Andromeda: S02E01: The Widening Gyre

An epsiode review by Hollydays

“Code Red, Code Red, Code Red”
The command deck is in shambles. Andromeda appears on the view screen and states  “Code Red, officers down in command”. To our surprise Beka answers her (she heard her the first time). Rommie tells her to help Dylan and Beka mutters about the fact that it is Dylan that Andromeda is worried about. She informs Beka that she isn’t reading a pulse. Beka starts CPR (hmm, I wonder how many times they had to shoot this scene? I’ll help you Dylan!). Dylan starts to sputter. Beka wants to get him to med bay but there are still too many maggog on board and the internal defences won’t be back online for another 20 minutes. Beka doesn’t think Dylan will make it if he has to wait that long, she tries to revive Trance. Andromeda tells Beka that there are no life signs from Trance. Beka retorts, “You say that like it matters”. Beka tries talking Trance back alive, which doesn’t work, she yanks Trance’s tail, which does.  Beka passes out again.

Rommie is still lanced to the wall, her tummy sparking away. She looks like she’s a gonner, when she accesses her emergency back up power. She speaks through the ships speakers to Trance and tells her that the Maggog have mostly left the ship, Harper and Tyr have been captured and Rev Bem went down to the Maggog planet ship. Rommie needs to get herself to the machine shop, so she will send two droids to help move Beka and Dylan to the medical deck. Rommie is slowly pulling the lance out of herself and falls to her knees in pain.

Trance gives herself a pep talk about there being a perfect possible future with the odds of creating it being just one million, six hundred and seventy thousand and one, more or less.

The planet ship is huge, with about twenty planets and one small sun. The hoards of Maggog inside are scurrying about, hard at work. Rev Bem is wandering aimlessly. In another area, Tyr and Harper are being gooed to the wall. YUCK! The Maggog’s puck on you to achieve this.

As an aside, I hope Newkate scans a picture of Harper and Tyr restrained on the wall, oh, happy dark thoughts.

Trance is freaking out. Andromeda calms her down by telling her no matter what she can see in the future, she has to focus on the job at hand and help Beka and Dylan. The hull starts to thump with more Maggog ships landing. “Too late”, says Rommie. But Trance is ready to give the old college try. She asks about Rommies’ external defences (that a’ girl). “You want a distraction?” asks Rommie and boy does she give them one. We hear a different kind of thumping on the hull. Like something walking, something huge!

Huge they are! Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, Andromeda’s twin planet warfare bots square off side by side and start wreaking havoc on the maggog ships. I think these two bots are enjoying themselves. After they shot up all the maggog ships – they turn and kind of nod to each other. I thought this was funnier than if they had actually blew the smoke off their guns. I like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum!

Dylan and Beka are being transported to medical when Trance is attacked by a maggog! She tells him that she really doesn’t want to hurt him but if he pushes her, she will. She dodges his attacks and sets him up to land in a mess of live electrical wire—hmm, toasty!

More Maggog’s show up to test Trance but she is saved by Rommie, who thrusts the lance she was skewered with into the first maggog. Rommie tells Trance to run and is left alone to contend with the maggogs. Which she does quite nicely. (An excellent girlfriend for blokes who get themselves in trouble at the bars!)

Back to the nasty maggog planet ship; Rev Bem has attacked and killed one of the leaders and taken his body armour. He resists eating him.

The next scene started so dreamily I was waiting for Dylan to wake up from it. Dylan wakes up in the med lab all clean and shiny and feeling much better. Beka is leaning over him all sparkling too, in a fetching strappy black outfit. “Front and center, soldier” She teases him, to which he replies “Captain Dylan Hunt, reporting for duty.” (no sense of humor, that boy!)

Rommie walks in, her tummy temporarily strapped back together, and tells Dylan that the first wave of maggog have been fought off.

Dylan’s plan is that he and Rommie will take the Maru planet side and retrieve their comrades. He asks Rommie to check on whether the immune system nanobots they gave the crew have built up to the point that she can track their whereabouts. To which Rommie replies that they don’t seem to be working at all in Trance but Beka’s are sending a clear signal.

The fact that tracking devises were planted on them makes Beka livid. She also wants to know what she is supposed to do on the Andromeda while Rommie and Dylan are gone. Dylan tells her about the one nova bomb left in the armoury and tells her to bomb the planet ship’s sun in three hours, regardless of whether he is back or not. Beka is tickled by the fact that a Nova bomb was on board all this time and Tyr did not know about it. Dylan transfers authorization to Beka and he and Rommie leave for the Maru. The internal defences are back online.

