Now that Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda has finally hit the airwaves, the fans can at last see what they’ve been reading about for the past six months. SPACE.com’s Don Lipper speaks with series head writer and co-executive producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe about press excess, shakedown progress and ratings success.

SPACE.COM: First of all, how’s it going now that you’re on the air finally?

RHW: It’s good. Our numbers have been quite good and -- it’s hard to say, we haven’t got any official final, final, final numbers but I think . . . I know . . . we’re probably going to be the number one new show in syndication. We may even be the number one hour show in first-run syndication.

SPACE.COM: And now that everybody is seeing what they’ve been talking about for months, what’s the response been?

RHW: Well, it’s been a little bit mixed. I think there’s been a lot of positive response. I think that there’s been some negative response. Mainstream critics have been a little tough, but then, that’s not unexpected with a syndicate sci-fi show -- a genre show in general. They tend not to get them for a while.

I think a lot of people who might have come in expecting something very, very much like Star Trek, for example, or had preconceived notions about what they thought the show should be, have probably been disappointed, because it’s definitely a different dish.

We get a lot of complaints about our tech being inaccurate because we don’t use things like tractor beams, transporters, phasers and force fields. So that’s kind of funny.

But overall, the numbers have been great, we deal within a lot of markets from one week to another, so obviously the people out there who are watching it are digging it. ‘Cause they’re coming back for more.

SPACE.COM: What are some other comments that you’ve been getting from people who were expecting Trek?

RHW: Well, certainly there’s been some comments on the Internet about the dialogue, which is sometimes quite contemporary. Something we purposely avoided on Star Trek, we’ve embraced quite a bit more on Andromeda. They’ve either reacted with gushing praise or violent opposition, so I find that to be a good sign.

SPACE.COM: Although there isn’t a big discussion of slipstream so far, your tech is much more within the confines of relativity and the uncertainty principle and known, real science. Is the fact that you don’t used tractor beams to pull things (you actually use ropes) causing problems?

RHW: We looked into it and ropes made of buckyballs with self-guiding warheads on the front is actually the best way to get a ship out of an intense gravity well.

We tried to do it as accurately as possible, and I think that the fact of the matter is, we didn’t spend a lot of time explaining these things to people. I feel that that’s correct, I don’t think we should have slowed down the show to say, "Okay, these are buckminsterfullerenes, and they’re incredible strong. And the time dilation is inside the Andromeda because it’s interacting with it’s gravitational fields, and that’s why the time dilation is happening inside, but there is not outside, so the heads of grappling hooks are in more normal time speed, and they are self guiding. And they do wrap around, and then you have a very, very strong connection, the strongest connection you could possible have, which is a molecular connection between one ship and the other." But you know what? That’s a pretty boring scene. I won’t do it.

And the other thing that’s been interesting is that people who have watched the show more than once, have suddenly realized that the answers to many of their questions were in the show; they just went by very, very fast and you have to pay attention if you’re curious about getting every last bit of tech and stuff laid out for you. We say they’re bucky cables. We don’t explain what that is. If someone really wants to know they can check.

SPACE.COM: I noticed that there seems to be a different cinematic style in the opening, and then when you cut to 300 years later, it’s a lot edgier.

RHW: Yes. We definitely tried to establish a more standard style for the Commonwealth phase as we were entering. It’s still a little more fluid than Star Trek crews. But then we went to handheld and a lot of moving around, as soon as we went on to the Maru. So, we definitely wanted to have a style with a differentiation to help show the passage of time and that now we’re in a different place.

SPACE.COM: Did you happen to see the New York Post review, "Hercules is Lost in Space"?

RHW: [LAUGHTER] I read it. I think that review speaks for itself. Maybe he just didn’t like it, that’s okay, I don’t care. But it felt like a cheap shot to me. And there have been a number of reviews that have felt that way to me. There have been some genuine negative reviews that were generally well thought out and had some legitimate points. But there have also been a larger number of reviews that have just seemed like they had an agenda before they were written and before the show was watched. There was quite a hilarious thing in one of them where they trashed me on my cheap and stupid dialogue. The particular line of dialogue that they said was silly and incomprehensible, was a bible quote.

SPACE.COM: What was the quote?

RHW: "For you have sown the wind and you shall reap the whirlwind." It’s from Hosea. [8:7] And a really nice piece of Old Testament stuff I think. So, you know, if they got a problem with that line, they should take it up with God.

SPACE.COM: Where do you think that some of your critics had pointed criticisms, stuff that rang true?

RHW: Well, I mean there were some things that people were commenting on that we had seen ourselves and we’re trying to fix. And we were already done fixing it. Many of it had already been fixed in the interim.

SPACE.COM: Such as?

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a $10 million budget [like Dark Angel] to do our first two hours. I wish we had. We would have done some really great stuff, but we had what we had.

