WATCH THE SKIES, AMERICA!
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reviews Gene Roddenberry's ANDROMEDA TV Phenomenon? |
 Kevin Sorbo |
As the 'Star Trek' party runs down, it's time for a new phenomenon!
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Early in the premiere episode of "Gene Roddenberry's 'Andromeda,'"
Capt. Dylan Hunt of the Starship Andromeda Ascendant answers
a distress call that turns out to be an enemy trap. Before you
can say "Holy Spock!," the Andromeda is being fired
upon.
"How many ships are attacking?" asks the captain.
The answer isn't exactly encouraging: Survey says, "About 10,000."
Well, if that isn't bad enough, consider this: Capt. Hunt can't call for reinforcements either because it seems the Andromeda Ascendant is the last surviving warship of the Commonwealth, the ruling government for a civilization spanning three different galaxies. A universe-wide uprising of the human sub-species known as the Neitzcheans finally has toppled the Commonwealth and civilization is sliding down a greasy slope toward infinite chaos.
You
think that's a jam? Hey, worse stuff is coming. Like, betrayal
by the ship's first officer, who just happens to be a Neitzchean.
Once he and his thugs start blowing apart all the humans, androids,
cyborgs and electronic gee-gaws that help run the ship, Capt.
Hunt suddenly finds himself about as alone and friendless as
William Shatner at his first solo gospel music concert.
No, if Capt. Hunt were Chester Riley, he'd be saying, "What
a revolting development this is!" If he were Andy Brown
of the Fresh Air Taxi Cab Company, he'd mutter, "I'se regusted!"
But he's not. He's a TV space captain, which means he grits his
teeth and tells the ship's computers to take the Andromeda Ascendant
toward the nearest black hole.
And if you know anything about those matter-gobbling downspouts in space, you can figure the Andromeda Ascendant soon will be the Andromeda Descendant, if not Decedent.
But, hold on, we all know better, don't we? The premiere episode of a new sci-fi series isn't going to dump its hero and its grossly expensive starship down a black hole in the universe before we see them kick any alien butt. That's called "Sink the Bismarck." This show is called "Gene Roddenberry's 'Andromeda,'" so you just know a happy ending is lurking right around the next asteroid.
I won't bother you with the details. Let's just say the happy ending takes 300 years and the good news is that we don't have to wait that long to see it. It comes when a space salvage ship chugs into the rather degenerated neighborhood of the black hole and latches onto a giant chunk of scrap metal with a faded Commonwealth insignia.
Now my irreverent tone means I can't really take any of this too seriously. People who take things like this seriously usually wind up getting obsessed and spend the rest of their lives dressing up in geeky costumes and going to conventions with other geeks.
However, I must say I think "Andromeda," which premieres in first run syndication next week on a staggeringly large lineup of stations, has all the makings of a long-lasting guilty pleasure, even for people like me who are immune to the "fever" that so often comes over sci-fi freaks.
For one thing, it stars the ultra-cool Kevin Sorbo, who left "Hercules...the Legendary Journeys," or whatever they called his long-running syndicated muscleman series, to play Capt. Dylan Hunt. Sorbo is handsome, well-built and, best of all, has that look in his eye that says, "Can you believe they're paying me all this money just to keep a straight face?"
And I'm sure we can thank Sorbo for having it put in his contract that Capt. Hunt has to be totally surrounded by beautiful babes in every scene. At least those of us who can appreciate gloriously configured young women will be thankful to whomever is responsible.
And, believe me, this is one smart collection of women they've put together for "Andromeda." The executors of Roddenberry's estate also have learned many lessons from all the reruns and spinoffs from his original "Star Trek." The principal one, of course, would be: Cast more beautiful young women and, whatever you do, don't uglify them with wacky eyepieces, bony foreheads and ears that you might step on while slow dancing.
You
will not believe the creatures they signed up for "Andromeda,"
starting with Lexa Doig, who plays the non-material visualized
form of the onboard starship computer system, known as "Andromeda."
She looks good enough to download yourself into, if there's no
other alternative to getting up close and personal with her.
