Series / Andromeda

The main cast. (L-R: Trance Gemini, Beka Valentine, Rommie, Capt. Dylan Hunt, Seamus Harper, Tyr Anasazi.)

The long night has come. The Systems Commonwealth - the greatest civilization in history - has fallen. But now, one ship, one crew has vowed to drive back the night and rekindle the light. On the starship Andromeda, hope lives again.

— Opening Narration

Some view Space Opera Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda as an unbranded Star Trek series. It is perhaps more accurately described as Star Trek in reverse. The show lasted from October 2000 to May 2005.

The story opens aboard the titular starship, the Andromeda Ascendant, a "warship of the line" for the Systems Commonwealth, a government founded by a race of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens called the Vedrans, which kept the peace among their worlds spanning three galaxies—emphasis on the past-tense. Though their technology was vast and their captains were noble and compassionate, they ran into a mess of problems all at once. First a race of cannibalistic savages known as the Magog invaded by the billions, wiping out entire Commonwealth worlds. And just after fighting the Magog to a standstill and making a peace treaty with them, one of the Commonwealth's member races rebels, the fractious Nietzscheans, genetically engineered humans obsessed with eugenics and following the chilly philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first battle of the Nietzschean Rebellion ends up with the Andromeda evacuating its crew and trying a slingshot around a black hole to escape, freezing ship and captain in time.

Three hundred years later, the Commonwealth is a distant memory, and a dark age has fallen over the known worlds. The Eureka Maru, a salvage ship crewed by a rag-tag team of minor-league criminals, happens upon the Andromeda and tows it to safety, thinking this will be the score of a lifetime. Mostly through his own strength of character, the revived Captain Hunt convinces the crew of the Maru to join him and try to re-unite the Commonwealth (or, at least, try to be of marginal assistance to his quest as they mooch off the Andromeda's resources).

The show has its origins in a combination of two separate Roddenberry story ideas from the 1970s, one about a sentient starship and a second about a man from the past trying to piece the remnants of civilization back together after it has crumbled - essentially, "What if The Federation fell?" The former never made it to the air prior to Andromeda, but Roddenberry (who died in 1991) used the latter concept in no fewer than three separate unsuccessful pilots (two of which actually included a protagonist named Dylan Hunt) before giving up on it. Undoubtedly these ideas were further developed by the Andromeda creative team. As a consequence, it's difficult to see Roddenberry's hand in this hard-boiled, dystopian future. Andromeda also had a spiritual bent unlike anything seen in Trek, except perhaps in the God Guise aliens of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The initial core crew is, approximately, The Team:

• Captain Hunt — The Hero, a human from the now-lost Commonwealth capital on Tarn Vedra (He eventually turns out to be not-quite-human after all: he's a Human-Vedran hybrid, or rather Human-Paradine: Vedrans who have become something more), and his human half comes from a genetically-enhanced Heavyworlder).
• Beka Valentine — The Lancer, hotshot pilot, recovering drug addict, and captain of the Eureka Maru. Secretly the genetic matriarch of the entire Nietzschean race via Time Travel.
• Tyr Anasazi — The Big Guy, Proud Warrior Race Guy, and Token Evil Teammate, last survivor of a vanquished Nietzschean clan (and at times, straddles the line between a Nietzsche Wannabe and an Übermensch).
• Trance Gemini — The Heart, cute and naïve Waif Prophet and medical officer, who later gets Darker and Edgier via Time Travel.
• Seamus Zelazny Harper — The Smart Guy, The Lab Rat, Mr. Fixit, a bit of a Casanova Wannabe, and more often a Fatal Attractor, the only member of the crew actually from the ghetto planet Earth, technician and hyper-active genius engineer who (re-)builds Rommie's avatar body.

With three additional regular characters:

• Rommie — The ship's female-shaped android avatar ("Andromeda" refers specifically to the ship's holographic AI, and also to the three individual entities of the ship [Andromeda Ascendant], the AI [Andromeda], and the android [Rommie]).
• Rev Bem — aka. Behemial Fartraveller aka. Red Plague. A reformed Magog, scientist, sociologist and pacifist priest.
• Late in the show when Rommie is believed destroyed Harper builds a new Robot Girl named Doyle as a Replacement Goldfish, who has identity issues and who thinks she is the rightful avatar of the Andromeda Ascendant. Hilarity Ensues (not).

Midway through the second season, the showrunner had a falling out with the male lead and is replaced. Rev Bem leaves the ship when his actor develops an allergy to the Magog makeup. This is when things start to get a little zany. After the third season, Tyr Anasazi is replaced by Telemachus Rhade, the Identical Grandson of Hunt's original first officer. This is when things get a little more zany.

In the universe of Andromeda, every celestial body has an "avatar", a humanoid counterpart of vast power. Such beings crop up from time, including the moon of Tarn Vedra, the black hole (who turns out to be the universe's greatest clingy ex-girlfriend), and, most importantly, Trance, who, it is eventually revealed, despite her youthful appearance and character, is the wayward sun of Tarn Vedra, the oldest star in the universe. Halfway through the second season, Trance is replaced by an older and moodier version of herself (not an other Darrin; it's the same actress in different makeup).

Subverting the Failure Is the Only Option trope, Dylan and his crew actually do restore the Systems Commonwealth, though internal politics promptly gets Dylan and his crew kicked out of it.

For most of the series, an approaching Magog worldship serves as an impending Dragon, guided by The Man Behind the Man, a shadow-cloaked avatar known as "The Spirit of the Abyss", a powerful chaotic force. When this comes to a head in the fourth season finale, Dylan is forced to escape through a Negative Space Wedgie to the timeless, isolated Seefra system, really the massively transformed Tarn Vedra system.

Andromeda was inordinately fond of the Negative Space Wedgie, depicting a universe rife with temporal anomalies — in fact, the Andromeda Ascendant itself incorporated dimensional anomalies into its very construction. For a starship crew the cast also spent a great deal of time underground, presumably because somebody in the first season invested money in a tunnel set that had to be re-used over and over again.

In addition to the obvious Star Trek parallels, Andromeda clearly owes a lot to Blake's 7.

Technically set approximately 3 millennia into the future (Figure from ep. Harper^2), though effectively A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...: Earth exists, but is hardly ever mentioned, except to say that it's not a very nice place to hang out these days.

