Well, I finished watching the first four seasons of Andromeda (minus a couple episodes that I deliberately skipped over), and what I have to say is this:
I’m not angry at the way this show was derailed after the first half of the second season – how it was turned into an incoherent mess with horribly misdeveloped characters and awful continuity – just incredibly disappointed and very, very, very sad.
As I am ever the obsessive-compulsive masochist, I decided to revisit Andromeda for the second time in four years. I spent the last two months watching the entire series; I didn’t skip a single episode. Suffice to say, time and exposure to the rank abomination that is Season 5 have made my statement above a lie. I am angry at how this series was derailed following the first half of the second season. No, not angry. Enraged. Apoplectic. Annie.
My favourite character was Trance Gemini. She was cute, vivacious, sexy, with a subtle sinister edge to her; I loved her as much as I could ever love a fictional woman. She was replaced with a gold imposter who spent most of the remainder of the series running around in a horrid rat’s nest wig and unflattering pleather outfits, spouting stilted nonsense which would make George Lucas shake his head. My second favourite character was Rev Bem. He became a washed-out shadow of his former self then was promptly forgotten about. My third favourite character was Tyr Anasazi. He was a character I should’ve hated, but his depth and dialogue made me admire him in spite of myself. He was reduced first to a milksop then to a mustache-twirling villain, whereupon he died an ignominious death after getting shot in the back. The remaining supporting characters – all decent in their own right, played by fine actors – were reduced to caricatures and animate backdrops.
Why did this all happen? Because Tribune Entertainment was run by visionless hacks only interested in catering to the lowest common denominator. Because Kevin Sorbo needed his ego vigorously jerked off. Because Robert Engles was a shitty showrunner who was under the assumption he was still writing for Twin Peaks.
Oh, and apparently Sorbo wants to bring this show back through Netflix to run an additional two seasons. He can go suck a force lance.
*takes several deep, calming breaths*
Now, that all purged from my system, here’re my ratings for each of Andromeda’s five seasons (and the individual episodes therein).
SEASON 1
- “Under the Night” – 7/10
- “An Affirming Flame” – 7/10
- “To Loose the Fateful Lightning” – 5/10
- “D Minus Zero” – 8/10
- “Double Helix” – 7/10
- “Angel Dark, Demon Bright” – 9/10
- “The Ties That Blind” – 5/10
- “The Banks of the Lethe” – 7/10
- “A Rose in the Ashes” – 5/10
- “All Great Neptune’s Ocean” – 6/10
- “The Pearls That Were His Eyes” – 7/10
- “The Mathematics of Tears” – 7/10
- “Music of a Distant Drum” – 8/10
- “Harper 2.0” – 8/10
- “Forced Perspective” – 7/10
- “The Sum of Its Parts” – 5/10
- “Fear and Loathing in the Milky Way” – 7/10
- “The Devil Take the Hindmost” – 6/10
- “The Honey Offering” – 8/10
- “Star-Crossed” – 6/10
- “It Makes a Lovely Light” – 8/10
- “Its Hour Come 'Round at Last” – 8/10
SEASON’S RATING: 7/10
SEASON 2
- “The Widening Gyre” – 8/10
- “Exit Strategies” – 7/10
- “A Heart for Falsehood Framed” – 6/10
- “Pitiless as the Sun” – 8/10
- “Last Call at the Broken Hammer” – 5/10
- “All Too Human” – 8/10
- “Una Salus Victus” – 8/10
- “Home Fires” – 8/10
- “Into the Labyrinth” – 8/10
- “The Prince” – 7/10
- “Bunker Hill” – 7/10
- “Ouroboros” – 3/10
- “Lava and Rockets” – 4/10
- “Be All My Sins Remembered” – 5/10
- “Dance of the Mayflies” – 6/10
- “In Heaven Now Are Three” – 3/10
- “The Things We Cannot Change” – 1/10
- “The Fair Unknown” – 5/10
- “Belly of the Beast” – 6/10
- “The Knight, Death, and the Devil” – 8/10
- “Immaculate Perception” – 8/10
- “'Tunnel at the End of the Light” – 5/10
SEASON’S RATING: 6/10
SEASON 3
- “If the Wheel Is Fixed” – 5/10
- “The Shards of Rimni” – 5/10
- “Mad to be Saved” – 4/10
- “Cui Bono” – 7/10
- “The Lone and Level Sands” – 8/10
- “Slipfighter the Dogs of War” – 1/10
- “The Leper’s Kiss” – 5/10
- “For Whom the Bell Tolls” – 6/10
- “And Your Heart Will Fly Away” – 4/10
- “The Unconquerable Man” – 6/10
- “Delenda Est” – 1/10
- “The Dark Backward” – 7/10
- “The Risk-All Point” – 6/10
- “The Right Horse” – 5/10
- “What Happens to a Rev Deferred?” – 2/10
- “Point of the Spear” – 8/10
- “Vault of the Heavens” – 3/10
- “Deep Midnight’s Voice” – 7/10
- “The Illusion of Majesty” – 2/10
- “Twilight of the Idols” – 8/10
- “Day of Judgement, Day of Wrath” – 8/10
- “Shadows Cast by a Final Salute” – 4/10
SEASON’S RATING: 4/10
SEASON 4
- “Answers Given to Questions Never Asked” – 5/10
- “Pieces of Eight” – 5/10
- “Waking the Tyrant’s Device” – 4/10
- “Double or Nothingness” – 2/10
- “Harper/Delete” – 7/10
- “Soon the Nearing Vortex” – 4/10
- “The World Turns All Around Her” – 4/10
- “Conduit to Destiny” – 5/10
- “Machinery of the Mind” – 5/10
- “Exalted Reason, Resplendent Daughter” – 3/10
- “The Torment, the Release” – 4/10
- “The Spider’s Stratagem” – 4/10
- “The Warmth of an Invisible Light” – 6/10
- “The Others” – 3/10
- “Fear Burns Down to Ashes” – 4/10
- “Lost in a Space that Isn’t There” – 5/10
- “Abridging the Devil’s Divide” – 8/10
- “Trusting the Gordian Maze” – 1/10
- “A Symmetry of Imperfection” – 7/10
- “Time Out of Mind” – 6/10
- “The Dissonant Interval” (Part One) – 3/10
- “The Dissonant Interval” (Part Two) – 2/10
SEASON’S RATING: 3/10
SEASON 5
- “The Weight” (Part One) – 5/10
- “The Weight” (Part Two) – 5/10
- “Phear Phactor Phenom” – 4/10
- “Decay of the Angel” – 5/10
- “The Eschatology of the Present” – 1/10
- “When Goes Around…” – 1/10
- “Attempting Screed” – 1/10
- “So Burn the Untamed Lands” – 4/10
- “What Will be Was Not” – 5/10
- “The Test” – 3/10
- “Through a Glass Darkly” – 6/10
- “Pride Before the Fall” – 1/10
- “Moonlight Becomes You” – 2/10
- “Past is Prolix” – 5/10
- “The Opposites of Attraction” – 1/10
- “Saving Light from a Black Sun” – 6/10
- “Totaled Recall” – 5/10
- “Quantum Tractate Delirium” – 6/10
- “One More Day’s Light” – 5/10
- “Chaos and the Stillness of It” – 4/10
- “The Heart of the Journey” (Part One) – 1/10
- “The Heart of the Journey” (Part Two) – 1/10
SEASON’S RATING: 1/10
SERIES RATING: 3/10
tl;dr: Consult my signature.