Kevin Sorbo ruined this show

Am I the only one that noticed how Andromeda became centered around Dylan Hunt after they fired the Robert Hewitt Wolfe?

Not at all. You're one of a not very numerous, yet highly vocal group of people who think that bitching on the internet defines some kind of trend.

And not only they burned the Tyr's character over time, but dumbed down the entire show.

Yes, because the premise of restarting the Federation - pardon me, the Commonwealth - under a leader whiter than the whitest knight is so immensely original and intelligent.

As for burning Tyr's character: Cobb thinks that leaning on walls, shaking his head as if suffering from Parkinson and getting into Shakespearean dictus whenever your character is supposed to say something meaningful is "acting". Just what were they supposed to do with him - other than let people look at him? Whenever they tried character, it turned out that the only thing he could portray was being a showy (admittedly a very showy) piece of meat.

Have you guys watched the last episode? The last scenes? Harper says he isn't as much as happy with how things turned out since Tyr was gone from their lives.

Does he now? Where and when exactly is Harper doing that?

Keith Hamilton Cobb didn't even appear in pictures from the cast, so the idea that he only left because his contract was for 3 years only doesn't make any sense.

Cobb appears in pictures from the cast in seasons 1, 2, 3 and 4 - as in: the seasons he was in.

Over time they tried to make Dylan Hunt look like a God, Mr. Perfect, womanizer, etc.

Like a god - yes. Mr. Perfect and a womanizer is what he was from the start. In fact, Hunt grows less and less perfect with the seasons. I thought that a rather nice touch.

Since Kevin Sorbo was also the executive producer, and some people even argue he championed for Robert Hewitt Wolfe to leave, I wonder how much influence did he have in turning Andromeda into cr@p. After S02 things were never the same.

Everyone without an idea what the "executive producer"-title means when attached to the lead actor is wondering about stuff like that. There are ways to inform yourself, though.

I advise you to read this article before responding:

http://www.agonybooth.com/tv/Gene_Roddenberrys_Andromeda_Series_Review.aspx

I did. A lot of half-truths (ever wondered what the other half of a half-truth is?), speculation and fanboy-rantings.

P.S. Did anyone have access to the ratings of this show for each season? I tried finding this information, with no luck so far.

A lady called Jill Sherwin, who was on Wolfe's writing team and is very much of a RHW-fan-girl wrote a book called "Sailing the Slipstream", with lengthy interviews and articles with and on Wolfe, Sorbo and many of the other people involved and with detailled analysis of each episode, including the ratings.

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roman8, are you Kevin himself?

Don't get me wrong, but you are the one who seem to be the minority here, since all posters and reviews from iMDB, plus all other people I ever read on the internet agree with me that this show became s.h1t horse after Wolfe was fired (or after S02, to be more precise, in the middle of it).

If Andromeda was never THAT GOOD, then things didn't became better after they decide to change things over the years.

http://www.republibot.com/content/interview-keith-hamilton-cobb

In this interview KMC confirms what I was saying:

Well... after a couple of seasons, I think it had come fairly clear to everyone that the character wasn't going anywhere except further into soft focus and obscurity. When you're writing show to show, and your concerns are not necessarily those of character, it is easy for this to happen. They weren't going to tell anymore Tyr stories that didn't subjugate his sensibilities and purposes to those of Captain Hunt. At the very same time that the character was being pushed further and further into soft focus, the on-line community was clamoring for more of who and what he was about, not unlike the way you're inquiring above. They too wanted to see more of his stories, and see his compelling persona featured more prominently in the episodes.

Clearly the premise was discarded and they decided to spit on what was already not that good to begin with, and Andromeda became too centered around KS, and with no more arcs that were intelligent, mainly episodic stories.

Wolfe contributed to Deep Space Nine, for god sakes, in my opinion the best Trek series, even better than TOS or TNG. I think Andromeda would have fared much better if he stayed on it. The only TV show I can think of that was as much good as DS9 was Babylon 5, that seem to have inspired the former.

All you need to know about the change in tone is in the difference in the first season intro:

"The long night has come. The Systems Commonwealth, the greatest civilization in history, has fallen. Now, one ship, one crew have vowed to drive back the night and rekindle the light of civilization. On the starship Andromeda hope lives again"

To the last seasons' intro after Wolfe was booted out:

"The Universe is a dangerous place. But in our future my crew and I fight to make it safe. I am Dylan Hunt, Captain of the Andromeda Ascendant, and these are our adventures."