Sometimes described as "Herc meets Kirk", because Kevin Sorbo, best known for his role as Hercules in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, is playing the role of a kind, wise and mysteriously super-strong character in the role that Captain Kirk filled in the original series of Star Trek, which this show so closely resembles.

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This series provides examples of:

#-F

• Accidental Time Travel: After Trance takes a few wrong turns in the Slipstream the ship winds up 300 years in the past.
• Achievements in Ignorance: Trance has a natural talent for this. At the end of "Forced Perspective", her report of how she rescued Dylan is "I wondered where you were, found you, and brought you back."
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Most of the ships' artificial intelligences are fairly sane and lucid, but the Balance of Judgment is an eco-terrorist with a vendetta against slipstream drives and the Pax Magellanic had a mental breakdown after being betrayed by her captain/lover. It's explicitly said that A.I.s without the input of others—Captains, crew, or other A.I.s—tend to go insane, and that this is why AI ships don't captain themselves.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Assumed of the Nietzscheans and the Magog by most people in-universe, but subverted in both cases. The Magog are capable of being good, most just don't choose to be. And Nietzscheans are always self-interested, which usually means treating people as either slaves or marks.
• Apocalypse How: Many different ways, starting with High Guard ships of the line, such as the Andromeda, that are said to be capable of de-civilizing an Earth-like planet in under two minutes with their conventional weapons.^note 1 kilogram missiles, launched at 0.9c. Delivering about 8 megatons per impact. 19,200 rounds per minute. Two minutes would be generous. Which is not to speak of the Nova Bombs that the Andromeda—a fairly standard ship of the line—carried 40 of, each of which was capable of turning a star inside out by nullifying its gravitational pull, and thus destroying an entire star system and everything in it in the resulting explosion. The Nietzcheans also possess planet-busters, although they also have an absolute resolve not to use such a weapon against a habitable planet. Then there are the Point Singularity Projectors, a weapon profligated by the Magog. The larger your mass, the more the damage—a person hit by one suffers the equivalent of a bullet wound, but hit a planet with one, and you have continents being crushed.
• Arcology: Of the many space stations present, one of them is actually called the Arkology, which is anchored to an asteroid, in orbit around a planet. True to the idea, it is a hippy's ideal home, being significantly older than most of the featured stations on the show, complete with substandard technology. It also happens to be the largest, and looks quite steampunk.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Hawkins reads off Harper's rap sheet:
  Hawkins: Seamus Harper...Grand Theft Spacecraft, and Interstellar Flight to Avoid Prosecution, and Public Lewdness.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Dylan Hunt's "force lance" is possibly the most unsafe blaster-type hand weapon ever imagined. In its collapsed form it's a foot-long cylinder with a button for a trigger and nothing that even resembles sights, a grip, or a trigger guard. The only way Dylan can aim it is to hold it at arm's length and sight along his arm. Even worse, the blaster function remains operational when the weapon is extended to its six-foot-long "fighting staff" form, raising the possibility of an accidental discharge at any time, regardless of where it's pointed.
• The Atoner: Rev Bem, although he personally hadn't done anything to feel sorry about except eating through his human mother, which he couldn't help but do at that age. He wants to atone even more after having killed fellow Magog in the assault on the Andromeda and the world-ship.
• Badass Army: Nietzscheans think they are but they're really not. While most Nietzscheans are physically formidable, actually training would be considered tantamount to admitting genetic inferiority, and the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder that plagues them as a culture does their command cohesion no favors. While a Nietzschean leader with the skill and charisma to get his people to train and keep them in line will inevitably command an outright terrifying force, those who can pull it off are few and far between.
• The Battlestar: Most High Guard ships, including the Andromeda Ascendant, carry "slipfighters" which are designed to defend the mothership, especially against missile attacks. The lack of pilots to do so comes up repeatedly.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Two sentient entities you never want to piss off, introducing Rommie and Trance.
  Rommie: I'm a warship, and I don't like running away from a fight.
• Bewildering Punishment: A variation. In "Abridging the Devil's Divide," Harper helps a madman build a time bridge, which was done under duress, but at the critical moment, Harper tried to activate the thing, largely For Science! and nearly leading to disaster. In the aftermath, Dylan says this is strike two for Harper. When Harper asks what strike one was, Dylan gets mad. Harper quickly witdraws the questin and leaves. Wen Rommie, who was present for the conversatin, asks what strike one was, Dylan admits that there never was a strike one.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Various organisations and factions now dominate the Three Galaxies following the downfall of the Systems Commonwealth, such as the Magog under the Spirit of the Abyss, the Nietzschean Prides (Particularly the Drago-Kazov), the Templars & their radical offshoot, the Knights of Genetic Purity, the Restorian movement, the Consensus of Parts and powerful mercenary groups, criminal syndicates & rogue Governments.
• Binding Ancient Treaty: During a conflict with the Pyrians, a species that never joined the Commonwealth, Dylan tries to force them to the negotiating table by invoking "Protocol Red Fifteen". The Pyrians scoff that any treaties they had with the Commonwealth expired when it did... but the fact that someone is using Commonwealth communications protocols piques their interest enough to get them to start talking.
• Bitter Almonds: The cyanide gas trap in In Heaven Now Are Three.
• Black Dude Dies First: Thompson, first on-screen death, inaugural episode.
• Blatant Lies: Does anybody believe that Trance is just a lucky guesser? Seriously?
  Dylan: You told me there is always a perfect possible future, so what is it today, Trance?
  Trance: It's not that easy...sometimes I have these 'flashes' but it's not something I can make happen all the time. I'm very sorry, Dylan, but if there is a way out of this it has to come from you.
• Boarding Party: The Magog use Swarm Ships to punch holes in the attacked ship and swarm in.
• Body Surf: How Constantine Stark (originally Constanza), founder of the Templars, has stayed alive for 300 years.
• Bombers on the Screen: Many a ship battle used a display screen to show the location of the Andromeda and other ships relative to it, though this usually came along with shots of those ships moving and firing.
• Boomerang Bigot: There was a radical group bent on destroying space travel in order to preserve planetary ecologies. It was founded by a warship's AI.
• Brain/Computer Interface: Harper has a jack on his neck.
• Brain in a Jar: Referenced when the crew have to fight the Consensus of Parts, a robotic civilisation. They're sure the Consensus can't follow them into slipstream because you need an organic mind to pilot a slipstream drive, but it turns out they use these to achieve it.
• Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: At the start of the first episode we see First Officer Rhade drilling the ship's crew and demanding they go faster, while Captain Hunt calmly observes.
• Cargo Cult: The child descendants of High Guard personnel from "To Loose the Fateful Lightning."
• Cathartic Scream: Rev Bem mentions that when he studied at the Wayist school, there was a cliff nearby for such screams.
• Chekhov's Time Travel: Harper has to use time travel/warping several times, including to cure himself of an infection by altering time-space.
• Chest Burster: The Magog reproduction method.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Congenital in the Nietzscheans. Tyr has a particularly bad case which Dylan takes advantage of several times.
