26 Years Later, ‘Star Trek’s Spiritual Successor Is Waiting To Be Discovered on Streaming

After Star Trek: The Original Series aired its final episode on June 3, 1969, with “Turnabout Intruder,” creator Gene Roddenberry turned his attention to other projects like The Questor Tapes, a TV movie released 8 years later that was meant to be the pilot for a new series. Of course, he wouldn’t find that level of Star Trek success again in his lifetime until Star Trek: The Next Generation. But after his lifetime? Roddenberry still wouldn’t find that level of success outside the Star Trek franchise, but he did enjoy moderate success with two projects he left behind: Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda (aka Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda), and the latter, finally, is available on streaming, 20 years after it aired its final episode.

‘Andromeda’s Systems Commonwealth Mirrors ‘Star Trek’s Federation

Roddenberry’s widow, Majel Barrett, came across the two series in Roddenberry’s archives, and gave the green light for both to be developed into series. Earth: Final Conflict hit the airwaves first in 1997, and its success paved the way for Andromeda‘s release three years later, in 2000. Kevin Sorbo, best known as the titular hero of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, was brought on as the lead character, Captain Dylan Hunt of an intergalactic government known as the Systems Commonwealth. If the idea of a collective governing body whose membership consists of representatives across the known universe sounds familiar, it should. It mirrors Star Trek‘s Federation, and is a concept Roddenberry would visit time and again throughout his proposed projects.

In Andromeda‘s case, the Systems Commonwealth is a constitutional monarchy established thousands of years in the future. The Commonwealth, with its capital in Tarn-Vedra, consists of representatives from three galaxies: our own Milky Way, Triangulum, and Andromeda. The backstory, as we learn in the pilot episode “Under the Night,” is that the Commonwealth was at war with a parasitic species, humanoid in appearance, known as the Magog. To prevent the Magog from spreading into the galaxies under its umbrella, the Commonwealth begrudgingly relents during peace talks and allows the Magog access to a key planet. That planet just so happened to belong to the Nietzscheans (and yes, that’s purposeful — they religiously follow the works of one Friedrich Nietzsche), who are none too pleased and secretly attempt to sabotage the Commonwealth and seize control in retaliation.

Dylan Hunt Wakes Up in the Long Night in ‘Andromeda’

With the series now in context, “Under the Night” sees Dylan in command of the starship Andromeda Ascendant, which harbors a powerful artificial intelligence he calls “Andromeda” that controls the computer systems aboard. It isn’t long before the ship is left severely damaged after a surprise attack from the Nietzscheans. Dylan orders his crew to evacuate, choosing to go down with his ship as any good captain would; only he’s attacked by his first officer, a Nietzschean known as Gaheris Rhade (Steve Bacic), who tries to kill him. Dylan thwarts the attempt on his life and kills Gaheris, just as the Andromeda Ascendant becomes stranded on the edge of the event horizon of a black hole.

They become frozen in time until 303 years later, when the Andromeda Ascendant is pulled from the event horizon by the crew of a salvage ship, the Eureka Maru (Roddenberry isn’t terribly imaginative when it comes to names, with this echoing the Kobayashi Maru, while the name “Dylan Hunt” was used not once but twice before by Roddenberry, in Genesis II and Planet Earth). The crew consists of pilot and con-artist Beka Valentine (Lisa Ryder); engineer Seamus Zelazny Harper (Gordon Michael Woolvett); Dr. Trance Gemini (Laura Bertram); and Rev Bern (Brent Stait), science officer, among others. They rescue Dylan and the ship’s AI android avatar Andromeda (Lexa Doig) and bring him up to speed on what’s happened over the last 300+ years. The Systems Commonwealth is no more, and they now live in the era known as “The Long Night,” a period marked by lawlessness, conflict, and great instability. Aghast, Dylan calls on the crew to join him and bring justice back to the galaxies, looking to “rekindle the light of civilization.”

The first season garnered less-than-spectacular reviews, with a review from SciFiNow summing up the consensus as “It’s a cliché but decent enough… but the problem is that Andromeda falls into Star Trek: Voyager territory by playing it safe and not doing enough to develop its characters.” Andromeda would stay in production for five full seasons before airing its last episode, “The Heart of the Journey (Part Two),” on May 13, 2005, the victim of a change in viewer interest away from its syndicated kin to more serious fare (per Collider). Nevertheless, Andromeda is worth checking out, a chance to see the last of Roddenberry’s original creative output at work, now made easier than ever thanks to streaming.