Roddenberry's dreams
One of the things I've been doing to keep me from totally vegetating has been watching Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.
Cathy sent me copies of the first 18 episodes years ago on video tape, but when I found that the whole series is now (and at an affordable price) available on DVD I started watching from the start. I'm working my way through season 2 just now.
The thing about this series is that it has it's creator's mark all over it. The basic premise is...
Captain Dylan Hunt is captain of the star ship Andromeda Ascendant. The ship was one of many in the Systems Commonwealth military. When the Nietzcheans turned against the Commonwealth and went to war, Andromeda and Dylan became trapped on the edge of a black hole, frozen in time for three hundred years. Three hundred years later, the Commonwealth has fallen and salvager Beka Valentine, captain of the Eureka Maru rescue the ship. Dylan finds the universe very different from the one he left. It is a chaotic mess and he's determined to fix it and re-establish the Commonwealth. SCIFIPEDIA
Now you could easily substitute Captain Kirk or Picard for Hunt; The Enterprise (though probably the 'D') for the Andromeda; The Federation for Systems Commonwealth; Klingons for Nietzcheans; and maybe either The Borg or Species 8714 for a species (and ultimate threat) of the Magog (not mentioned above). The show was initially developed further by Robert Hewitt Wolfe and of course not by Paramount, so that's why they're all different.
It's a Canadian production and I like that. There's a certain "cheesiness" to the show that I like. It stars Kevin Sorbo (have you seen his force lance?) for a start! The plots and ideas are better than they ought to be, but often the show doesn't seem to take itself seriously, even playing with the format:
Harper: Yeah, sure, that explains everything. No chance that they've been left alone because they're a bunch of cannibals, or killer robots, or…Trance: Harper!Harper: What? You're gonna say I'm wrong? C'mon, every single High Guard remnant we've encountered has been psychotic, evil, or both… Present company excluded, of course.Dylan: Of course.
Also today I visited the Star Trek Museum in Second Life. Once again things were better than I expected. There was a recreation of Ten Forward in one area, and another building had replicas of the main ships from all five series (the one shown above being the best) and lots of other stuff too.
Sometimes it's fun to veg out on fan type stuff, even though I no longer have anything to do with organised fandom. Some folk however might have too much time on their hands - check out the Unnamed USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) personnel listing at Memory Alpha to see what I mean!