• Cloning Body Parts: In "Forced Perspective", Venetri has managed to keep himself alive for 300 years by creating multiple clones of himself and harvesting their organs.
• Colour-Coded Timestop: As the Andromeda got close enough to a black hole for time dilation to make 300 years pass in a matter of minutes, the picture took on sepia coloration.
• Coming in Hot: The Eureka Maru, or other visiting ships, occasionally crash-land in the Andromeda's launch bay.
• Cool Starship: The Andromeda Ascendant is a heavily armed warship that is also a genuinely beautiful thing to see.
• Crew of One: Zig-zagged. The Andromeda Ascendant originally had a crew of over 4000, but apparently she can make do with six or fewer. The catch is, as mentioned frequently in the first season, that with so few crew she has no ground troops, no fighter pilots, and her general combat capability is reduced. Technically she doesn't need crew at all, being able to run everything from planetary war-machines to nanobots. But having crewers aboard speeds up repairs, provides a lot more brains to run little things like slipfighters, and apparently is good for the mental health of the AI.
• Critical Staffing Shortage: The Andromeda Ascendant originally had a crew of thousands, but in the first episode everyone but Captain Dylan Hunt either abandons ship or is killed as it gets stuck in orbit around a black hole. For most of the series the crew consists of the captain and the five (later four) former crew of a salvage ship who pulled the ship away from the black hole 300 years later (due to Time Dilation). Other characters join as well, and the crew varies between 6 and 7 for most of the rest of the series. Andromeda's Artificial Intelligence can fill most crew roles herself so they get by, but it's pointed out several times that the ship is way less effective in combat — or anything else — than it would be fully crewed.
• Cyborg Helmsman
• The Cycle of Empires: The long night has fallen...
• Darwinist Desire: Nietzscheans are a species of Social Darwinists who compare pedigrees when courting, seeking to breed only with the fittest and strongest.
• Data Pad: "Flexis" that resemble overhead transparencies.
• Deadly Gas: The cyanide gas trap in In Heaven Now Are Three.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Invoked. We get to see Dylan and the resident Nietzschean (Tyr or one of the Rhades) discuss philosophy and life perspectives over basketball or Go. Both sides are shown as having trouble understanding the other.
• Derelict Graveyard
• Do Androids Dream?: The main conflict in "Star-Crossed" is the romance between Rommie and another android.
  Rommie: All sentients seek to establish a connection with their own.
  Tyr: Love is merely a trick the DNA plays to replicate itself.
  Rommie: I don't have DNA.
  Tyr: My point exactly! Are the two of you planning to procreate?
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: On a few occasions, Dylan has to acknowledge that Andromeda, while still a powerful ship, is functionally more limited than it would have been at its peak when it had a full crew, as opposed to the present when Dylan's smaller crew have to rely more heavily on Rommie's coordination when defending themselves.
• The Dreaded: The Spirit of the Abyss, the series' resident chessmaster and Greater-Scope Villain, has hordes of Magog and legions of mercenaries at its command, myriad agents placed in every spaceport, military, MegaCorp and Government throughout the New Systems Commonwealth, later forms an alliance with a revived Nietzschean Empire under Tyr Anasazi and is later revealed in the Grand Finale that Maura, the powerful leader of the Lambent Kith Nebula council of solar Avatars, is secretly its Avatar all along.
• Earth All Along: Seefra-1 is Tarn-Vedra.
• Eleventh Hour Super Power: Hunt, from his half-Paradine heritage.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Tarn Vedra as Seefra-1, then literally with the destruction of Earth.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The best description of how the prison warden of the correction facility in "A Rose from the Ashes" automatically assumed that an inmate must have had outside help to develop the technology she was using rather than believe that a prisoner, genetically predisposed to disruptive behaviour, could be capable of such achievements on her own.
• Evil Is Visceral: Aspects of the Magog that are not already covered by the subtropes: they spit on people, and have exposed noses.
• Epigraph: Every single episode begins with a (fictional) quote
• Exact Words: Tyr once tricked an enemy into thinking he'd joined them. When he inevitably betrays them he points out he didn't say he was on their side, only the winning side.
• Expy:
  • Dylan Hunt is an expy of Dylan Hunt from Genesis II.
  • Bartolome Naz in And Your Heart Will Fly Away is an expy of Dr. Strangelove.
• Extinct in the Future: The show mentions that the common house cat has been extinct for thousands of years.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: The Magog.
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: In "The Prince", Tyr is trying to get a future king to understand that a king has to also think like a soldier. As examples, he suggests that he read Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Hedas of Thonia. At the end of the episode, Dylan points out that he's read all these as well, surprising Tyr.
• Fantastic Drug: The narcotic Flash is taken by despensing the drug into one's eye with an eye dropper. The drug gives the user all white eyes and an incredible high, making the user feel stronger and faster. It's also highly addictive. Beka's father was an addict and her uncle once exposed her to the drug, leading to her taking large doses of Flash later on when she needed to perform some particularly taxing piloting.
• Fantastic Racism: Not just for/against aliens, either; the Knights of Genetic Purity hunt down all modified human-offshoots. They spend most of their time picking fights with the more belligerent Nietzschean prides, which earns them support throughout the known universe. However, Dylan points out that between biomodified races like the Inari, Heavy Worlders, commercially available modifications and purely accidental mutations, less than 12% or so of the humans in the entire known universe fall under their definition of "pure".
• Fantastic Ship Prefix: Andromeda's registry is XMC-10-284. Each High Guard ship class has its three letter code, but the personal number is given for only a few.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: Slipstream, not the best way to travel faster than light, just the only way. Organic pilot required.
• Flanderization: Oh, so very much, primarily after original showrunner Wolfe left and any pretensions at character balance went with him.
  • In a meta-sense, the entire Nietzschean race. At the time of the fall of the Commonwealth, the Nietzscheans, intended by their progenitor to be a race of Warrior Poet-Übermenschen had, if not reached that level, at least a reasonable claim of striving towards it. By the time the series rolls around three-hundred years later, the intellectual and spiritual aspects of the progenitor's vision have all fallen by the wayside and the Nietzscheans have degenerated into little more than roving bands of morally myopic supremacist thugs. As described by the best and worst of them;
    Gaheris Rhade: Our people were meant to be living gods. Warrior poets who roamed the stars bringing civilization. Not cowards and bullies who prey on the weak and kill each other for sport. I never imagined they'd prove themselves so inferior.
    Charlemagne Bolivar: (when asked what he wants) The usual: hundreds of grandchildren, utter domination of known space, and the pleasure of hearing that all my enemies have died in terrible, highly improbable accidents that cannot be connected to me. And you?
    Tyr: (Chuckling despite himself) ... The usual.
• Flat Character: After Season 2, all of them. Robert Hewitt Wolfe planned major Character Development for the Andromeda crew. After he was fired, Status Quo Is God took effect in regards to their emotional growth.
• Frameup: One episode had a conspiracy try to pin an assassination on Tyr. Although Tyr was in fact enraged at the man for something he'd done, the crew doesn't believe it for a minute. Tyr is a professional assassin, and the murder was far too incompetently done to be Tyr's work.
• Freudian Slip: In "It Makes a Lovely Night" when Dylan is talking to Beka after she got out of the shower, wearing nothing but a Modesty Towel:
  Dylan: "I was looking at your figure... I mean, figures..."
• Gaia's avengers: The Restorians, led by the Balance of Judgment, a Knight Templar warship AI.

