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Andromeda - Season 4 Collection 5
Here's the moment of truth. Are you watching Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda for what you keep hoping is going to be an interesting story arc, or are you watching it for the campy action sequences? If it's the former, I have to tell you, it's time to get off the merry-go-round, because it just keeps spinning round and round without ever going anywhere worthwhile. It's only you're looking for cartoony mind candy that Andromeda: Season 4 Collection 5 is worth viewing.
Some of the earlier sets in this season were actually relatively watchable (Collection 2 and Collection 3 were passable), but that charm evaporates in the five alternately laughable and pretentious episodes in the fifth, and final, volume of the season.
"Trusting the Gordian Maze" gives us a gorgeous spy who's sent to pick up the Star Map; instead of handing it over right away, Dylan takes her to where he claims the only copy is located, a planet that's surrounded by an almost impenetrable maze. Oh, and once they're on the planet, they have to make their way through another maze. There's the predictable can-we-trust-one-another scenes and hidden-agenda scenes, liberally sprinkled with some really awful attempts at comedy. Ouch.
"A Symmetry of Imperfection" will be entertaining if you particularly like the character of Rommie, as it sets up a conflict between her developing emotional state and her AI core processes. Despite the hokey plot (Oh no! Will the Andromeda be destroyed by the Magog while Rommie is out of commission?) it's not badly handled overall.
The same can't be said for "Time out of Mind." The premise sounds OK on the surface: agents of the Abyss come to find the hidden library of the True Collectors, and it turns out that Beka has an important key. But there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip, and in the case of this episode, it degenerates into a string of unexplained events capped with a deus ex machina (perhaps better described as a machina ex machina, really) that's badly explained even by technobabble standards.
I can't say as I was impressed with the two-part season finale, either. "The Dissonant Interval" parts 1 and 2 finally give us the promised showdown with the Magog world ship, but it's all sound and fury, signifying nothing. After a lot of hand-to-hand combat and spaceship dogfighting, we get a conclusion to the Magog threat and the Andromeda season, all wrapped up in one package. For those viewers who haven't seen the episodes in question (and are still motivated to do so), I won't spoil what happens, but... it would be a decent way to wrap up the whole Andromeda series, if it weren't so lame in its execution. Sorry, but the characters have been just too cartoony; I haven't really been attached to any of them since the end of Season 1, to be honest. Well, I actually liked Harper a reasonable amount (Gordon Michael Woolvett seems to be the only one who managed to maintain a natural feel to his character despite the hokey plots), but the others were a disappointment.
To make matters worse, knowing the existence of a Season 5 renders the finale of Season 4 about as weak as it can be. It has "upcoming reset button" stamped all over it in big, red letters. The only question is exactly what form the reset will take, and whether things will be handled differently. Personally, I'd be interested in seeing a reset button that took us all the way back to the start of Season 2 and handled the story in the mature and dramatic way that it could have been handled, but let's face it: that's not going to happen. Not with the secret godlike nature of Captain Dylan Hunt being pulled out of hat here, as if he weren't enough of a cardboard action already!
The DVD
Andromeda: Season 4 Collection 5 is a two-disc set, packaged in a double-wide plastic keepcase. It contains the last five episodes of Season 4, numbers 418-422.
Video
I noted in my earlier reviews of installments in this season that the image quality wasn't up to the high standards of the first few seasons, and that's a trend that continues here. In fact, it's even more noticeable. While the image is still perfectly clean and appears free of edge enhancement, it's also noticeably grainy, even in indoor shots. Some of the shots that move from CGI to live action in a single sequence are actually visibly bad-looking, with very heavy grain, and the opening text looks shimmery. On the bright side, it's presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1), which does make for a pleasing experience.
Audio
The Dolby 2.0 soundtrack is adequate, but I noticed in this set that it often sounded a bit flat. Dialogue is clear and presentable, but the overall effect is not very impressive for a show that relies on its action sequences to impress the viewers.
Extras
The assortment of special features here is fairly typical. Disc 1 has a ten-minute featurette on Jorge Montesi, the director of "Trusting the Gordian Maze," a storyboard/scene comparison for "A Symmetry of Imperfection" (2 minutes), and one deleted scene for "A Symmetry of Imperfection." For minor material on this disc, there's also three minutes of "Kevin Sorbo's Bloopers and Gags," which I found rather insufferable, and text character biographies of Rommie and Telemachus.
Disc 2 has two sets of bloopers, one from Steve Bacic, and the other (a genuinely funny one) from various guest stars, running two minutes each. Deleted scenes and an alternate ending for "The Dissonant Interval" add up to about seven minutes of footage, and we also get a short storyboard/scene comparison for "The Dissonant Interval: Part 2." A nine-minute segment called "Season 4 Visual Effects: From Concept to Completion" is not a featurette, but rather a video image/clip gallery that compares concept art to the final version for a handful of special effects. Text cast biographies of Lexa Doig and Steve Bacic are also included.
TV promos for all the episodes, and ADV previews, are also included on each disc.
Final thoughts
About the only reason to pick up this collection is if you're completing your Andromeda: Season 4 collection. The watchable:awful ration is rather low, and I'm not impressed with the season finale. The image and sound quality have also taken a turn for the worse; the DVD still looks fine, but it's not the dazzling quality I'd come to expect. Skip it.
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