Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda/Headscratchers

• What's with the protocol prohibiting any relationships between ship AIs and crew? Isn't that infringing on the AI's rights as a sentient being?
  • It's the ultimate form of fraternization. It'd be like shagging the ship's first officer, chief engineer, CPO and deck chief at the same time.
    • Exactly that. No-one on board is supposed to make the sexing with other crewmen. It doesn't seem like a big deal in principle, but think it through.
    • Any military style system is based on people being told to do dangerous or life threatening things by those in charge. Now, assuming everything else is order the grunts follow orders, because while they probably aren't too keen to go to their deaths, the system is normally fair and shares the danger out. They trust their commanders not to risk lives unnecessarily.
    • Now when love starts to get into the mix, you don't know what priorities the commander has. Are you going out to risk your life AGAIN instead of the CO's girlfriend ?
    • And what happens if you break up and suddenly your missions get more dangerous or obviously suicidal ?
    • Now take that to the extreme of the actual battleship having non-combat priorities. The ship is never just risking its own life, its risking thousands (the crew) and potentially millions or billions if it decides to go all nova-bomby.
    • Basically you need to know that everyone is going to follow their orders (to the death if needs be) and aren't going to start dicking around or screwing up the chain of command just because they have tingly feeligns.
      • All demonstrated by what happened in "The Mathematics of Tears".
      • In other words, they have the same right to pursue romances as much as anyone else, but as part of the military, they have the same restrictions as anyone else in the military.
• What, exactly, is Dillon trying to accomplish in the first season? Maybe his goal of a restored Commonwealth makes a bit more sense when the Magog are coming, but all the planets already seem to have varying degrees of functional governments, trade, and communication. The worst thing we've seen about living in this time is that the prison system sucks, and why should we expect the new Commonwealth to be any better at that? To take it a step further, it seems to be mainly the planets that are already decent places to live that are signing on. What the hell are they getting out out of this? And to get even more irritating, lets assume for a moment that creating a new Commonwealth really would be as awesome as Dillon thinks: why is he necessary? Somehow no one on any of these planets had even considered the possibility of an interplanetary government, but once Dillon brought it up, none of them could think of any real objections, and instantly signed on? That's not how politics works!
  • They all suspect that the biggest warship in the galaxy will throw in with their rivals instead of themselves, but by joining together they all get Rommies services? Maybe it's really Rommie they care about rather then Dylan and they only care about him because she obeys him.
  • Then too, and related, none of the governments can afford to surrender any of their sovereignity unless there is an impartial party with enough force to umpire between them.
  • They also don't know that he jettisoned all of his nova bombs in the pilot episode. Anybody who knows the standard loadout of that class of Commonwealth ship is not going to argue with him - he's (potentially) got the power to make 40 star systems go away in puff of smoke, and nobody wants to volunteer to be one of the first 40.

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