Customer Reviews

Andromeda - Season 5 Collection

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Talent really fell into the black hole with this one. Andromeda was never an intellectual show, but it was entertaining and humorous, which made it enjoyable nonetheless. I personally didn't care for the ending of season 4; Dylan Hunt's rise to near-godhood was so self-indulgent.

Season 5 was just horrible. The writing and directing were mindless. The same pointless, poorly-choreographed fighting that plagued Hercules was too abundant throughout the season. Every episode seemed to have a drunk picking a fight with one of the crew for no reason, just so Dylan or Becka or whoever could prove their fortitude. It was painful to watch the story go absolutely nowhere every episode - in the same terrible sets. The plots were just so circuitous with no payoff.

Astronomical bodies being represented by avatars? Becka the matriarch of the Nietzschean race via a time-traveling Drago? A black hole in love with Dylan? Too many lame ideas and twists being pulled out of too many you-know-whats. Everybody knew the show was coming to an end and stopped trying.

Like many, I initially did not care much for Season 5. However, I would give it 3.5 stars now. While there are some plot holes and inconsistancies with the past, it is actually very clever. Perhaps too clever in that you only pick it up fully seeing it over again. I just finished watching the Season 5 DVD's and throughly enjoyed them. The entire season builds toward the ending, which while not excellent is still satisfying. Actually, my only complaint about the ending is that there was not a little more post victory stuff.

While I was not a fan of the first four seasons of ANDROMEDA, my reaction to Season Five was quite mixed. One of my main complaints about Seasons One through Four was that except for Trance, there was little or no character development, and that the overall narrative tended to be more episodic than serial. Season Five both featured more character development and had far more of a serial composition, but disappointingly the series didn't get much better. In fact, in many ways it was less enjoyable than previous seasons. Why? Partly because the changes to the show in Season Five were simply undesirable. After the apparent rescue of their corner of the galaxy by Trance's destroying the mother shihp, the crew of Andromeda found themselves in a dingy, harsh, and unpleasant solar system. To make matters worse, most of the crew members were angry with Dylan Hunt and Trance for getting them in this fix. Nevermind that their anger was not believable (destruction of the mother ship?). It was all just unpleasant and, to quote Iggy Pop, no fun.

Another problem was the pregnancy of Lexa Doig. Since she played three characters on the show, her inability to play much of a role changed the chemistry on the show. The timing of her pregnancy was such that it relegated her to her "A.I." character for nearly the whole season. She then came back to the show probably a bit too soon after giving birth. Her place was somewhat filled by the inclusion of former Penthouse model Brandy Ledford (though to be fair, she is a much better actress than you would expect given that pedigree) as a new android, Doyle. And watching the interplay between Doyle and Romy when Lexa Doig made a late season reappearance makes you wish that they could have been together longer than they were. Their android competition was a lot of fun.

But in the end, the season was simply insufficiently entertaining. About the only thing that made it watching was the ongoing saga involving Trance. She was far and away the most interesting character on the show and the only one who was developed nicely over the course of the five years of the show. But nothing could overcome the countless problems in the series. In the 21st century I wonder how many people really want a male lead character over whom women instantly swoon. I have no patience for a show that has two people look at each other and almost immediately start making out. In what way is that appealing? The plots of the individual episodes remain for the most part on the pretty simplistic level of the first four seasons.

Still, even though ANDROMEDA is not a very good show and despite its being flawed on a host of levels, I was weirdly sad to see it come to an end. One of the strengths of TV is that you get to know a group of characters. You end up spending many hours with them and you get pleasure out of spending time with them (I suspect that this is one of the things that lies behind the success of such otherwise incredibly bland shows making up the CSI and LAW AND ORDER franchises). So, even though I have very little to say about ANDROMEDA in any of its five seasons, I was sad to have to say goodbye to Trance and Dylan and Andromeda (in all her forms) and Beka and even Harper. Go figure.

Sorry folks, but this one drags on for no good reason. Having watched it once i would never do so again. I have been a big fan of the andromeda series and enjoyed many of the episodes. There are simply too few episodes of any worth in season 5 and so it came to an end. What a sad finish to what could have been a much greater series. Watch farscape if you need a long running decent sci-fi. I hate to bag something unless necessary but it is that way here. Take care.

I like the Andromeda series but season 5 is a complete disaster.

Sure the show is low budget and the writing is sub par but it always seemed to have a nice charm to it. With season 5 any charm it had is now gone replaced by writing from a 12 year old boy lost in random thought fantasy land.

The story line for season 5 makes no sense (spoiler alert!).....wait how can I spoil what is already a spoiled rotten mess? The Vederans having to creating a solar system of barley inhabitable planets where random people get shipwrecked on and taking off never to be seen again is silly. Even more silly is the planets are going to be used to slow down the Vederan star when it comes back after taking off for some unknown reason.

This is crazy 12 year old boy daydreaming. I know most Sci-Fi shows do not stick to science very well but come on! Just imagine the sun taking off one day for no reason and then using Venus and Mars to slow it down when it comes back. That's like throwing golf balls at an 18 wheeler going down a turnpike at 75 MPH to slow it to a stop.

There are more insane story lines but I don't want to turn this into a book so to the next disaster we go. The little sayings at the start of each show were mostly ok with a few here and there that were good in the previous seasons but with season 5 each and every one were about as thought provoking as a 10 hour speech on trickle down economics given by Ben Stein.

The writing must have been farmed out to teenagers in the early 1990's. I feel sorry the actors had to say most of there lines on film so the humiliation is forever haunting them.

The acting too is 98.43% of the time "phoned in". It's obvious everyone had given up on the show and just wanted to go home.