G-L

• Gainax Ending: The final episode of season 4.
• Galactic Superpower: The Commonwealth before its fall, in three galaxies.
• Gambit Roulette: The events of season 5 are essentially the last phases of a plan the Vedrans came up with centuries previously to use their own sun to destroy the Abyss.
• Generican Empire: The Systems Commonwealth.
• Generic Federation, Named Empire: A historical example of one changing to the other in response to changing demographics with the Vedran Empire reforming into the more democratic All Systems Commonwealth (though with the Vedran Empress still as titular head of state).
• Genetic Memory: The episode "The Devil Take the Hindmost" has a race of people who have this. They are also pacifists because of this, as they know that if they fought in battle, then all their children would be born knowing the horror of war. When their planet is threatened by Nietzscheans, they face the possibility that they will have to fight, but one woman impregnates herself with Magog larvae who soon hatch and mature into full-grown beast men. Because of the genetic memory of their mother, they all had knowledge of her peaceful ways, giving them a stark contrast to regular Magog, who are bloodthirsty killers.
• Genocide Survivor: Tyr's people, the Kodiak pride, were wiped out by the Drago-Kazov pride. Unfortunately for him, under Nietzschean morality, the fact that his people were wiped out only served as evidence that they, and by extension Tyr, were genetically inferior.
• Give Me a Sword: Tyr and Seamus just before their Last Stand against the Magog, once Seamus has stopped panicking and agreed that fighting back is probably a good idea. Once he's pulled himself together Tyr has a little grudging respect for him and gives him one of the knives he just happened to have about his person.
• God of Evil: The Magog worship the Abyss, and it's heavily implied the Abyss engineered their creation.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Trance Gemini.
  • Not even when she pretends to be. Maybe especially not when she pretends to be.
• Honey Trap: Inverted. A Nietzschean assassin bride in an arranged marriage with another Nietzschean leader whom she's supposed to kill beds Dylan because "For one night [she'd] like to pretend [she] was only human"...and it leads her to a sex face turn. She even sends Dylan a message saying that his idea of peace over war "seems to be the better one".
• Hostile Terraforming: The episode "Point of the Spear", the Pyrians (aliens who live in Venus-like environments) tried to forcibly pyroform (as it's called when they do it) a Commonwealth world. A large battle breaks out, and to prove that the Commonwealth is not one to be messed with, Dylan orders the planet's destruction via Nova Bomb.
• Hourglass Plot: In the Season 1 episode "Star-Crossed", the Balance of Judgment is an eco-terrorist zealot a few fries short of a Happy Meal and his android avatar Gabriel is a reasonable guy unfortunately chained by programming to the directives of the aforementioned. When the Balance's AI reappears in Season 3, the Andromeda is able to talk him into a Heel–Face Turn, but now his new avatar Remiel remains evil and has to be stopped.
• Humans Are Special: A.I.s are horrible at guessing, which makes humans and other organic lifeforms are far better at slipstream navigation. Also, ship A.I.s seem to make poor commanders, anf are more effective in combat when working with a crew.
  • Averted partly when the AI Ryan is given command of... well, himself, aka the Wrath of Achilles.
  • Also averted in that it's not humans in particular: it's ALL biological sentient beings, supposedly due to "something having to do with collapsing quantum wave fronts." It is, however, noted that an AI can navigate the slipstream if they have biological intuition... even if that intuition comes from harvested brains in a jar attached to the computer system.
• Humongous Mecha: Planetary Defense Bots. Andromeda has two of them nicknamed "Tweedle-dee" and "Tweedle-dum".
• Hunter of His Own Kind: The Balance of Judgment and his followers, the Restorians, hunt down spaceships because they believe space travel leads to the destruction of indigenous cultures and ecosystems. The irony of the facts that they have to use slipstream to find ships to destroy and that the Balance is himself a sentient ship seems to be lost on them.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The Slipstream is not scary in the sense of horror, but it's scary in the sense that it's a highly complex, ever-shifting maze with only a few Hyperspace Lanes being permanent routes and most everything else requiring intuition (which is why humans are so good at navigating unlike any given AI). Things become really scary when one eventually gets lost, which happens at least once to the Andromeda.
• Hyperspace Lanes: Several star systems are strategically important because you need to travel through them on your way from one slipstream to another. Just the place to lay in ambush, or place a BFG IN SPACE!
  • In one episode, they're trying to get to Tarn Vedra (the lost capital planet of the old Commonwealth) by following a ridiculously complicated sequence of slipstream routes. Several of the steps are jumps between different galaxies! The lanes were purposefully scrambled this way to keep away the Nietzscheans after the Commonwealth lost the war.
