Andromeda: S02E05: Last Call at the Broken Hammer
An episode review by Hollydays
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“Life? Life’s pretty much a Gunnery Sergeant |
Next comes the weak excuse as to why they are not scouting in style…apparently Andromeda is in the shop (man what a freaking lemon).
Dylan next starts telling us about Ortize. Isabella Ortize was a great leader who knit together twenty systems after the fall of the Commonwealth. He thinks she would make a great advocate for promoting the new Commonwealth constitution and would like to take her to the Sinti council of Directors. (okay, wouldn’t Dylan and the gang already discussed this before embarking on their journey? “Hey guys meet you on the Maru in 20, got a new gig, tell you all about after we leave and search through several systems first”)
Then Tyr tells us that Ortize’s great alliance was wiped out by the Calderans and he doubts if she is still alive. The Calderans meanwhile are taking no chances and wiping out anything that even looks like a interstellar government in their little corner of space. Dylan, the walking Commonwealth encyclopaedia, tells us that the Calderans had been forced into the original commonwealth basically at gunpoint. In the background, Trance drops a crescent wrench on her tail.
Tyr inquires why Trance was brought along. Trance mumbles that Ortize was the kind of person who’d be likely to be on the hardest hit place in the whole alliance of worlds that she’d forged. Dylan gives Tyr a look and says, “That’s why we brought her.”
The course gets changed to “Svorog’s Anvil”
The place looks post apocalyptic, dirt and crappy buildings everywhere. There is apparently a mining settlement left.
The group heads on in to the local saloon, “The Broken Hammer”. Dylan sidles up to the bar and asks the lady bartender if she can help him to which her reply is only if you want to get drunk. She isn’t very amenable. Beka tries talking to a pregnant lady but also gets the brush off.
They show a picture of Ortize, a fair lady with short blonde hair when a big thug comes on in a picks a fight with our group saying they own him landing fees for the Maru. Our shorthaired lady walks in after the thug, whom Dylan addresses rather questioningly as Madame Ortize. Thug draws on Dylan: Beka, Tyr and Dylan draw on thug and he falls to the ground with an injured leg. The bartender lady, Safia calms things down.
Dylan tries to talk to Ortize but she brushes him off to help the injured thug. Apparently she is the local doctor. She gets a big lizard guy to haul thug to the back room of the bar where she patches him up.
The bartender Safia allows Dylan into the room to talk to Ortize while eka, Tyr and Trance wait at the bar. Trance starts “sampling” while Beka teases her about her hollow drinking leg. Poor Tyr is avoiding the lizard dude who seemingly is trying to pick him up. 😉
Ortize and safia tell Dylan that Ortize is dead. The girl who looks like Oritze (her name is Cory) was in the mines after the war and says Ortize showed up there blaming herself for causing all of the problems. Ortize helped the people to set up the clinic in the bar. A bounty hunter showed up two years ago and killed her, but the people killed the bounty hunter. Cory assumed Ortize’s identity to maintain her off world contacts to keep the clinic operating. Dylan doesn’t buy this and suggests checking her blood against the DNA sample they have in the Maru’s databank.
Mortar shells start landing from the Calderans.
The Pregnant lady becomes hysterical but Beka(not Trance!) calms her down.
Dylan sets their force-lances to intercept the mortar shells and he and Tyr plant them in the ground outside the bar. This takes care of the mortar pounding for the time being.
Dylan is slightly wounded and Tyr goes off to take out the Calderan assault position, while Dylan goes back to organize the people in the bar.
Trance is pacing. Beka asks her if she’s okay she replies that she’s just thinking.
Dylan gets his arm patched up by Cory, and then tries to organize some surprises for the Calderans for when they attack the bar. Lizard dude interrupts here and thinks that they should just hand Ortize to the Calderans (he is armed). Big thug protests that Ortize was a great leader, but Lizard sneers that she was good at bringing the Calderans down on people’s heads.
Trance faces off against him and scares him with I must be crazy or that strong routine so don’t piss me off. He meeks out and at her request runs off to help gather up heat lamps to through off the Calderans infra-red sensors.
Pregnant lady is hysterical again. The Force lances have had the bun.
The Calderans zero in on the bar with the shells. Thug is killed as well as one of the extras. Safia is right out in the open. Trance takes a running leap and tackles her to the ground ….
Her tail gets blown off right at her butt!
What a stupid way to get rid of her tail! How is it possible to blow off her skinny little tail right at the juxtaposition of her bum?? Couldn’t she have just got tail rot like Iguanas do or something?
