The Show That Should Have… Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda
The ship, made flesh: Lexa Doig, as Rommie.
I’ll tell you upfront, I enjoyed the first two seasons of Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. Though I did watch all of it. If only the series had remained what it had been, it all might have ended better.
This show, ironically should have been the anti-Star Trek… and under the supervision of Robert Hewitt-Wolfe, it very nearly was. As the story goes, RHW, tasked by Gene Roddenberry‘s widow, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry to flesh out television pilot treatments which were found in a box became the show runner.
Now I’m always very skeptical of such things, clearly attaching Gene Roddenberry‘s name to any project provides it with more weight, and a likelihood to go into series. There’s little doubt RHW brought a lot of his own vision to Andromeda.
Of course Andromeda was not the first time we’ve met Captain Dylan Hunt.
Why I liked it:
Humans were shown to advance, not just by having spaceships, and other technology, but were diversifying because of it, breaking off into their own branches of new humanity, they were in effect Transhuman.
AIs were part of peoples daily lives, and they could be given flesh, at least before the fall.
Despite (or maybe because of?) the Transhumanist bent of the series, the show runner allowed for a certain amount of religion to come into play. I’ll put it a different way, Star Trek has, at least in its later incarnations (RE: Star Trek: The Next Generation) hold a very anti-religion view. You never got that sense from Andromeda.
The uniforms, well at least the original Commonwealth red gear was pretty slick.
Force-lances are more interesting than phasers, also ship to ship combat seemed to actually involve some skill.
Interstellar communication was not easy.
Everything was not streamlined, it was a ‘used universe’.
It showed Earth as just one planet among many, the interstellar coalition, The Commonwealth, and High Guard were founded, not by humans, but aliens. Oh and the reach of this universe was vast, spanning galaxies, not just solar systems.
Titles, the series had some of the best titles. “An Affirming Flame”, “The Banks of the Lethe”, “Its Hour Come ‘Round at Last” – That last one quotes my favorite poem. There’s a clear literary bent there, along with the epigraphs in front of each episode helped the series stand out.
Things of course went down hill when Robert Hewitt-Wolfe left and Kevin Sorbo got more rein over the show. Things seemed to descend into intentional camp…
Related articles
- Dynamic Duo of the Day (geeks.thedailywh.at)
- Five things that nearly killed Star Trek before it started (geek.com)
- Sci-Fi Blast From the Past – Laura Bertram (Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda) (scifiandtvtalk.typepad.com)
- Trek Nation At SDCC (scifitalk.com)
- Wonderfully Animated STAR TREK Series Intro (geektyrant.com)
I’ve never heard of this show, it sounds good. Why did it not run more and be more widely known?
As I said, the show runner ended up leaving, it moved to Syfy… and steadily declined, and in many ways lost focus. The First two seasons however were pretty good.
Reblogged this on Frylock's Fantabulous Fantasyland and commented:
I’ve never seen this show, but this has me thinking I should. But then the author reminds me that it starred Kevin Sorbo, so I’m still on the fence.
I never got a chance to watch it, sadly.