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Intro
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
Season 5
  1. "The Weight (Part 1)"
  2. "The Weight (Part 2)"
  3. "Phear Phactor Phenom"
  4. "Decay of the Angel"
  5. "The Eschatology of Our Present"
  6. "When Goes Around..."
  7. "Attempting Screed"
  8. "So Burn the Untamed Lands"
  9. "What Will Be Was Not"
  10. "The Test"
  11. "Through a Glass Darkly"
  12. "Pride Before the Fall"
  13. "Moonlight Becomes You"
  14. "The Past is Prolix"
  15. "The Opposites of Attraction"
  16. "Saving Light from a Black Sun"
  17. "Totaled Recall"
  18. "Quantum Tractate Delirium"
  19. "One More Day's Light"
  20. "Chaos and the Stillness of It"
  21. "The Heart of the Journey (Part 1)"
  22. "The Heart of the Journey (Part 2)"
DVD
"Inanimate objects and sentient beings
Obey the laws of nature.
Without discrimination.
Environment is their only conscience."
Vedran Inscription
Departure Slates
005 AT9

"The Weight (Part 2)" is episode 2 of Season 5.

Synopsis[]

Dylan Hunt looks on as Telemachus Rhade unsuccessfully negotiates the price of a landcraft with an alien trader. The talks decay into a street fight and as Dylan jumps in to break it up, he drops his comm and a pickpocket snatches it up and takes off. They chase him down and recover it as it starts beeping in a code that spells out “Beka.” The message is a month old but the coordinates are specific enough. Dylan insists they search for her.

Beka Valentine does her best to remain silent as she is slammed onto a table and interrogated by two thugs. As they demand answers, she flashes back to the events before her capture. She was adrift in the Eureka Maru, out of food and water and low on fuel and she was in the process of sending out one last message to anyone who might get it. Suddenly, the alarm goes off. Preparing for a fight, she turns to the screen and is astonished to see the Andromeda Ascendant floating in front of her. She boards the ship and wanders the vacant corridors, shouting her crew member’s names to no avail. The best she can do is send out a primitive distress signal on a control console.

Back in the present, Beka’s captor Jonah Darrega monitors her interrogation from another room. They have learned nothing from the Andromeda as it far surpasses any technology they have come across. Finally, Beka agrees to talk to the one in charge. Before Jonah arrives, the two thugs try to encourage Beka to loosen her tongue by raising a sliding door in the room that exposes something they call The Core, a white hot being made of raw energy that melts anything that comes close to it. However, Jonah arrives before they can get creative and has Beka untied. After she has cleaned up, he answers a few of her questions over dinner. She is in the Seefra System and the Maru is safely docked aboard Andromeda. He tells her no one ever comes and goes because Slipstream technology hasn’t been discovered in this system yet, leaving them isolated. He runs Darrega Corp., the largest commercial trade fleet in the system, and is very interested in the Andromeda’s abilities to expand upon his current monopoly. He offers Beka a job because she is the only one familiar with the systems of the super ship.

Dylan and Rhade have renegotiated the deal, this time for a jetcraft, and they leave the unconscious trader lying in the dust. They take the stolen Darrega Corp. craft out of the atmosphere and are immediately approached by repo police. The repo ship fires on them as Dylan figures out the controls and finally loses their assailants. They arrive at the coordinates of Beka’s distress call and are dumbstruck at the sight of the Andromeda with the Darrega Corp. logo already painted on the ship.

They sneak aboard, dispatch a couple of guards and split up to search for Beka. Dylan sees her and Jonah strolling down one of the corridors and behaving very friendly towards each other. He overhears Jonah tell her that he believes he can harness the power of The Core to refuel Andromeda and power his whole fleet. Rhade catches up with him and Dylan tells him the story, but Rhade is convinced Beka simply took sides against Dylan at her first opportunity. He deserts Dylan, who is jumped by guards and captured, and heads back to the hangar, intending to deliver the jetcraft to his client. He finds guards looking it over. After Dylan is brought before Jonah and Beka, who masks any recognition, the two retire to private quarters.