Then there's Lisa Ryder, who plays salvage lady Beka Valentine,
a hard-eyed and cynical lass, but one who's starting to warm
up nicely by the end of episode two. And much can be said also
for Laura Bertram, who plays someone called "Trance"
Gemini, the traditional fem-alien, whose only "disfigurement"
is a long, prehensile tail that looks like it might come in handy,
especially when the ship's infirmary is running a little low
on the Viagra supply.
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Lisa Ryder, left, is Beka; Lexa Doig, center, is Andromeda and Laura Bertram, wagging tail, is Trance Gemini
To everybody's credit, the women of "Andromeda" aren't the "Baywatch" variety. These are real accomplished actors who just happen to be very attractive. They're also deeply important to the storylines, so they're not just window dressing. Still, I'm sure the producers know that part of the appeal of Kevin Sorbo is the way he operates when you put him in with good-looking women. This may be the first Roddenberry space series to really turn up the heat in this manner, which may explain why I found it infinitely more interesting than watching Sulu turn knobs on the flight deck while hoping they wouldn't come off in his hand.
Why does this have a shot at being a long-running series? Well, I think it's pretty clear the steam is almost out of the "Star Trek" choo-choo after more than 30 years and it's time for something new. Because Roddenberry made some notes on this concept before he died and his widow is one of the producers, it at least has some fractional "Trek" pedigree. It also seems to want to have an intellectual undercurrent, which the Trekkies always have insisted was an absolute necessity.
Frankly, I never got that element of "Star Trek." I guess I had a certain bias. I couldn't see anything with Shatner in it as intellectual. I'm sure if Shatner had landed the starring role in the Globe's first production of "Hamlet," none of us would have had to study Shakespeare in high school. Anyway, you know darn well there will be at least intellectual pretensions out of any TV show that suggests the bad guys are adherents of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy.
Also promising is the character of Rev Bem (Brent Stait), the ugliest guy on board the Andromeda. Certainly, the in-joke here is that his surname, Bem, is the old Hollywood acronym for "bug-eyed monster." He's a flesh-eating cannibal who has poisonous fangs and propagates his offspring by putting eggs in the corpses of his victims. But he's also a thoughtful, religious guy who's the unofficial priest on board ship. His race is known as the Magog. If you recall the biblical prophecies surrounding Gog and Magog, you'll catch the scent of some intellectual pretensions there, too.
One of the more compelling males on board is Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb). Though he looks like a rather handsome Rastafarian bodybuilder, he's actually a descendant of the Neitzcheans. When you first meet him, he's a hired gun bent on blasting Capt. Hunt to smithereens. If that surname sounds a bit like a certain vanished race of North American Indians, you're beginning to sniff out the pretensions nicely.
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How would you like to be the dental hygienist on board the Andromeda? |
But I think the ultimate intellectual pretension may be the relationship between the captain and his hologram computer woman, Andromeda. He seems to dig her to an extraordinary degree. If Roddenberry actually dreamed that relationship up, he may have gone to his grave with a wry smile on his face, knowing he had subtly flipped a cyberbird at the geeks who may have enabled his career, but probably drove him nutso before it was over.
If
you think about it, the hero of this TV space show, Capt. Hunt,
may be the ultimate computer geek -- a guy who actually is falling
for his computer and now has a way to literally have sex with
it. You may not have to be a geek to accept that idea. I'll go
so far as to say that if Apple could reconfigure the Imac to
resemble Lexa Doig, I might be willing to give up my IBM compatible.
Ultimately, though, my test for any new TV show always has been:
Would I watch another episode without putting in for overtime?
When it comes to "Andromeda," I don't think I'll be
able to resist. It's clear the makers of this eye-catching and
actionful one-hour series are having way too much fun to be taking
this real seriously. If that's their attitude and they can keep
it up, I think the future of the universe -- not to mention the
TV season -- is in good hands.
© 2000 by Ron Miller. The photos all are © 2000 by Tribune Entertainment.
 with illustrations by JIM HUMMEL |
 He was the most feared battle commander in Earth's sector of the galaxy. Then he died--and became a deadly weapon, programmed to destroy all who opposed him. |
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