There's a Tyr in my beer, 'cause I'm missing you, dear.
In revisiting Andromeda for my choc_fic story, I'm remembering just how much I enjoyed the show's early seasons and Tyr and Beka and just how horrible the series became later on. I never even made it to season five. So reading the episode summaries and the Wiki entry now and discovering that they made Beka the mother of the Nietschean race...? RAGE. BLACKOUTS. OMG. It's a damn good thing I wasn't watching that season because I would have thrown something through my TV.
To do that story, to make her the person that Drago Museveni's DNA came from, after Tyr has been unceremoniously killed off...? There are no words. I had to put up with the simmering attraction between them being constantly blocked by the barrier of his racial pride, by Tyr wanting her but thinking she was inferior... and that, as I've often noted, is hardly grounds for a romance. But far from being a proto Draco Malfoy who thought she was a Mudblood, he did respect her as a warrior and a person. He just couldn't get over the biological and sociological imperative to mate with a Nietschean woman. All they would've needed is that one wakeup call: Hey, Dumbass, she birthed your entire race, so get on your knees and worship your Goddess!
And, see, that's where the racial and skin color issues of our Earth, of American fandom don't quite fit with the constructs on a Sci-Fi show. Keith Hamilton Cobb may be black, a minority, but Tyr Anasazi is a higher being, evolved, genetically superior, and it's white Beka who isn't good enough, inferior, comes from a lower class, etc. Get your rocks off all you want with a woman like that, but marry her? Breed with her? Have you lost your mind? (And doesn't THAT sound familiar?) Nietscheans were better, stronger, faster, and it most certainly wasn't about skin color.
The only way I can see it being an issue of color is returning back to Earth, to us, and how we view the aesthetics of a show like Andromeda, with blond, pale, willowy Beka and big, muscular, dark Tyr and the much more home grown Midwestern farm boy looks of Dylan or Harper... plus the NQW (Not Quite White) AI, Rommie, and purple-then-gold alien Trance. Tyr stands out. But, again, as a Nietschean, he is meant to. I remember being so, so amused when James Marsters guest-starred on the series. I thought, "That wee man is supposed to a genetically engineered uber-man? Really?" Of course, even Steve Bacic's Rhade was dwarfed by Cobb. The man is ginormous, imposing, and pretty much commanded the camera's eye every time he was onscreen.
I suppose it's no wonder they had to off him so unceremoniously, because even Earth mythology's strongest man, Hercules, couldn't compare to Tyr Anasazi out of Victoria by Barbarossa.
P.S. ATWT's Noah and Luke's kiss was shot from the other angle today and I loved it even MORE!
To do that story, to make her the person that Drago Museveni's DNA came from, after Tyr has been unceremoniously killed off...? There are no words. I had to put up with the simmering attraction between them being constantly blocked by the barrier of his racial pride, by Tyr wanting her but thinking she was inferior... and that, as I've often noted, is hardly grounds for a romance. But far from being a proto Draco Malfoy who thought she was a Mudblood, he did respect her as a warrior and a person. He just couldn't get over the biological and sociological imperative to mate with a Nietschean woman. All they would've needed is that one wakeup call: Hey, Dumbass, she birthed your entire race, so get on your knees and worship your Goddess!
And, see, that's where the racial and skin color issues of our Earth, of American fandom don't quite fit with the constructs on a Sci-Fi show. Keith Hamilton Cobb may be black, a minority, but Tyr Anasazi is a higher being, evolved, genetically superior, and it's white Beka who isn't good enough, inferior, comes from a lower class, etc. Get your rocks off all you want with a woman like that, but marry her? Breed with her? Have you lost your mind? (And doesn't THAT sound familiar?) Nietscheans were better, stronger, faster, and it most certainly wasn't about skin color.
The only way I can see it being an issue of color is returning back to Earth, to us, and how we view the aesthetics of a show like Andromeda, with blond, pale, willowy Beka and big, muscular, dark Tyr and the much more home grown Midwestern farm boy looks of Dylan or Harper... plus the NQW (Not Quite White) AI, Rommie, and purple-then-gold alien Trance. Tyr stands out. But, again, as a Nietschean, he is meant to. I remember being so, so amused when James Marsters guest-starred on the series. I thought, "That wee man is supposed to a genetically engineered uber-man? Really?" Of course, even Steve Bacic's Rhade was dwarfed by Cobb. The man is ginormous, imposing, and pretty much commanded the camera's eye every time he was onscreen.
I suppose it's no wonder they had to off him so unceremoniously, because even Earth mythology's strongest man, Hercules, couldn't compare to Tyr Anasazi out of Victoria by Barbarossa.
P.S. ATWT's Noah and Luke's kiss was shot from the other angle today and I loved it even MORE!