On the bright side like many of the episodes of past seasons EVERY episode of season 5 has 20-55% recycled footage from previous episodes in the series thereby reducing the shows carbon footprint because they did not have to spend time writing new material or shooting new scenes. Everyone can stay home one or two days a week instead of driving their cars and using materials to create sets and keep the lights and air conditioning off in the studio.

So when you see footage from old episodes for 20-55% of a season 5 episode know that your saving the Earth. Oh by the way the Earth gets blown up for no reason at the end.

I could go on and on but you get the idea, there is almost nothing to love about Andromeda season 5. You can skip it and pretend that the ending of season 4, that was not a good ending itself, was the ending of the series.

Season 4 ended magnificently. It had it all..Drama, action, loss, self sacrifice, interesting technology (the arcology)....then it all plopped into the silly muck that was season 5.
Boring bar scenes on the lost Tarn Vedran planets albeit with no Vedrans, everyone dressed in raggedy clothes and two artificial suns that somehow give warmth to 9 earthlike worlds. If it wasn't stupid mind games, it was one bar fight after another against hapless thugs and gangs. What about the abyss and the magog? In the last two episodes, which really shouldve been only 1, the writers most have realized vacation time was near and they created a writers convenience to wrap up the whole season 5 mess.
Thoroughly unsatisfying.
It could have been so-much-more.
If you've bought the other 4 seasons and haven't seen any of season 5, (like me) DONT DO IT!>>>just rewatch the last episode of season 4 and dream of what it could have led too.

I've read others reviews here and they're not entirely good. But I'm not sure if people know the whole story. I started watching Andromeda right from the pilot when it first aired. I hung out in the chatroom at andromedatv.com before they took it away. Zack Stentz and Ash Miller, two of the shows writers, would frequent the chat room. They were useful in giving some inside information that not a lot of people knew at the time. I don't pretend to know the full story, but I know there were some disagreements between Keith Cobb and the show's producers at the time that wanted to take his character in a different direction. Cobb eventually left the show and went to The Young and the Restless because of it. With no Tyr, the writers were forced to take the show into another direction. Budget cutbacks didn't help any either, and they had lost viewer support after the show jumped the shark in season 4. Season 5 wasn't what they had intended I don't think, so for what they had to work with, I think they did a really great job with it. They kept the storyline flowing without detracting too much from the earlier seasons. The series finale was kind of a surprise because it was unexpected, but all in all I think was satisfying enough. So if you liked seasons 1 - 4, keep in mind, season 5 is different but still worth it.

Wulfric
(from the old Andromeda boards)

Season 5 of Andromeda is better than season 4. A lot better. But unfortunately that isn't really saying very much. The final season of this show saw a return to a slightly more goal-oriented, arc-based storytelling, and that is definitely in its favor.

The trouble is that the goal is too vague and too pointless. The show started out back in season 1 with the goal of restoring the Commonwealth. The goal in season 5? Repair the ship and get out of a claustrophobic star system. Whenever you go from something so grandiose to something so basic, there's practically no way to keep it from being a disappointment.

While there were a few decent moments in the season, such as the return of Hohne and the corridor scene with Harper in the last episode, they are few and far between. And, more importantly, they can't compete with such ridiculous horrors as making Drago Museveni - the father of all Nietzcheans - into an annoying punk, rather than the warrior that the images of his remains would have you believe he was (remains which they actually show in that episode, by the way). The season tries to have more good moments than it actually does, but many of them fall flat, such as the whole thing with Beka's "father". The rest of the time, one of the main cast punches somebody for looking at them the wrong way, because that is clearly the best way to solve all problems, including diplomatic ones. Add on top of all this the conspicuous absence of Lexa Doig (Andromeda herself) for much of the season.

Dylan Hunt was never the most interesting character on the show (that honor would go to either Tyr Anasazi or Rev Bem), but when the show first started out he was not the larger-than-life character that he eventually became. In season 1, and somewhat in season 2, Dylan was wrong sometimes. He sometimes made morally questionable decisions in pursuit of his goals. What made him likable was that he was always trying to do the right thing, even when he went about it in questionable ways.

Over the years, his character transformed into an over-the-top hero. Always right. Always good. There was no questioning his decisions, because he was the Super Awesome Captain. It really did become Hercules In Space, except less fun. Despite some attempts in season 5 to add more interesting facets to his character (making him into an evolved Vedran, for example), he retained the one trait that made the character completely uninteresting: infallibility.

Season 5 could have been worse. It could have been another season 4. But the fact of the matter is that it simply wasn't enough to redeem what started out as an imperfect but promising show. More than anything, season 5 left me with a feeling of "who cares?"

The final episode brought the show back to its Commonwealth/anti-Abyss focus, but it had been absent for so long, and things had been left in such a state of disarray without resolution, that it just didn't cut it. There were too many abandoned threads in the Commonwealth storyline, which adds up to nothing but too little reason to be interested.

Consider: despite a season 2 episode indicating that the Vedrans were still around and very much aware of Hunt's mission to restore the Commonwealth, when the Vedran homeworld is finally reunited with the rest of the known worlds, you don't see any Vedrans. Aside from the fact that the people in that system can now travel to other places, there's nothing to indicate that the reunion even matters in the grand scheme of things.

Andromeda was a really good sci-fi series. The characters are well written. The set and costuming are well done. A must-have for Kevin Sorbo fans. This series is great to own on DVD because it is packed with extras. ADV Films does not skimp in that area. Tons of behind the scenes material, interviews with cast and crew, plus bloopers and deleted scenes. If you loved this show when it aired, you'll be completely satisfied getting the DVDs.

What can I say? If you're a Star Trek fan this is a must have for your collection. The cast of characters are varied enough that the episodes stay interesting from start to finish.