After letting it sit in my “Hopefully the world will end before I have to review it� pile for a good six months, I figured that I’d take a punt at it finally. Perhaps the break has been good to my perception of the show. Maybe the effects aren’t as cheesy as I remember, perhaps the acting not as bad as I recall, perhaps it doesn’t take itself as seriously as I originally thought?

Wrong, wrong and wrong. Yup, I was right the first time. It still has cheesy effects, bad acting, and takes itself far too seriously. I really ought to trust my opinions more. I tend to be right quite often. You know it’s true.

So, to attack this DVD with a more positive attitude, I decided to get myself in the right frame of mind. I made myself a beer shandy (the sort of drink that I figured fans of the show would drink), and bought myself a pack of WhizzFizz (the sort of snack I figured fans would eat).

After gagging on the shandy while my mouth was full of WhizzFizz which caused foam to come out of my nose, I settled in and gave the DVD my full and undivided razor-sharp, super-focussed attention. Here is the result of my in-depth analysis of this title:

After much discussion with friends and family, I’ve come to the conclusion that my lounge room windows are really really dirty. I should try to wash them sometime. Maybe even after I do this review. Yeah, get the review done and out the way so I can focus on cleaning up this pig sty a little. I mean, I’m not an animal or anything. So, focus on Andromeda now, and then clean the windows later. Yep, that’s the plan. Now, the DVD, what was I watching again? Ah, here we are, Andromeda 2.4... oh man, I thought I did this one already, sheesh…

207. Una Salus Victus

Leather pants are obviously still a fashionable item in the future. And still as stupid looking.

Using my very minimal grasp of Latin, the title of this episode, Una Salus Victus, translates roughly as ‘A Salada Biscuit Victory’. I might be wrong, but I figured that Una is probably A, that Salada is most likely a derivation of Salus, and that somehow the biscuit was ‘victorious’ in something, maybe in a dry biscuit taste test, thus One Salada Biscuit Victory. All hail the victorious Salada biscuit!

As far as I could tell, there aren’t any biscuits in this episode. Not anywhere at all, perhaps that’s what the reference was to, the lack of suitable biscuit adversaries in the taste-off. Frankly, it would make far more sense than what I watched. Dylan and Tyr come across some of Tyr’s enemies while trying to shutdown a command base under a mountain, then they find out Tyr has the body of someone important in the cargo bay of Dylan’s ship, and Dylan and Tyr have a go at each other over it. Sure, I’d be pissed off too if one of my friends didn’t tell me that he put the corpse of his recently deceased uncle in the boot of my car just before we set of for a long drive to Sydney. There are certain things you can allow between friends, but secretive transportation of corpse relatives is a bit much. Unless there’s money in it, of course.

208. Home Fires

Kids, this is what happens if you pick at your pimples.

Dylan comes face to face with the descendant of a friend who betrayed him 300 years ago. I can see how that might be uncomfortable for Dylan. Just when you’ve managed to put it all behind you after 299 years of sulking and questioning yourself with “Oh why did he do such a nasty thing?? Why?�, you run smack-bang into the bastard’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson, and it brings all those feelings back to the surface again. Instead of going to a shrink to work out his problems, Dylan and the guy work out their issues like real men, by engaging in fisticuffs, firing laser-blasters at each other and chatting up whores. Okay, I made up the bit about the whores, because I was daydreaming at this point of watching the show.

This pair of episodes are still panned and scanned to create a full screen image like the previous two discs I reviewed, even though I’m fairly certain they were shot at 1.78:1 (have a look at the menu system as it looks vertically stretched from 1.78:1). Arguments of directorial vision aside, I doubt that the cropping makes for a whole lot of difference, but yes, I concede, that if I was a huge fan of this show –which I’m not- then indeed the original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (and 16:9 enhancement) should be the only way to view this show. Moving that issue off to the side for now, and focussing on the actual quality, it’s basically more of the same as we’ve viewed previously in this series, with the same positives and same negatives, namely a nice clear picture with vibrant colours and good deep blacks, but a tendency to lose a little detail upon movement which reveals the compression to be a little too perceptible to the eyes.

This is saddled with a Dolby Digital 2.0 surround track, but it lacks any worthy surround embellishments to make it stand proud amongst its brethren. The use sounds like wraparound of the front effects channels, free from any independence. The rest of it okay, dialogue is clear enough, I didn’t have as much issue understanding it this time around. It just has that slightly limp television sound to it which fails to give impact to the more action fuelled sections, but it’s basically fine overall.

No bonus material exists on this disc. Which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your nerd level.