Review for Andromeda - Season 1

Introduction

We’re back to the mid-eighties! We’re not talking about the depths of recession; we’re talking about the dearth of space sci-fi on television. Ever since I first saw Star Trek, this has been my genre of choice when it comes to sci-fi television. The late seventies had what seemed like the last gasp of space opera, with Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, but it wasn’t until the revival of Star Trek with The Next Generation that it became popular as a genre again. Even then, it took the advent of early CGI effects on TV to make it truly viable, and it was with the debut of Babylon 5 that other studios realised that they could do it too. Today I look at TV, and see that genre television hasn’t gone away the way that it did in the eighties. Instead it’s all vampires, zombies, and swords and sorcery. Doctor Who may just be the last vestige of the space sci-fi epic. But there was a period in the late nineties to the late 2000s that space sci-fi ruled the airwaves. Every channel wanted a crew boldly splitting infinitives, and while Star Trek’s various incarnations were joined by the Stargate franchise, and a couple of Babylon 5 series, other studios tried their own versions, with shows like Space Above and Beyond, Farscape and the criminally short Firefly. Much as I love this genre, there came a point where even I couldn’t catch all of the shows.


One show that I missed out on was Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. I have to admit that it was pure cynicism that turned me away. For one thing, it was made six years after the passing of the Great Bird of the Galaxy, and while his widow Majel Barrett Roddenberry was producer, it did seem like a cash-in. The second thing was that I just didn’t want to see Hercules in space. Hercules actor Kevin Sorbo stars as Captain Dylan Hunt of the starship Andromeda Ascendant... With Dylan Hunt a name used for heroes in several prior failed Gene Roddenberry pilots, I wasn’t exactly inspired. Maybe I was wholly unfair, as in the end Andromeda ran for five seasons, two more than the original Star Trek!


Now that Andromeda is coming out on Blu-ray, a world exclusive for UK audiences courtesy of Revelation Films, this is the ideal time to give the show the attention it deserves, free of any prior bias. Before you get too excited about the Blu-ray release, it must be noted that Andromeda is a show from 2000, a time when US television was decidedly in SD. It’s true that shows like Friends, and Star Trek The Next Generation have been given the native HD treatment, but Friends was shot on film and has no special effects worth mentioning. The Next Generation has Paramount behind it and their deep pockets. While its live action elements were shot on film, it was edited, and the special effects composited on video tape. For its Blu-ray release Paramount have to recreate the episodes from the original film elements, and completely redo the special effects anew in HD. The rumours are that Fox is going to give the same attention to the X-Files. This takes time, and more importantly money. Andromeda is a cult show from an SD age without major studio money behind it. Like TNG, while its live elements were shot on film, it was finished and its special effects applied at a much lower resolution. This is going to be an upscale, and it’s best to lower your expectations accordingly.


The Systems Commonwealth has stood for thousands of years, a peaceful union of worlds spanning three galaxies. For Dylan Hunt, Captain of the Andromeda Ascendant, his duties amount to little more than patrol and the odd rescue missions. The Commonwealth hasn’t been tested by war in a thousand years. But there are elements in the Commonwealth that are uncomfortable under the yoke of peace, most notably the genetically engineered Nietzschean race. A distress call from a system threatened by a rogue black hole draws the Andromeda Ascendant into a Nietzschean trap, and while Hunt orders his crew to abandon ship, he’s betrayed by his Nietzschean first officer. In the resulting mayhem the Andromeda is pulled across the event horizon into the black hole, where time is at a standstill...


Three hundred years later, the salvage ship Yurika Maru discovers the starship trapped in amber, and pulls it out of the maelstrom. Dylan Hunt finds himself in a time no longer his own, centuries following the Nietzschean betrayal and the fall of the Commonwealth. Civilisation has waned, and worlds have fallen back towards barbarism. Hunt decides that he will use the Andromeda to resurrect the Commonwealth, and the first thing he does is recruit the crew of the Yurika Maru, Captain Beka Valentine, Seamus Harper, the enigmatic alien, Trance Gemini, the Wayist Magog Rev Bem, and the Nietzschean mercenary Tyr Anasazi. Together aboard the Andromeda Ascendant, along with the ship’s computer made corporeal, Rommie, they endeavour to bring peace back to an embattled universe.


The first season of Andromeda, 22 episodes are presented across 5 Blu-ray discs by Revelation Films.

