At the end of the previous glorious Andromeda season our intrepid intergalactic civilization rebuilders had just destroyed a vortex or opening between universes which was disgorging some incredibly powerful and numerous bad guys in bad looking and extremly hard to destroy spaceships. In a desperate last ditch attempt to save the Andromeda universe from being conquered the Maru with Beka and Tyr in control had delivered the attack bomb that sealed the vortex. The Maru broke off just in time to avoid loss of the crew - or did it?
Okay, back comes the Maru on fire and on automatic pilot. Tyr and Beka are not on-board but there doesn't appear to be a hole in the hull.
There is a new saying that Dylan says at the start of episodes: blah "Future is" blah "My crew and I fight to make it safe". Didn't get the whole thing. But the line definitely needs some work.
Implausibiliity Alert: How can the database playback from the Maru show a view of the Maru that would be filmed from a distance away from the Maru?
Dylan has the Maru's recent video record of its flight deck played back. What's with the kitty showing up in the Maru database playback? Why were Beka and Tyr appearing and disappearing on the Maru's main deck?
Now we play dimensional tunnel peek-a-boo games trying to find and open the tunnel because maybe Beka and Tyr are inside it. Ooops, almost killed by intense gravity. Dylan managed to shoot Harper's tunnel opening control board with a force lance to turn it off. Then Dylan went out in the Maru and tried to find the tunnel.
I guess this tunnel is supposed to be a lot smaller than the previous opening that they closed in order to stop the bad guys. Otherwise one would expect bad guy ships to come pouring thru it.
Suddenly Beka and Tyr are back on the Andromeda. Where'd they come from? How'd they just come to be strutting onto the main deck? They are not acting normal.
The Andromeda is stuck in the dimensional tunnel. Okay, the tunnel pulses. Down pulse you go forward. Up pulse with full thrusters on you stay even.
Why is it that ships always have to shut down life support to maintian their position against some really powerful force? Seems like main deck life support would use such a small fraction of total energy that it wouldn't be necessary.
Is Beka coming on to Trance?
Beka grabbed control of the Andromeda when Dylan told her they were gradually breaking free of the tunnel. Was Beka trying to make the ship fall back into the tunnel? Or was she desperate to get away from it? Did she not know what she was doing? Dylan manages to break free.
Walks in to see Dylan. Beka has a kitten she says she found in her quarters. Will this kitten show up in other episodes? Or is it part of the mirage?
Beka is coming on to Dylan. She wants it all to stop. What to stop? An alien has got to be in control of her body. Ditto for Tyr. Are these spies trying to infiltrate? Or did their souls get stuck in this universe when the big portal was collapsed and they grabbed control of the bodies in order to use thgem to get home?
Ooops, the Andromeda is spinning. One of the slipstream motors opened up?
Implausibiliity Alert: Why would it a ship's slipstream motors open up when it was put into maintenance mode? Why would its engines come on in maintenance mode in a maintenance dock? Disinfectant is fake. But why would disinfectant automatically be sprayed into the ship in maintenance mode? A ship that complex wouldn't have a single maintenance mode that caused so many things to happen.
They are fighting a mirage on the Andromeda. Really? Doesn't seem like a mirage. They look at the Maru playback again. I do not understand the bit about Rommie seeing what she was trained to see and what they figured out from watching the Maru playback.
The energy rays from the dimensional tunnel have wavelength patterns that match Tyr and Beka's brainwave activities? This is a bit far-fetched. Why not just plant control pods in their brains?
Tyr knocks out Rommie. He's paralyzed here and somehow she now has to take his orders.
Tyr: "I left my fear in the dimensional tunnel". Yeah, well, some people left their hearts in San Francisco.
Is that where we are going? Is San Francisco on the other side of the tunnel?
Why was Trance willing to go Maru cruising with Beka? And what was the point of Beka's outing? It never became clear. Was she trying to go back into the tunnel by herself?
Beka: "Sh, lets have some fun with Dylan." (or did Tyr say that?)
