Good concept, poorly executed.

disgusting, overrated, pointless

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

I enjoyed this show very much.I am so saddened to discover, in the age of the internet, that the actor Kevin Sorbo is such a right wing nut dickhead.He's an extreme USA Repulican in his freely vomited beliefs.Fortunately his reach is niche and a broadcast that is mostly never seen.Thankfully, Mr Sorbo is only an actor, so speaks other people's words and ideas on his filming gig and emotes that which is written and directed, thankfully not his own spewed content.That saving grace proving, in my opinion, Kevin Sorbo is a 'good enough' TV actor, when contained in the action science fiction genre.

In the distant future, the High Guard protects the System's Commonwealth spanning three galaxies and a million systems. The Nietzscheans are a Commonwealth race dedicated to the propagation of the strongest genetic lines. Their descent against the Commonwealth's treaty with the viscous Magog leads to their secret revolt plans. The Andromeda Ascendant is the High Guard's top of the line warship captained by Dylan Hunt (Kevin Sorbo). They are ambushed and betrayed by his Nietzschean first mate and Nietzschean forces. Hunt is caught in a black hole. The time dilation slows him down for more than 300 years as the Commonwealth falls and the worlds slip into a dark age. Captain of the Eureka Maru, Beka Valentine (Lisa Ryder), leads a salvage operation with her crew Earth survivor Seamus Harper (Gordon Michael Woolvett), mysterious purple being Trance Gemini (Laura Bertram), pacifist Magog Rev Bem who follows The Way, and Nietzschean outcast Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb). Harper builds the avatar Rommie (Lexa Doig) from Andromeda's AI.After Gene Roddenberry's death, his widow Majel Barrett and producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe use his unused story material to create this TV series. It definitely has that Star Trek flavor. The Commonwealth has similar sensibility as Starfleet although the Commonwealth doesn't have something quite as compelling as Starfleet's Prime Directive. It's different species and different monsters but similar style of sci-fi. There are inherit problems with the premise. Three hundred years is a long time for technology to stand still with Andromeda maintaining its state-of-the-art status. War tech is always advancing no matter how dark the age. Despite the ship having a crew requirement of hundreds, they never manage to showcase more than six crew members. The show has its appeal but it struggles to be more than Star Trek leftovers. It does start awkwardly with a naked Lexa Doig in front of a group of kids. The first season has a few good episodes and the new world holds some fascinations. After a good first year and a bit, the show struggles for direction and it meanders through a 5 season run. They try to sex Trance up with a makeover in the second season but it's the start of a series of changes over the years that degraded the show. At around the same time, Rev is bounced from the show. A build-up to an epic war against the Magog seems to be put on the back burners. Also Kevin Sorbo's heroic lead acting has questionable appeal. He's stiff in need of more humility. The last season is a throw-away where the crew gets stuck in an alternate world. Lexa Doig gets bounced and the show adds a Penthouse Pet. It's a muddle and degenerates even further. This show could never exceed its older siblings and ends up as a footnote for the legendary sci-fi creator.

I thought I would watch this show due to the wife of Gene Roddenberry being part of the production team and the fact the show had apparently been one of Gene Roddenberry's unrealized projects during his lifetime. I read the synopsis before watching it and I found it a bit far fetched. I think the show works from the perspective of it being basically Star Trek in the year 4000 AD-but not 10,000 years into the future. For some fairly simple reasons-language has changed so much since the time of Shakespeare you could only imagine how unrecognizable language would be in 5000 years-never mind in 10,000 years. I watched the last season-or most of it-including the shows 100th episode-and it wasn't very hard to follow-maybe because I was watching it on DVD so I could see it without commercials which tend to ruin most good TV shows. I liked the acting although I found the lead maybe a bit dry. It was like watching a Star Trek show where Gene Roddenberry had indulged his fantasy of the future being a swashbuckling situation mores than in the original Star Trek show-where it was only a bit of a swashbuckling situation.The science was creative and the show was well paced-maybe with a bit too much in the way of bar fights though. I think its watchable-but maybe not quite genius.

Andromeda is a series that was created through a compilation of Gene Roddenberry's ideas and, mostly, of Robert Hewitt Wolfe's ideas. The premise was excellent: a transgalactic utopian society the All Systems Commonwealth (something like a transgalactic version of the united federation of planets) falls because of betrayal and brute force and 300 hundred years later an ex-commonwealth officer who survived trapped in the event horizon of a black hole together with a diverse crew tries to reestablish the commonwealth and end the "dark ages". Is it possible? how it can be done without compromising the values you represent? One plus of the series was also the magnificent starship Andromeda which was sentient! Unfortunately the series never lived up to its premise. The first season and the first half of the second season were good with a good two part pilot , some decent and interesting episodes and the excellent "Angel Dark, Demon Bright" . But from the beginning the series tended to be a little campy and with much mindless action. When Wolfe left the series in the middle of the second season the story arc was gradually abandoned and the series deteriorated into "the adventures of captain Dylan hunt" a kind of bad star trek, campy and even cheesy!! In the fourth season they tried to come back to the story line but with many changes and without any coherence. In the fifth season the series was simply absurd! So watch the series up to the middle of the second season but not buy this box set before you see something from the later seasons first. For me this series was a great disappointment: a great premise that was really wasted. The 6 stars are for the first two seasons. For the rest 4 stars.