While it's nothing exceptional, the third set of episodes from the third season of Andromeda shows that there's still some potential for entertaining stories in this action-adventure space opera. The four episodes included here offer four stand-alone adventures of Captain Dylan Hunt and his crew, now working more as agents for the Commonwealth than as founders of a new order.

The third set of episodes from Andromeda: Season 3 starts off on a strong note with "The Unconquerable Man." Here, a strange twist in time has altered a critical event just at the point when Dylan and the Andromeda Ascendant were falling into the black hole where they would lie for the next three hundred years... and the result is that Dylan's traitorous Nietzchean first officer, Gaheris, is the one who ends up in the role of savior of the Commonwealth. It's a nicely done episode, with an interesting what-if premise; while it does retrace story events that we've seen before, the episode moves along briskly, and it's interesting to see an alternate perspective on the same events. The story doesn't end up doing anything spectacular, but all in all it does stand out in the crowd of Andromeda's recent episodes: this is the kind of solid storytelling that Andromeda ought to be doing on a regular basis.

Incidentally, one of the interesting aspects of "The Unconquerable Man" is that its "story world," with the conflicted Nietzchean at the helm, and things definitely not going his way, offers a considerably darker and edgier vision of the Andromeda story... and this darker version has considerably more substance and dramatic punch than the real thing, with Dylan Hunt, the White-Bread Good Guy Hero. But this clearly could never have been... not with Andromeda having been designed by Gene Roddenberry. "Dark," "edgy," and "Gene Roddenberry" just don't fit in the same picture.

The second most interesting episode here is the third one, "The Dark Backward." Here the story focuses on Trance, who (surprisingly) has ended up being my favorite character on the show. Here we get an inside view of Trance's awareness of "possible futures" as she desperately tries to figure out a way to deal with an alien invader on the Andromeda. The episode gets high marks for developing Trance's mysterious ability, and for taking a somewhat original approach to telling the story; unfortunately, the plot has some generous-sized holes in it, and the ending shuffles some of the mysterious elements off-stage as if to get them out of sight before the audience starts asking too many questions. At least it's a memorable episode.

The second and fourth episodes fall more into the "standard action adventure" plot. "Delenda Est" has the Andromeda under attack by a invisible adversaries who are trying to take over the ship. (Does anyone else wonder how an impressive-looking warship like Andromeda can have such lousy defenses? At least on Star Trek the writers had to think up ways to get invaders past the shields; in Andromeda, they seem to just walk in the front door.) "The Risk All Point" offers a slightly more interesting story: a newly commissioned High Guard ship is destroyed, and the Eureka Maru is the only vessel around who can pick up the survivors in the escape pods. The only problem is that Dylan believes the ship was sabotaged... so the saboteur is out there in one of the pods. Though the atmosphere of "Whom can we trust?" isn't exploited fully, and a few plot holes appear toward the end, all in all this is a reasonably entertaining episode.

The DVD

Andromeda: Season 3 Volume 3 is a two-disc set, packaged in a double-wide keepcase. It contains episodes 310-313.

Video

Andromeda: Season 3 Volume 3 offers a transfer that's pretty close to perfect. The widescreen 1.85:1 image is anamorphically enhanced, and shows a delightfully crisp and detailed image, with rich colors and natural skin tones. Dark scenes look excellent as well; I didn't notice any of the grain that I commented on in earlier volumes. The print is sparklingly clean as well.

Audio

Andromeda's Dolby 2.0 track continues to offer satisfactory clarity and a pleasing, natural sound. The action sequences don't sound as impressive as they could with more surround sound, but overall it's a solid soundtrack.

Extras

Two featurettes are included. Disc 1 has "Meet the Cast: Lisa Ryder," which is a 15-minute interview segment with Ryder, in which she mainly sticks with talking about her character. The liberal use of clips from the show make this more light-weight than it could have been. Disc 2 has a more interesting piece: the 13-minute "Behind the Scenes: Production Design," which features production designer Richard Lewis talking about how he creates different aspects of Andromeda's fictional world.

The minor special features include two "Design Gallery" segments with sketches and concept art, totaling a little over two minutes; TV promotional segments for all the episodes; ADV previews; and the two-minute "Laura Bertram's Gags and Bloopers," in which Bertram shows how making funny faces at the camera, and flubbing lines, may be funny on the set but doesn't translate well to DVD.

The menus have been simplified from earlier seasons, and are much more user-friendly; in fact, they're quite straightforward and easy to navigate.

Final thoughts

Andromeda Season 3 Volume 3 offers a reasonable selection of episodes for Andromeda fans; it's probably the best collection thus far in Season 3. There's not a whole lot of repeat viewing value here, so I won't recommend a purchase except for die-hard fans (who will be very pleased with the transfer), but it's a decent rental choice for viewers who've enjoyed some of Andromeda's previous episodes. Rent it.