One of the things that I loved about Andromeda is that it blended the morals of Star Trek with the fun, simplistic action of Star Wars and presented us with something entirely new. That's because not only was the original story idea created by Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, but it was developed for TV by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who had been a writer on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Gene Roddenberry's widow, Majel Barrett, who also had been involved with every incarnation of Star Trek until her death in 2008.
Another thing that I liked about Andromeda is that it came at a time when Star Trek had started to die down following it's huge success in the late '80s and throughout the '90s with two TV shows on at any given time and a movie coming every two to three years. By this time both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had ended, the movies weren't doing quite as well at the box office as they had done in the '80s, and Voyager was just about to end. So Andromeda arrived at the perfect time to fill that void that the lack of Star Trek on TV was creating.
My favourite characters on the show were Tyr Anasazi, played by Keith Hamilton Cobb, the Nietzschean mercenary that joined Dylan's crew, and Trance Gemini, basically a Goddess. I've heard fans of the show say that Tyr's betrayal at the end of season 3 and his behaviour in season 4 were inconsistent with how he was written and portrayed in seasons 1 and 2. Honestly I very much thought that they were consistent with the character. Tyr always looked out for himself. He was about surviving and doing whatever it took to ensure HIS survival. Betraying Dylan and the crew of the Eureka Maru was something that he felt was necessary at the time. It goes all the way back to the second episode where he easily moved from the side of Gerentex, the Nightsider who had hired Beka and her crew to salvage the Andromeda from the black hole in the Hephaistos System in the pilot, to the side of Dylan and the crew of the Maru, despite the fact that Gerentex was paying Tyr and his group of mercenaries. It also goes back to the show's fifth episode "Double Helix" where Tyr seemingly had switched from the side of the Andromeda to the group of Nietzscheans, the Orca Pride, just as easily as he had switched to Dylan's only three episodes earlier.
The reason I liked Tyr so much is because you never knew what he was going to do next or how he was going to handle any given situation. I also liked that he was calculating and waited to act until the time was suitable for him to do so. He always thought about his actions before he did them and was never impulsive. Luckily for the first three seasons Tyr's goals matched Dylan's goals. Otherwise things might've gone south for Dylan a lot sooner.
The reason I liked Trance is because she was so mysterious. Right from her introduction in the pilot episode, she seemed like this simple, thoughtless, sheltered girl at first glance. However you quickly realize there is far more to her than meets the eye even though she kept quiet about where she was from and her past. It wasn't until midway through the second season when the original Purple Trance was replaced by future Gold Trance that she starts to become less of a mystery. At least to the audience. Even right up until the series finale at the end of the fifth season, Dylan and the crew aren't quite sure what to make of Trance. I also liked that she was generally a friendly person, but could get quite mean if you crossed her a certain way. Particularly after she became Gold Trance.
I've also heard people online talk about the shift in tone and change in storytelling direction midway through the second season when Robert Hewitt Wolfe left the show and Kevin Sorbo replaced him as showrunner. Successful or not, every show that is on long enough for there to be a change in showrunner and writing staff will have a tonal shift and/or shift in storytelling direction because every showrunner is different and have different storytelling sensibilities. Even Star Trek: The Next Generation had several shifts in storytelling direction between Gene Roddenberry, Maurice Hurley, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor. Arrow also had several showrunners during it's eight year run and each one tried to change the tone of the show from the darker tone set by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim in season 1 to the weird tone set by Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle in season 4.
Personally I didn't really notice the change mid-season 2 as I always felt that Andromeda was never trying to be like Star Trek and so was never trying to be sophisticated like Star Trek was at the time. I think it was just trying to be lighthearted and entertaining. Which I appreciated since Star Trek was starting to get darker with Star Trek: Enterprise a year after Andromeda started.
Recently I bought a few episodes of Andromeda season 1 on iTunes and I watched them while I was in the hospital. They actually held up after almost 20 years. Which is pretty awesome. Oh sure they're cheesy as hell but they were cheesy when they aired almost twenty years ago so in that regard they hold up for sure.
Overall I still love Andromeda after 20 years. Only the first season is available on iTunes so I'll definitely be tracking down the DVD sets for this show once the COVID-19 stuff is all over and done with. I'm not rating the things I'm talking about over the next few days as they aren't really reviews, just discussions about certain TV shows that I want to talk about while I'm confined to my bedroom.
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213327/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
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