Trance cries and moans in Beka’s arms about her lovely tail while Cory kneels down by the dead thug (apparently her boyfriend).
Trance gets hauled off to the backroom and lies facedown on the table. Cory gives her a bottle of booze to numb the pain while her butt is being stitched up. She’s in agony, “Why couldn’t they have just killed me? It would have hurt way less!”
Dylan directs the people in setting up defensive structures to make a Kill Zone for the coming Calderans.
Trance has chugged back about half the bottle. She mumbles while Cory works on her. “I can’t believe that it’s gone. My tail. Is gone! I mean, I didn’t even get to say good bye to it. It was so pretty. My poor tail.” she ends a little hic.
By the time Dylan walks in Trance has polished off the bottle and is feeling no pain! She giggles and tells Dylan she’s doing fine and offers him a look at her butt. Dylan declines and tells her to rest, she gives him a salute and passes out. (with a sigh I must say that I do not believe Dylan would ever make Sadgeezer status. Just what is wrong with that man?)
Tyr arrives back now and says he took out the one position but another scout ship has landed and the assault is going to continue.
Pregnant lady is still whining “I dont’ belong here!“ Safia puts a gun in her hand and tells her to point it at the door and shoot at whatever comes through it.
One calderan sticks its nose into the door and gets it’s buggy self completely splattered by everyone in the bar. The pregnant lady proceeds to shoot Cory in the back. She figures that if they give the Calderans the body they’ll go away. Trance blunders out with a hangover giving Dylan a chance to disarm the murderer.
Trance takes the pregnant lady into the back and tells her that she’s going to have a daughter and Trance tells her that if she does everything she can do, her daughter will grow up and have the potential to become a great healer.
The Calderan shelling assault begins again. Dylan talks with Safia and tells her not to blame herself for what the pregnant girl did. All through this we can hear this really annoying bird screeching from the Calderan’s .
Dylan tells Safia that he knows that she is really Ortize as Cory was always looking to her before making a move. Safia admits that Cory had been in the Bene Sera Dragoons and had become Ortize’s bodyguard. It was Cory who had suggested the identity switch as a last line of defense.
She and her remaining few supporters had hoped to eventually rejoin the fight but she’s lost hope, believing there are too many people with money and power and weapons who do not want a new Commonwealth.
In the front of the bar, the haggling begins about handing over Cory’s body to the Calderans. Saphia protests that they’ll test the DNA and know it isn’t herself. So now Lizard learns that Saphia is the true Ortize and pulls a weapon to gun her down. Everybody draws on him and shoots him to death.(Probably for the best. He was bitter that he had given up his life to follow Ortize and then she had let everyone down, he was also a spy for the Calderans).
Stupid Ortize whines that all these things are because she was a coward in the first place and let her people down because she was afraid of facing her own enemies. She tries to walk out and give herself up.
Everyone decides to dump Cory’s body for the Calderans to pick up. Tyr goes out to create more mayhem for the Calderans. The pregnant lady has another hysterical outburst and Trance comforts her (I am beginning to wish someone would just shut her up!).The Calderan hive/pack arrive now and are angry the body, isn’t Ortize and screeching away they pile into Dylan’s ‘kill zone’. Like a scene from Alien, they just keep coming in and getting killed. one of them grabs Dylan around the neck but he picks up a butcher knife from the bar and kills it (how many bars have butcher knives just sitting there?). The annoying pregnant lady has another fit . Trance saves the day yet again and kills one of the Calderans that was about to kill the pregnant lady. (I don’t think I have ever seen Trance use a gun before or kill somebody) Tyr comes through the door behind the last Calderan.
Tyr is standing guard outside the bar, watching while the people moving all of their things out. Trance is fidgeting beside him. Annoyingly he looks at her and glances down her backside, “Are you alright?” Trance whines, “My tail itches“. Tyr responds, “Then it isn’t really gone, is it?”
Safia decides Dylan is worth the risk of continuing the fight and she elects to throw her lot in with them. She’s going to accompany them to the Siinti Council to serve as the negotiator for the Commonwealth Constitution
I can’t even rate this one…give me the freakin’ camera buddy!
| …PUHLEASE! This was one of the stupidest, throw good beer at the T.V. kind of episodes. |
The “Last Call at the Broken Hammer” episode review is © 2001, 2002 Hollydays. Not for reproduction without the authors express permission
The names, characters and everything else associated with Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda TV series are the property of the Tribune Entertainment Company. All rights reserved.
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