Apr. 3rd, 2012 07:06 pm
pessimism is not a survival trait
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chicafrom3So it's season-one-love month over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
andromeda_fans and because I am a loser slacker lurker most of the time I am determined to contribute at least something this time.
I kind of want to do this for all of season one, but I doubt I have the attention span and my willpower would probably give out somewhere around "Music of a Distant Drum" or "Sum of Its Parts".
In any case, for now, I give you ... Under The Night, a picspam/review/gushfest, but most of all a study in exposition and worldbuilding.
Caps from andromeda-web.com.
I honestly think this episode is one of the best TV pilots existing, for many reasons -- it handles exposition cleanly and efficiently, it introduces the characters memorably, and it, along with An Affirming Flame, sets up both the universe in general and the show's scope in particular. It does everything a pilot should do, and it does it extremely well.
It also does this other thing that I love that almost never happens in TV pilots.
What that thing is: It spends the first half of the episode setting up an *entirely different show*.
It starts off as being something much closer in tone to Star Trek. Meet Captain Dylan Hunt of the Systems Commonwealth. Meet his ship, the Andromeda Ascendant. Meet his crew -- Thompson, the nervous rookie with something to prove; Rhade, the hard-edged first officer who secretly thinks higher of his crew than they know; Refractions of Dawn, the snarky alien pilot with a sense of humor. They roam the galaxies protecting the Commonwealth as part of the High Guard. They're military and proud of it but that doesn't mean uniform.
Oh, and then the writers go and kill most of them off and throw Dylan and Andromeda into a completely different show.
I love this so much. The only thing I can think of that's similar is the original (unfilmed) LOST pilot, where Jack would spend the first half being set up as the hero and main character and then get killed by the monster suddenly, abruptly shifting focus of the show to Kate. It's screwing with your audience -- not out of maliciousness but to reflect what the characters are going through; they didn't expect this to be their story, either.
Then we get some setup for the Eureka Maru show (which is a show I kind of wish we'd gotten). The first thing this does is set up, sharply, the differences between the High Guard past and the salvagers' present; where Andromeda is sleek and silver, her crew in uniforms, everything clean and orderly, the Maru is rusty, dingy, barely holding on, her crew dressed however the hell they feel like dressing, the crew spaces a mess of personal belongings. Plus, even in the most cast-crowded scenes on the Andromeda we still get shots of plenty of space and room, while in the Maru everyone's on top of one another. Showing instead of telling at its best ...
The characters get sketched out quickly but efficiently in their discussion of how to spend the money from the salvage job -- Harper wants girls, Beka wants to pay the bills, Rev wants to buy absolution, Trance evades the question.
More character exposition when they board the Andromeda -- Beka's all business, Trance is kind of a ditz, Harper is in love with a machine and makes contemporary-to-us Earth pop references (which is a meta I will write someday so help me). And Rev needs less protective gear than the rest of the crew, which isn't a character note so much as a worldbuilding note, but is still a nice touch.
In exploring the Andromeda, Trance finds plants (her reaction to the hydroponics garden is "oh, pretty" ♥), Beka finds Thompson's dead body, Rev finds planetary warfare bots. (And, again, there's the silent reminder of just how big Andromeda is in comparison to the Maru -- look at how small Trance and Rev seem in those shots ... )
Then we get Dylan and Andromeda's reactions to their invaders, and a bit more exposition on how different the new world is -- humans working with a Magog (does that mean we've progressed?) and Harper sick with a disease that was nearly extinct in their day (that definitely doesn't mean we've progressed).
This is a more clumsy bit of exposition, because the first scene is telling us something that we already know (raise your hand if you figured out the High Guard lost the war as soon as you saw the Maru!) and the second scene is Dylan and Rommie repeating facts they already know (yes, Dylan, I'm sure Rommie needs you to remind her how big the Commonwealth was), but it's necessary to get everyone on the same page, so I forgive them for now.
And then we get a semi-cliffhanger, with all Tyr-related exposition to be held off until the next episode.