We didn’t have any enhancements for the pilot really, the first two episodes, so, that means that we had to make do and learn as we went, figure out other ways of doing things other than the expensive ones, and so that means there are going to be some things that didn’t work. We’re fixing them.

There’s some things that people not liked, like some of the dialogue and some of the music and stuff like that that we like and, it’s a matter of taste there.

SPACE.COM: What else? What other legitimate things?

RHW: Those are three that pop out in my mind right now. But again, I think most of the things that people are calling attention to that they did not like, that I feel are legitimate are things that we’ve been addressing for months. The Than-Tre-Kull costume, is a really good example, the bug costume.

The robots, the Andromeda Robot costumes, the ones moving around in the background? Now we finally have new ones. It’s been quite a long and arduous process, but we think we finally got some new ones that we’re going to replace the silver and gold ones. We had a lot of trouble with those. That was something we had a huge amount of trouble on, just making them work. So, happily, we will have new ones that we think will work better.

SPACE.COM: And the responding primarily to stuff that’s in the standard media, or stuff that’s also coming from the fans, from the back channel, from the fans on the net?

RHW: The truth is we’re not responding to any of it. The truth of the matter is people are commenting on stuff that we’ve known about since April. And they’re seeing it now in October, and saying, well, this needs fixing and this needs fixing, and we’re like, yeah, no shit. We knew that six months ago.

And in fact, a lot of what you’re complaining about, we’ve already fixed, it’s just you won’t see the results of the fixes for another eight, ten, twelve weeks. Because that’s just the nature of the beast.

SPACE.COM: Just one thing about the pilot, and sort of the shakedown cruise. If you look at [the Next Generation pilot movie] "Encounter at Farpoint", it is unwatchable now.

RHW: Yeah. And to me, I think our first two episodes are better than that. That’s just me. I think for a shakedown period, I think we’re doing pretty well. And I’ll stack our first ten episodes up against the first ten episodes of any show you might want to pick off the top of your head.

SPACE.COM: So what do fans have to look forward to?

RHW: We have some great stories coming up. Part of the burden of the first two hours was that we just had to do just tremendous amount of set up in terms of character and overall situation and universe, so those episodes were purposely a little thin on story.

And then we go into sweeps with a really strong four episodes. Really nice episode for Tyr, "Double Helix". We’ve got a really strong Dylan episode in "Angel Dark, Demon Bright". Good Beka episode in "The Ties That Bind" and then another really wonderful Dylan episode in "The Banks of the Lethe".

So I think that we definitely are catching our stride, and then as good as I think November sweeps are, I think that the February sweeps are gonna be even better. There’s some really nice location work and really, kind of cool and interesting stories; lots of good drama and action and character stuff.

And obviously the more the characters grow, the more comfortable you get with them, the more cool stuff you can do. I think we’re starting to find some of the really nice possibilities in these characters.

SPACE.COM: Will we be seeing any romance?

RHW: Yeah, we haven’t seen any romance in the first two episodes. There’s the barest hint of a little tiny, teeny romance in Episode 3, but obviously that’s part of good storytelling, some romance and developing character relationships, so we’ll be seeing a lot more of that. "Lethe" has got a lot of romance in it.

And then there’s a couple of episodes, I wouldn’t say they’re romance episodes, but I would certainly say there’s episodes with that kind of, that are about relationships, coming up. And at least one of our characters does get laid in the first eight episodes.

SPACE.COM: Excellent. And I understand you’re doing a convention shortly, aren’t you?

SPACE.COM: Anything else going on, anything you want to tease? Do you want to talk about your guest shots?

RHW: Well, we’ve already announced that John de Lancie was doing an episode. And that’ll be on in February. He just gave a terrific performance.

We’ve got some great guest star performances, the kids in "Lightning", which is the episode coming up this weekend are just great. Young actors, good young actors are hard to find, and we found some terrific ones for this, so we’re really happy about that.

I’m trying to think if there’s any other big newsworthy guest appearances coming up. Well, we have Ralph Moeller on an episode. Ralph was the big German barbarian in Gladiator. He also played Conan in the Conan TV series for two years. So we’ve got him on an episode coming up. He’s a great guy, he’s huge. He dwarfs [Andromeda regular] Keith Hamilton Cobb. He’s like three or four inches taller than Keith, and about 50 pounds heavier. He’s just gigantic. It’s hilarious.

SPACE.COM: So that will be a show full of testosterone, cause you’ve got Hercules, Keith Hamilton Cobb and Conan?

RHW: Yeah, exactly. And the three of them fight one each other, at least once or twice. So there’s plenty of big, strong dudes throwing each other around the room in that episode. That’s not what the episode is about, mind you, it’s actually a Harper episode, but there’s a bit of fun action with those characters, definitely.

We’re talking about a couple of other short, mentionable guest appearances coming up in the next three or four episodes as well. But we haven’t locked them down yet.