On my third rewatch of the Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. Might contain spoilers

[Candleicious Ghost]

Yes you read that correct my third rewatch. I loved the early seasons up to the end of season 3, 4 and 5 well they can go get stuffed but the first three seasons, as far as I am concerned were OK to watch, not great, but reasonable entertainment. Of course like anything your mileage may vary with what you like or not about the show, but feel free to chime in here if you want I don't mind.

The set I got was digitally remastered and with the reasonably new screen I have I have noticed with this and other things I watch the picture quality just seems a lot nicer and clearer, brighter in parts. The sound doesn't seem that much different at all to the previous set I had used which wasn't a remaster.

One character that seems to pique my interest this time around is Trance Gemini. During season 1 you get this impression of her as curious, bubbly, somewhat childlike in how she interacts with the world around her but the more you watch her there are subtle hints that there might be a darker side to her. I just finished the episode "Pitiless As The Sun" and that was a good episode as a lot of it was built around her. The Andromeda visits a planet that has been having attacks upon its ships from an unknown enemy, though later we do learn that those attacks were not without reason. That gets resolved later but I think Trance was the focus of this one as a scientist dude talks Trance into answering some questions, and she plays along.

it turns out that she was not the only person of her race to visit that planet. Some time earlier another of her kind made a visit and stirred up trouble and caused a civil war, all because they were bored. Makes me wonder what kind of people she comes from when one of them is bored, visits a planet, causes mayhem and then scoots off as if nothing wrong had been done. This season 1 and 2 version of the character does seem different to the version we get in later seasons, and I did wonder if the writers had changed her story quite a bit because as you might know later on in the series Trance is a star, or more precisely an avatar of a sun which really is more fantasy to me than scifi and I can dig it. I wish more shows had done this kind of thing. I really liked that they did this.

Anyway where was I, yes the scientist guy was asking her questions and she was playing along, then he gets frustrated with her, and that's when he mentions the other one like her that had come before. She frees herself from her binds and gives us the audience, and him the impression that she could very well have escaped at any time had she so wished to but didn't want to. Later on near the end of the episode you see her reveal a bit of herself to the guy and shows him stars and galaxies inside her eye as he looks at her intently so maybe the star thing wasn't a total rewrite later on but it's hinted at here that there is something more about her than what you see.++

Season 2 episode 5 is next and a shootout in a bar

 

[FPAlpha]

I really liked the concept of it. A vast interstellar Empire building huge, AI powered, battleships. the Nietzeanchs ( sp?) and all that. It had cool space battles and back then nobody knew how batshit insane stupid Sorbo would become ( or he was always like it and was a better actor than we knew).

Somewhere doen the line i lost the plot though, can't tell exactly when since it's been decades since i watched it but the early episodes/seasons were cool.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

At the time I didn't know about Sorbo and his craziness, had previously watched a bit of him in Hercules and liked the show. I didn't mind his portrayal of Hunt.

Just started the episode in a bar.

 

[Christopher]

This season 1 and 2 version of the character does seem different to the version we get in later seasons, and I did wonder if the writers had changed her story quite a bit because as you might know later on in the series Trance is a star, or more precisely an avatar of a sun which really is more fantasy to me than scifi and I can dig it. I wish more shows had done this kind of thing. I really liked that they did this.

Trance's character was retooled at studio insistence, hence her purple version being replaced by a more "mature" gold version. But she was always going to turn out to be a star. After the end of the series, Robert Hewitt Wolfe published "Coda," a short script that summarized his original intent for the series's story arc. It can be found here.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

Trance's character was retooled at studio insistence, hence her purple version being replaced by a more "mature" gold version. But she was always going to turn out to be a star. After the end of the series, Robert Hewitt Wolfe published "Coda," a short script that summarized his original intent for the series's story arc. It can be found here.

Oh that's pretty wild

 

[FredH]

Trance's character was retooled at studio insistence, hence her purple version being replaced by a more "mature" gold version. But she was always going to turn out to be a star. After the end of the series, Robert Hewitt Wolfe published "Coda," a short script that summarized his original intent for the series's story arc. It can be found here.

