ORBzine - UK TV Review: "Andromeda" April 2001

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 1] Answers Given to Questions Never Asked
Shown 29-Sep-2003

The command crew hang out and discuss the aftermath of the previous episode. The Commonwealth Fleet does not appear to have survived the climactic battle, unsurprising since it was a three-way battle between them, the Drago-Katsov and an alliance of hostile alien forces. The circumstances force Andromeda to return to the scene of the battle, where only wreckage remains. Kunt’s Commonwealth took two seasons to rebuild, but one season to be destroyed.

The two rulers of the Confederacy (it’s called the Triumvirate AKA the Trio, for some reason) are missing. Dylan and his minions take on The Collector (Nigel Bennett - Lexx ).

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 2] Pieces of Eight
Shown 06-Oct-2003

The Triumvir that Kunt rescued last episode - a beautiful female one, of course - has been victimised by a political rival in the Senate. Kunt takes Andromeda to visit the man’s space station. The Senator (Maury Chaykin - Stargate SG-1 ) is a human Jabba the Hutt, the kind of blatant villain one would expect from a dumbed-down show like Charmed .

Some metal space-dogs went wild in Rommie’s engine room, and Kunt needed to use an EMP grenade to put them down. Yes, this is real Star Trek: TOS Territory. Despite having a crew of redshirts, the captain of the starship (equivalent of a Brigadier-General) does all the fighting himself. Well, his pilot and his chief engineer help out. Now the station sends some engineers aboard to help Harper out. They are beautiful women, and he is more than happy to let them distract him. It is nice to see Rommie have some rivals for Harper’s affections.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 3] Waking the Tyrant's Device
Shown 13-Oct-2003

The magog could not have constructed the worldship, even with help of the Abyss. Instead the work was subcontracted four hundred years ago (yes, almost a century before Dylan Kunt’s birth). And the man who did it is Kunt’s new target.

Dylan and the minions meet up with his former protege/love-interest Molly Noguchi ( Kristen Lehman ). They get trapped together on a desolate world, inhabited by trigger-happy stormtroopers.

The Magog worldship is still on its way.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 4] Double or Nothingness
Shown 20-Oct-2003

Kunt visits a world run by a pair of high-stakes gamblers. The one who does all the talking is Colin Cunningham from Falling Skies . But is Kunt trapped in a simulation that they are betting on? What is real and what is not real?

Back on Andromeda, Bekka is left in charge. Unfortunately, Rommie accidentally doses her with a counter-intrusion weapon - hallucinogenic gas. Instead of relieving the afflicted Bekka from command, they allow her to keep giving orders.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 5] Harper/Delete
Shown 27-Oct-2003

Kunt and his crew go to retrieve a new Confederacy super-weapon so deadly that it accidentally killed its first crew. Unfortunately, Nietzschean scavengers found it first. Now a pirate and his fascist sister ( Ona Grauer ) are fighting over it.

Kunt gets hot and sweaty while distracting the sister. Harper gets locked inside the weapon drone, and has to defuse it single-handed before it takes out the capital.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 6] Soon the Nearing Vortex (1)
Shown 03-Nov-2003

Kunt and his crew discover a Confederacy prison ship being attacked by Nietzscheins. The Confed pilot is Rhade (Steve Bacic), demoted from Admiral by Rat-boy (Nicholas Lea - X-Files ). His prisoner is a secret - but how many Neitzscheins are so important that the entire battle fleet would try to rescue him?

Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb) is back. His head is shaven, his beard reduced to a wisp of bum-fluff, but instead of disguising him it just makes him look ten years younger. He has succeeded in uniting all Neitzscheins in the three galaxies, which gives him a much better fighting force than Kunt’s rebuilt Confederacy. After all, any society democratic enough to risk giving Bekkah’s Uncle Sid a seat at the table is in serious trouble from the outset. Unfortunately, Tyr’s loyalties are unclear. He has made an alliance with two of Kunt’s other enemies - Rat-boy (one of the Confederacy’s joint-heads) and the new head of the Collectors.

