Andromeda: S01E07: The Ties that Bind

Not the best of the Andromeda shows so far, but the action was constant and the performances (especially by Cameron Daddo as Raif) were pretty convincing.

There were a few inconsistencies and Lady Maigray’s ‘Nitpickers page’ will surely be full after this show. But there were a couple of wonderful moments including the Hee haa‘s of Trance and the “Well bless you too” from Rev Bem. But not much of Beka, and considering that this was Beka Valentine’s show, far too much emphasis was placed on her brother. There is a LOT more to Beka, she is a skillful and adept communicator, a successful Captain in her own right, it would have been really nice to scratch that witty exterior of hers and really see what makes her tick.

The show opens with a lesson in self defense for Trance, given by Tyr.  She is worried about hurting him with a vicious punch.  She lets out blood curdling battle scream ‘Hee haa‘ and almost caresses him to sleep.  Tyr advises her to use a different battle cry – personally I would advise her to get a gun.

On the Bridge, Dylan Hunt learns that Harper has decided to take some unscheduled shore leave on is return from fixing something called a ‘lightening array’.  The mildly piqued Captain is however impressed with the reason.  Harper is apparently a surfer of great skill, and has entered the Pan-Galactic Surfing Championships on a planet called Infinity.  He is currently running 48th (out of 10,000!).

Rev Bem meanwhile, has been monitoring a distress call from a Wayist courier ship called the Om Shanti.  Rev notices that one of the two passengers is the Wayist top dude himself, Serenity Khalsa.  The geezer doesn’t look too serene at the moment though, his ship is just about kaput, “This is the Om Shanti hailing the Andromeda Ascendant…. We need immediate assistance.”  Dylan asks Beka to deploy the grapples, Rev Bem to transmit an acknowledgment and Andromeda to set an intercept course.

They arrive just in time, the top Wayist dude looks in bad shape, but much more interestingly, Beka notices that the assistant to His Serenity is her brother! Rafael (Raif) Valentine.

Dylan asks Trance to attend to the chief Wayist. “He’s human,” she responds, “which means that patching him up is as easy as cake.”
“Easy as pie.” Corrects Dylan Hunt.
But Trance is convinced that making a pie is much harder than making a cake….. “He’ll be fine, compared to baking, brain surgery is a snap”  This from a girl with purple tail, has a battle cry of ‘Yoo hoo’ and who supposedly can’t operate anything mechanical.

Beka pulls Raif to one side so that they can talk privately.  She doesn’t have the greatest respect for her brother (though I suspect that she is still pleased to see him).  She accuses him of pulling one of his famous scams.  In this case trying to get into the Wayist bank accounts.  Raif demurely denies any wrongdoing, proclaiming himself to be born again and an all round good person.  Beka is a little upset that he doesn’t admit the scam to her and continues to bring up many other similar escapades.  He sincerely points out that he is a changed man and regrets his past exploits.  He asks her to watch him closely for a while and see if she will change her mind.  A weak argument, but I guess there is not much else he could do.

In the medical centre, Trance’s confidence about her abilities is explained when she and Rev Bem attempt to inject His Serene thingy with some medical Nanobots.  These will repair and replenish him from the inside (no brain surgery necessary).  The program is all set when suddenly the Serene dude objects and Rev Bem apologizes.  He realizes that His Serenity is committed to the ‘Mountain Path’  (a sort of Wayist puritan thing where they leave their fate in the hands of the Universe and cannot accept assistance in any form).  He s left alone to rest

On the bridge, Raif, Beka and Dylan discuss the Serene dude’s mission.  Raif tells them that they were on their way to peace talks with the Restorians.  Dylan raises an eyebrow and Beka elucidates, “Eco-terrorists.  They came out of nowhere about three years ago and they have been devastating the space lanes ever since.”

Raif continues, “The Restorians say that it’s bad enough to despoil your own planet, but space travel encourages colonization and colonization damages indigenous cultures and exterminates native ecology’s.  They can’t allow that.”