I admit I’m a little disappointed that Wolfe, who (I believe?) was responsible for the, excellent hardish-sf lore of the series pre-airing, now has reality originally forming out out mystical claptrap, free-floating capitalized Emotions, and so on.

 

[Christopher]

I admit I’m a little disappointed that Wolfe, who (I believe?) was responsible for the, excellent hardish-sf lore of the series pre-airing, now has reality originally forming out out mystical claptrap, free-floating capitalized Emotions, and so on.

That's filtered through Trance's sentimental way of expressing things. "Love" here means gravitation, the attraction that draws matter together. "Blowing Things Up" is the opposing cosmic force that made the universe expand (inflation, dark energy, whatever). From the start, Robert always said the show was about "love and blowing stuff up," and "Coda" revealed what he secretly meant by that.

And yes, Robert was responsible for the hard-SF approach, along with Zack Stentz & Ashley Edward Miller, and the show's science consultant Paul Woodmansee of JPL. But hard-SF works have speculated about cosmic-level intelligences before, and even about the universe being their creation. I can't say I was partial to that aspect of it myself, but it's not unprecedented.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

"All Too Human" was what I called the Matrix episode because Rommie does a lot of matrix style fighting in it which is wire work when actors have to leap across the set at some silly height and distance. It's nicely done but the it was so obvious where they got their influence for the fight scenes in that episode.

"Ouroboros" was my most recent episode and I like this one because this is where we meet the new Trance and it's interesting what makeup can do, same actress, same character yet she looks a little taller too because probably platform footwear of some kind or screen magic. It's also the one where Harper loses the rest of his Magog babies. Thank goodness that saga is over.

My next favourite episode is coming soon after a few episodes of blah, blah.. "Belly Of The Beast" which is a season 2 episode that I really enjoy. We've had some interesting guest stars too with the actress who plays the detective Angie Flynn from the show Motive aka Kristin Lehman. I didn't recognise her till years after Andromeda when I then started watching Motive because she looked familiar then I realised Oh she's the woman from the episode "Lava And Rockets" which wasn't a bad one, just it felt like time filler in parts.
=================================

Other stuff:

The show never goes out of its way to actually present any kind of scale for the main ship that it's based on, or any others for that matter, except sometimes for the Eureka Maru where we have seen the odd shot where we can see the cockpit area as she is flying. Trouble is these scenes are so fast that you never get a chance to look closer and get some idea of the ships true size at all, much like the Andromeda.

For instance the slipstream core. Just how big is this place in the middle of the ship and has anyone ever been to the bottom because down there is a pile of dead bodies that would probably stink up the place if anyone went there. There is probably a ton of dead Magog there at the bottom and assorted others.

The ship has an observation deck but where is it? since they don't do windows on the CG model they use for the show that one bugs me a lot because again we don't really get any idea of ship scale.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

Today another favourite episode "The Lone And Level Sands" and guest star is Tony Todd whom you may know from various spooky movies and the Final Destination series.

Great episode. The Maru is being chased by the Ogami and along the way a mysterious ship jumps in saving their butts and rescuing them. We find out that it's an Earth ship called the Bellerophon lost in space for over 3000 years. Again with the time thing if the Bellerophon is that old and in the far future makes me think even that is a very long time in the future from us, and since the writers never give us any clues abut the time period I guess it's anyone's guess. I'm thinking the Bellerophon was in the 30th century or something close to that, and the Andromeda was built many years beyond that even.

Anyway this was a good episode nice story, the Maru damaged and looking for repair the Captain of this ship offers help but is hiding a secret. Along the way in their travels they found a slipfighter and kept it locked away. It has the parts they need to fix the Maru and Captain Metis knows that.

Some of his crew want to mutiny to get away from him and they almost do it but Dylan calms everyone down, they get the Maru fixed and who wants to leave leaves and Metis the rest continue on their journey on their ship.

