Andromeda Episode 33: Bunker Hill

Harper heads over to Earth to help his cousin overthrow its Drago-Kazov Nietzschean overlords, while Andromeda meets up with Elssbett again.

Episode Summary

The crew of Andromeda has a reunion with Elssbett and must aid her Sabra-Jaguar Pride in its war against the Drago-Kazov ‘cause of the mutual defense pact her husband recently signed. Meanwhile, Harper gets a message from his cousin Brendan, who’s on Dragan-occupied Earth; he hopes to get Harper and Andromeda’s help to free Earth while the Drago-Kazov is busy with its war.

Captain Hunt can’t immediately spare Andromeda because Earth isn’t that important, but sends Harper and Rommie in the Maru to help incite a global rebellion in the meantime (easier said than done, right?). Andromeda will head to Earth to offer support when it’s done helping Elssbett.

Welcome to Earth

So Harper and Rommie go to Earth and Harper introduces her to Brendan, who introduces both of them to his resistance cell. They distribute weapons and Harper makes a rousing speech that gets transmitted around the world. People start rising up as planned, but the rebels take heavy losses.

Tyr arrives on Earth in a Slipfighter to tell Harper that Andromeda is too busy and can’t make it. He urges Harper to leave Earth and try the rebellion thing another day, but by now the global uprising has grown too strong to stop, and Brendan wants to keep fighting.

In the end, Harper, Rommie, and Tyr head back to Andromeda. The rebellion fizzles out and Brendan dies, but he was able to transmit one last video message from Earth encouraging other Nietzschean-held worlds to rise up and overthrow their oppressors.

Thoughts

Not a bad Harper outing – this could very well be his best episode in the show so far, and the bittersweet ending was a nice touch. With all the sci-fi space operas out there where Earth is the #1 most important planet ever, it’s always a nice change to run into a universe where it’s not.

However, the storyline itself could have been executed a lot stronger, with more showing and less telling. We never actually see much of the Drago-Kazov brutality, just hear about it in dialogue mixed in with “we’ve all lost someone” cliches. Since this episode is all about freeing the people of Earth, we should actually see more of these people Harper and Brendan are trying to save. But considering nearly all the Earth scenes of this episode take place in darkened tunnels, a tight budget was most likely to blame.

The B-story focused on Elssbett and the conflict between the two Nietzschean groups. Having her return was a nice way to pick up a thread from a previous episode, but the whole thing was hard to follow and so boring that I didn’t bother writing about it in the summary. Nothing much comes out of it, anyway; we learn that Cuchulain, the Drago-Kazov adversary for a couple episodes, died offscreen. I hate it when promising recurring characters get killed offscreen.