Andromeda Revisted -

Since the current league was "less than palatable", I've spent some time rewatching Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.

One of the last episodes I had watched was Tyr's final exit, and I couldn't help but think that was an insanely disappointed. So much in fact, that I was reading up on old forums and it was brought up that it was likely the result of the character being a fan favorite that overshadowed the lead.

Captain Dylan Hunt may have been the lead role, but the character was so flat. I mean he could have prevented the entire downfall if he just used the weapons available to him but didn't want the innocent lives on his conscious, which led to far more death and suffering. For something that should have caused constant inner conflict he brings it up like once and instead of giving the character actual depth he basically chooses the "good" option and magically succeeds even in the most unlikely situations.

In comparison, you've got Tyr, who isn't blindly good or evil, we're often taken on a ride as we see him explore his options. And unlike Dylan, his decisions typically had consequences.

It reminded me a bit of The Blacklist, and the appeal Raymund Reddigton has as a character, or even Kingpin from Daredevil.

The most fascinating characters, the most relatable characters aren't so much the good guys who always manage to pull off a win, but the folks who are flawed and don't always make the right choice, or even fail when they do.

It just seems so tragic to see a character who brought so much life to a show ended in not just a humiliating way making a choice that didn't make sense given how we had seen the character develop. I haven't seen this latest season of Game of Thrones yet, but I'm guessing a lot of the "disappointment" may be along similar lines.

Thoughts? (and No GoT Spoilers, will watch soon =P)

I still can't finish Babylon 5, and barely remember what happened when it was on air. I loved Farscape, and the visuals just feel very "90s" to me. I barely remember Space Above and Beyond except a scene where some guy is in a cargo container or mobile bunker of some sort that is ejected and firing in hopes of buying time for his friends to escape... that's literally all I remember, 15 seconds.

Enterprise was a bit awkward, it didn't feel quite like a Star Trek. I bet I would have liked Voyager a lot more if they had stayed in the known universe instead of taking "conservative" risks with new races and such.

I liked DS9 but the whole station concept was harder for me to swallow given every other iteration has been on a mobile starship. But it definitely had memorable characters, Quark a prime example.

The BSG reboot definitely set the bar higher, but I didn't ever really get into the prequel, despite it sharing the same if not better level of visual effects.

As for shows like Andromeda and Earth Final Conflict, I'm not quite sure where Gene's influence ended and the writers took over. I hadn't even cared to know who developed Andromeda (Robert Hewitt Wolfe) until reading an interview with Keith Hamilton Cobb (Tyr Anasazi). The studios apparently felt his stories were "too complicated" and they wanted more aliens and space battles.

Let's be real, the cgi was PASSABLE back then, but even next gen battles looked more impressive. Epic space battles would have been great, but the tech was lacking, and seeing recycled clips is hardly immersive.

But if streaming old sci-fi shows has enlightened me to anything, it's to the politics going on behind the scenes, whether it was Kate Mulgrew's distaste for Voyager trying to use Seven's sex appeal to boost viewership or Andromeda's killing off a fan favorite because he was more liked than the lead.

Even now as I'm finishing off Andromeda, once again Dylan Hunt is marked as some super special being who always gets the girl and always manages to get out of trouble. His problem wasn't that other characters were more "likeable" as it was was his character was too predictable.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Expanse s3. Oh. Dude. I waited too long.

Oh yeah, Expanse definitely set that bar high. And the cancellation of it on SyFy was brutal, but thanks to Bezos we should hopefully get a nice 4th season and without having to wait week to week.

And yet that still relates to Andromeda in the sense they wanted to reduce the focus of internal conflict, where The Expanse is so fascinating because it's rife with it. I guess it was a bit too much Hercules in space for its own good.