Tyr and his expendables chase after Kunt to find the Route of Ages, a special map of the cosmos. This must be a different star-map from the Slipstream map Tyr got from Deep Midnight’s Voice. The new one is magical, guarded in a cave by one of Trance Gemini’s relatives. All this seems strangely reminiscent of the Magic Arrow plot in Battlestar Galactica 2003 .

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 7] The World Turns All Around Her (2)
Shown 10-Nov-2003

Bekka teams up with Tyr, and offers to help him find where Dylan has gone. They can divide the known universe between them - he can rule the Neitzscheins, she (or Kunt) can rule the humans and the Confederacy. This is what they need in order to save the universe from the Magog. It seems like a match made in heaven - but they are both basically space pirates. Who will doublecross the other first?

The Andromeda and the Maru get sucked into an alternate universe, where Kunt and Tyr have a final confrontation. Unfortunately it is metaphysical, so the weapons are completely imaginary (although we are meant to believe that the damage they do is real).

Trance’s superpowers come in handy when they have to get Andromeda out of the alternate universe again.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 8] Conduit to Destiny
Shown 17-Nov-2003

Bekka misses a Slipstream point (first time for everything) and accidentally lands the ship in a Commonwealth system. The local ruler (a very young-looking Sebastian Spence - First Wave ) asks for their help in putting down a prison riot. Yes, the expert prison guards are overwhelmed, but Kunt’s command crew of FOUR people can make the difference!

Worse, Kunt waits until AFTER the revolt is over before asking Rommie to check the local laws that the prisoners are accused of breaking. The prisoners are political detainees, alleged members of a cult whose beliefs include greed and nihilism. How they can embrace two completely opposing philosophies is not explained, because Kunt does not enquire further.

Three prisoners have escaped in the confusion of the riot. Kunt and his three sidekicks pursue them into the nearby slums. The economic inequalities are apparent, but again go unquestioned. However, Kunt discovers clues to a prophecy he encountered the last time he was there - three hundred years previously. The prophecy includes a magical girl (a young-looking Laura Mennell ).

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 9] Machinery of the Mind
Shown 12-Jan-2004

The Confederacy has organised a scientific conference to organise a defence strategy against the Magog. Harper is keynote speaker at the conference, where he mixes with the likes of Grace Park . Unfortunately, someone starts assassinating the delegates. When Kunt is called away by the Triumvir (Nicholas Lea - X-Files Kunt’s summons comes via the Conferacy Intelligence Dept, which is the villainous group known as The Collectors. Naturally this cannot end well. Not for the Collectors anyway, because one of their other prisoners is someone Kunt has been looking for. By incredible coincidence the prisoner has a way not only to identify the killer at the conference, But also potentially to kill the Abyss itself!

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 10] Exalted Reason, Resplendent Daughter
Shown 19-Jan-2004

Andromeda is assigned to hunt down a space pirate. It turns out that he rules a thousand worlds, so he is in fact a very powerful regional warlord. Bearing in mind the Confederacy started with only fifty signatory worlds, he could actually be twenty times more powerful than them. However, Kunt favours gunboat diplomacy to enlarge the Confederacy.

The king of the local Confederacy world, Shineoa San (Jim Byrnes - Highlander: The Series ), reluctantly asks Kunt for help. Apparently the Crown Princess Aleiss ( Christina Cox ) has gone missing, either kidnapped or killed by a space-pirate who is similar to Toad in X-Men . Kunt sends Bekka and Rhade (a cut-price imitation Tyr if ever there was one) to find her. But is everything as it seems? Or will Jim Byrne turn out to be an evil dictator the same way that Sebastian Spence was a couple of episodes ago?

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 11] The Torment, The Release
Shown 26-Jan-2004

Nicholas Lea ( X-Files ) arrests Kunt and puts him on trial. The first charge is that he is harbouring a fugitive (Rhade). However, this is a clip show so Rommie’s CCTV tapes (AKA clips from the previous half-dozen episodes) are used as evidence. The Head Collector is the prosecutor.

