Andromeda Episode 44: Tunnel at the End of the Light

The New Systems Commonwealth is finally established, but alien invaders emerge from another dimension to spoil the festivities.

Episode Summary

Andromeda hosts a party with representatives from all fifty worlds that have signed on for the New Systems Commonwealth. Yes, you heard right – the New Systems Commonwealth is finally happening!

Of course something goes wrong: Rommie tells Hunt her AI core has been sabotaged.

But who is the saboteur? It’s one of the guests on board, Severin, a Drago-Kazov Nietzschean who’s had his bone blades removed so he can pass as human. Before he can be caught, though, he’s grabbed by a weirdo alien from another dimension and taken away.

Alien Invasion

Suddenly, zillions and zillions of ships fly out of a dimensional hole and start attacking Andromeda. Trance reveals that these aliens destroyed the New Commonwealth in her timeline and are the reason she went back to the past. She probably should have mentioned this earlier.

The Commonwealth fleet arrives to give Andromeda a hand against the alien swarm, but more and more alien ships keep coming out.

Hunt reveals his trump card: earlier in the season, we saw Harper working on a souped up Nova Bomb named Roseanne. The Bomb was meant for the Magog Worldship (hey, remember that?) but will instead be used to close the alien dimensional hole.

Tyr and Beka head out in the Eureka Maru and deploy Roseanne – the plan works, but they’re caught in the explosion. The Maru is heavily damaged but returns to Andromeda on autopilot; however, Tyr and Beka are nowhere to be found aboard.

Thoughts

Wow, what an insulting episode. The momentous occasion of Hunt finally re-establishing the Commonwealth – the quest he began at the very beginning of the series – is sidelined by the invasion of a boring new enemy and action scenes we’ve seen a million times before.

Now, getting a new villain in the series isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but we already have the Spirit of the Abyss and the Magog Worldship as big bads. You can’t get much bigger than the embodiment of pure evil (or whatever the Spirit of the Abyss really is).

But these dimensional aliens have absolutely no substance to them. They don’t communicate or have any real aspirations or goals. They’re just another faceless foe in a long line of faceless foes (Kalderans, Ogami, et al.) for the Andromeda crew to fight. Hell, they’re so faceless, they don’t even have a name!

I should also mention the horrible attempts at humor in this episode, with Harper being tasked to keep the New Commonwealth entertained (read: distracted) during this crisis, and an annoying Perseid representative clapping at every silly thing he does. Juvenile and embarrassing to watch. It’s no surprise a lot of viewers jumped ship after this episode.

Season 2 Overview

Poor Andromeda. Season 1 was a little rough around the edges, but it held promise and actually churned a decent episode here and there. Once season 2 started, you could see things finally coming together, and y’know what? Andromeda was actually starting to become legitimately good.

Episodes were actually building on past events. The introduction of the Magog Worldship gave Andromeda more of a sense of direction. We even got a mini-arc, with Harper and the Magog larvae in his stomach!

But all that promise went away at the halfway point, with the departure of Andromeda‘s showrunner, and the ensuing episodes magnified the show’s flaws: boring action, clichéd storytelling, and mundane dialogue. The seasons to come will continue this trend, and apart from a microscopic handful of halfway decent episodes, Andromeda will continue its decline.

But how low will it go? For starters, the next episode is one of the worst, if not the worst in the entire show!

Season 2 Graph