All in all, I give Under The Night an A- for how it handles pilot-necessary exposition. Points are knocked off for the Dylan/Rhade fight (which ... I didn't cover here, but c'mon, that scene only really works in the context of The Unconquerable Man, Rhade spends it telling Dylan things he already knows), the Dylan/Harper scene, and the following Dylan/Rommie scene, but overall it does beautifully.
andromeda_fans and because I am a loser slacker lurker most of the time I am determined to contribute at least something this time.I kind of want to do this for all of season one, but I doubt I have the attention span and my willpower would probably give out somewhere around "Music of a Distant Drum" or "Sum of Its Parts".
In any case, for now, I give you ... Under The Night, a picspam/review/gushfest, but most of all a study in exposition and worldbuilding.
Caps from andromeda-web.com.
I honestly think this episode is one of the best TV pilots existing, for many reasons -- it handles exposition cleanly and efficiently, it introduces the characters memorably, and it, along with An Affirming Flame, sets up both the universe in general and the show's scope in particular. It does everything a pilot should do, and it does it extremely well.
It also does this other thing that I love that almost never happens in TV pilots.
What that thing is: It spends the first half of the episode setting up an *entirely different show*.
It starts off as being something much closer in tone to Star Trek. Meet Captain Dylan Hunt of the Systems Commonwealth. Meet his ship, the Andromeda Ascendant. Meet his crew -- Thompson, the nervous rookie with something to prove; Rhade, the hard-edged first officer who secretly thinks higher of his crew than they know; Refractions of Dawn, the snarky alien pilot with a sense of humor. They roam the galaxies protecting the Commonwealth as part of the High Guard. They're military and proud of it but that doesn't mean uniform.
Oh, and then the writers go and kill most of them off and throw Dylan and Andromeda into a completely different show.
I love this so much. The only thing I can think of that's similar is the original (unfilmed) LOST pilot, where Jack would spend the first half being set up as the hero and main character and then get killed by the monster suddenly, abruptly shifting focus of the show to Kate. It's screwing with your audience -- not out of maliciousness but to reflect what the characters are going through; they didn't expect this to be their story, either.
Then we get some setup for the Eureka Maru show (which is a show I kind of wish we'd gotten). The first thing this does is set up, sharply, the differences between the High Guard past and the salvagers' present; where Andromeda is sleek and silver, her crew in uniforms, everything clean and orderly, the Maru is rusty, dingy, barely holding on, her crew dressed however the hell they feel like dressing, the crew spaces a mess of personal belongings. Plus, even in the most cast-crowded scenes on the Andromeda we still get shots of plenty of space and room, while in the Maru everyone's on top of one another. Showing instead of telling at its best ...
The characters get sketched out quickly but efficiently in their discussion of how to spend the money from the salvage job -- Harper wants girls, Beka wants to pay the bills, Rev wants to buy absolution, Trance evades the question.
More character exposition when they board the Andromeda -- Beka's all business, Trance is kind of a ditz, Harper is in love with a machine and makes contemporary-to-us Earth pop references (which is a meta I will write someday so help me). And Rev needs less protective gear than the rest of the crew, which isn't a character note so much as a worldbuilding note, but is still a nice touch.
In exploring the Andromeda, Trance finds plants (her reaction to the hydroponics garden is "oh, pretty" ♥), Beka finds Thompson's dead body, Rev finds planetary warfare bots. (And, again, there's the silent reminder of just how big Andromeda is in comparison to the Maru -- look at how small Trance and Rev seem in those shots ... )
Then we get Dylan and Andromeda's reactions to their invaders, and a bit more exposition on how different the new world is -- humans working with a Magog (does that mean we've progressed?) and Harper sick with a disease that was nearly extinct in their day (that definitely doesn't mean we've progressed).
This is a more clumsy bit of exposition, because the first scene is telling us something that we already know (raise your hand if you figured out the High Guard lost the war as soon as you saw the Maru!) and the second scene is Dylan and Rommie repeating facts they already know (yes, Dylan, I'm sure Rommie needs you to remind her how big the Commonwealth was), but it's necessary to get everyone on the same page, so I forgive them for now.
And then we get a semi-cliffhanger, with all Tyr-related exposition to be held off until the next episode.
All in all, I give Under The Night an A- for how it handles pilot-necessary exposition. Points are knocked off for the Dylan/Rhade fight (which ... I didn't cover here, but c'mon, that scene only really works in the context of The Unconquerable Man, Rhade spends it telling Dylan things he already knows), the Dylan/Harper scene, and the following Dylan/Rommie scene, but overall it does beautifully.