Andromeda: S01E19: The Honey Offering

An epsiode review by Hollydays

Ugh! What a groaner! And I’m not just talking about the punny title!

We start off learning that there is a puny little planet filled with nice normal people trying to go about a days work when opposing Nietzschean’s from each nearby planets show up and battle each other and then vamoose. They do this all the time apparently. Dylan thinks this should stop and that the planet should have the opportunity of joining the Commonwealth. Enter reason why Nietzscheans would let this happen. After the generations of fighting there is to be a political wedding between “princess” Nietzschean daughter A and ruler dude B. But neither side trusts each other enough to transport said daughter to her new planet.

“OH Andromeda, where art thou?”

Dylan agrees to be a cruise line in exchange for allowing the little battle planet to be freed from Nietzschean rule and allowed to make it’s own decision. Now, I for one would think this would be the only choice the little planet had. But then again, we see another of Dylan’s character flaws, arrogance. He hasn’t contacted the planet, doesn’t know if it wants to be freed, doesn’t know if it has even heard of the Commonwealth. And what is the Commonwealth going to give this little place? A battle ship to protect it? I think not, just a piece of paper and a slipstream trail in the sky…but I digress.

Enter the beautiful Elssbett, Nietzschean princess type. Tall, beautiful dark skin, delicate features, and an outfit that looks leather cat suit like with high heel boots. Now immediately one hears the Northern Pikes song in one’s head “She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way”. This girl makes enemies of everyone but Harper, who’s knees buckle. She doesn’t know that you get more flies with honey than vinegar, ha, ha. She calls Trance a purple monkey and throws aside the flowers Trance has presented to her. She immediately assumes Tyr is in charge and tells him to get his slaves to move her luggage toot sweet and blows off everyone and trumps off to see what her room is like. Apparently it is not suitable and she moves into the Observation deck. Now one would think a “princess” type person would have been raised to be more diplomatic, but we soon find out what she actually was raised for.

Dylan sends Tyr to talk with the haughty one and try and get her to “play nice”(which we find out later she can do, and yes in That way). Her presence and Dylan’s lack of control over the situation is causing cat fight like responses in Trance, Beka, Rommie, and even our Maggog friend, Rev Bem. Tyr, of course, tries to take personal advantage of the situation with Elssbett. Now I must say this scene made me laugh. Most of all because it looked too much like a daytime soap set. Filter on the camera, mood lighting, Tyr reclining and posing (once again) on her bed. Tyr attempts to convince her to sleep with him and have his child instead of her new husbands since the new husband is weak and since he is weak, Elssbett will emerge as the power behind the thrown, helped of course by Tyr. Elssbett makes another enemy by scorning his lineage, his character because he works for humans, and boots his butt out of her room. The other thing about this scene is that it was uncomfortable to see our haughty, better than thou Tyr, trying to prostitute himself and getting strip taken off him for his efforts.

Meanwhile and later in the day, the purple one is all in a tizzy about what kind of person doesn’t like flowers. She has worked herself up to the point that she is willing to sneak into the observation deck and start snooping through the Nietzscheans’ luggage. She just gets started when who sneaks up behind her but Elssbett. Elssbett uses her kick ass boots to step on Trance’s tail. Trance lets out a ballyhoo of a wail and Dylan comes running. Elssbett demands retribution and Dylan is considering what to do when a new “twist in the tale” arrives with a hail from one of the ships of a now involved third pride. The Drago Katsov pride. They don’t like the idea of peace happening between the two other prides, since it could mean an undefeatable enemy.

