Rumored to be the season finale where the person behind the massacre shown in Harper 2.0 is revealed as well as Trance's origins.

A cliffhanger, too.

A dormant part of Rommie's personality is accidently activated sending the crew on a 300 year old mission in which a secret is uncovered.

A cliffhanger. Sigh.

Andromeda has serious personality problems--why, why, why did her programmers give her two distinct personalities in the "on-board" and the hologram. What would be the advantage? (And Rommie makes 3 personalities. This is a good thing?).

She's really rather careless about weaponry, too--When she first throws aside the head magog who is tempting Rev Bem, she neither stops to make sure he is dead nor pickes up his weapon, and at that point, another weapon would have been a very good thing.

Our dauntless crew really holds out rather well against a swarm of Magog.

This was one of those edge-of-your-seat what will happen next kind of deals. WOW. Can't wait for next year.

Methinks Fearless Leader is in on the conspiracy. What with his fancy code and all.

If he had this code all along, why did he wait till then to use it?

Those planets are enormous. Even Jupiter is miniscule compared to our sun.

And what exactly could contain a star?

GREAT LINES:
TYR: Harper, I have been watching you for over a year. You are an annoying little man, but you have fire in your belly. Now let it out.

REV BEM: ALL THINGS WERE CREATED BY THE DIVINE.
CRAZY MAGOG: Except us.

ROMMIE: Sometimes I can be a real PAIN IN THE A$$.

REV BEM: I do not condone violence, but I will use it to save my friends.

BEKA: You're too stubborn to die. Everyone knows that.

DYLAN: Why did it have to be Magog. I hate Magog.

GREAT MOMENTS:
Harper finally overcoming his fears and Tyr showing his pride in the little annoying man.

Harper and Tyr being devoured by the Magog after losing in hand to hand combat.

Dylan giving orders to Beka to continue his cause should he be unable to make it.

The eerie silence for a few moments before the Magog start coming.

The initial view of the super planet ship. A very daunting spectacle.

All Andromedas speaking simply, "Code Red" and the close ups of all the characters unconscious on the floor.

SPECIAL KUDOS:
Word out to Brian Stait as Rev Bem. His portrayal was both gripping and powerful. I could almost feel his turmoil myself. That's emmy material Brian my boy.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
It's amazing that a show that started out so tacky in the beginning could reach an episode like this one. Sure there was a lot of action, but the character growth, especially Rev Bem's, is what made me keep my eyes on this one the whole hour. For the entire season we've heard about the Magog being horrible and awful and evil creatures. Now we can see what all the fear is about. I don't know about you, but the prospect of being eaten by those things would make me very uncomfortable.

On a scale of 1 to 10, this was a perfect 10. I hope the conclusion is as good.

TUE
(Now a full-fledged Andromeda fan)

DYLAN: Why did it have to be Magog. I hate Magog.

I liked this line too. I assumed it was a tribute to Indiana Jones.

Methinks Fearless Leader is in on the conspiracy. What with his fancy code and all.

If he had this code all along, why did he wait till then to use it? TUE

It was only when Harper described the encryption that he realized that he knew a command code that would over-ride it. And even so, he had not updated his authorization to issue the command code since he was a Lt. Commander.

Beka: "That's a new one!"

Dylan: "No, it's a really old one."

I really doubt that Dylan knows anything, or he would have recognized the previous captain's name.

i loved this episode.
a couple of things that bothered me.

1) the whole crew were perfect marksmen (or is the markspersons). every shot hit their mark (or magog).

2) that was a pyrrhic victory for the magog. sending in large numbers of troops with no weapons as cannon fodder doesn't seem militarily intelligent.

3) the androids holding trance left halfway through the episode so why was she still piloting thru slipstream and listening to rogue rommies.

4) harper said something before he placed on his goggles, it was pertaining to the magog. what did he say? i noticed that they all had eye wear on during the fight but towards the end they were gone. i guess they didn't need them anymore.

1) You don't need to be a marksman when the enemy is so numerous that no matter where you aim you are going to hit them.

2) A Pyrrhic victory is one where your losses are so great that you are almost as bad off as if you had lost. The Magogs' numbers were so astronomically overwhelming that even the huge casualties barely made a dent in their forces.