On ugly world, Harper is waking up on the wall and Tyr is still out (shouldn’t Tyr be 1st?). Harper asks Tyr if he is okay but shuts up as he realizes his tummy is infested with maggog. Then he starts screaming! (As would you)

The Maru makes it safely down to one of the planets, but it took awhile. Dylan and Rommie admit to being terrified. Rommie is also upset that she can’t reach herself, errrm, the ship because of the interference from the planet. They start searching for their crew and start shooting maggog. Time is running out.

Rev Bem/Redplague, is being hounded by the ultrasonic communication of Bloodmist. I thought the guy looked blind in the 1st part of this episode, by I can see his beady little eyes in this half.  Bloodmist is calling for Rev to join his brothers and serve the abyss. Rev looks like he is being tortured and broken. Bloodmist wants to turn Rev to the dark side since he is such a good warrior. 😉

Dylan and Rommie have been making their way down the 4 km into the planet where Harper and Tyr should be. They only have 1hr and 10 mins to find them and vamoose. Rommie can’t pin point their signals. They hear the point singularity weapon firing again at the Andromeda.

Beka barely avoids the shots. As long as the keep their distance by not attacking or launching the nova bomb, she can avoid the weapon fire. Andromeda is traumatized that time is running out for Dylan and thinks that the mission will end just as badly as the first. Beka asks to see what happened and straps on VR glasses. She is very saddened by seeing the crew killed and eaten. Poor Andromeda had made it back to slipstream, but couldn’t find her way out for 13 months. Later when her superiors decided to seal off the memories for security reasons, Andromeda was relieved. Andromeda makes Beka promise that she will either go back into slipstream with her crew, or not at all!

Bloodmist catches up with Rev Bem near an open chasm. The scene looks straight out of an M.C. Escher drawing. Maggog are walking up/down/sideways on purple walkways. Bloodmist proudly points out the achievement, asking Rev if primitive savages could build that, could snuff out stars and destroy entire galaxies. Bloodmist defends the destruction by saying it is for the cause of harmony and peace and asks Rev to come with him and seek truth from their maker, the spirit of the abyss. He offers that if Rev does this, he will give him Harper and Tyr to do with as he pleases, to slay or to save.

Harper is still trying to break free he asks Tyr to talk to him. Tyr tells him about when he was 16 and captured to work as a slave in the mines. It is a story about his tenacious will to live. Tyr expects Harper to fight as hard as he to live.

Dylan takes a chance on the Magog tracing his signal and talks to Harper through his transceiver implanted in his neck. He tells Harper that they have 20 mins until Beka launches the nova bomb so make some noise so he can find them. Harper is more concerned about the nova bomb than attracting maggog attention so he spurs Tyr to start yelling too. The noise echoes through the tunnels.

Beka has 10 minutes left to blow up the bomb, but they are nine minutes out of range so they have to start the attack now. It is a hard decision for Beka to blow up her comrades but she asks for the bomb to be armed.

Meanwhile, Rev Bem is in the presence of the maggog god with Bloodmist. Rev states that he can feel it’s hatred but Bloodmist asks him to look deeper, to feel it’s love. Rev spurts out that yes, he can see it now, that life is suffering, chaos, but there is another way of harmony, of death. The maggog god disappears and Rev cries out in agony for it to come back as there is much more to learn. Bloodmist volunteers to teach him. Rev Bem asks to be taken to his friends so that he can offer them transcendence….

Harper tells Tyr he hopes the bomb explodes soon, as he is exhausted. He finally has one hand free when maggog come storming in. Tyr’s legs are as deadly as the rest of him. He kills all three maggog.

Dylan and Rommie still haven’t found the boys when they pop out at a chasm with armed maggogs on the other side. “Whatever happened to just clawing people to death!” shouts Dylan. Rommie wants to tell Dylan something important if they’re going to die but he won’t let her (miserable git!).

Since the Andromeda can’t get close to the planet ship and still dodge the singularity weapon, they decide to launch the nova bomb from where they are. Rommie is concerned that it will get intercepted from that range. Beka tells her “On my mark, I want you to fire everything, missles, drones, AP guns, lasers, you name it!” Rommie starts to interject that the conventional weapons won’t work against the planet ship but Beka yells “Mark”. Rommie answers with a “Yes, Captain” and lights up like a Christmas tree at Macy’s! The maggogs don’t like this one bit and send out their ships. Next, Beka orders Rommie to dump everything she can into space, including cargo holds and water. This is a clever rouse to launch the nova bomb undetected. It heads towards the sun.

