My lengthy take on the good and bad of Andromeda and why many dislike it
I just finished binge watching this series, on my commute to work (so "binged" over a 4 month period), and I feel compelled to write a long review to digest my thoughts. In many ways, I did not like the show – however, in some ways I did. Unlike most of the reviewers here, I think the show got better with time, not worse. And even though there was a change in the style of the show and the writers after the Ouroboros episode, and many people blame the new writers for making the show “silly”, I think that much of what happened was (1) predetermined (particularly evidenced by Trance’s color and tail) and (2) indicative of what was happening in TV in general at that time. Many people speak of the TV renaissance that spawned series that are less episodic in nature, culminating in shows like Sons of Anarchy, Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Lost, etc. etc. I’ve read that the beginnings of this change began with shows like Star Trek DS9, which broke the mold of Star Trek TNG’s episode of the week style. I love both TNG and DS9, so it’s not a criticism, just noting the stylistic change towards season-long or series-long story arcs.
The people who protest most about this show tend to complain because they wanted another episode-of-the-week TNG style show, that was slowly rebuilding the Commonwealth. Or they are people who are scifi-only fans, who are intolerant of fantasy. I have a bunch of friends like this – who love TNG, but would never watch Merlin, for example, because it seems silly to them. Andromeda is science fantasy, not science fiction. It’s a fantasy show that takes place in the future, with minimal effort to address advanced technology concerns, but only for the sake of supporting the fantasy. The show doesn't become "silly" or "lose all its potential," which seem to be the most common critiques, unless you hate the fantasy genre. The show does however suffer from bouts of bad writing and consistent drawbacks associated with budget constraints.
The show draws heavily from:
Dune – quotes before each episode (the bad: they all have the same vague, trying-to-be-deep tone. All obviously written the same author, but they are all ascribed to different authors and different centuries. They generally have little to do with the forthcoming episode, despite their efforts to be insightful about it. Dune does this better, as all the pre-chapter quotes were actually ascribed to the same author, and they make sense, and they pertain to what follows rather apparently). Also reminiscent of Dune is the heavy emphasis on religion. My favorite character was Rev Bem, and I thought he was the spirit of the show, and wove religion and spirituality for a new age into the show really nicely. Unfortunately, the actor developed a makeup allergy and left the show about halfway in.
Low Brow Scifi – Not trying to start a debate on quality, but more on style. Notice how Star Wars and Firefly have a lot of fist fights and guns? But Star Trek is tales of ambassadors and peace negotiations? I know they fight in both types of scifi, but Star Trek is a little more Shakespearean. Andromeda has a fist fight in nearly every episode.
Opera, particularly Wagner – one full episode on Flying Dutchman, another that has the Act III prelude to Lohengrin, recurring leitmotivs (due to low budget and recycling musical snippets, but likely also an homage to the Wagnerian leitmotiv style), a reference to a Mozartean seraglio in the first episode. And most significantly: the fantasy. Some characters evoke Ring Cycle characters, similar to the Rheinmaidens who are humanoid forms of a life-giving river. This is the “silliness” that scifi-only fans, who hate fantasy, cannot tolerate. However, I think this is what made the show interesting. It was never well written enough to be TNG or DS9. So I think Andromeda had to forge its own unique story and universe. You have to suspend your disbelief, but I think Andromeda needed to do this to be its own show.
The bad:
The plots have lots of holes. The technological capabilities constantly change to suit the story. Oftentimes episodes just end without getting the viewer to understand how they solved the problem. The writing isn’t Shakespeare either. Beka and Harper have particularly difficult lines to utter sometimes, but those two actors do a good job of making the best of bad writing. People tend to hate on Harper, but think – could you really deliver some of those lines?
The music is abysmal in the first season. Like a 3rd grader playing on his Cassio keyboard. They later increase the musical sophistication significantly, and even re-record the theme song with added instrumentation and ornamentation, but reuse most of the in-episode musical clips frequently. When things are sad vs happy vs funny vs poignant, you’ll always hear the same unique measures of music. Again, given the show’s heavy influence by Wagner, this is likely both a low budget drawback and deliberate leitmotiv allusion simultaneously.
Each season has a number of boring or bad episodes.
Tyr is a horrifically bad actor. He is only in the first 3 seasons, and I think the show gets better when he departs. Try reading the following sentence with an aloof and dispassionate tone, slightly cocked head angle, and an awkward pause between each word: “I … think… I … would….like…to…kill…you…now.” That’s the Tyr Anasazi school of acting. You just graduated. Congrats. Watching him is painful, and I am really surprised other reviewers haven’t commented on it. It’s comically bad. Reminds me of that oft-sputtered line from Shakespeare in Love, where an actor delivers for the first time in history a line of text from Romeo and Juliet, and another actor condescendingly grimaces and asks “Are you going to do it like that??” You’ll find yourself saying that almost any time that Tyr speaks. It’s unfortunate too, because his character is very important to the story arc.
The early episodes that scifi fans seem to love have a lot of silly characters: fish people, bug people, rat people. Why are all of the aliens you meet based on earth animals? That thankfully goes away after season 1.
The Dylan-as-boyscout theme, later replaced with the Dylan-makes-out-with-random-new-girl theme, can get kind of tired. Part of my problem with the show is in the first season, Beka makes an excellent rebuttal to Dylan’s quest to restore the commonwealth. She says “that would be like someone in 20th century earth trying to rebuild George Washington’s army” – or something to that effect. She protested too well, and that one line detracted from the early theme of the show for me of Commonwealth restoration. Another reason why I think the show got better with time, not worse.
Despite almost everything I said, I found myself liking the show by the end. The mythology made it fun. If you can get past the many drawbacks of the low budget, and the bad acting of Tyr, you might end up liking it. But only if you like both scifi and fantasy.