Strangely, Trance refers to Tyr Anasazi in the present tense, as though she knows he is still alive. Well, he was only shot with imaginary weapons, and then fell into the very Abyss that he had an alliance with.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 12] The Spider's Stratagem
Shown 02-Feb-2004

Kunt and his crew are on the run from the Confederacy, in all likelihood provoking a civil war. However, he takes it upon himself to blockade on a neutral world that might be suppyling weapons to people who need them. Kunt treats the suspected weapons dealers as war profiteers, but without war there would be no need for professional peace-keepers so he is profiting himself.

Kunt harasses a small independent trader ( Nia Peeples ), abandoning the blockade to chase her through slipstream. He treats her like a criminal, even though he has no legal authority and she has not done anything Bekka did not do.

The ship was carrying bio-armour. Kunt sends Bekka and Rhade to deliver the armour, While he and the lady smuggler try to find out where it was made. It turns out there is a princess in a tower, spinning silk ...

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 13] The Warmth of an Invisible Light
Shown 09-Feb-2004

Andromeda, despite being the most powerful warship in the three galaxies, is on the run from a handful of bounty hunters. Kunt and the Andromeda crew are fugitives again. Last week they were threatening an entire neutral solar system, but now they are on the run from bounty-hunters. Andromeda badly needs to refuel so they need to find a gas giant. She only uses a certain kind of hydrogen, whatever that means.

Harper has a secret cloaking gizmo. It is not ready, but Kunt is desperate so he uses it anyway. Unfortunately it sends him to a parallel universe.

This is a rip-off of an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys rather than a direct reference to the classic Star Trek Episode Mirror, Mirror. Former DS9 scribe Wolfe would have done a better job, if he were still around.

Hunt discovers that, had he been killed, Harper would have replaced him and become leader of the Commonwealth. Alternate Harper has taken over the Commonwealth, although he is being manipulated by The Abyss. Rhade is chief of his secret police, although there has never been a bond between them. Rommie was deactivated, and Bekka is leader of the rebel faction. Luckily, Trance is the same in all universes! And everyone thinks that Hunt is an android replica of himself, loaded with explosives ...

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 14] The Others
Shown 16-Feb-2004

If this ep is based on one from Star Trek: TOS it must be the infamous Let this be Your Last Battlefield. Andromeda captures a couple of feuding warriors - Peter Wingfield ( Highlander: The Series ) and Kandyse McClure . Their homeworld is site of a centuries-old race-war. Now it seems that a biological weapon has been deployed.

The locals have built a peace wall that rivals the Great Wall of China.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 15] Fear Burns Down to Ashes
Shown 23-Feb-2004

Kunt gets a call from Rev Bem (Brent Stait), who claims to know how to defeat the Abyss. Rev is hanging out on the most over-criminalised world in the three galaxies. As requested, Kunt turns up alone to meet him ...

Bekka and Rhade go down to search for Kunt. They meet a junkie who dresses like Harley Quinn, and she offers to be their guide.

The Collectors are plotting against Kunt. Rather than just shoot him, they plan to dump him back in a black hole - ironic and inescapable, but still a clichéd supervillain move. It turns out that there are two rival factions of Collectors, and some of them believe that Kunt is actually the good guy. The rest have sold out to the Abyss.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 16] Lost in a Space that isn't There
Shown 05-Apr-2004

The bounty hunters are still after Kunt and his crew. After all, the bounty hunters are the nearest thing to an interstellar police force that the Commonwealth has. Is someone on-board signalling the Andromeda’s position to its pursuers? Despite there being a lot of redshirts aboard, Rommie shortens the list of suspects to the command crew.

