Andromeda Episode 68: Pieces of Eight

Andromeda is ordered to stop a man from using his fortune-telling creature to take over the Commonwealth.

Episode Summary

Triumvir Tri-Jema contacts Andromeda and tells them to head on over to Ganglia Drift for systems and weapons upgrades. The guy in charge of the drift is named Citizen Eight, and his family’s been building Commonwealth ships for generations.

But he’s got this creature called “the Prescient” that can predict the future, and he’s been using it to sway public opinion against Tri-Jema in the hopes of usurping her position. Tri-Jema orders Hunt to stop him.

Ganglia Drift

Right after Andromeda arrives at the drift, a shipment of worker droids malfunction and try to destroy everything, but Harper disables them with technobabble.

Captain Hunt heads straight to Eight’s office and accuses him of being an asshole. Eight blows him off and instead takes him, Beka, and Harper to see a demonstration of the Prescient’s abilities. They feed it some balls in exchange for their fortunes.

We later learn from Rommie that the balls have brain shit in them that lets the Prescient read the minds of the people that feed it. Then it uses that information to make up fortunes that sound believable but aren’t necessarily true.

Fight with Eight

Hunt decides to go out and destroy the planet containing the Prescient’s food (what?!) so Eight can’t take advantage of it anymore. Eight sends some ships after Andromeda, but confesses to wanting to take over the Commonwealth over the comm line; Hunt broadcasts his comments all over the Commonwealth channels. Now everyone knows he’s an asshole.

Hunt frees the Prescient and its interpreter Misabo, and Eight turns into goo like Paroo in the last episode.

Thoughts

My immediate fear after starting this episode, based on title alone, was that we’d get another “quest” episode like The Shards of Rimni – fortunately it wasn’t, but what we got wasn’t much better. The worker droid scene in the beginning felt like a waste of time, and the climax with Eight outing his evil ambitions over the airwaves was mega cliché.

The stuff with how the food is what allowed the Prescient to “predict” the future was a load of gibberish. And I can’t believe Hunt was willing to destroy it all. Or was he just messing with Eight? I did like how shifty Tri-Jema seemed in the opening; we’ll actually see her a couple more times, so for once, Andromeda‘s not dumping a promising thread.

Eight wasn’t the best villain ever, but his actor reminded me a bit of Richard Kind or maybe even Michael McKean. I thought he was way too similar in appearance to Paroo (but with hair) though. Maybe the Spirit of the Abyss has a “type” when he’s recruiting people to do his bidding.