Singh Khalsa and Raif were headed to a meeting between the Free Trade Alliance (who had been planning a major campaign against Restorians) and the Restorians to negotiate a peaceful settlement. This seems like milk and honey to Dylan Hunt, who offers to take the two of them to the peace talks.

Tyr joins Rev Bem as he meditates.  Rev asks if he has come to join him in meditation and a rather predictable confrontation follows. “Meditation is for weak people with troubled minds.” Accuses Tyr.  He goes on to ask how the Wayist’s knew that the Andromeda was nearby.  He accuses Rev of communicating with them and that he had given away their position. Rev admits this and Tyr makes him aware that Dylan might be more than a little upset if her were to find out about this lapse in security. Rev Bem believed however, that his actions were justified since the goals of the Wayists and Dylan’s appear to run in parallel.

Dylan catches up with Beka in he corridor, she basically indicates to him that if her brother is really a monk, then she is a vestal virgin (she says this wearing a very hot black leather outfit – things don’t look too good for Raif). Of all the spaceship in all the sectors of the galaxy, Raif had to come into hers. Beka doesn’t think that Raif’s visit is coincidental.

On the bridge, Andromeda shows Tyr that the radiation trails left by the Om Shanti and he radiation signal of the ship that attacked them (in D Minus Zero) are similar.  They conclude that they were both attacked by Restorians (Restors).  This wasn’t very clear, the conversation seemed to indicate that the Om Shanti was a Restor ship and not that it had been attacked by one. I was left wondering if the Om Shanti was in fact an enemy or a comrade.  Tyr asks Andromeda to search the database for other information about the mysterious Restors.

Beka returns to the Eureka Maru and notices that her brother is pawing through her collection of antique music disks (CD’s I think).  He points out that he knows a Nightsider that would pay a huge price for museum relics like that.  But alas, he is there to put one back.  Beka has another go at him.  He admits that he’s been a bad boy in the past but he apologizes.  Beka is surprised.

On the bridge, Dylan is reviewing the material about Restors, he is impressed with their tactics and the way they have secretly managed to avoid detection yet inflict massive damage on the space trading fraternity.  Beka ventures that Raif may actually be telling the truth, he has never apologized before and she rather hopes that if he can find it within himself to apologize for the hurt he has caused in the past, then maybe he is a reformed character after all.

All that is dashed when Andromeda informs them that Raif has stolen the Eureka Maru.  Beka gives chase in a slip-fighter. Why the hell Andromeda couldn’t have checked first!

Rev Bem joins His Serenity in the medical centre and asks him why he should choose to give such a position of trust to someone with such a dubious background.  The Wayist head dude sympathises with the Restors and this surprises Rev Bem.

On the Bridge, Tyr enters and expresses a certain delight in the fact that Beka’s brother stole her spaceship, “I believe I’m getting to like him” he says.

“Tyr, you don’t mean that.” Says Trance disapprovingly.
“Yes.  This is the first self-motivated act I’ve seen round here in months.”  He goes on to accuse Dylan of wanting to help any old plonker who’s in trouble because their circumstances appear so close to their own. He asks Dylan if he isn’t sick of fighting for a cause that has been dead for 300 years.

“You take that back.” Says Trance angrily.
“Why?” Tyr asks surprised.
“Because Dylan is our captain, he’s saved our lives dozens of times.  Because if you don’t then I’m going to ….. hit you!”
Tyr and Dylan both raise an eyebrow.  But Trance is serious.  “Don’t forget to Hee Haw” says Tyr sarcastically.
Trance launches herself at the giant Nietzschean and just as she’s about to give him a sharp smack, Dylan calls for her to stop.

“It’s ok, Tyr’s right.” He says, “It does get frustrating fighting so many losing battles, but I never expected anything different. I’m trying to erase 300 years of chaos and corruption.  I’m not going to win every time.  But when we do win it’s going to be big, big news.  So if I were you I’d stick around, it’s going to be an amazing ride.”  Nicely put, I’m sure that appealed to Tyr’s baser instincts – the victory is much sweeter (and noticed by a lot more lady Nietzschean’s) when you are the underdog.

Tyr is left to ponder Dylan’s words to the delight of the loyal purple girl.