Tyr exits stage left off of the command deck before the “call” is answered as the guy calling is Fleet Marshal Cuchlain who doesn’t like Tyr from his previous encounter in the episode “Music of a Distant Drum” (I think). Dylan and the Cuchlain guy chat politely, and Cuchlain asks for Dylan to send Elssbett over. The Andromeda is greatly outnumbered and outgunned. Dylan humbly asks for a few moments so he can confer with his crew. Tyr and Beka are now wishing they were in the star trek universe and could beam Elssbett’s butt over there. Dylan tells them not to surrender anything while he goes off to talk to Elssbett as to whether she has any ideas about how to handle the situation. But good luck finding her, she’s trying to make her own escape since she thinks Dylan has already agreed to hand her over, since that is what she would do. He catches up with her and does the whole song and dance about honor and we see her hard little heart grow a size. He decides to save her butt and hopefully the Andromeda’s too by taking off with Elssbett on the Maru. Beka escorts them, I think loading luggage, and gets all possessive of Dylan and tells Elssbett she had better not hurt him or she will hunt her down and slips Dylan the tongue. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the tongue, but it certainly looked passionate enough, (Beka was taunted into it by Elssbett telling her to kiss her boyfriend goodbye).

But hey, it has started out to be a gooood day for our Dylan.

The Maru sends out a taped transmission that Elssbett has taken over Andromeda and the crew is doing a runner. Cuchlain seemingly buys it and lets the Maru take off. once all cozy and cuddly like in the Maru, Dylan confronts her nastiness about something he saw in the box Trance had been snooping in, a pocket neutron bomb. The bomb looks like a black Faberge Egg.

Well, here we see that the nasty Nietzschean can be diplomatic, or more like, manipulative, in a feminine kind of way. She tells Dylan she is supposed to get married and then nuke them all and die. She does the whole poor me, I’ve been trained to be an assassin since I was three and I didn’t know any different life until I arrived on the Andromeda where I saw different species getting along splendidly, blah, blah, blah, look at my huge, errm, huge eyes and pouty lips and if I could do it without being obvious, I’d unbutton my shirt even more.

Apparently this works universally on all men in a sci-fi world. Dylan looks all soffty like and Elssbett sidles up to him and…kicks the crap out of him! She has no use for the lifestyles presented on the Andromeda. This is when Dylan, as well as we, are glad that he has half engineered DNA. His mom was a heavy gravity trucker or something. Elssbett is surprised by the fight put up by Dylan and asks him if he is half Neitzschean. By the way, this is another scene to make you laugh. The girl can play nasty real well, but she sucks, SUCKS, in a fight scene. I could hardly believe she could stand up in her boots, never mind chuck our hero around the Eureka Maru. Anyway, Elssbett gets ticked off that her hair is getting messed up or something and gets out a nifty little gadget known as a monomolecular lance. It looks exactly like a holo-whip from Red Dwarf. It scares the crap out of Dylan. Dylan tells her that there is no way she could control such a device and that she’ll cut a hole in the bulkhead and she has to demonstrate that she can control it and…ends up cutting a hole in the bulkhead. They both stop fighting long enough to patch the hole.

Andromeda meanwhile, is skipping along through space like O.J. Simpson out on a drive. Cuchlain hails Andromeda and tells “Elssbett” that ha, ha she is too deep into “stellar nursery” to go into slipstream and that in three hours the Andromeda will be in range of a planetary orbital defense system. Rommie cringes; she is no match for it. They decide they have to keep going on with the game. The guy keeps sending them nasty messages on a frequent interval.

Dylan is now Elssbett’s prisoner with some cool restraints that can make him walk and move independent of his will. They decide to take the Maru to the nearest port o’ call so that the bulkhead or port or something can be fixed properly. Dylan plays the part of slave poorly, but he does look cute with all the “bondage” items. Elssbett orders the honeymoon suite and off they go, not noticing a guy watching them with some serious arm gear that could only mean he’s Neitzschean. This forearm stuff was so pointy; you would kill yourself just by walking. once in the room, Dylan chastises her for being so flamboyant and picking a room that is not easy to defend. She is quite determined to enjoy her last days. Dylan starts on a tirade about not killing innocent people and she retorts with how many people have died and how she will in fact be ending the war. She is so into this theory she starts telling him about all the background info like the fact that her ova have been removed and distributed among the pride and how she will be as famous and revered as much the main man Drago Muscoveny.  Dylan tells her he feels sorry for what her pride has done to her and she inexplicably thinks he’s right in some small way and releases him from his bondage (awww). She then goes on to tell him that she will continue on alone and that she has enjoyed her last few days on the Andromeda and enjoyed having freedom of choice in her own life and relationships. She demonstrates this new freedom by putting the moves on Dylan and, well, let’s just say, Kirk, I mean Dylan is one happy camper.