• Hypocrisy Nod: The Wayist in "The Devil Takes The Hindmost" who is trying to stop a gentle, innocent people with Genetic Memory from having to kill in order to defend themselves against slavers, acknowledges the hypocrisy of asking Dylan to kill the enemy for him with Andromeda... Unfortunately, he has a point: if even one of these people kills, then their children will be born dealing with the guilt and memory of killing someone, tainting their immature and unformed minds from the very moment they come into the world for generations onwards until their genetic line dies out, whereas the crew don't have that problem.
• I Am X, Son of Y: The Nietzscheans will give their given name, family name, name of pride, and name of both parents when introducing themselves formally. For example: "I am Tyr Anasazi of Kodiak Pride, out of Victoria by Barbarosa." Considering the importance of lineage to the Nietzscheans, this makes sense.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: In "The Knight, Death, and the Devil", Michael Hurst (previously Iolaus) plays Ryan the AI.
• Identical Grandson: "Genetic reincarnation" is a proven phenomenon for Nietzscheans due to their low genetic diversity (the original Nietzschean population was only about 8000, the Nietzscheans deliberately stripped their genome of a large number of "genetic defects" such as haemophilia and predispositions for diabetes and various cancers, thus reducing the number of genes they have, and they breed for a very specific set of traits). Telemachus Rhade is played by the same actor as his ancestor Gaheris Rhade, and Tyr's son was apparently the reincarnation of the first Nietzschean (and therefore their Messiah) Drago Museveni. It's lampshaded that the odds of this are still in the trillions even with fewer genes, but since there are trillions of Nietzscheans (with more being born every day) it still happens often enough.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: Invoked in "All Great Neptune's Ocean" when Tyr is accused of killing a visiting leader who once caused the death of several Nietzscheans; Tyr defends himself to Dylan by pointing out all the ways that he could have killed the man without attracting suspicion to himself as evidence that he didn't (according to available data) just shoot the man with his force-lance.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Justified and lampshaded in an episode where it is revealed that most small arms ammunition are smart bullets whose guidance system is jammed by man portable jammers, causing them to miss.
  Gerentex: Why am I the only one who seems to attract bullets?
• Implacable Android: Rommie, Andromeda's humanoid avatar, is nearly indestructible and incredibly strong, which she often demonstrates by simply walking through scores of Mooks and tossing them aside like ragdolls.
• Immigrant Patriotism: Although human, Dylan is far more concerned with Tarn Vedra, the homeworld of the Vedran species and capital of the All Systems Commonwealth, where he was born, than with the Earth. In fact, Harper is the only crewmember who cares about Earth much. At least until Dylan's speech about Earth representing what they're fighting for in the series finale (shortly before it's blown up), but Season 5 was full of Series Continuity Errors.
• Inappropriately Close Comrades: Rules against this apply not only to people but, apparently, to warship AIs.
• Informed Ability: Despite being lauded as a tactical genius, Drago-Kazov Fleet Marshall Cuchulian Nez Perce sure gets his ass handed to him by Dylan and company. Twice.
• Infinite Supplies: subverted in that despite the huge supplies of military arsenals the Andromeda Ascendant can fit in storage (keeping in mind she was fully stocked at the beginning of the pilot and she is a huge ship), a lot of episodes deal with the crew trying to salvage parts and supplies for her. It is mentioned, though, that as long as they can get a supply of the raw materials, Andromeda can manufacture or repair quite a lot of weapons tech etc. It's usually delicate and highly complicated parts of ship hardware that they have to find.
• Instrumental Theme Tune
• Interfaith Smoothie: Wayism is a religion that seeks to blend all the good bits of the religions that came before it. Rev Bem is a cleric of Wayism, and the religion was founded by another redeemed Magog.
• Kaleidoscope Hair: Beka has nanomachines that can change her hair to any color she wants.
• Killed Off for Real: Tyr Anasazi.
• Knight Templar: The Templars are a remnant of the High Guard dedicated to taking down the Nietzscheans and restoring the Commonwealth, the Knights of Genetic Purity were a more extreme splinter faction that believed genetic engineering itself was evil.
• Lady of War: Rommie. Being an avatar of a heavy cruiser counts doesn't it?
• Large Ham: Tyr, and, to a lesser extent, Dylan and Harper.
  • Definitely not all the time. Just when they feel especially diabolical, idealistic or enthusiastic, respectively.
  • As for guest characters, there's Bartolome Naz.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Tyr Anasazi in an episode in Season One. Subverted in that it's not natural in the least—it's the result of infection by nanobots designed to scramble memory systems, both biological and electronic.
• Last-Name Basis: Harper.
• Literary Allusion Title:
  • An improbable number of episodes were named after lines from W. B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming". Some examples: "The Widening Gyre"; "Pitiless as the Sun"; "Its Hour Come 'Round at Last".
  • In general episode titles were influenced by literature, such as "The Pearls That Were His Eyes" (Shakespeare), "To Loose the Fateful Lightning" (Julia Ward Howe), and "Fear and Loathing in the Milky Way" (Hunter S. Thompson).
  • The Bard on Board: "Star-Crossed" has a tragic love affair between Rommie and the avatar of an enemy ship. It ends about as well as it does for Romeo and Juliet, and Rommie begs Dylan to have her dismantled.

