After a disastrous slip-piloting lesson with Trance, Andromeda finds herself at the site of a climactic battle of the Nietzschean rebellion and Dylan must make a terrible choice.
- Artistic License – History: In-Universe. Harper gives a heavily fantastical account of the Battle of Witchhead, including rival commanders "Teddy Roosevelt" and "Ho Chi Minh," along with the battle lasting 40 days and 40 nights.Seamus Harper: Who's telling this story? Me or you?Tyr Anasazi: You. And that's precisely what you're telling, isn't it?
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: This episode covers several rules of slipstream travel, such as the fact that it can only be navigated by an organic pilot.Dylan: You know the saying. "Slipstream: it's not the best way to travel faster-than-light. It's just the only way."
- Foreshadowing: As they're preparing to leave, Rommie tells Beka that, as a warship, she doesn't like the idea of running from a fight. She gets to partake in the battle at the end.
- Hope Spot: About midway through the episode, Dylan tells Yeshgar the truth and convinces her to come with him to the future. The Renewed Valor ends up being destroyed by the arrival of the Nietzschean fleet. Dylan solemnly remarks "my friend died three hundred years ago."
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Harper's reasoning for trying to wipe out the Nietzschean fleet even if it results in the Magog overruning the galaxies. Nietzscheans retained humanity's capacity for cruelty, Magog just eat people and leave.
- Insistent Terminology: Harper's "Nietzschean Rebellion" is Tyr's "Nietzschean Tactical Offensive".
- Legend Fades to Myth: The Nietzscheans have a legend about the Battle of Witchhead. Tyr doesn't speak of it until the very end and references an "Angel of Death" wiping out the majority of Nietzschean ships just before the battle. The Andromeda's crew ends up playing this role.Tyr Anasazi: (looks at Dylan) I've never seen an angel before.
- Lesser of Two Evils: Discussed throughout the episode. Tyr claims that if they support the Nietzscheans, then a united, empowered Nietzchean Empire will be able to repel the Magog, and prevent them from overrunning known space. Rev initially agrees with this, but then Dylan points out that even though the Magog would indeed run rampant and kill billions, they would at least leave when they were done, compared to the Neitzcheans who would continue to enslave and kill the people in the worlds they occupied. He ultimately decides to allow history to progress as stated, figuring that even they could affect change, there's no guarantee it would be in their favor.
- Life Saving Misfortune: One time, Trance tried to fix the Maru's coffee maker and ended up shorting out the artificial gravity. Fortunately, it happened then rather than when the ship was accelerating, which would have killed them all.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Dylan goes through one, after destroying one thousand Nietzschean ships in their fleet of fifteen hundred in order to preserve the timeline.
- Oh, Crap!: Several, from the realization that they've arrived at the Battle of Witchhead to seeing 1500 enemy ships instead of 500.
- Pyrrhic Victory: What the Battle of Witchhead ended up being. The High Guard fleet was completely destroyed, but not before inflicting heavy casualties on the lead Drago-Kazov ships. Their vulnerability ended up costing them further when rival prides attacked them, splitting the Nietzschean alliance and ruining any chance of a Nietzschean Empire to replace the Commonwealth.
- Shout-Out:
- To Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dylan convinces Yeshgar to join him by saying that one more ship won't make a difference at Witchhead, but can make all the difference in 300 years. Picard used this same argument, albeit reversed, in "Yesterday's Enterprise."
- To Bhagavad Gita. Before destroying the Nietzscheans, Dylan says the same quote Robert Oppenheimer used upon the first detonation of an atomic bomb: "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."
- Stable Time Loop: While history recorded a Nietzschean fleet of 500, the Andromeda crew sees a fleet of 1,500. The Andromeda knows it cannot escape back into the future unless they can defeat a lot of the ships. They use a specialized mine that destroys 1,000 of the ships, but not before Tyr recites a Nietzschean legend of an "Angel of Death" who "released the fires of hell." This was the role the Andromeda ultimately played. Even Harper, initially giddy at the thought of wiping out a hundred thousand Nietzscheans, has a realization that all he did was ensure that history plays out exactly as it did, and Earth is still in Nietzschean hands. Hence his dejected final comment, "We win."
