the hope that'll some how fix the show is just bizarre.
I think I watched a bit of early season one and had the hots for Steve Bacic, and it felt low budget even then. Then I watched a bit of season two maybe and found a few episodes sort of okay.
But then they started doing something that so many sci-fi shows love to do: tinker out of desperation. It's not a good look. Like completely reinventing one character. Didn't they even cut off her tail?
I'm not saying a tail is the best look in the first place, but mutilating your characters in the hope that'll some how fix the show is just bizarre.
I wouldn't say it was out of desperation, though, since the studio did it with most of their shows. It was a habit of micromanagement and pushing to cut costs and simplify the storytelling.
Trance losing her tail was very much a budgetary decision, since the show just couldn't afford to pull off the prosthetic effects on a regular basis, and the executives basically said that either the tail went or Trance went. Although her bigger executive-mandated character change was seven episodes later, in the last episode made before Robert Hewitt Wolfe was fired, where she was replaced by her older, gold-skinned future self.
Huh.
I thought Trance losing her tail and the switch from Purple to Gold skin (future Trance) happened in the same episode.
Shows you how much I remember from the show.
I thought Trance losing her tail and the switch from Purple to Gold skin (future Trance) happened in the same episode.
Shows you how much I remember from the show.
That sounds pretty desperate.
Yeah I think I conflated the two in my mind too... I knew they messed around with her character somewhat. But I never watched it all, so it's partial memory and partial remembered third hard info.
So did I, at first. I had a draft of my previous post written saying it all happened at the same time, and then I thought, "Hey, wait a minute, didn't she lose her tail a few episodes earlier?" and I looked it up.
That's right. According to Sailing the Slipstream, Cobb wanted to lose either the boneblades or the long hair, and they chose the blades. (He not only found them unwieldy to work with, but thought they looked like "rubber carrots.") Which apparently was done without explanation, since new showrunner Bob Engels and the studio execs wanted to do standalone episodes with little continuity, because they believed the story arcs in season 2 had been too "confusing."
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