M-R

• Made of Explodium: That command bridge is a fireworks display and a jarring violation of all worker safety protocols, for crying out loud!
• The Man Behind the Man
• Mathematician's Answer: Trance likes providing these.
  Dylan Hunt: Are you dead or alive?
  Trance Gemini: Yes.
  Dylan Hunt: Crystal clear as usual.
• Matrix Raining Code
• Meaningful Name: Beka's ship, Eureka Maru. "Eureka" is Greek for "I have found (it)"; "maru" is a word traditionally appended to the names of Japanese merchant ships. Prior to finding the Andromeda Ascendant, the Maru's crew had attempted to find several other derelict Glorious Heritage Class ships with no success and frequently did odd jobs, which included transporting cargo.
• The Milky Way Is the Only Way: Averted. The Commonwealth spanned the Andromeda, Milky Way and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies, with the capital Tarn Vedra situated in Andromeda.
• Morton's Fork: Invoked when Andromeda finds itself in the past prior to the Battle of Witchhead Nebula and is faced with the possibility that he could change history to save the Commonwealth or allow the Nietzscheans to form their planned government, as the Nietzscheans' planned empire might be able to protect other worlds from later Magog attacks where the Commonwealth is now too weak even if they didn't collapse after this battle. Talking with Rev Bem about his options, Dylan observes that Magog assaults on planets are devastating but they always left the worlds alone after the initial attack, where worlds controlled by Nietzscheans could endure long-term enslavement; both were horrible in their own way, but Dylan questions whether either would be 'better'.
• Most Writers Are Human: While the Commonwealth consisted of many, many species, humans are apparently the most populous of them. The background information specifically notes humans as among the most prolific breeders and colonizers, as well as the source of most androids and genetically-engineered spin-offs like Nietzscheans.
  • Humans seem to have been the most widespread because they were easy to engineer (or no one cared enough to stop them) and pretty much anywhere that life could exist, there is an engineered form of humanity to plunder it. From high gravity worlds to under the sea, humanity is all up in nature's face eating her resources.
• Mr. Fanservice: Tyr Anasazi.
• Muggle Power: The Knights of Genetic Purity (GenKnights for short), who oppose and hunt down human genetic variants such as Nietzscheans, although it is noted that even Dylan and Beka would qualify under the Knights' rule because they have genetic augumentations themselves (Dylan's mother was from a high-gravity planet and Beka's father augmented her with enhanced reflexes).
• Multiple-Choice Future: Trance Gemini can see multiple timelines and pick the best one possible. One episode focused on her shows her reviewing different possibilities and rejecting them by pruning one of her plants.
• Mundane Utility: Beka Valentine's use of nanomachines for instant hair dye.
• My Skull Runneth Over: In "Harper 2.0", Harper had a database downloaded into his brain, via the computer port on his neck, and the information made him super smart, and also kind of crazy. Besides speaking dozens of different languages and being terrified of Rev, Harper began and abandoned dozens of projects.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Nietzscheans tend to give themselves names that are Badass Boasts, like ethnic groups with a warlike reputation (Sabra), military leaders (Guderian) or even War Gods(Tyr).
  • Three Magog names we've heard are Blood Mist, Red Plague (Rev. Bem's real name) and Bilethroat. Even the name "Magog" itself is one with its Biblical connotations.
  • The Siege Perilous class destroyers like the Balance of Judgment were designed for one purpose.
    Beka Valentine: Sounds friendly.
    Dylan Hunt: They weren't really going for friendly.
• National Weapon: The force lance for the Systems Commonwealth, to the point that the Commonwealth calls its ground troops Lancers.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The slipstream system in general, although the black hole he got trapped in is a more conventional example.
• Negatives as a Positive: When the Sabra-Jaguar pride wanted to join the New Commonwealth, their leader used this trope to make his pitch.
  Charlemagne: Here are the three biggest reasons why you shouldn't let us join: we are renowned for our treachery, we're at war with the Drago-Kazov pride, and we will constantly remind you of your genetic inferiority. Now, here are the three biggest reasons why you should let us join: we are renowned for our treachery, we're at war with the Drago-Kazov pride, and did I mention we command the third largest army in existence.
• Never My Fault: In "Forced Perspective", Dylan confronts Venetri, a planetary ruler who came to power because of his actions; Venetri became a dictator because he had to forcibly take power after the collapse of the Systems Commonwealth prevented anyone coming to help him rebuild, but he blames Dylan for everything he had to do rather than accept that Dylan had good intentions that just didn't work out for reasons outside of his control.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Harper, when Andromeda has a secure protected file or copy of herself that even she doesn't know about, that was obviously secured and hidden for a reason, why do you keep trying to access it?
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Tyr and the rest of the Nietzscheans.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Although Harper is said to be from Boston, Gordon Michael Woolvett delivers all his lines in his regular Canadian accent.
  • It is possible that, in the far future, people from Boston 'may' speak with a 'Canadian' Accent.
• Obfuscated Interface: There's a written language that is nothing like English that goes along with all of its displays, signs, and even "Happy Anniversary" banners. This makes it even harder to understand the common shots of tactical displays.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Purple Trance often uses a "Naive Girl" routine to fool antagonists.
• Obstructionist Pacifist: An episode involves Dylan and his crew trying to save a pacifist colony from Space Pirates. When one of the pacifists deliberately blows up the crate of Smart Lances that the crew brought along (and he justifies it as better off dying than allowing the colony to be "tainted" with violence), Dylan has to do a Training the Peaceful Villagers montage and play guerrilla. More justified than most examples; the colonists have perfect genetic memory, and all children born after the battle will remember the act and emotions of killing from birth.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Rev Bem. His full name, "Brother Behemial Fartraveller" is a bit of a mouthful. His birth name is Red Plague.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: The Vedrans are quadrupeds with humanoid torsos and arms. Only one is depicted in the series, but their quadrupedal nature is frequently mentioned, their family units are called "herds" and the bridges of Glorious Heritage Class cruisers like the Andromeda Ascendant (ships designed by the Vedrans themselves) are clearly designed to accommodate a race with four legs.
