Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good, if a little at odds with itself, 3 Oct 2007
Andromeda is a good sci-fi series. Its imaginative (at least compared to the usual drivel you get on TV, before some other series' fanboy tries to jump down my throat), it looks lovely, and the acting is at a good standard (with the general exception of Tyr, although thats not to say he's bad).
The episodes are in a largely self-contained but at the same time follow a general story arc. Its pretty much bang-on the middle between Star Trek (original series) and Battlestar Galactica (the new series) in that respect; if you didnt like the way the arc (or lack thereof) was done in those series or ones like them, then Andromeda provides a good middle ground for a series that both knows where its going but doesnt focus its entire attention on that.
There are some problems with it though. It doesnt have the deep meaning of something like Babylon 5 or (to a lesser extent) Galactica. It's pure sci-fi, nothing more, nothing less. The episodes also continuously feel like theyre trying to cram too much into themselves. I literally cant think of an episode where I didnt get a sense that it should have run to 50 minutes rather than 45; ive never actually come across a series of this type that has that problem, certainly not so consistantly. This leaves it feeling at best like a series thats been let down by the rigid nature of TV conventions, and at worst it feels slightly incoherent (but not enough to say that its _bad_ for it). I also found Season 5 somewhat... odd; whilst I havent seen it all, a friend who has assures me it remains much like that. I do realise that suddenly finding arguably your second most vital character unavailable due to real-life pregnancy does somewhat deaden what you can do with a series (not that I hold it against Lexa Doig).
So, in conclusion, its a good, straight-up-straight-down sci-fi series boasting good acting and ideas, but suffers a little from a paradoxical mix of overambition and lack thereof (that is, it doesnt go beyond its relatively narrow bounds, but then tries to do a little too much within them).
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8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
From Greatness to Unmitigated RUBBISH in Five Easy Stages, 12 Jul 2008
First of all, `Andromeda' wasn't CREATED by Gene Roddenberry, it was pieced together after his death from the dozens of ideas and concepts that he had noted down. But whilst the first two series showed a great deal of potential, once Captain Dylan Hunt had managed to restore the Commonwealth, the whole series plummeted into the same kind of clichéd `Black & White, Good vs. Evil' rubbish that ruined the original series of `Star Trek.'
From the beginning of the pilot episode, Dylan Hunt was the great hero and hope for the future who had left everyone he'd ever loved behind.
He used reason, logic and compassion as weapons, turning the villains own plans against them. But after the storyline with his late wife was concluded in series three, Hunt almost literally became the illegitimate son of Captain Kirk, solving every problem with violence and having sex with any woman who breathed.
When `Rev Bem' left the series, the programme lost almost all of its depth and its ethical conscience. And when Tyr Anastasi abandoned the Andromeda at the end of series three, the warning bell rang for all intelligent science fiction fans that there was now a black hole in the middle of the series that nothing else was ever going to fill.
Sure enough, by the beginning of series four, Andromeda had degenerated into the mindless, soulless, unimaginative and clichéd type of programme that millions of fans adore because it doesn't tax their brains.
They don't want ambiguity and emotional dilemmas, they want `Cool Explosions, Bright, Pretty Colours and for the Good Guys to Win in the End.' And so if you're a fan of the first two series and believe that series three `had its moment,' then I would recommend renting the fourth and fifth series before you decide whether or not to buy.
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14 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great, 5 Jul 2007
Ive seen all the episodes... and think it gets better in season 4 and 5 due to thier being most of the plot questions being aswered there...
I love the 'dissonant evil pt 1 and 2', especially the Paradine Aria that is sung when arkology is about to be *you know what :P*
Season 5's ending... its ok.. but Andromeda will never beat stargate :D
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