Paeans of Praise for Andromeda
Jan. 29th, 2003 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
herewiss13[Author's note: There's nothing so annoying as having something really passionate to share and then being unable to connect to the server. Is there some sort of "12 hours between posts" limit I haven't been notified of?]
Massive wibbling ahead:
If I'd read this plot online, I wouldn't have read it. A massive, time-traveling AU investigating the "might have beens" at the foundation of cannon. Only the best of authors would even dream of attempting it, on the god-like among them would succeed (Think 'Cicatrix' by Te).
T.I.M. succeeds at this impossible endeavor like you wouldn't believe.
In the pilot for Andromeda, now in it's third (and most lackluster) season, Captain Dylan Hunt is faced with a massive uprising that threatens the Commonwealth and then his best friend and first officer, Gaheris Rhade betrays him as part of the uprising and Dylan is forced to kill him.
Then, immediately afterwards, Dylan gets sucked into a Black Hole and spat back out 300 years later where the rebellion succeeded, and didn't and where anarchy runs wild amidst the ruins of a civilization that once spanned galaxies. A natural go-getter, Dylan now has his work cut out for him, and the show's mission is set running: save the universe. ;-)
So what's the first thing that TIM does? It shows Rhade killing Dylan and then being future shocked into a world no more to his liking than it was/would be to Dylan.
The episode then leapfrogs around the next two seasons of Andromeda (when it was really, really good) and with cut-scenes and recreations, revisits several key moments to illustrate how Rhade is both different and similar than Dylan.
How often to you do a character piece for someone who was killed halfway through the pilot, three years ago!! This is continuity.
And then end? Well...you knew it wasn't going to last, obviously. Dylan had to come back somehow. So Rhade, faced with the failure at his own attempt to redeem his act of destruction goes back to the final showdown with Dylan, kills and replaces his younger self, and then let's Dylan kill him, like we originally saw. An incredibly noble and completely invisible sacrifice.
There are some other nice touches, things you might not see in an actual series, including a romance with Becca, the murder of Tyr, some more insight into Trance and the lovely skewed dynamics Rhade has with Harper and hostile Andromeda herself. The holographic Dylan as Go partner was lovely too, like Hamlet's Ghost, only more cynical. ;-)
So, while some might complain about the whole "it was all a dream" factor, I'm still stunned by the courage it took to turn the whole show on its ear and trust that the majority of viewers would like an entire hour made up of past references and balanced on the pivot of the pilot. The story changes nothing, but it re-interprets everything. And frankly? It was really damn cool.
"Every Man is the Hero of his own story." Well, Gaheris Rhade was a hero with a story worthy of anything television or SF has produced.
P.S. Rhade's racial philosophy was well addressed too, but I didn't tackle it because I'm only going to attempt to spell 'Neichtzean' once. Liked all the busts and portraits of that mustachioed philosopher, though.
Massive wibbling ahead:
If I'd read this plot online, I wouldn't have read it. A massive, time-traveling AU investigating the "might have beens" at the foundation of cannon. Only the best of authors would even dream of attempting it, on the god-like among them would succeed (Think 'Cicatrix' by Te).
T.I.M. succeeds at this impossible endeavor like you wouldn't believe.
In the pilot for Andromeda, now in it's third (and most lackluster) season, Captain Dylan Hunt is faced with a massive uprising that threatens the Commonwealth and then his best friend and first officer, Gaheris Rhade betrays him as part of the uprising and Dylan is forced to kill him.
Then, immediately afterwards, Dylan gets sucked into a Black Hole and spat back out 300 years later where the rebellion succeeded, and didn't and where anarchy runs wild amidst the ruins of a civilization that once spanned galaxies. A natural go-getter, Dylan now has his work cut out for him, and the show's mission is set running: save the universe. ;-)
So what's the first thing that TIM does? It shows Rhade killing Dylan and then being future shocked into a world no more to his liking than it was/would be to Dylan.
The episode then leapfrogs around the next two seasons of Andromeda (when it was really, really good) and with cut-scenes and recreations, revisits several key moments to illustrate how Rhade is both different and similar than Dylan.
How often to you do a character piece for someone who was killed halfway through the pilot, three years ago!! This is continuity.
And then end? Well...you knew it wasn't going to last, obviously. Dylan had to come back somehow. So Rhade, faced with the failure at his own attempt to redeem his act of destruction goes back to the final showdown with Dylan, kills and replaces his younger self, and then let's Dylan kill him, like we originally saw. An incredibly noble and completely invisible sacrifice.
There are some other nice touches, things you might not see in an actual series, including a romance with Becca, the murder of Tyr, some more insight into Trance and the lovely skewed dynamics Rhade has with Harper and hostile Andromeda herself. The holographic Dylan as Go partner was lovely too, like Hamlet's Ghost, only more cynical. ;-)
So, while some might complain about the whole "it was all a dream" factor, I'm still stunned by the courage it took to turn the whole show on its ear and trust that the majority of viewers would like an entire hour made up of past references and balanced on the pivot of the pilot. The story changes nothing, but it re-interprets everything. And frankly? It was really damn cool.
"Every Man is the Hero of his own story." Well, Gaheris Rhade was a hero with a story worthy of anything television or SF has produced.
P.S. Rhade's racial philosophy was well addressed too, but I didn't tackle it because I'm only going to attempt to spell 'Neichtzean' once. Liked all the busts and portraits of that mustachioed philosopher, though.