Harper has finally broken free (ha, ha on you Tyr, score one for being wiry) when in walks Bloodmist and Rev Bem.  Rev informs the two that his name is Redplague and he does what he must.

The sun blows up and maggog are frying.   Dylan and Rommie jump into the chasm. Dylan lands and breaks his ankle. They can’t believe they lived through a Nova bomb.

As Beka is apologizing to a “dead” Dylan, the singularity weapons are sprouting fire. The nasty fiery dude is in the centre of the ship trying to stop the damage by sucking up the energy or something. Andromeda is concerned that the whole place isn’t exploding.

Back to Harper and Tyr. Harper is starting to freak that Rev is going to eat them. Bloodmist is cackling about everything being possible for the harbingers of the abyss when Rev replies, “yes, I understand, but then I did all along!” and whirrs around and guts Bloodmist. Here we get our maggog quoting Dante. Something about behold the fiery beast (antichrist). As Bloodmist lies dying he asks who is the fiery beast, he, his master, or Rev Bem.  The boys start to escape but are deterred by a group of maggog filtering in. “BLAM, BLAM!” (hehe, force lance sounds). The maggog are killed by shots off side.

“I know of but one person idiotic enough to try and rescue three dead men from a maggog hive”, states Tyr, in his dry, you are an idiot voice.

“That’s me, Captain Idiot” replies Dylan, being helped into the room by Rommie.

While I laughed myself silly over Dylan calling himself Captain Idiot, Tyr already knew Dylan was coming when he and Harper were yelling for him to find them.

Beka is losing the battle against the maggog and Rommie suggests they do a runner. Beka reminds her that she keeps her promises (and is therefore fighting to the death). She doesn’t know that the crew are nearing the Maru. They have a brief encounter with nasty fiery dude (he chucks some of his indigestion at them), and then Rommie leads the way through the plasma mines.

Andromeda sees the Maru coming and lays down some covering fire. once they arrive Beka does a runner.

Harper wakes up screaming in medical. He asks if they got the eggs out. Trance tells him that maggog larvae wrap themselves around stuff and if you try to get them out, they attack the host. She has figured out a way to get them out, but the procedure almost killed Tyr so she won’t do it on Harper. Rev gives Harper a vile containing a suppressant to keep the larvae dormant, but it will only work if Harper takes it religiously and takes care of himself (oh, no, Harper is going to die!). But the suppressant will only be effective for a while and they will have to figure out another way to get them out before then.

Harper doesn’t want to be a walking time bomb and tells Trance off for even saving him. Tyr lightened my mood with a very good Harper imitation and then starts to admonish him. “Listen to yourself, child if I can teach you one thing.” Harper interrupts, “If you are going to give me any more of that where there’s hope there’s life crap…thanks, cause I really need it about now.” Tyr pretends to whack him in the head.

Well, that is where the show effectively ended. There is still one more scene where Dylan teases Andromeda about looking bad (command deck), and Rommie responds that he looks bad too, then Beka apologizes about blowing him up and Dylan taunts her that back that in the high guard days, with the proper training, Beka would have made a great executive officer. “And now?” Beka asks, “Now, you’re a miracle!” responds Dylan.

The End

Well, I thought it was a fantastic episode except some of the story lines seemed on familiar territory but there were enough plot twists to make them acceptable. Ex: Rev Bem being called to the “dark side” but since he went from the dark side to the light side, it is not a direct comparison and therefore acceptable. The only major hole I found was the fact that the Maru would be able to make it planet side. There wasn’t anything in the plot that made it plausible to me.  I loved the action sequences and all the performances were stellar! Every character had to make hard, life changing decisions. I am amazed at what Brent Stait (Rev Bem) can do through all the make-up. I had to breeze over his scenes as they were more sub-plot, but they were very good. In a few spots I felt like I was watching Shakespeare in the middle of a Jackie Chan flick (don’t get me wrong, I love Jackie).

Well that’s it for my rambling.

I’d rate it 923562 out of 10
What did you think?

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The “The Widening Gyre” episode review is © 2001 Hollydays.
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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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