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July 2001

"Symbolic Initiation"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Send books for review in this column to: Jacqueline Lichtenberg, POB 290, Monsey, N.Y. 10952
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Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda syndicated TV series by Gene Roddenberry, Season Finale "Its Hour Come Round At Last" May 2001

Yes, the Andromeda season finale, ending in "To Be Continued" is the kind of 1940's Saturday morning movie theater serial cliff-hanger that the old writer's joke applies to. When a serial writer for the old pulps would write himself and his co-writers into a corner, trapping the hero in a deep pit with no way out, the next installment would open with the hero exiting the pit "with a mighty leap" and the serial would continue.

Although the Andromeda season finale ends with that sort of Situation, I don't think the next installment will vanquish the problems quite that easily. Why?

Because, throughout this show's short life, the scripts have had a depth and meaning far beyond the ostensible action surface. This show is about restoring the commonwealth, about making peace among peoples who had once been allies and friends.

This finale episode's opening scene shows Captain Dylan Hunt counting the worlds he has already brought to sign the Commonwealth Charter, and feeling the impossibility of his goal of 50 planets.

Meanwhile, our hot-shot tech makes a terrible mistake, and the ship's A.I. (nicknamed Rommie for Andromeda Ascendant) is overwritten with a backup copy even she didn't know was there. This backup copy does not recognize any of her current crew, and is totally bent on completing an old mission into Magog space.

The presence of a Magog crewmember convinces Rommie the entire crew are collaborating with the enemy.

What is this whole episode really about? Can we dare assess that having seen only half of it? Let's take a stab at it because there's something worth learning here for the magician-in-training as well as the aspiring writer.

The story opens with Dylan grasping at his optimism with white-knuckled effort. The middle (end of Part I) has Dylan unconscious or maybe dead, and his whole crew defeated, his ship with a big hole blown clear through it.

In the course of this episode, each of the crew members has faced their own personal worst nightmare.

The one who can't pilot slipstream is piloting slipstream. The one who has vowed to harm none has reverted to species type, swarming with killers who feed and breed off sentients. The hottest tech in the galaxy overwrote the current copy of Rommie with a backup copy and can't fix it. Worse yet, Magog are this tech's worst nightmare, and he has to face them in hand-to-hand combat. The greatest warrior/philosopher whose goal is to survive to reproduce is savaged to a bleeding mess and dragged off to be the receptacle for another species' breeding habits. Rommie has faced her worst nightmare -- being erased. And Dylan Hunt likewise is utterly defeated, and doesn't even know he's lost his ship.

Each of our favorite characters has been psychologically destroyed as well as physically immobilized.

That's just good action writing isn't it? It's just escapism, pure fun, utterly meaningless in any philosophical way, and completely irrelevant to the training of a magician.

?

Ever noticed that each Andromeda episode begins with an epigraph, a quotation from some future philosopher we've never heard of? This is a technique often used in 1950's/1960's sf, very often not well used. In the case of Andromeda, however, it seems to be very well used indeed. Pause your tape and read those epigraphs before and after watching the episode. They're not just decoration.

What do we really have in this season finale episode? I think we're looking at an episode that directly addresses the process the whole USA is going through -- the process of Trendlessness we've been discussing for some months now.

The Andromeda is so utterly defeated, it is stopped dead in its tracks. It is paused, locked down, mired, helpless, and what consciousness may remain to Rommie has to be locked in debate about what to do.

When the '01-'02 season starts, you'll have a chance to see the rerun of this finale episode and then we'll see Andromeda escape this pit of Trendlessness -- "With a Mighty Leap" -- i.e. by application of supreme Will to the situation of being frozen and defeated by fear, by death itself. (Is it coincidence that Wall Street expects corporate earnings to start to pick up in the fall?)

What Ceremonial Initiation on the Path does this resemble?

Go back to the beginning of the finale episode. First Dylan is feeling defeated just as many of us thrown out of work by the current "slowdown" are feeling. Next our supremely cocky Tech blunders in a way that is very familiar to every computer-user.

What follows is about 40 minutes of armed combat. A hoard of Magog invade the Andromeda and come rushing at heavily armed crew members in a disorganized rabble. Our crew members then pick them off one by one (until they run out of ammo).

The attackers Symbolize the Troubles that beset you when you accidentally overwrite some critical software on your computer. You face your worst nightmare, and then face it again and again every which way you turn with a white-knuckled grip on your inner panic.

No matter how many problems you conquer valiantly, the hoard keeps coming -- until you're defeated enough to call Tech support and wait forever on their 800 number. That wait symbolizes the period of Trendlessness

If you've ever gone through this common experience, you know that in those moments waiting on hold, your inner eye sees blackness all around. If that computer can't be fixed, your life is altered forever. Blackness.

Another common Situation that produces this state of mind is being confronted with the possibility that you may have cancer. The mental/emotional sequence modern HMO's put you through during that ordeal is almost identical to what Andromeda faces in this finale episode.

What Initiation am I describing here?

Death.

It's the Initiation where you are ceremonially entombed in a coffin, shut up in darkness, left to face the fear of death in silence, solitude, without recourse. You are left in utter stillness to confront that worst fear, that worst nightmare --if not Death, then whatever it may be for you. Nothing stands between you and your nightmare, not even your Self, for your Self has quit in gibbering paralysis.

The Initiation only "takes" if you are really in a state of sheer terror. It won't work if you trust the Lodge Officers to extricate you safely from your tomb.

But in the end, you must rise from that tomb of your own volition, and by your own decision and applied strength.

Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda has consistently presented scripts with occult dimensions, scripts that bespeak the principles we all struggle to internalize. Therefore, I expect in the Fall we will see the emergence from this coffin of Trendlessness. (We also get a new Star Trek series in the fall, called Enterprise, and not wearing the ST brandname.)

If enough of the right people watch the reruns of Andromeda this summer, learn to identify with a character whose fears symbolize their own and come to the rerun of the Season Finale episode able to live the confrontation and experience the rising with the characters in the debut episode -- if that Group Mind gathering around Andromeda is large enough and powerful enough, it is very possible that the future direction of World History may be changed as we break out of this Trendlessness during the fall.

And if the show being watched is Andromeda -- it is likely that the change will be toward world unity and world peace, rather than away from it.

The question uppermost in my mind right now is whether Hollywood will be able to sustain this drama. Will this crew subsequently behave as if they have in fact been through the Death Intiation? Will they feel and do things the way an Initiate does? Will they become something more than action/adventure Heroes?

Put the words "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda" into the Alta Vista search engine and you will find the key websites of the show and its fans. Or go directly to the official site, which includes local tv listings, at http://www.andromedatv.com/  where you will also find video clips of the show and radio and video clips of cast interviews. Then watch the reruns.

 

Send books for review in this column to: Jacqueline Lichtenberg,

 

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