Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda: An Overview

Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda (2000-2005) was an oddity in an era where fans were weaning themselves off Star Trek thanks to a combination of The X-Files, Babylon 5, and even Xena: Warrior Princess redefining their viewing habits.  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had developed a strong but relatively small following, and Star Trek: Voyager was proving hard to love.  Farscape swooped in to steal attention, and Stargate: SG1 was on its way to becoming a whole franchise of its own.  Then of course Battlestar Galactica happened.  Star Trek: Enterprise couldn't compete.  Andromeda, stuck in the sudden vacuum of syndication that had worked so well for Star Trek: The Next Generation, became an afterthought, no matter how successful in that market.

Fans heaped blame on Robert Hewitt Wolfe's departure in Andromeda's second season.  Wolfe had developed Andromeda out of basic elements left behind by Gene Roddenberry (most notably the name of lead character Dylan Hunt, which had appeared in two failed pilots from the '70s), and fans latched onto him as a central creative voice in an era where J. Michael Straczynski had dominated the idea in Babylon 5.  Wolfe had been a crucial part of the creative team behind Deep Space Nine, and all the dazzling elements he created for Andromeda were themselves worth salivating over.  He struck big idea after big idea for the show's first season, and it looked as if Andromeda might join the geek pantheon of beloved TV shows.  And then Wolfe left in the second season.

What exactly Wolfe was doing originally was never really questioned.  Certainly, the idea of the show itself can be seen as a version of the whole Star Trek era from which he'd come.  The premise, even if suggested by Roddenberry, could be viewed as a variation of Voyager's concept, that a lone starship might be forced to carry the torch of an entire civilization.  The dynamic between Hunt and breakout character Tyr Anasazi could be seen as a riff between the unique dynamic seen in the Deep Space Nine pilot "Emissary," in which lead character Benjamin Sisko shows us a new way to look at Next Generation's Jean-Luc Picard.  (Here, Sisko would be Tyr, the more aggressive loner, while Picard would be the idealistic visionary Picard.) 

And what about Trance?  Trance was Wolfe's biggest tipoff.  Trance was a combination of Next Generation's Guinan and Deep Space Nine's Odo.  Guinan, when introduced, was made up of odd suggestions of great mystery, whose true nature, powers, and origins lurked behind everything she did.  She was no mere bartender.  (I suppose even "plain, simple tailor" Garak in Deep Space Nine owes her a debt.)  Except the more we learn about her, the less spectacular Guinan becomes, until at last we learn who her people really are in Star Trek Generations, and the mystique is finally gone completely.  Odo, meanwhile, is known as a shapeshifter, but he never knew his own people, and spends his first few seasons earnestly searching for them.  Finally we learn they're the Founders, who lead the malevolent Dominion, and Odo spends the rest of that series trying to reconcile his life with the nature of his people.

Trance develops differently.  By the time Wolfe leaves, she's still largely unexplained, but there are increasing hints of what she might actually be.  There apparently was great resistance to her continued presence in the series, so cosmetic and personality changes push Trance along, including in Wolfe's final episode, until Andromeda reveals, in its final season, that she is a star avatar (and a crucial one, at that).

The classic narrative is that everything that was good about Andromeda happened while Wolfe was still involved, and that it all went downhill from there.  I watched the series throughout its original run.  I'm watching it back now.  Wolfe, I think, tried to go too big too soon.  He knew that the episodes fans tend to love best are the ones that go big.  He oversaw some big episodes in the first season.  He built Tyr up to be a thorn in Hunt's side.  But eventually, if Tyr was to stay, he would have to settle in a little.  But to be true to himself, to everything he did even when Wolfe was still around, he had to leave, even if Wolfe never did.  And ironically, the seeds are definitively planted for it not longer after Wolfe did, and it's arguably Andromeda's finest hour.

I think Wolfe's biggest failure was forgetting the premise, that Dylan Hunt awakens after three hundred years to find the Systems Commonwealth gone, and civilization devolved into barbarity.  He never really depicts the barbarity. He becomes obsessed, like Hunt, in the quest to rebuild the Commonwealth.  The fifth season is often accused to be the show's worst, the most Hercules of all the Hercules shenanigans that followed Wolfe's departure.  Andromeda starred Kevin Sorbo, who previously starred in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.  I'm not sure what show fans watched when thinking of Hercules, because Sorbo always, always had a companion of some sort in that series (and, remember, Xena was a spinoff of it), but Andromeda had a whole cast of "companions" that even after Wolfe's departure remained thoroughly in the picture, in the same roles they'd always occupied.  Beka Valentine continued on as Hunt's rogue first officer (with her own ship, the Eureka Maru, which in some ways was like criticizing Voyager for never, ever remembering that Neelix had his own ship, too).  Trance continued baffling everyone.  Harper remained deliriously, happily Harper.  And Tyr remained Tyr, even while he struggled to decide to remain Tyr.  Yeah, we lost Yoda-like Rev Bem, but the makeup ought to have been better conceived.  That's why we lost him.  And we gained Rhade, who was like the show's secret weapon all along.  But maybe the right Rhade would have been better.  Well, can't have everything.  And Rommie!  All three versions!  Four, by the final season! 

And that final, "disastrous" season?  It's basically one long meditation on what a failed civilization looks like, one that definitely needs saving, and Hunt's crew doesn't magically decide to work peacefully together, but has to work at trusting each other.  And they all have their own distinctive arcs.  If this were Babylon 5, starting the series like that and then hammering big moment after big moment would've been completely natural. 

It's also worth considering the Magog.  The Magog were the biggest gamble.  If Wolfe had Star Trek on the brain when he developed Andromeda, the Magog were his Borg.  In Next Generation, the Borg were actually teased as early as the first season, but didn't debut until the second, even though their biggest mark waited until the end of the third.  Wolfe ended Andromeda's first season with the first Magog encounter, and it was terrifying.  He even seemed to anticipate Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.  And that was only the beginning.  It wasn't until the final episode of the series that the Magog and their World Ship and the Spirit of the Abyss were finally, finally defeated.  (Even Enterprise, at the same time, didn't nail what cosmetically looked fairly similar with its Temporal Cold War and "Future Guy" arc.)  The Borg are hard to compete with, but the Magog make a fair argument.  I think even the Shadows can't compete with their legacy (but I'm not a Babylon 5 guy).

Anyway, I remain a big fan of Andromeda, and yes, I'm rewatching the series at the moment.  I hope to put together a viewing guide, much as I have for every incarnation of Star Trek.  Maybe not exactly as I've done with Star Trek, but enough so that Andromeda can begin to be...appreciated.  Because it really deserves to be.