Almost a parody of simplified dumbing down of a writing staff, isn't it?

The version of Dylan developed by Robert Hewitt Wolfe was so much more complicated and nuanced, a challenge that demanded and got a solid performance out of a not-tremendously-talented actor like Sorbo.

Dylan v.2 was basically Hercules.

Sorbo was actually better than he thought he was, or than his acting ambitions lay.

Maybe his taste just sucks.

All I know is, his increasing power behind-the-scenes post-Wolfe's era was vastly to the detriment of his character, and God knows the show in general.

Does he now? Where and when exactly is Harper doing that?

In the last episode:

00:35:35,933 --> 00:35:36,959
Hoo, hoo!

00:35:37,056 --> 00:35:38,693
Yeah!

00:35:41,582 --> 00:35:43,539
We are free and clear.

00:35:45,305 --> 00:35:46,974
And home.

00:35:48,835 --> 00:35:50,761
See ya later, you big freak.

00:35:50,857 --> 00:35:51,981
Speaking of which,

00:35:52,077 --> 00:35:53,585
I haven't been this happy since tyr left.

It was not very nice to hear this from a character I cherished while it was there and that even saved Harper's life once. They even made Beka sleep with Tyr, clearly the only character that couldn't be flawed was Dylan.

As for the pictures, I mean you can clearly see that in all behind the scenes videos KHC doesn't appear much, and in the IMDB pictures from the cast reunited to celebrate something, he is the only person that does not appear.

I don't know what happened exactly, but we can infer there was a clash of egos and Sorbo won in the end, even though Tyr was considered the best character (and many still think it was the best, despite the writers decision to depict him as something else entirely different in seasons 3/4).

BTW, I would have accepted Coda anytime:
http://www.roberthwolfe.com/Insider%20Info.htm

Over seasons 3-5.

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Yeah it totally went to *beep* Up until the Trance swap it had promise... then went downhill from them. It stayed alright for awhile but got worse over time. Then there's the abomination that is the season 4 finale and season 5. I can't believe the show lasted 5 seasons.

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https://screenrant.com/casting-decisions-saved-syfy-shows-scifi/?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral

At the end of the day, you need your lead to be likable. Andromeda was a mediocre show that managed to last five full seasons, but you'd be hard-pressed to find any earnest fans of it these days.

This lack of any real impact can mainly be attributed to the main character, Dylan Hunt. Hunt just wasn't pleasant to watch, as Kevin Sorbo never managed to present his role in an engaging way. Worse still, the show seemed to focus more and more on Hunt as it went on, despite most of the supporting cast being more intriguing that Hunt himself.

The show lasted five seasons, but without a compelling lead, it may as well have been canceled after one.

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https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Sci-Fi-series-Andromeda-ruined-by-Kevin-Sorbo-s-ego-Should-they-have-taken-the-Blake-7-solution-of-have-him-disappear-and-finding-him-become-a-goal/answer/Ciaron-Drain

Actually it was ruined by several things, the flogging of some of Gene Rodenbury’s other sci-fi series ideas was a bit like flogging a dead horse as it appeared to an attempt to wring out money from stuff that was not particularly good. The other show Earth the Final Conflict managed to have some promise only for it to bring in new writers as the budgets and cast were cut more savagely than the contents of a eunuch’s posing pouch.

In the case of Andromeda it had some promise with Robert Hewitt Wolfe was hired on as the show’s main writer. Wolfe first gained fame by writing the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ”a fistfull of Datas” and wrote episodes of Deep Space 9 so it looked good for a season and a half, the characters developed Kevin Sorbo was keen to see comparisonss to Star Trek and his character Dylan Hunt (a name I would swear was Cockney Rhyming slang) was like Captian Kirk. For a season and a half it had potential the characters and story arc had developed, well apart from Hunt who came over as yet another of those generic Roddenbury heroes, the first season cliffhanger had the big bad of the magog World ship and that they had managed to twat it with a Nova bomb.

However, by the middle of the second season, all of the development was rendered moot afterward. As like Star Trek: Voyager, Andromeda jettisoned its promise and was content with simply being an action show, with an ineffectual captain to boot. The show’s distributers Tribune Entertainment, decided to give Wolfe the sack. Sorbo personally explained that this was because Wolfe’s scripts were too intelligent. He also said the show would become more episodic, claiming that this was closer to Roddenberry’s original vision.

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