gutsy, opinionated captain. A central organization that governs the macro, interplanetary affairs for its members. Sound familiar? Well, it might—but we're not talking about classic Star Trek here. Instead, these basics set the stage for another genre series from the mind of Trek master Gene Roddenberry: Andromeda. Developed from Roddenberry's archives after his death, Andromeda follows the exploits and efforts of Capt. Dylan Hunt (Sorbo) as he explores what the universe has become since the demise of the Systems Commonwealth that he so proudly served in some 300 years before.
The first episode, "Under the Night," does a good job of engaging viewers and setting up the premise for the series—although its ending does seem a bit rushed-for-television, even if the action is being continued in the second episode. After being lured into a losing battle with the supposed allies, the Nietzcheans, Hunt does the unthinkable: Rather than let the opposition get his ship, he steers the Andromeda into a black hole. There, he and his ship remain caught in time until a salvage ship comes along and pulls the ship out. Hunt is then not unlike a fish out of water: He must adjust to the new realities and circumstances of a changed world and contend with the fact that everyone he knew and loved has long since died.
Episode two—"An Affirming Flame"—picks up where the first episode left off. The Nietzcheans are after Hunt and strive to send him back into that black hole. And in order to stay alive, Hunt and the ragtag crew of the salvage ship must join forces. By the end of the episode, Hunt has convinced the crew of the Eureka Maru to join him on the Andromeda and to help him in his quest to restore the Commonwealth.
The subsequent episodes on this two-disc DVD set—the first installment in series of releases which will eventually include the full first season of Andromeda—continue to start the series out on a good footing, even if some of the plots (such as "To Loose the Fateful Lightning," in which a group of children who descended from Commonwealth members think that Hunt is their savior) have a strangely familiar ring to them. "D Minus Zero" provides the long-expected command tension between Hunt and Beka Valentine (Ryder), the captain of the salvage ship, whose crew is now his own; and "Double Helix" offers a new insight into just what the mindset of the Nietzcheans really is.
Unlike other season DVD sets, ADV Films is opting to do a number of interesting things with Andromeda—starting with the fact that the syndicated series is being released on DVD just a year after its debut. The discs' producers have taken the time to pull together a variety of great content—and heavyweights like The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Trek: The Next Generation would do well to take note of the sort of extras that ADV has packaged together in conjunction with Andromeda's producers. While the execution of some of these elements falls flat, they do mark a solid effort to provide something extra for viewers.
An embarrassment of extras
Before discussing this set's copious extras, here's one dizzying design nit: the six menu chapters appear onscreen at once, itself a nice touch, if not for the fact that those chapters are active video clips, which can be quite disconcerting if you look at that screen for anything longer than a few seconds.
In reality, the long list of extras scattered across the two Andromeda discs is more impressive than the content itself is. Too many of the segments are short snippets of less than three minutes, and could have just as easily been culled from some B-roll for an electronic press kit or created for the show's official Internet site. Case in point: the Behind the Scenes tidbit, with cast comments on the idea behind Andromeda, is a sequence that takes all of three minutes to watch, and the character profile of the ship, Andromeda (and her living projection alter ego, Andromeda, played by Lexa Doig), features a short, postage-stamp-sized clip with Doig that was never intended for viewing at full-screen resolution on television.
Where the discs fail are with the copious amounts of text backgrounders—covering topics from the character bios of Andromeda and Hunt to a timeline of the Commonwealth, and even a bio of co-producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe, a former Trek producer who was instrumental in developing the series from Roddenberry's notes. The text is hard to read on the TV screen and is often difficult to navigate.
More interesting are the Props and Set Concept drawings, and the design drawings of the Andromeda. However, like the textual material, these can be a little difficult and unintuitive to navigate about.
The most enticing extras are the audio commentary track for "Under the Night," with views from producers Kevin Sorbo and Allan Eastman; and the alternate takes of a total of six scenes. As with other elements on the disc, the alternate takes could be better presented to users; not only isn't there an index screen for directly accessing individual takes, but there's no commentary noting why one take was used in the end over another; nor is there any link to the final take used in the show (an extra that would have demonstrated the value of showing alternate takes to begin with). However, the inclusion of these separate takes offers some insight into the television production process, and will hopefully be better executed in the future.
And here's one more word of warning: While fans eat up things like bloopers, and the Andromeda set does indeed feature some bloopers, as is billed on its box, well, the bloopers aren't exactly what you might expect. The tightly edited piece runs less than three minutes, and has as much hamming it up as it does actual bloopers from the set.