Trance: "Beka, of all the people on the ship I'm the last one you shold be messing with."
Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that Trance is not really restrained. She can break free. She's the real superhuman among them.
Revesrse the powers of the jaws? (jaws? pet TV peeve: dialog ought to be made perfectly clear) Cut off the rays?
Dylan fights Tyr. Tyr phases in and out. So its not just that his mind is under control from these aliens. How are they sending beams that let him phase in and out?
Super strong Trance shows that she can make magic dust come from her mouth to dissolve whatever Beka used to tie Trance to the railing. Trance takes control of the Maru after showing Beka who is boss. Trance tells Beka of a future where they travel together on some mission and Beka gradually gets various parts of her body blown off her and replaced by cyborg pieces. First of all, what the heck is that all about? Secondly, hey, that's weird.
Harper flips on the disrupter field. Suddenly Tyr knows who he is and so does Beka.
Tyr: The all-embracing light and then darkness and more darkness. And then I'm old and talk and strong.
Dylan: Tyr, you didn't lay a finger on our friendship. not a scratch.
Dylan: What happened to you Tyr?
Tyr: I don't know.
So the aliens grabbed Tyr and Beka off the Maru to use them for some purpose? To destroy the Andromeda? Or were they just trying to get home? By the end of the episode not only was it not clear it also wasn't obvious whether the writers meant it to be clear.
This seems like a sloppy episode that is hard to follow. Were they fighting mirages? It doesn't seem like it. It seems more like Beka and Tyr were under alien control and that they also gained the ability to phase shift and appear and disappear. I never could figure out what the Maru playback video record was supposed to mean. Ya got me.
Hey, lets get swallowed by a giant planet-eating space whale. What a neat plot premise. While watching it I kept hearing Star Trek TOS suspense theme music and saw Kirk waiting to get beamed off the other starship by Scotty before Kirk sent the other starship into the planet-eating funnel monster. Of course both the Star Trek episode and this Andromeda episode owe their inspiration to the Jonah and the Whale story.
Dylan: Eat your cake and have it too.
Yeah, I agree with the writers: "Have your cake and eat it too" never made much sense. But why not tie the cake eating into the whale's appetite for ships and planets?
Trance: You can even say we had our cake outside of the box and ate it too.
Oh come on. Once Dylan pointed out the problem with the original formulation if they wanted to throw the "out of the box" line back in couldn't it have been something more like one of these:
Trance: You can even say we took our cake outside of the box and then ate the box.
Trance: You can even say we made the box choke on the cake.
Trance: You can even say we saved our cake from the cake box.
Trance: You can even say we saved two cakes from the box and we still have both of them.
Trance: You can even say we got our cake out of the box and then blew up the box.
One other thing: Once they ejected the Andromeda's slipstream drive then how did they leave the star system they were in? Where exactly could they go to get another slipstream drive for such a powerful ship?
Here's a more conventional description of the episode.
First time I saw the Harper 2.0 episode of Andromeda Ascendant there were a couple of lines of dialog whose significance I totally missed. But a friend who rarely watches the series was watching it and called me up asking if I'd seen the episode and if he'd heard these lines correctly. Some quick google searching quickly turned up the lines in multiple copies of the episode's transcript:
Harper: It's a bird, it's plane, it's ah...I don't know, you tell and we'll both know. Meanwhile (Speaks in Gaelic)
Rommie: Irish Gaelic, earth based, an adaptive form. You're making seductive overtures to me in a dead language?
Harper: Hey, it's not dead the way I speak it baby! (Speaks in French)
Rommie: And now French, Harper, what's gotten in to you?
Harper: (Speaks another language)
Rommie: Persiat. Harper I had no idea you were such a cunning linguist.
Harper: (Really fast) Love speaks in all tongues baby.
Cunning linguist? I totally missed that the first time the episode was aired. And Harper's rejoinder certainly drives home the point.
Anyway, wonder what Harper was saying in Gaelic, French, and Persiad. Anyone know?