Disc 1
1. Under the Night
2. An Affirming Flame
3. To Loose the Fateful Lightning
4. D Minus Zero
5. Double Helix

Disc 2
6. Angel Dark, Demon Bright
7. The Ties That Blind
8. The Banks of the Lethe
9. A Rose in the Ashes
10. All Great Neptune’s Ocean


Disc 3
11. The Pearls That Were His Eyes
12. The Mathematics of Tears
13. Music of a Distant Drum
14. Harper 2.0
15. Forced Perspective

Disc 4
16. The Sum of its Parts
17. Fear and Loathing in the Milky Way
18. The Devil Take the Hindmost
19. The Honey Offering
20. Star-Crossed

Disc 5
21. It Makes a Lovely Light
22. Its Hour Come Around at Last

Picture

Andromeda Season 1 comes to Blu-ray with a 1080i presentation, at the 60Hz frequency that is appropriate for its NTSC origins. As mentioned before it is an up-scale from what I would assume is 480i resolution, and I have to say that I have seen better up-scales. Andromeda’s problem is one of consistency. I think that it has had some processing applied to it to give it some extra sharpness and make the most of its detail at the higher resolution, but it is selectively applied. You can certainly see it in facial features, with eyes in particular looking very sharp and clear, but then lips will look a little less well-resolved. Generally it’s as if whoever has mastered the show, has picked the main point of interest in each scene, and has enhanced that for HD presentation, while leaving irrelevant detail in the background at SD. Another case in point is the quote of the week at the head of each episode. One line in the middle will be in perfect focus, but the other lines will be blurry and less well resolved. And while the live action sequences gets such enhancement, it’s less evident in the CGI effects sequences for the spaceships, which all display their SD origins, complete with aliasing in some scenes. For me, while Andromeda Season 1 was watchable this way, it was never aesthetically pleasing, and the selective nature of the enhancements meant that I was always reminded of them, rather than being able to forget the upscale and just watch the show, as I would with any DVD that I would watch up-scaled.


That said, Blu-ray does offer some enhancements over SD presentation that are worth considering. The richness of the colour palette really does tell here, and the warmth and detail in the set designs and costumes is very impressive. Also there is the advantage of watching the show at its native frame rate, with no PAL speed-up or conversion artefacts to get in the way, and for an interlaced presentation, very little in the way of combing artefacts and the like.

Sound

You have the choice of uncompressed PCM 5.1 Surround English streamed at 6.9 Mbps, or PCM 2.0 Stereo English at 2.3 Mbps. The audio experience is enjoyable for the most part, with the dialogue clear, some impressive placement of effects, and the overall clarity and fidelity lossless audio has to offer. There is a small problem during a dinner scene in episode 12, where the dialogue is somewhat distorted with hiss, but this is the sole issue with this release. Well, that and the lack of subtitles.

Extras

There have been several releases of Andromeda on DVD across the world, with initial two disc collections (five per season) released by ADV in the US and E1 Entertainment in the UK. Subsequent releases were season boxsets, and tended to vary in terms of content. Those first releases were the richest in terms of extra features, with commentaries and featurettes and looks behind the scenes. Alas this release from Revelation Films is, in terms of extra content, a clone of what looks to be the Australian complete season DVD sets. The smorgasbord of extra features has been pared down to something more modest, so if you were looking for the definitive Andromeda, you might want to hold onto those first DVD releases, at least in terms of supplemental content.


The episodes are spread across five discs, presented with animated menus from which Play All, Episode Select, and Audio Options are accessible. The extra features in this collection are consigned to disc 5, and in this release amount to Alternate Takes (12:24), Bloopers (7:30), and Deleted Scenes (12:48).

Conclusion

I do not know how to spell Nietzschean. I had to look it up on Google and assign to an F-key. That would be a petty reason not to be disposed to this show, and it’s certainly not the reason why I avoided it when first broadcast, as I didn’t have to write about it then. Now that I’ve watched the first series again in earnest, rather than catching the odd episode when first broadcast, I realise that I was right to give Andromeda a miss, as it’s not all that great. Of all the mid-budget space opera shows that popped up around fifteen years ago, Andromeda is likely my least favourite, and for a plethora of reasons.