The prime suspect resists arrest, seizing a pair of pistols. Rommie is closest, but despite having superhuman speed and strength she lets Kaptain Kunt take all the risks. The suspect has been possessed by the Abyss since the Tyr Anasazi episode. This means we get flashbacks to Tyr, and also to all the suspects’ previous low points. Yes, this is basically a clip show masquerading as part of the story arc.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 17] Abridging the Devil's Divide
Shown 12-Apr-2004

The Patriarch (Michael Ironside - V ) captures Harper and Rhade, and uses them to build a time machine. A Bridge to the Future, as he calls it. And Harper starts to channel Colonel Nicholson from Bridge on the River Kwai, which isn't the best thing for a low-budget TV show to compare itself to. Kunt does his best to rescue everyone and sabotage the bridge ...

The villain doesn't care about the Magog threat, instead he's planning on ruling the survivors himself. But he learns that ignoring the Magog is a VERY bad idea!

Rommie single-handedly takes out a platoon of heavily-armed guards. Unfortunately she is somehow unable to do the same when confronted with a smaller number of Magog. And since the guards are all dead by this stage (thanks, Rommie!) there is nobody left to fight the monsters. Worse, these are super-evolved Magog that can use weapons.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 18] Trusting the Gordian Maze
Shown 19-Apr-2004

The Commonwealth corner Kunt and his crew. A beautiful woman orders him to hand over his spare copy of the Route of Ages, the super-map of slipstream. Unfortunately he left it with Shakespearean King Peter Deluise ( Stargate SG-1 ) and his bickering wife.

This episode is more like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys in space than any other recent episodes. It is a collection of pseudo-comedic scenes that make no sense in the wider story arc.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 19] A Symmetry of Imperfection
Shown 26-Apr-2004

The super-evolved Magog from the future are back. They ambush Bekkah and some red-shirts. A pity nobody mass-produced Magog-proof killer robots that can do what Rommie did to the Patriarch’s men a few episodes back. The Magog have a moon-ship - a smaller version of the worldship that they use for scouting missions. And they use it to pursue Andromeda ...

The crew have more worries. Harper was running a diagnostic on Rommie’s AI. The central computer decides that the avatar is malfunctioning due to excessive emotions. As a result, the avatar is locked out and the ship itself is on lockdown for the next twelve hours. Yes, while the Magog are closing in on them!

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 20] Time Out of Mind
Shown 03-May-2004

Kunt and his crew visit the Collectors' secret library. Helpful librarian Erica Durance lends a hand. They need to find a file on Bekka's childhood, when she was raised by Chief Tyrol from Battlestar Galactica (2003) . The info is stored as full-immersion interactive holograms. Unfortunately, the old if you get injured in a dream trope is invoked.

The Abyss wants to commandeer the archive. It sends Missy Perrigrym , who locks Harper in a sitcom version of his own life.

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 21] The Dissonant Interval (1)
Shown 10-May-2004

Andromeda arrives at Arkology, a giant space station inhabited by love-and-peace hippies. They were perfectly protected by complete secrecy, but gave it all up to negotiate a peace treaty with the Magog. Harper and Rommie try to repair its engines before the Magog arrive.

Rhade meets a Nietzchean woman ( Marjorie Monaghan ), and decides to go native. Unfortunately, the natives are about to become Magog-fodder. To be continued next week!

Andromeda [Season 4, Episode 22] The Dissonant Interval (2)
Shown 17-May-2004

The Magog worldship arrives, and the Arkology space-station gets boarded. The boarding party are the super-Magog from the future.

Bekka has done a runner, and everyone else looks to be doomed. This is a setup to the infamous Blake's Seven ending, when the entire crew get wiped out one at a time.

Kunt has a plan of sorts. He hides out, snug with Trance Gemini (the one in the cleavage-enhancing leather) and her magical glowing time-travelling bonsai tree. Andromeda can selectively switch off life support, wiping out all the invading Magog. A pity the ship's internal defences are never used consistently, and only work when it is essential to the plot.

Last week's revelation was that Kunt was a superhuman, older than Trance (who is as old as the universe itself). Will he magically save the day? Or will Trance use her own Supernova power?

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