  Seamus Harper: Watch your step here; the ramps can be a little tricky, but we kept it as part of the original Vedran charm.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Whenever Tyr the Nietzschean stops his deadpan delivery, you know something's up.
  • In "To Loose the Fateful Lightning" when Dylan gives the order to get rid of a few dozen nova bombs, Tyr yells a Big "WHAT?!".
• People in Rubber Suits: Than-Thre-Kull, Magog, Ogami.
• Perfect Pacifist People: On two seperate ocassions, the crew of the Andromeda ran into cultures who refuse to reort to violence, even when the alternative was being wiped out.
• Planet Spaceship: The Magog come from worlds (yes, that's plural—twenty of them) locked together in some kind of structure. The whole thing is mobile, and even contains an artificial sun! Oh, and it can survive having its sun blown up by a Nova Bomb.
• Plot Hole: At the end of Season 1 Rev Bem gets outed as an infiltrator among other Magog because he refuses to partake in a gang's kill. Early in Season 2 an episode's drama is built around the fact that as a Magag he physically can not eat anything hasn't just killed himself.
• Pocket Rocket Launcher: The High Guard's force lances carry a set of micro-drones that can be used as homing kinetic missiles or intercepting other projectiles.
• Possessing a Dead Body: In the episode "Dance of the Mayflies", the Andromeda crew discover a plague that reanimates the corpses of the people it kills as zombies. It's able to possess Trance immediately, leading Dylan to question whether she was really alive to begin with (foreshadowing later developments).
• Punch-Clock Villain: Beka refers to Nietzschean slavers as "9 to 5 bad guys."
• Radio Silence: At one point Dylan sends a message to Tyr, telling him he's going to render assistance, and to maintain radio silence, so nearby Drago-Kazov can't find him. Tyr says "acknowledged" over the radio, thus giving away his position. Thing is, Tyr wanted the Drago-Kazov to open fire on his position.
• Rape as Drama: Harper gets a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong from the Magog, getting the young'uns out without killing their host requires a Polarity Reversal.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Due to Brent Stait's inability to endure his heavy makeup for long periods, his character, Rev Bem, got a less prominent role, and was finally Put on a Bus. Lexa Doig's pregnancy was one of the reasons for Rommie's absence in early season 5.
• Recap Episode: Especially during the fourth season. Christ.
• The Remnant: Dylan Hunt is this for a while; trying to restart the Commonwealth despite being the last soldier of the High Guard in existence.
• Replaced with Replica: One episode had the Andromeda crew attempting to negotiate for the return to the Than of an artifact called the Hegemon's Heart. Since they were doubtful they could persuade its current owner to return it through negotiation, Dylan authorizes a mission to steal the Heart and replace it with a fake they'd engineered. When trying to access the map the heart was supposed to have at its core, Beka realizes the heart they'd stolen is itself a fake and the real one is in possession of an old lover of hers, who was supposed to be protecting the thing in the first place.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Villified: "Forced Perspective" is a complex meditation of this, as Dylan is confronted with the results of his actions on a planet ruled by a brutal dictatorship before the fall of the Commonwealth; the Accidental Murder of an Asshole Victim dictator. The guy had it coming as dictators often do, but in the chaos following his death a new dictator arose — one who originally tried to rule benevolently, but was driven to even worse crimes by constant coup attempts, assassinations and terrorist attacks. The lesson that Trance is pushing the entire episode is that in the chaotic nature of the universe control is an illusion and all we can do is control our own intentions, especially when justice and the fate of a people are concerned. This time, Dylan refuses to take the simple Just Shoot Him route in favor of forcing him to officially turn power over to his Senate, include the dissident factions into his government, then resign. The new dictator is thus becomes a Karma Houdini — unpunished for his crimes of oppression and despotism that needed to be brought to justice — but the point is the difference between revenge and justice; revenge punishes cruelty, but justice ends it, even at the expense of punishment.
  Dylan: ...violent action breeds violent men and I think Mobius has had its fill of violent men, don't you?
• Revised Ending: Sort of. The original series developer, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, wrote a non-canon (technically Fan Fic) one-act-play of an outline, entitled "Coda" (warning, PDF) showing how he envisioned the series to play out past the point of his departure. It takes place during the warped time incident of "Ouroboros" with Trance explaining things to a possible version of Harper, and the whole Seefra plot of Season 5 is dismissed by her as an unlikely timeline.
• A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma: Seamus calls Trance "an enigma wrapped in a riddle with a tail in the middle."
• Ridiculously Human Robots
  • Rommie has mixed feelings about discovering that Harper engineered her humanoid body with "certain features" (if you know what we mean) which, strictly speaking, aren't necessary for her normal operations, and asks whether he used gloves while handling said parts. Harper assures her that he made her android body anatomically correct simply so that she could have the full range of human experiences if she wanted to.
  • Doyle was designed to pass as human and programmed to believe she was human, when one of her hands is damaged in Decay of the Angel, she sees the white superconductor fluid as red blood.
  • Carter, in "All Too Human", managed to get a job in the security forces of the android-hating world of Machen Alpha. Which, being an Atoner from the old android-ruled regime, he uses to hunt other androids.
• Rising Empire: The new Systems Commonwealth.
• Robosexual: Strictly speaking, High Guard captains are discouraged from having romantic relationships with their ship avatars, with "The Mathematics of Tears" revealing why this is a bad idea, when the ship's avatar of the Pax Magellanic destroys the planet her crew was on after her captain/lover orders her to wipe herself rather than be captured during a losing battle, because rather than maintaining her military professionalism she interpreted this as a betrayal of their relationship.
• Robot Buddy
• Robots Enslaving Robots: The Consensus of Parts. Also, the Balance of Judgment restrictively controlled his rebellious android avatar Gabriel, whom he tried to take over with a virus when his ship-self was destroyed in battle.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Perseids, technically rubber chin.