By the time Beka catches up with Raif, The Eureka Maru is at a space monastery.  Apparently Raif was there to confess his sins, but in actual fact he was there to meet up with a Restor posing as a priest.  I’m not sure if the Restors and Wayist’s are in this together, but their meeting is in private.  The Restor dude gives Raif a device so that the Restor ships can sneak up on the Andromeda without being detected.  Raif refuses and tells them that his sister is on board.  The Restor terrorist (rather stupidly) gets very aggressive and tells him,

“Someone named Valentine is going to die.  Be grateful that you have a choice which one!“  Certainly not the words of a comrade.  I mean, how many real leaders would expect their followers to kill members of their family.   I guess that most of us knew that from this point on, the forthcoming Restor/Andromeda conflict would end badly for the Restors.

On the Andromeda, Rommie tells Dylan that the Om Shanti wasn’t too badly damaged after all.  After Beka and Raif arrive back at the Andromeda, Rev Bem discovers that Raif had been seen in a Restor demonstration.  All these niggling inconsistencies cause Dylan to become suspicious enough to confront His Serenity and he sends Tyr off to get him.

When Tyr catches up with the serene Restor dude, he finds that the head monk is not a person after all (monks always frightened me too).  The Wayist impersonator opens his mouth and lots of tiny Nanobots fly out like thousands of black flies.  Tyr runs off (as you do).

On the bridge, Rommie falls to the ground and when Rev tries to jump into slipstream, they find that the ship has been incapacitated because of the Nanobots.  The Restorbots or Monkbots have completely disabled the ship.  Rev notices that there are a group of Restor ships headed for Andromeda and that they only have an hour to do escape.

Tyr rushes in and grabs Trance ushering her out of the Bridge with a “come with me…. Go… go…” (he’s gonna fail completely with that chat up line!).  In the corridor, Dylan catches up with Beka and her brother and screams, “What have you done to my ship!” Raif is undone, he tries to explain that he is a spy for the free trade alliance, but since they are nowhere to be seen, Dylan is unimpressed. The only way Raif is going to get out of this is to follow Dylan’s instructions exactly.

On the Bridge, Rev Bem tries to communicate with the approaching ships.  He asks them to identify themselves.  They respond briefly with, “This is {some geezers name} and we’re gonna kill you!“.

“Well, bless you too.”  Replied Rev Bem sarcastically.

Beka suddenly shouts out that her brother has ‘screwed’ them.  Rev Bem tells Dylan that Raif had gone and stolen the Andromeda’s ‘access codes’ (that’s bad right?) and everyone generally looks unhappy. Andromeda tells them that the communication system is still on and that they have just transmitted all the previous words to the Galaxy (and in particular the oncoming Restors).

They decide that their only chance if for Beka to attack and kill her brother in the Eureka Maru (?!?  Is it me, or does all this seem really implausible). She catches up with him and has a very worrying conversation about betrayal before firing a number of kinetic warheads at his ship.  Raif is blown to bits (but not before transmitting the access codes to the Restor ships) and Beka heads back to the Andromeda.  She arrives with an escort of about 5 Restor ships on her tail, they open fire on her and launch missiles at the Andromeda.

On the bridge, Rev Bem tells Dylan that he hopes his plan worked, and we learn that all the worrisome chatter of the last few minutes was an elaborate ruse to fool the Restors into believing that the ‘access codes’ would help them destroy the Andromeda more effectively (I guess they may have thought that the Andromeda was an unknown entity and that they could use all the help they could get).  Sure enough, the missiles turn back just as they are about to intercept the Andromeda and destroy each and every one of the Restor ships.

It also seems that Raif’s ship wasn’t destroyed (nice trick) and when he joins the Andromeda, Beka runs to greet him, “That’s the best scam we ever pulled.” She says.

And except for some other back slapping, there the show ended.  Not my favorite so far but it’s still a few thousand times better than I could do.

I’d have to rate this a miserly 22,643 out of 10.  What did you think?

“The Ties that Blind” episode review is © 2000 Tony Fawl.
Not for reproduction without the authors express permission

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