3) I got the impression that the androids had secured her into the pilot's chair. The real question should be why did she continue to pilot the ship to the location that Rommie insisted on. One possible answer is that Trance does not visualize quite properly on her own, which is why she usually has so much trouble piloting, and so only felt safe piloting to the patterns supplied by Rommie.

It WAS a wonderful episode. I am now officially addicted--at the beginning, this was a guilty pleasure; now it's a a GOOD show.

I, too, was puzzled by the Magog tactics. It isn't as though they lack the tech for weapons. Maybe they have some code of honor or something that requires fighting without extra weaponry. Or maybe they just prefer it (since their leader did have a gun).

Maybe the captain Dylan didn't recognize only led the one mission, and, since it was classified, his time on the _Andromeda_ never went on record.

Excellent show.

One little REALLY nit-picky nit though.

Tyr seems willing to shoot Harper when the two are totally outnumbered and almost out of amunition. This is presumably because Harper would rather die than face being impregnated/infected by the Magog. However, Tyr is a Nietzian. Existentialism is very clear that the only human choice that can never be made is the choice to kill yourself, as that is a choice that can never be taken back. As a devout Nietzian, I wouldn't imagine Tyr being too responsive to Harper's desire for death.

Ok, so this one is really nit-picky, but then, that's what I do :o)

Tyr is a N**** (I'm not even going to attempt to spell it at 3:30 in the morning), but he knows that Harper is not, and the reason for Harper's especial horror at the Magog practice has been revealed in other episodes.

Still, when Harper elicits the promise to kill him Tyr does clearly show disgust at the idea, and when he decides to go down fighting, he looks relieved, and unlike a Klingon, who would say "Today is a good day to die," his battle cry is "While there's life, there's hope."

Man, I LOVED this episode! I knew it was the finale, but not a cliffhanger! This REALLY had me on the edge of my seat, and it did a good job of making me fear the Magog. Seeing Harper, Rev and Tyr all ripped up and bloody was WAY cool, as was Rev's confrontation with the Magog leader. I also liked the variation between the Magog leader's makeup and Rev's. The smallness of the leader's nose, and the way it was placed so much higher on his face made him look like someone took Rev's face and drew a caricature out it.

I'm still not sure about the Magog, though. They walk around naked and basically act like wild animals, but have spaceflight and weapons. and why does the Magog captain wear clothes and speak with a British accent, but the hordes do not?


That point singularity weapon that punches a vertical hole through the ship, from bottom to top, was AWESOME! I have to admit, though, the shot of Andromeda drifting away toward the left of the screen after the explosion was really bad and obvious CGI.

Now THAT was a season finale! So much more satisfying than the X-Files.

This show has really come into its own over the season, and this episode really showed it. What a true cliffhanger--I'm really curious to know how Harper escapes becoming a proud daddy to a bunch of hungry Magog, what happens to Rev Bem, how Hercules the Legendary Captain recovers. I fear the Trance Gemini reset button, but for now all is cool.

If I had a problem with anything, it's that it seems some version of Rommie should have set a self-destruct sequence (if the AA has one) at some point, although an anti-nit is that obviously she was confused with all the different avatars and the one who was apparently on a secret mission. Furthermore, I sort of wonder how fearsome an enemy is when five or six lightly armed humanoids can take out a few hundred of them with no problem. Again, though, I guess it's their sheer numbers and the horrible fate that awaits those that survive an attack. Harper's hysteria seemed very real, and Tyr finally seems to be becoming more fleshed out as a character.

Wonderful. I'm looking forward to next season.

Not to mention the fact that this episode took its title from one of my favorite poems--"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Great episode. So much better than the premiere, which seemed like cheesy sci-fi.

What's great about this show is the continuity. The Magog God was first introduced in a previous episode, his identity a mystery, before being brought back. The Restorians were a mystery at the start but were explained much later in Star Crossed. Also in that episode, they mentioned the Andromeda's crazy older sister ship (whose name I cannot think of...Pax Magenallic or something).

One fear though. With all those quantum singularity weapons punching holes through the ships hull and that one scene with the pieces of the ship flying off into space as it spiraled out of control, the writers might have figured it would be too implausible to repair and hit the reset button (kind of like Year of Hell, which was the best episode that never happened).