S-Z

• Sapient Ship: Andromeda and the other Commonwealth vessels, while not biological, are capable of emotion and treated by their captains and crews as living persons.
• Series Continuity Error: In Season 5, the battle where Dylan and Andromeda were stuck near a black hole in the series pilot is referred to as the Battle of Witchhead, when it was actually the Battle of Hephaistos, and the Battle of Witchhead was the one the crew time-travelled to in a later Season 1 episode. Unfortunately, this isn't all that surprising, given that fans near-universally agree Season 5 was the ur-example of seasonal rot.
• Sexual Euphemism: Beka and Harper call out Rommie on her opportunity to "interface" with another sentient android.
• Shout-Out: At least Once an Episode.
  • In the very first episode, Harper compares Dylan Hunt to a Greek god.
  • When hailing the others over the radio, Harper imitates the boatswain's whistle.
  • The Knights of Genetic Purity were lifted directly out of the classic role-playing game Gamma World.
  • Also, Seamus Zelazny Harper.
  • The crew of the Bellerophon had red, blue, and gold uniforms.
  • Johann Fletcher and Flux.
  • Just about all of the drifts or space stations seen, when you look closely, have the saucer of the Enterprise D as their foundation.
• Smart Gun: Many of the firearms and lances featured autonomous features such as Homing Projectiles.
• The Social Darwinist: All Nietzscheans, even the "good" ones.
• So Proud of You: In "The Fair Unknown," the crew meets a Vedran admiral, the first time anyone has seen the legendary race since the fall of the Commonwealth. At the end of the episode, she tells Dylan that the Vedrans are well aware of his efforts to restore the Commonwealth and they're very proud of him.
• Sound-Effect Bleep
• Spaceship Girl: All of the larger Commonwealth warships have A.I.s and many of them have robotic avatars. Many cultures prefer female avatars for their ships (though avatars are not exclusively female).
• Spoiler Opening: The pilot contains the opening sequence, which was a bad call since at the point where it plays, the Andromeda hasn't even gotten caught in the gravity well of the black hole yet.
• Spot the Imposter
• Star-Crossed Lovers:
  • The episode where Rommie has a romance with fellow android Gabriel, whom she has to kill to prevent him from being taken over by his ship-self the Balance of Judgment after the ship body is destroyed, is literally called "Star-Crossed". Conversely, their actors Lexa Doig and Michael Shanks, who met while filming this episode, are married to this day.
  • Dylan is separated from his fiancée Sara after being trapped in time by the effect of the black hole. In a later episode of Season 1, they manage to communicate across time but not to reunite physically and Dylan tells her to move on with her life without him. In Season 2, the crew finds that she took his advice, and helped found a hidden planet where Commonwealth culture is still intact, and she has descendants.
• Stealth Pun: The resident Magog priest, Behemiel Fartraveler, is most often called "Rev Bem"; in real life, BEM stands for "Bug-Eyed Monster".
• Stock Footage: The same space battle shots are re-used over and over. This creates a number of minor continuity errors, since the limited pool of "minor power ships fighting each other" shots means that a race's distinctive ships will frequently be swapped out for the ships of their enemies between episodes.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Vedrans. They are between a solid type 1 to borderline type 2 on the Kardashev scale; they created multiple artificial suns. Not only that, but they have mastered the ability to tesseract and move between dimensions. Their evolved counterparts, the Paradine can time travel at will without any technological assistance.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Rhade for Tyr.
  • Doyle for Rommie. And odd example in that Lexa Doig, the actress who played Rommie, remained with the show as Andromeda's AI.
• Talking to Themself: Andromeda/Rommie occasionally has debates between her humanoid avatar and herself. Sometimes she loses.
• Temple of Doom: The temple in In Heaven Now Are Three.
• Temporal Suicide: In the episode "The Unconquerable Man", a future version of Dylan Hunt's treacherous first officer Gaheris Rhade — having come to regret this role in overthrowing the Commonwealth, and learned that Dylan, not he, is the right person to restore it — travels back in time, kills his younger self and takes his place. He then throws the fight with Dylan which he originally won, thus allowing the events of the series to date to occur.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Justified. Compared to the original crew complement of 4500 people on board, as it stands, the current skeleton crew operating Andromeda is (usually) just 6. However, getting a full compliment later on did nothing to stop this
• Theme Naming: Commonwealth ships often have names like Salient Debate or Continuation of Politics.
  • Which in itself is a Shout-Out to the Culture novels.
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: From Season 1's Fear and Loathing in the Milky Way:
  Gerentex: There are two kinds of people in this universe, Mr. Harper. The kind with loaded guns and the kind who open doors. You open doors.
• Time Abyss: Trance is the avatar of a sun. Other stellar objects also have avatars, all with memories as old as the celestial objects they represent.
• Time Travel: Frequently.
• Time for Plan B
• Tomato in the Mirror: Doyle. She's fine once she gets over the initial shock.
• Too Dumb to Live: In "Immaculate Perception" Tyr says sending the DNA of Tamerlane Anasazi for comparision with Drago Museveni's could not be kept a secret. He says that he is leaving with his son and wife while the rest of the pride can perish from it's stupidity. He invokes it himself in the same episode by acknowledging a "whatever you do don't send a message" message, although that was intentional.
  • Tyr tells a story about a previous employer who had him functioning as combined bodyguard, personal assassin, and chef. Then the idiot decided that actually paying him for his work was optional, and it goes like you'd expect from there.
• Trail of Bread Crumbs: Seamus Harper leaves one behind the Eureka Maru in the pilot episode.
• Troubled, but Cute: The entire crew of the Andromeda Ascendant has checkered pasts.
• Used Future: Averted with the Andromeda Ascendant and her sister Glorious Heritage Class ships; played straight with the Eureka Maru and other modern cargo ships.
• Vehicle Title
• Vestigial Empire: The Systems Commonwealth, which once spanned a million worlds in three galaxies, is now reduced to a single ship and a few out-of-the-way Cargo Cult Colonies.
  • The Nietzschean Empire shattered in a big way after Witchhead, with the separate prides going their own way. Large prides like Drago-Kazov and Sabra-Jaguar are still significant intergalactic power-players, but in general the Nietzscheans spend more time jockeying among themselves for power, resources and mating rights than doing anything else. Besides, even if a single leader could re-unite the Nietzscheans, a resurrected Nietzschean Empire would still be a far cry from the force that shattered the Systems Commonwealth.
• Villainous Lineage: The prison colony in "A Rose in the Ashes" even keeps the inmates' children locked up on the grounds that the society reasons they are genetically predisposed to crime, so keeping them locked up is justified by the government as keeping potential criminals contained.
• Waif Prophet: Trance Gemini.
• We Will All Be History Buffs in the Future: It takes place around the year 5167, and after three centuries of war and barbarism in which most of intergalactic civilization has regressed to savagery. They still seem to be familiar with every aspect of our culture, from Pac-Man to garage sales to Richard Wagner. Bear in mind, these things would be as old to them as the Trojan War is to us.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: Nova bombs.
• Weaponized Exhaust: The Bellerophon lacks any conventional weapons (it was built in the 22nd century, before humans knew of the existence of aliens). Instead, she uses its massive fusion drive to vaporize enemy ships before accelerating away. However, this use of the engines rapidly drains the ship's gas supply.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When the New Commonwealth kicked Captain Hunt out they listed several from over the course of the show. It was played like a biased kangaroo court, but most of them were genuine atrocities he had committed that the show had earlier glossed over.
  • Dylan returning to Andromeda to mope that he had accidentally given children access to 80 Nova Bombs in To Loose a Fateful Lightning instead of ordering them to stand down and surrender control over the weapons to Andromeda. Keep in mind, at this point Dylan knows they revere him as "The High Guard" and would likely easily have done so. Instead, his inaction causes one heavily populated neighbouring system to be destroyed and only narrowly averts them doing similar kamikaze runs with the rest of the arsenal.
• Will They or Won't They?: Beka and Tyr — never a relationship, though they did do each other. Twice.
  • In an alternate timeline which may have been the original timeline, she did enter into a relationship with a Nietzschean... namely, Gaheris Rhade.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Dylan is a master of this.
  • Tyr was able to play at almost the same level in the first season and a half, very nearly defeating Dylan a few times before switching sides at the last minute. This peaked in the episode The Prince where both reached heights they never had before and never would again by working together on such a project. After the original creator "left", Tyr suffered a horrible case of Badass Decay and quickly became a more straight-forward villain type.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: The series starts out as this with Dylan Hunt and the Andromeda Ascendant having been stuck near the event horizon of a black hole for 300 years, but only a few minutes took place on board.

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