 

[Christopher]

Today another favourite episode "The Lone And Level Sands" and guest star is Tony Todd whom you may know from various spooky movies and the Final Destination series.

I always felt it was a shame that Todd never got a series lead role. He would've been a better Dylan Hunt than Sorbo.

Great episode. The Maru is being chased by the Ogami and along the way a mysterious ship jumps in saving their butts and rescuing them. We find out that it's an Earth ship called the Bellerophon lost in space for over 3000 years. Again with the time thing if the Bellerophon is that old and in the far future makes me think even that is a very long time in the future from us, and since the writers never give us any clues abut the time period I guess it's anyone's guess. I'm thinking the Bellerophon was in the 30th century or something close to that, and the Andromeda was built many years beyond that even.

The timeline was given in the online tie-in site: https://philharris.co.uk/AllSystems/www.saveandromeda.com/allsystems/history/timeline.html

But yes, the series does take place around 3000 years in the future. By my best estimate, the Andromeda Ascendant was built in 4852 CE (Commonwealth Year 9772), trapped in the black hole in 4864 CE, and rescued in 5167 CE. The Bellerophon was launched in the 22nd century, though it would've had to be before Earth's first contact with the Commonwealth in c. 2135.

My notes for calculating Andromeda chronology:

Spoiler: Click to open

Available documentation provides two data points for reconciling Commonwealth and Gregorian calendars. The AllSystems Timeline gives CY 6811 as the publication date of the final volume of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, an event which happened in 1885 CE (AD). The “Harper’s Brain” website gives CY 6869 as the date Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier (1947 CE). This would put Commonwealth years 4926 years ahead in 1885 and 4922 years ahead in 1947 -- a loss of four years in 62. This would make a Commonwealth year 93.55% as long as an Earth solar year, and would put the first year of the series (CY 10087) in the year 4957 CE.

However, Zack Stentz has stated that he used the English publication date of Zarathustra (1891) as his reference, and that a Vedran/CY year is almost exactly equal to an Earth year. This would make the conversion factor a simple CY = CE + 4920. The Yeager date provided by Harper can be ignored, given Harper’s demonstrably imperfect grasp of historical fact.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

I always felt it was a shame that Todd never got a series lead role. He would've been a better Dylan Hunt than Sorbo.




The timeline was given in the online tie-in site: https://philharris.co.uk/AllSystems/www.saveandromeda.com/allsystems/history/timeline.html

But yes, the series does take place around 3000 years in the future. By my best estimate, the Andromeda Ascendant was built in 4852 CE (Commonwealth Year 9772), trapped in the black hole in 4864 CE, and rescued in 5167 CE. The Bellerophon was launched in the 22nd century, though it would've had to be before Earth's first contact with the Commonwealth in c. 2135.

My notes for calculating Andromeda chronology:

Spoiler: Click to open

Available documentation provides two data points for reconciling Commonwealth and Gregorian calendars. The AllSystems Timeline gives CY 6811 as the publication date of the final volume of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, an event which happened in 1885 CE (AD). The “Harper’s Brain” website gives CY 6869 as the date Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier (1947 CE). This would put Commonwealth years 4926 years ahead in 1885 and 4922 years ahead in 1947 -- a loss of four years in 62. This would make a Commonwealth year 93.55% as long as an Earth solar year, and would put the first year of the series (CY 10087) in the year 4957 CE.

However, Zack Stentz has stated that he used the English publication date of Zarathustra (1891) as his reference, and that a Vedran/CY year is almost exactly equal to an Earth year. This would make the conversion factor a simple CY = CE + 4920. The Yeager date provided by Harper can be ignored, given Harper’s demonstrably imperfect grasp of historical fact.

That's handy.

The website is also handy..

 

[FreezeC77]

Trance's character was retooled at studio insistence, hence her purple version being replaced by a more "mature" gold version. But she was always going to turn out to be a star. After the end of the series, Robert Hewitt Wolfe published "Coda," a short script that summarized his original intent for the series's story arc. It can be found here.

