Andromeda
"The Mathematics of Tears"

"The Mathematics of Tears"
Airdate: January 22, 2001

Poor old Captain Hunt is getting just a little bit tired of his crew taking unscheduled leave on him. After all, the Andromeda Ascendant is a High Guard warship, not a cruise liner. He yearns for the good old days when his crew wore uniforms, showed him the respect due to his rank, and yes -- they even saluted him for Heaven's sake!

Obviously the man has never heard that old saw "Be careful what you wish for... "

Rommie -- Dylan's crying, talking, sleeping, walking, livin' doll?

Beka, in an attempt to cheer him up, brings him a list of possible High Guard vessels that might be in a salvageable state. The ploy works and they find themselves deep in an asteroid field that funnily enough, should have been a planet, where they discover the Pax Magellanic; Rommie's sister ship.

Taking most of his crew across to the Pax, (will these guys never learn?) Dylan is amazed to discover that most of her systems are still functional. However, he's more surprised to find out that so are some of her crew. (He obviously never watched anything from the SF genre in his off hours).

Of course Dylan is swept away with the ship-shaped-ness of things aboard the Pax, which is probably why he seems a little reluctant to realise that there's anything strange going on. However, luckily for him, the rest of his less-than efficient crew are somewhat more uptight about the situation.

When it turns out that the crew are actually not quite what they seem, Dylan and Rommie have some hard decisions about the fate of the Pax Magellanic and her AI on their hands.

For a brief moment I thought this was going to be your standard 'ghost-ship' episode, and to tell the truth it wasn't far off that. However, despite the 'let's take all but one of our crew over to that spooky looking relic' cliché and some other oft-before seen themes "The Mathematics of Tears" was nicely done -- especially the major fight scene where Tyr once again proved to be the big man with the useful weapon. [OK, so I did pass the comment that maybe the others might be able to fight a little bit better than they did -- but I didn't let that distract me from watching muscles in leathers go to work for very long]

Again, the absence of Trance Gemini hardly registered after the scene in which it was used to point up Dylan's growing dismay with his crew; and to be honest there was really nothing that the character could have done in this story, except perhaps to squeal and run away a lot. Perhaps TPTB should take note -- episodes where the purple one is absent seem to work better......

There was nice focus on Rommie in this episode again, with Lexa Doig putting in a very good performance, and it seems to me that the ship's avatar could end up being the break out character from this show. So now who wants to talk superiority of man or machine?

Andromeda airs at 8pm GMT Mondays on Sky One in the UK and is syndicated in North America so check your local listings for show times.

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