Since this is a PG rated show, we are taken back to the Andromeda where Trance has been checking out all the messages creep boy has sent them. She notices that all the messages are relatively similar. Turns out that the sneaky Cuchlain recorded them within minutes of each other and ha s done the same thing as Andromeda by broadcasting them from the fighters later. The Andromeda crew thinks therefore that the fighters are drones. Beka turns Andromeda around and prepares to fight, whether drones or not…but they are drones. So Andromeda has to find Dylan and save his happy butt.

Speaking of the happy butt man, he is just popping out of the shower, and we get a lovely chest shot while he puts on his sweater. Nothing for the lads from Elssbett though, sorry. He comes out practically whistling (isn’t he in mourning for his fiancé?). His mood is drastically changed when Elssbett no longer wants him to be chummy, but a slave again. He is about to get really pissed off when the Drago Katsov guys starts breaking down the door. Elssbett and Dylan join up once again to fight their way out of there. Elssbett provides the way via whipping a hole in the wall. They escape to the Maru. LIKE THAT wouldn’t be guarded and off they go to take her to her wedding. The Drago Katsov guys are in tow about to take over when The Andromeda arrives just in time. But it really isn’t going to help as they are just back at step one: outnumbered and outgunned. Dylan orders Beka to do a runner but Beka’s gotta protect “her man” and stays put.

Dylan then sends a distress signal to alert Elssbett’s husbands’ pride the Jaguars (sounds like West Side story). The Drago Katsov guy Cuchlain sends a message that he is armed well enough to take The Jaguar’s on. Dylan retorts, I’m sure the Sabre Pride (Elssbett’s) has forces hidden in the system too. Elssbett is surprised by Dylan once again, “Are you sure you’re not Nietzschean?” she asks. She then sends orders out for her forces to jump into action.

The two prides involved in the wedding come together and instead of firing on each other, actually work together in dispersing the Drago Katsov pride. The working together part seemed to be more instigated by Elssbett’s future hubby, Charlemagne. Now ladies, keep this Charlemagne guy in mind for the future. We don’t get to see him here, but I hear the fellow who plays Spike on Buffy will play him in the future. Creepy, yes. Great to look at without a shirt on, yes.

Now Dylan has shown why he gets to be captain and you don’t. He has forced Elssbett to consider a new option. He has made the two prides prove to each other what good allies they would be against the Drago guys (and they came to her rescue, showing their marriage offer to be valid). Off she goes, undecided, to her marriage.

Dylan is now back on the Andromeda, looking rather like the cat who got the cream (don’t’ go there) when he hears from Rommie that he has a personal message. He takes off to his room and clicks on his view screen. once again his ego gets the big stroke. Elssbett tells Dylan that he’s hated and respected so therefore the Jaguar and Sabre prides will do business with him and the little planet is free to do what it wants. Also, marriage agrees with her. Her new husband is decadent like her and ambitious in a way that pleases her.

Well that’s it, time for my rant. The episode would have been better named the Trojan women or something. I thought the Elssbett character was written to react in very unlikely ways. “Adult terrorist sees error of ways and settles down to a happy married life with the enemy”. The other weakness with this plot is that it treads dangerously close to Original Star Trek. What shall we call the Martian moon princess this week? And sure, guys will be open to bedding women whom they have no future with, or like…but she had kicked his butt and made him her slave! Wouldn’t it be closer to date rape had it been the other way around?  Also, Her ova are removed? Isn’t having babies the most important Neitzschean thing? Wouldn’t  her marriage be over if she was sterile? Then there is the ending, a nice happy, sitcom one.

Watch it only once, unless you want to see the cat suit girl wielding a whip over and over again. Oh no, I probably just made its ratings jump!

I would rate this one a –10 out of 4000
What did you think?

The “The Honey Offering” episode review is © 2001 Hollydays.
Not for reproduction without the authors express permission.

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