From what I remember the rumor was the tail was shot off simply because they found it annoying to work with. The actress didn't care for it and to actually manipulate scenes to make it look like it was an actual appendage was more work than they wanted to do.

Also I believe both Trance's actress and the actor who played Rev Bem had skin reactions to the makeup/prosthetics and that's why both departed the show for awhile before returning in altered appearances with less makeup/prosthetics.

 

[Christopher]

From what I remember the rumor was the tail was shot off simply because they found it annoying to work with. The actress didn't care for it and to actually manipulate scenes to make it look like it was an actual appendage was more work than they wanted to do.

That rumor is pretty much entirely wrong. According to the behind-the-scenes book Sailing the Slipstream by Jill Sherwin (Robert Hewitt Wolfe's assistant on Deep Space Nine and Andromeda and script coordinator for season 1 of the latter), it was an executive mandate to lose the tail because it was too expensive. In Wolfe's words (p. 159), "It was something we didn't particularly want to lose, but given the choice between losing the tail or losing the character, which was essentially the choice that was given to us, we decided to lose the tail... I secretly nurtured an intention to grow it back later if we ever got the bugs worked out.... The tail was let go before we decided to change Trance completely ("Ouroboros"). Had we known ahead of time a second change was coming, we probably could've held off on the tail. Though maybe not. The folks who wanted it gone didn't much want to wait." (Wolfe adds that if he'd known how tiny the FX budget would be, he would've made it a humans-only universe.)

As for the actress's feelings, from p. 160: "Though [Laura] Bertram was pleased she would no longer have other actors and crewmembers tripping over the prosthetic, she was sorry for the loss of it as she felt it added to the character."

Also I believe both Trance's actress and the actor who played Rev Bem had skin reactions to the makeup/prosthetics and that's why both departed the show for awhile before returning in altered appearances with less makeup/prosthetics.

True of Brent Stait (Rev), but Bertram never departed the show. Her Trance-formation from Purple to Gold Trance happened in a single episode, "Ouroboros," in which she appeared in both makeups. Bertram is quoted in Sailing the Slipstream, pp. 198-9: "I do not have the same issues with my make-up as Brent did with his... I only have the prosthetic ear-tips to deal with... The make-up they use on me is all water-based, and does not cause any allergic reactions on me." In fact, the Gold Trance makeup was more elaborate and took longer than the Purple Trance makeup (p. 200).

Robert Wolfe explains on p. 199 that the execs wanted to kill off Trance (and Harper and Beka), since the focus groups didn't like her, so he had to fight to keep the characters and make compromises to appease the studio's demands. Like the loss of the tail, the change to Gold Trance was mandated by the executives, who insisted that Trance needed to lose the manic pixie dream girl characterization and become more tough and sexy (Wolfe said they wanted her to be like Xena, though I don't know if they actually said that to him). The writers considered that redundant when they already had Beka and Rommie as strong and sexy heroines, but they were forced to make the change.

Both Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda were micromanaged to death by Tribune's executives, who had no respect for the intelligence and creative ambitions of the shows' creators and just wanted cheap, lowbrow action-adventure. They also constantly overreacted to audience and focus-group criticisms and pushed the shows back and forth in their direction -- for instance, demanding that Andromeda drop its story arc when audiences complained it was hard to follow, then demanding that they get more serialized when audiences complained it had gotten too episodic. (Or was it the other way around?) And of course, they kept firing showrunners and replacing them with inferior talent. Robert lasting a season and a half put him ahead of Beastmaster: The Series's Steve Feke (let go after one season) and Earth: Final Conflict's Richard C. Okie (fired after half a season).

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

That's a heck of a lot of backstage drama

 

[JD]

It's frustrating that Tribune had so little respect for their creatives and audience, because gave us some shows with great premises, and then almost immediately ruined them with their constant crap.

Today another favourite episode "The Lone And Level Sands" and guest star is Tony Todd whom you may know from various spooky movies and the Final Destination series.