The main characters being such excellent marksmen was unrealistic, but most large groups of enemies can only get minor characters (redshirts), this-episode-only characters, or can't kill anything at all while onscreen (Imperial Stormtroopers).

I believe they were point-singularity, not quantum singularity. Quantum singularties are the centers of black holes. If point-singularity is anything like zero-point energy, it's a different thing. (pick, pick, pick.)

And I really liked Tyr trying to pep up Harper with his "you have many annoying traits, but..." speech.

Marksmanship anti-nit:
I think it was established in the one of the previous episodes that the weapons (at least the lance) have self-guiding projectiles.

During the Tyr/Harper "annoying traits" speech, did anyone else think Tuvok/Neelix during the Voyager episode "Homestead"?

Yup.

Oh, and sorry about the quantum-singularity thing. I've been watching too much Star Trek.

Man, I totally missed that. Good call, Scott.

Why is Rev sniffing as the Magog ships approach. There is no smell in space. (Psychic influence, perhaps?)

Would it make sense for Harper to turn off the weapons diagnostic so Andromeda could use the internal weapons on the Magog?

Tyr picks Harper up by the head. I expected to hear popping sounds. (Like popping one's knuckles.)

Even though they are hollow, 20 worlds as part of a structure must require some seriously strong metal.

Andromeda will need some seriously major repairs next season.

Luigi, I got the feeling that there are levels or classes involved in the Magog. At one point the leader tells Rev that his true culture has been hidden from him for ten generations.

Why is Rev sniffing as the Magog ships approach. There is no smell in space. (Psychic influence, perhaps?) KAM

I remember the sniffing, but I thought it occurred after the first wave of the invading ships breached the hull. I really need to get another VCR (or two). Relying on memory is not enough.

Would it make sense for Harper to turn off the weapons diagnostic so Andromeda could use the internal weapons on the Magog? KAM

Didn't Harper say that it would take a certain minimum time in diagnostic mode before the weapons could be activated again? I got the impression that no one could re-activate them before they finished cycking through their diagnostics.

Andromeda will need some seriously major repairs next season. KAM

Somehow the extent of the destruction so far(and we're not done), just seems to scream "reach for the reset button. I hope I'm wrong

I believe you're correct on the first two points, Tom. I believe the Magog did breach the hull when he started sniffing, and Harper said, IIRC, the diagnostic cycle would take 2 hours.

The second episode to be rerun after the premeire of the finale was The Music of a Distant Drum, wherein Tyr says he has defensive nanobots in his system as part of his genetic engineering. Would that mean that they would kill the Magog embryo if one of them impregnates him?

Or, unlike the premise in Aliens, do the Magog only impregnate females?

I believe they do impregnante males. I believe Harper's two cousins that were impregnated by the Magog were male.

I also wonder what kind of gravity that gargantuan "World of worlds" puts out, and what effect it has on the Magog living there, or on passing ships. I wonder if Robert Hewitt Wolfe got the idea from that mega-sized JLA: Heaven's Ladder comic one-shot, or if the CGI guys at least got the visual from Bryan Hitch's rendering in that book.

I also wonder what kind of gravity that gargantuan "World of worlds" puts out, and what effect it has on the Magog living there,... Luigi

Since most, if not all, of the "worlds" are hollow, (at least I vaguely remember hearing a throw-away line indicating that, or comparing it to a ship --I may be wrong), the total mass might be no more than an Earth-like, or at most Jovian planet. And even in a solid body, such as a planet, in calculating the force of gravity you only need to consider that portion of the mass that is as close as you or closer to the center, all the mass that is further from the center than you are cancels out.

...or on passing ships. The fact that Anromeda's sensors did not detect any major concerns due to the gravity would tend to confirm my idea that "the World[s] [are] hollow and I have touched the sky." (Sorry, but I just couldnt resist.) Or maybe the writers forgot to research the effect of the gravity on a ship like Andromeda, and it is a nit.

Dataport date: 3.15.10088

Other Andromeda episode titles taken from Yeats' poem include the second part of this two-parter, "THE WIDENING GYRE", and also "PITILESS AS THE SUN".