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I've been watching season 4 of Andromeda. I don't know why. Some latent masochistic streak that insists, against all reason, that I must finish the damn series.
It's like every episode is "Spock's Brain."
I watched a featurette with Bob Engels, who took over as head writer after they fired Robert Hewitt Wolfe. He said a couple of...interesting things. Like that their goal in season 3 was to make the show completely episodic. Which, ok, they did, at the expense of character and the truly interesting mythology. He also said that it didn't matter if your science fiction was poorly explained/designed/conceived if the story was good. First -- what? And second -- y'all's stories suck! What are you talking about?
He says that they "tried to keep the mythology that Robert Hewitt Wolfe created, but only stuck to it really loosely." "Really loosely" in this context means they strip-mined it for its pseudo-deep rhetoric and abandoned all social implications, complex morality and complicated interpersonal interactions. In other words, everything that made it good. You end up with drivel like the two-parter "Soon the Nearing Vortex" and "The World Turns Around Her." I watched that. Take my word for it -- there isn't a single sentence in the whole hour and a half that actually has content. They could have strung together random syllables and gotten the same result.
They decided that they were best at "rip-snorting yarns," which Engels defines as facing certain doom with a quip and then shooting some stuff up and smashing some furniture. Under that definition...I guess the later seasons of Andromeda were a success?
The most interesting thing, though, was that Gene Roddenberry apparently wanted Andromeda to be Horatio Hornblower in space. Engels says that they've succeeded -- because Hornblower is all swashbuckling and so is Andromeda. Maybe it's just because I've only seen the A&E films and not read the books, but there's so much more going on in Hornblower than swashbuckliing. Kevin Sorbo could not be more unlike Horatio Hornblower. And drawing that comparison also forces me to think about how much better the plot mechanics were on Hornblower. He actually seems, you know, clever and brave. As opposed to Dylan Hunt who's a big dumb self-righteous idiot who can afford to be all of the above because he has a better starship than everyone else.
ETA: Bob Engels' credits include some of the decent episodes of seaQuest DSV and quite a lot of Twin Peaks, so I'm going to go ahead and blame all of Andromeda's failings on Kevin Sorbo.
It's like every episode is "Spock's Brain."
I watched a featurette with Bob Engels, who took over as head writer after they fired Robert Hewitt Wolfe. He said a couple of...interesting things. Like that their goal in season 3 was to make the show completely episodic. Which, ok, they did, at the expense of character and the truly interesting mythology. He also said that it didn't matter if your science fiction was poorly explained/designed/conceived if the story was good. First -- what? And second -- y'all's stories suck! What are you talking about?
He says that they "tried to keep the mythology that Robert Hewitt Wolfe created, but only stuck to it really loosely." "Really loosely" in this context means they strip-mined it for its pseudo-deep rhetoric and abandoned all social implications, complex morality and complicated interpersonal interactions. In other words, everything that made it good. You end up with drivel like the two-parter "Soon the Nearing Vortex" and "The World Turns Around Her." I watched that. Take my word for it -- there isn't a single sentence in the whole hour and a half that actually has content. They could have strung together random syllables and gotten the same result.
They decided that they were best at "rip-snorting yarns," which Engels defines as facing certain doom with a quip and then shooting some stuff up and smashing some furniture. Under that definition...I guess the later seasons of Andromeda were a success?
The most interesting thing, though, was that Gene Roddenberry apparently wanted Andromeda to be Horatio Hornblower in space. Engels says that they've succeeded -- because Hornblower is all swashbuckling and so is Andromeda. Maybe it's just because I've only seen the A&E films and not read the books, but there's so much more going on in Hornblower than swashbuckliing. Kevin Sorbo could not be more unlike Horatio Hornblower. And drawing that comparison also forces me to think about how much better the plot mechanics were on Hornblower. He actually seems, you know, clever and brave. As opposed to Dylan Hunt who's a big dumb self-righteous idiot who can afford to be all of the above because he has a better starship than everyone else.
ETA: Bob Engels' credits include some of the decent episodes of seaQuest DSV and quite a lot of Twin Peaks, so I'm going to go ahead and blame all of Andromeda's failings on Kevin Sorbo.
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(Anonymous) 2006-08-26 08:47 pm (UTC)(link)-mithras
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*stops to imagine that for a moment*
I think he was too young at the time it started up, though.
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Of course, I was mostly interested in things like AI rights and culture, and loved the *idea* of the episode with the Bellepheron, but ws hung up on things like 'after 3000 years, could anyone still *talk* to them'...
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My favorite favorite episode is "The Knight, Death, and the Devil," late in season 2. I too love the AI culture, and this episode goes so far into exploring how even what the Commonwealth did to AIs was slavery. And - what a shocker - Dylan is actually wrong in this episode. I have long wished that there was fic about the Clarion's Call. AI angst!
Have you seen "Day of Judgment, Day of Wrath"? It's season 3, but in spite of that, it kicks ass. I consider it the final episode in the unofficial AI trilogy: "Star-Crossed," "The Knight, Death, and the Devil," and "Day of Judgment, Day of Wrath." Rent just that disc if you can -- it's worth it.
The only other episode worth it in season 3 is "The Unconquerable Man" -- maybe because there's no Dylan in it.
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Maybe I'll netflix the second and third season. I did try recording them when they were first aired, but rarely was interested in watching beyond the teaser.
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There are some stinkers in season 2, but no more so than in any other show I watch. And there are definitely some good eps. It wasn't until they fired Robert Hewitt Wolfe and ignored their mythology that it started to really suck.