I’m a big sucker for SF movies and TV series and will happily watch stuff that insults my intelligence, so long as it doesn’t bore me senseless at the same time. I have watched Time Tunnel, Lost in Space, two of the Star Trek series (TOS and TNG) and part of a third Trek series (Voyager) and tried to watch Enterprise. I’ve regretted the passing of such little-known series as The Lone Gunmen, Special Unit 2 and The Tick. I have even watched episodes of real dreck like Mutant X and the Lost World TV series.
But I have tried watching Andromeda several times, and I just can’t get behind it. I can’t say this is because it sucks, because the SFX are good, the cast seems competent, and the plots, if not the most brilliant, are at least on par with a lot of the other SF I’ve watched. And I generally like stories about FTL ships cruising thorugh interstellar space and encountering strange new races and planets.
Andromeda just bores the living shit out of me whenever I watch it, and I don’t know why. I’ve watched much crappier SF shows. I wonder what’s going on there?
Ages ago, when Andromeda first started out, it was typical cheesy WGN sci-fi (how can you trust anything from the makers of “Earth: Final Conflict”?), but it showed some promise. Then the star character got to be a producer, and the show started to suck even more than it did to begin with. Sorbo, dashing as he is, was never the best of actors; now I don’t even think dude’s trying. The same goes for the rest of the cast. Despite the critics’ claim that Andromeda would be Hercules in space, it never really was – that is, until now. I’ll watch just about anything, but this show is really not tolerable anymore. The two things that annoy me the most are:
The pretentious, pseudo-intellectual philosophizing. Who the hell do they think they’re kidding? I mean, seriously, they need to work on putting together cohesive, coherent plots first before they try to get all deep and meaningful.
And the soundtrack. It’s terrible, it really is. The tech guys at work during a high school Drama Club production do a better job with sound than the ninnies on this show.
It also doesn’t help that they killed off the one good foil for goody-two-shoes Captain Hunt (Tyr “Can I Slather that Body with Chocolate and Lick it Off” Anasazi). Everything about this show is so bad. It’s like they’ve got these decent ideas, but the execution is just… ugh.
I liked the first season of “Earth: Final Conflict.” I thought the “who can you trust?” aspects of the storyline were interesting and the storytelling was compelling. It went downhill fast in season 2 and I guess went on for a few more seasons after that which I ignored almost completely.
As for “Andromeda” I liked it when it first came out well enough to watch it for several weeks but it never hooked me. I missed a few eps and didn’t notice that I’d missed them so it went off my rotation.
Now if you want to talk syndicated SF that sucks, let’s talk “Mutant X.”
Mmmmm, the things I’d like to do to that man. Keith Hamilton Cobb is the reason I started watching Andromeda when it first aired (I’d already been in lust with him for years). I think I made it through the first season or so. But then I missed when it came back, or could never figure out when it was on, so I stopped watching. I tuned in once and found my boyfriend wasn’t on the show any more, so didn’t even bother trying to get back involved.
They made a big mistake in getting rid of Tyr. He was the perfect companion to Sorbo’s “Save The Universe” philosophy, in that he freely admitted he was acting purely in self interest. Being very intelligent, he could also explain this in a way that made sense. The fact that he was so good looking didn’t hurt at all either. Perfect goodness and selflessness vs. total selfishness. There is one teeny problem I have with the fight scenes. Captain Hunt apparently can whup everyone in the galaxy. How can this be when he always seems to be completely off balance, doing that weird “hop on one foot and struggle to remain upright” thing? You do that in a real fight, and you get hammered real fast.
Tyr’s not the only mistake they made. 3/4 of the characters that interested me - Tyr, Trance, Harper, and Rev Bem - all seem to have been botched in the recent episodes I’ve seen. Tyr’s gone, Rev Bem seems to be gone, and what the HELL did they do to Trance?
And have they brought back the Neitczian first officer from the pilot, or something?
Ah, Sorbo did a fine job as Hercules. He was OK as a spaceship captain, though a little too melow to be as believable as he should have been. I’ve really got no beef against him. He at least did a good job of acting capable and determined.
Oh, it’s easy for me to figure out why I don’t like Mutant X all that much – it was just too fucking cheap, and it looked it. Mutant X was an obvious ripoff of X Men, who had incredible powers and could (and routinely did) destroy entire city blocks in the course of battles. Mutant X battles rarely did more than dent a few walls. And the SFX were incredibly feeble. Glowing thingies in a guy’s hand. Hoo-ha. The only decent SFX that series had was Vicky Pratt, and they didn’t even dress her sexy.
Plus, everything in the series seemed to be kinda drab and gray and uninteresting to look at. Visually dull.
