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10/08/2002: late night musings on Andromeda
Why am I up after 4 a.m. you ask? (Well, probably you don't ask that but anyway--) It's because currently I spend my time (and that includes the times which are supposed to be for sleep as well as those for various other things) watching Andromeda. Once I foolishly decided to give Andromeda another try it developed into a kind of binge-watching. I'm not totally unfamiliar with this (the arrival of a long awaited Buffy or Angel box set has been known to have similar effects in the past) and luckily, unlike other addictive things, tv series have a limited amount of episodes. So it won't be too long until I settle into a more regular watching pattern.
Anyway, as recently as two days and 15 episodes ago I still tried to tell myself that I didn't need another fandom, but there's no way to close my eyes to the truth now. I have another fandom. I even started to check the series background info, timelines and quotes on the All Systems University site. But then, since technically you don't need fandoms anyway, it's probably just as well that I acquired a new one. I'm still not completely sure what hooked me on Andromeda this time when I wasn't interested when I first watched the pilot, though.
I think it is because I stuck with it longer and not just for an episode. I mean, none of the episodes I watched so far had the intense effects that, for example, some Farscape episodes have on me, which can be heart-wrenching, hilarious, or breath-taking, often all at the same time, Andromeda's plots aren't exactly cliché-free either, and some of the aliens look downright silly (even more true for modified humans like those fish-people in "All Great Neptune's Ocean"), however when I compare my reactions to for example to those I have to Enterprise (and actually not just the newest Star Trek incarnation), I find Andromeda a lot more captivating. I watch Enterprise regularly, but I'm mostly indifferent to the whole Star Trek universe, Andromeda's universe OTOH has become alive to me in a much shorter time span.
I think it is because it is because right from the start it gave me the feeling that there is a lot more stuff that I don't know (yet), that there is this whole history, with technology, art, culture, religions, wars, evolution etc. that has happened. And while humans aren't unimportant, they aren't what the universe revolves around either. They didn't found the Commonwealth for example. Also the characters have actual motives and agendas (something that I sort of miss with Enterprise, I mean, I've watched over a season of Enterprise by now, and still even the main characters are all...bland, and all bland in roughly the same way too).
So while Farscape is still rules, and is still by far my favorite science fiction series (and has better aliens too), I like Andromeda. Quite a lot.
