How the mighty have fallen.<br /><br />This series began as very innovative in some regards with interesting characters. Some stories were downright interesting. Many were even INTELLIGENTLY written in some regards (a compliment one can only offer very few TV series today). Also, there was a theme and a purpose.<br /><br />The intrigue and purpose seemed to peak around the end of the first season. Season 2 continued to be interesting. Only the Great Maker knows what happened in Season 3!<br /><br />While a few interesting individual episodes still managed to sneak in to Season 3, this season was a marked decline. They had lost the original purpose from Season 1 and the redoubled anxiety we saw in Season 2. Now, in Season 3, they seemed aimless and downright pointless in many ways. The role of the Andromeda in the new Commonwealth was absurd and not completely clear. Most importantly the goals of the first 2 seasons seemed utterly ignored. They weren't even engaging in missions to build and strengthen the new Commonwealth as you might expect; instead they were puppets, albeit rebellious puppets, of naive political powers.<br /><br />The only element which remained somewhat intact in Season 3 were the characters. Yet even then, one could not see them in their new roles. Would Dylan not say "hell with this, we have things to do"?<br /><br />The end of Season 3 was such that it looks like it might mark the end of any worthiness to the show we once knew as Andromeda. One got the feeling the writers didn't like the show they'd created so they just pointlessly smashed it all. They had a monumental event handled in such a poor and pointless why that it left the viewer saying "why did they do THAT"? It seemed like a cheap and senseless way of saying "OK, we producers have changed our minds so we came up with the quickest, most pointless way to change almost everything without having to waste more than an episode doing it". We're not talking about a sudden and shocking plot twist like you might see in the best of shows. There was no sense of PURPOSE to this one. No promise of a PAYOFF for having changed the rules. No - rather it smelled of taking an eraser to the script and aimlessly wiping out huge elements.<br /><br />While I can recommend the first two seasons of Andromeda to most SciFi fans because they appealed to many people on many different levels, I cannot recommend Season 3 or beyond to anyone who appreciates intelligent or well done writing. This series is no longer what it once was.<br /><br />If the producers are merciful they will put Andromeda out to pasture before it becomes primarily an object of ridicule and the punch line to many jokes.