The biggest is that it squanders a great premise. Andromeda is the other side of Star Trek, which is unsurprising given that it’s a show adapted from a Gene Roddenberry idea. In Star Trek we had this idealised union of worlds, this Federation of Planets that boldly went into the unknown to spread peace and prosperity. Andromeda begins with that concept taken to its extreme, a Commonwealth of millions of worlds spanning three galaxies, where it looked like war was a thing of the past, and all people really had to worry about was the occasional natural disaster. It then flips the switch, and sends all of that perfect utopia down the toilet by one act of betrayal. We then catch up with the galaxy three hundred years later, all fallen to ruin and barbarism, and into this world enters a relic with a starship, the last vestige of a forgotten age, Dylan Hunt and his self-appointed mission to restore the Commonwealth that he knew and loved. It should be great, compelling stuff, but Andromeda fails in really developing the universe that he’s trying to reshape. There’s no sense of scale, no clear definition of what the obstacles are on his way to his goal. The show just trudges along, episode by episode, throwing information at us, hoping that it will stick, but never really emphasising just what has relevance long term, and just what is a fleeting concept to be toyed with for 45 minutes.


Another problem is that it is episodic, in an era where genre television was already telling its stories in season long arcs. This combined with the third reason for my ditching the show, a disregard for continuity, invites a 'three strikes and out' metaphor. I got tired of the Andromeda being half wrecked in a battle, and then being absolutely pristine in the following episode. I got tired of a hint of character development occurring, only to be ignored for ten episodes before being revisited again. Beka’s Flash addiction is a case in point. She gets introduced to the drug by her unscrupulous uncle in episode 11, and then we don’t hear about it again until the penultimate episode, where she uses it to enhance her piloting skills to a degree where she becomes fully hooked. By the next episode, she’s cured of her addiction again. Then there is Harper, who declares himself a super genius in one episode and invents a time machine and a teleporter all in one. Do we see his genius skills again? Do the crew use the time-teleporter again? Of course not. In one episode they find a map to the lost Commonwealth capital, which you would think would be a big deal for Dylan, but it isn’t mentioned again for five more episodes. Andromeda will keep piquing your interest before telling you to forget about it.


I’m not too fond of the cast either, and a lot of that is down to the engineer Harper, who has a line in being annoying that makes Neelix in Voyager seem angelic in comparison. Never have I hoped so much for a hasty and terminal exit for a character until I encountered Harper, and having read a little ahead, I knew not to let the season cliff-hanger raise any hopes. The rest of the cast pretty much verges on the bland, with Dylan Hunt an uninspiring lead, Trance’s quirkiness getting confused with pointlessness, Rev Bem’s religious leanings trite and cheesy. A problem with the series is that it doesn’t have a continuity of cast, most episodes will have one or two cast members absent, even if they just remain off-screen for the duration of the episode and that’s no way to develop characters.


The one exception to this is the Nietzschean Tyr Anasazi. The Nietzscheans are this universe’s Klingons, mean, tough warriors who alternate between allies and enemies. What makes them interesting is that they are genetically engineered humans, made tougher and meaner, but more than that is their adherence to the philosophies of Nietzsche, a Machiavellian self interest that makes them unpredictable. Tyr Anasazi has his universe shaken when he meets the altruistic Hunt, and the portrayal of the character with a mix of sly scheming self interest, rough warrior exterior and childlike naiveté in the face of new experiences makes for a very compelling character.


If Andromeda had just been about Hunt restoring the Commonwealth in the face of Nietzschean self-interest and interclan rivalries, it would have been a more interesting show, but alas the curse of Buffy hits Andromeda, and this universe has to have vampires as well. We get here the Magog, Rev Bem’s people, basically animals in starships that go around eating people. There’s little character, and nothing but cannon fodder in them.


I think what it is, is that the creators tried to capture the era in which Andromeda was developed, rather than when it was made in terms of its storytelling. That means the 1970s as opposed to the 2000s. You also see echoes of Star Trek in its stories, it has its own version of the Borg, and one episode was almost a beat for beat remake of Elaan of Troyius. What it boils down to is that even in the context of when it was made, these episodes seem cheesy, goofy and silly, and not in the fun Farscape way. I could have done without the episode where the starships fell in love...


Andromeda is watchable, and if you twist my arm, I’ll even admit to enjoying some of the episodes. A lot of that is down to the character of Tyr Anasazi, who single-handedly has more depth and dimension than all the other characters put together. But one character alone cannot carry a whole show. If you are an Andromeda fan, I’m not convinced by this Blu-ray presentation. Certainly the colour depth is a lot better than anything DVD can offer, and you can compare the finished product to the up-scaled deleted scenes to see the difference. But those extra features are also put through the up-scale process without any additional processing to the image, and oddly I prefer the consistent SD look to them, than the selective enhancement to the image of the episodes proper. Sharp eyes and blurry lips look weird. If you already have the DVDs, then I wouldn’t bother double dipping. And since Andromeda is being re-released on DVD as well, I would consider trying both that and the Blu-ray out first before choosing, to see which version is more preferable on an HD screen.