Don't forget he was also Kurn in Star Trek:TNG and DS9.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

It's frustrating that Tribune had so little respect for their creatives and audience, because gave us some shows with great premises, and then almost immediately ruined them with their constant crap.

Don't forget he was also Kurn in Star Trek:TNG and DS9.

OMG I did not know that, thought he was familiar but never thought it was him.

The one constant that never appeared in every season was the stupid black hole and his ex fiancee Sara who kept cropping up a bit too much

 

[somebuddyX]

I've only ever seen "Angel Dark, Demon Bright" but I think I read every review of Season 1 and 2 at Jammer's Reviews. It's an interesting world and the behind the scenes stuff is fascinating.

 

[theenglish]

Oh that's pretty wild

She was Mrs. Whatzit as a young girl. Or maybe in reverse?

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

She was Mrs. Whatzit as a young girl. Or maybe in reverse?

Now there's a character that I haven't heard spoken in many years

 

[Orange Crusher]

That rumor is pretty much entirely wrong. According to the behind-the-scenes book Sailing the Slipstream by Jill Sherwin (Robert Hewitt Wolfe's assistant on Deep Space Nine and Andromeda and script coordinator for season 1 of the latter), it was an executive mandate to lose the tail because it was too expensive. In Wolfe's words (p. 159), "It was something we didn't particularly want to lose, but given the choice between losing the tail or losing the character, which was essentially the choice that was given to us, we decided to lose the tail... I secretly nurtured an intention to grow it back later if we ever got the bugs worked out.... The tail was let go before we decided to change Trance completely ("Ouroboros"). Had we known ahead of time a second change was coming, we probably could've held off on the tail. Though maybe not. The folks who wanted it gone didn't much want to wait." (Wolfe adds that if he'd known how tiny the FX budget would be, he would've made it a humans-only universe.)

As for the actress's feelings, from p. 160: "Though [Laura] Bertram was pleased she would no longer have other actors and crewmembers tripping over the prosthetic, she was sorry for the loss of it as she felt it added to the character."




True of Brent Stait (Rev), but Bertram never departed the show. Her Trance-formation from Purple to Gold Trance happened in a single episode, "Ouroboros," in which she appeared in both makeups. Bertram is quoted in Sailing the Slipstream, pp. 198-9: "I do not have the same issues with my make-up as Brent did with his... I only have the prosthetic ear-tips to deal with... The make-up they use on me is all water-based, and does not cause any allergic reactions on me." In fact, the Gold Trance makeup was more elaborate and took longer than the Purple Trance makeup (p. 200).

Robert Wolfe explains on p. 199 that the execs wanted to kill off Trance (and Harper and Beka), since the focus groups didn't like her, so he had to fight to keep the characters and make compromises to appease the studio's demands. Like the loss of the tail, the change to Gold Trance was mandated by the executives, who insisted that Trance needed to lose the manic pixie dream girl characterization and become more tough and sexy (Wolfe said they wanted her to be like Xena, though I don't know if they actually said that to him). The writers considered that redundant when they already had Beka and Rommie as strong and sexy heroines, but they were forced to make the change.

Both Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda were micromanaged to death by Tribune's executives, who had no respect for the intelligence and creative ambitions of the shows' creators and just wanted cheap, lowbrow action-adventure. They also constantly overreacted to audience and focus-group criticisms and pushed the shows back and forth in their direction -- for instance, demanding that Andromeda drop its story arc when audiences complained it was hard to follow, then demanding that they get more serialized when audiences complained it had gotten too episodic. (Or was it the other way around?) And of course, they kept firing showrunners and replacing them with inferior talent. Robert lasting a season and a half put him ahead of Beastmaster: The Series's Steve Feke (let go after one season) and Earth: Final Conflict's Richard C. Okie (fired after half a season).

I adore the 'manic pixie dream girl'-purple Trance. Laura Bertram is a delight!

I liked the creative ways in which they implemented her tail - she would hang by it and use as an extra arm. Off the top of my head, I can't recall any major Trek characters that had a tail.

Christopher's posts are always a wealth of information. You're a true master of the geekosphere.