While lying in bed, Jonah makes it known that he intends to kill Dylan, thereby setting an example for any would-be thieves and testing Beka to see where her loyalties lie. He knows Dylan was her captain but she swears she doesn’t owe him anything; she just pities him and doesn’t think he deserves to die.

Dylan is shackled and brought to command where The Core’s steel cylinder waits ominously. Beka arrives with Jonah who begins the meeting with a test of loyalty. He shows Beka two remote activators: one releases The Core, the other launches a missile from Jonah’s planet that will destroy Andromeda. The catch is he won’t tell her which is which, intending fate to take the reins and guide her choice. She refuses but Dylan senses something and prods her to go for it. She finally closes her eyes and presses her hand on one of the panels. The Core’s door slides open and the creature emerges. It drifts towards Dylan, who suspects it is Trance Gemini. She stops when he calls her by name. Beka then touches the other panel which operates the cylinder door as well. The ruse is up. Jonah never intended to give up the Andromeda but he will attack the ship with a poison warhead missile, rendering it uninhabitable until his scientists discover its secrets.

He leaves Dylan chained and tells Beka their deal is off. As he tells her the Maru is back on his planet, she sees Rhade behind him signaling he has sabotaged Jonah’s transport. She tells Jonah she really did love him and leaves him to his fate. Rhade arrives when she returns to free Dylan and, putting their differences aside for the moment, Dylan tells them his plan. He releases Trance from her vault and asks her to go to the main console.

Her radiant energy powers up the ship’s generator and Dylan fires a counter missile, destroying Jonah’s missile. With her energy expended into the ship, Trance’s glow subsides, revealing a younger version of her. She vaguely recognizes them all but is still disoriented. The Andromeda Ascendant Artificial Intelligence appears onscreen, informing them that Trance’s substance was greatly diminished while tesseracting them all to this system during the battle for Arkology.

Each of them begins to realize how they actually arrived. It dawns on them that the rest of the crew could be here somewhere too. Now partially reunited, they set their sights on locating Seamus Harper and Rommie.

Trivia[]

  • It would appear once more to be a nod to a work by Friedrich Nietzsche, in this case "The Gay Science", which posits the crushing weight of an endless, unbreakable cycle of repeated and futile actions. The full reference is: “The heaviest burden: “What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh… must return to you—all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!’ If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?”
  • The title refers to the phrase "the Weight of the World".

Memorable Quotes[]

Dylan: You know, this seems like a bad deal because, apparently, I die either way.
Jonah: (talking about Beka) Not necessarily. Should she choose the missile, you will be evacuated with rest of us. Your life spared, though...the rest of it you'll both spend in chains.
Dylan: Oh, I feel much better now.

Andromeda: The power she used to tesseract us all to where we are took away her substance.
Dylan: Andromeda...
Andromeda: I missed you too, Captain.

Dylan: Thanks Beka. See? Isn't teamwork a great thing?
Beka: Teamwork? Dylan? That's funny, that's what almost killed me. I had a lot of time to think that one over actually. Six months to be exact.
Dylan: That's right, blame me for everything that happened. You know, why didn't you just leave with your boyfriend?
Rhade: Hey, there's no functioning escape pods, what's the plan?
Beka: You know what I miss most while I was out there orbiting all alone without food or water abandoned?
Rhade: If we could have this conversation later--
Beka: The chance to tell you how damned disposable you made me feel. After everything I did.

Production Information[]

Trancecore
Production Number: 502
Aired: October 1, 2004
Writer By: Naomi Janzen
Directed By: Jorge Montesi
Created By: Gene Roddenberry
Developed By: Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Executive Producers: Majel Roddenberry
Josanne B. Lovick
Adam Haight
Kevin Sorbo
Bob Engels
Producer Sherry Gorval
Production Designer Brian Kane
Intro The Universe is a dangerous place. But in our future my crew and I fight to make it safe. I am Dylan Hunt, Captain of the Andromeda Ascendant, and these are our adventures.

Starring[]

Regular Cast[]

Guest Star[]

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