Andromeda Episode 9: A Rose in the Ashes

Captain Hunt learns that orange is the new black when tablecloth-covered aliens sentence him and Rommie to prison.

Episode Summary

Captain Hunt and Rommie visit some aliens covered in red tablecloth with hopes that they, former members of the Old Commonwealth, will become new members of the New Commonwealth. Unfortunately, these aliens have bad memories of the Old Commonwealth, and they arrest Hunt and Rommie on charges of sedition.

Hard Time

Rommie and Hunt are sent to a prison planet. Rommie is locked in a cage, and Hunt quickly gets in a fight with a big furry monster. Hunt’s victory earns him the respect of Kae-Lee, the prison alpha. She believes there are only three rules to follow in the prison: “You can be a wolf. You can be a sheep. Or you can be a corpse.”

A little girl named Jessa causes a distraction with remote-controlled helicopters and breaks Rommie free, then leads her and Hunt outside the prison settlement where all the “sheep” live. Rommie’s not doing well and is low on battery power; Jessa starts work on MacGyvering a battery.

Confrontation

The android warden didn’t like Jessa’s helicopter stunt, and has his guards apprehend her and take her to his office.

Hunt realizes Jessa and Kae-Lee are sisters, and asks Kae-Lee to help him rescue Jessa from the warden. They save her and destroy the warden, but Kae-Lee dies in the process.

Rescue

Meanwhile, the crew of Andromeda works hard to locate their lost comrades. Trance randomly chooses a planet (because she found it pretty), and it just happens to be the right one. The Eureka Maru heads down to pick up Hunt and Rommie but gets hit by the planet’s defense grid. Rommie is able to deactivate it in the warden’s office before she completely loses power, and she and Hunt are finally rescued.

Hunt has a chat with Trance about how her random guess turned out to be right. He teaches her how to play heads or tails with a coin, but she loses. Then when he has her back turned to her, she plays again and again and again, winning every time.

Thoughts

This episode was a little weak and reminded me of a typical “prison episode” found in countless shows, especially sci-fi. There’s some half-hearted nature vs. nurture argument that pops up a few times – Hunt and Kae-Lee have a debate about whether the children of prisoners should be considered prisoners or something like that, but it’s not really explored in depth.

On the plus side, Jessa wasn’t as annoying as the kids from the third episode, and we got a bit more of Trance being mysterious, which at this point, I like.