Andromeda OTOH, DOES have decent SFX, with a nicely designed spaceship and a bunch of nicely designed other spaceships and set. It did not look cheap. But it did rely too heavily and black and white and gray, and as a consequence, did look dull.
Maybe it’s just the characters he plays. Too good, too decent, too noble. It’s the same beef I had with the Herecules series, which I also watched. He was/is just too perfect. The really good heroes do have a flaw or two. On the other hand, I think he could handle more demanding roles, given a chance. Just make him stop that “hop on one foot thing”. Give him some decent moves.
I tend to agree – Andromeda never has grabbed my attention. Partly I can’t get beyond the “Hercules in Space” aspect of it. But also, for some reason, the plots just seem murky – I can never figure out what the characters are doing and why. It may just be that I missed a lot of the backstory. Or it could be that their manufactured history is essentially completely uninteresting.
They do also have a bad case of the Voyager syndrome, e.g, the ship takes a hellacious pounding week after week and never appears to take any serious damage.
I did try to follow it this season when it moved to the SciFi channel, but I missed the first episode after they hit the Big Reset Button at the end of last season, so now I have no idea why they’re apparently stranded on some desert hellhole planet, or even why they’re all still alive after apparently dying in various ways in last season’s cliffhanger.
I remember every one of those shows. The SciFi network could fill up its programming with bad SF/fantasy shows from the last decade and never have to repeat during the year, if they had the money … and wanted to.
It seems like a couple of years ago shows syndicated SF/fantasy shows were all over the place, maybe copying the success of Xena/Hercules. Now Andromeda is about the last of them … I THINK Mutant X was cancelled …
Let’s not forget Beastmaster/Lost World/Wolf Lake/The Tick/ whatever.
The first season of Andromeda, I kinda… liked. They had some interesting concepts- the Nietzsheans… Nitzsheons… Nietzshins… however you spell it, race, is pretty damned interesting (except for the stupid spikes on their arms, which Tyr somehow lost at one point, and good riddance). I liked the ship itself, and the trinity of ship’s avatars (played by the incredibly hot Lexa Doig). Trance was interesting as well… well, back when she was cute (I particularly liked the episode where Trance convinced Harper and the ep’s bad guy that she could kill both of them and get away with it, because she was so cute). I even liked the MaGog, even though their makeup was always laughably bad.
Then everything went downhill. Trance lost her tail and turned golden and bitchy. Tyr decided he was a bad guy. They brought in a descendent of the first officer that betrayed the Commonwealth (and who happens to look just like him, sigh). They even screwed around with Rommie’s look, but luckily changed it back. Rev Bem left and founded a new race of somewhat nice MaGog, and then died, I think.
Every now and then I’m surprised the show’s still on.
Oh, by the way- the reason the captain could fight so well was supposedly because he was a “heavy worlder”- he came from a high-gravity planet. They didn’t mention this too often in the series, though.
I’ve never been able to find a station that airs it at a regular time to even try to follow it. However, if it sucks, then I blame that blonde chick that sucked all the life out of Forever Knight.
See now, I had the opposite reaction. I thought Hercules was awful in large measure because of Sorbo. I was very hesitant about giving Andromeda a shot because of him but found I liked him much better and it was almost entirely because of his hair. His Hercules hair was way too long. His Andromeda hair is about eight inches shorter and while it’s still a little long for my taste it’s about 1000% better than his straggly Hercules locks. He’s still a snooze as an actor but at least he has nicer hair.
Instead it fills up its programming with bad SF/Fantasy shows from two or three decades ago and repeats them incessantly.
According to IMDB it was renewed for another season and then abruptly cancelled because one of the production companies fell apart.
Wolf Lake and The Tick (live) were both network shows. I really liked Wolf Lake and obviously was the only one who did. The whole small town gothic power struggle thing but with werewolves really appealed to me. Plus the acting was so atrocious. I couldn’t get enough.
Beastmaster I liked but only because of Daniel Goddard’s running around in tiny loincloths. I read something when the show first aired that he was never happy with his loincloths. He kept wanting the wardrobe department to make them shorter. Woof.
Another great cheesy sword-n-sorcery syndicated show from the same era was “The Adventures of Sinbad.” Anyone else remember that one? And of course the Hercules prequel, “Young Hercules.”
I sorta liked the 1st season, the season finale really grabbed me (yes, I recognized it as away to get rid of actors if needed - but I still liked it).
Later Wolfe (one of the head hanchos) left He was the one who was going for a continuing story while Sorbo wanted one-offs. Even then I still mostly liked the show.
But then the last sydicated season got REALLY wierd, Lost of mind warping and existential crap. Done well that stuff might work and be intersting, but I just found it confusing and random.
Two things I liked about the show: Staring the show with a “quote” and the often cool ship names. Like “Persistance of Vision” or “Unbroken Glory” (not actual examples)