Trance Gemini | |
---|---|
Alias: | The Purple Princess |
Gender: | Genderless (Appears female) |
Species: | Solar Avatar of Tarn Vedra |
Date of Birth: | Billions of years ago |
Ship Position: | Arms Master Officer (emergency position), Medic, many other positions |
Status: | Alive? |
Family | |
Sister: | Many other Avatars |
Brother: | Many other Avatars |
Chronological and General Info | |
Affiliation: | New Systems Commonwealth, Lambent Kith Nebula |
Enemy: | Spirit of the Abyss |
As I destroy you, I am able to create."
Core
Trance Gemini is a fictional character in the television series Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, played by Canadian Laura Bertram.
Biography[]
Her first appearance on the show is as a young, bubbly, purple skinned alien of an unknown origin with a prehensile tail (somewhat resembling the Marvel Comics X-Man Nightcrawler). She is somehow representing a cartoony archetype of the animal like, sweet, sensitive, and funny fantasy creature and serves as a comic relief. Her way of thinking is somehow "out of this world" and innocent. For example, her report on Dylan Hunt's rescue was "I looked for you. I found out where you were. I traveled to where you were. And I got you out."
She was the last member to join the crew of the Eureka Maru before they rescued the Andromeda Ascendant and its Captain, Dylan Hunt, from a Black Hole. On the Andromeda, she serves as their environmentalist and life support officer, xenobiologist, botanist and physician, and is consequently often found in the ship's Hydroponic Garden or medical deck.
She is mysterious about her true nature, but has made accurate guesswork that saved the crew of the Andromeda on many occasions. This ability has also helped her in gambling games, espionage and thievery when she and the crew needed it.
At the start of Season 2 in "Last Call at the Broken Hammer", Trance loses her tail during a firefight and expresses her longing for its return in several subsequent episodes.
Later in Ouroboros, Trance undergoes a physical transformation via the effects of a Tesseract machine, which folds space and time. She changes places with a being that tells her that she is an older version of herself. The "new" Trance is still played by Laura Bertram and has the same facial features, but has a very different personality, dropping the pretext that she was "just along for the ride", revealing that she has an agenda of her own in "If the Wheel is Fixed". The "new" Trance also has a golden skintone instead of the purple skintone her younger version possessed.
Trance is the Avatar of the original Vedran sun, which was born to destroy the Spirit of the Abyss and has special powers and abilities. For instance, she can transform herself into a model of her sun and go supernova at will.
She plays a critical role during the Nietzschean Secession, in which the crew of the Andromeda fought with former crew member Tyr Anasazi to obtain passage to the Route of Ages.
When the crew was in Seefra, Trance was in her sun state known as the Core creature. Once she was in her humanoid form, she had no recollection of who she was or what she was capable of. On Seefra-2, she met a man named Ione who was really the missing Moon of Tarn-Vedra. Later, the Lambent Kith Nebula sealed her into Methus-2, the artificial sun of the Seefra system, but thanks to Dylan and Rhade, she was rescued.
Unfortunately, she found out that her people (the Lambent Kith Nebula) were under the spell of the Abyss, but she used her sun to destroy it.
She is the oldest of her people, as stated briefly in "In Heaven Now Are Three".
Memorable Quotes[]
- "Well, there're all kinds of futures. I can, anyone can foresee any number of possibilities, all of which are constantly diverging. Contingencies arise, imperatives vanish, and all the while we tread our way through chaotic uncertainty, never knowing which of hundreds of possible realities we could find ourselves in." ("Forced Perspective")
- "The future? Sometimes it seems like yesterday, sometimes today, sometimes tomorrow. Imagine the possibilities." ("If The Wheel Is Fixed")
- "The lifetime of a human is infinitely smaller compared to that of a star, but a star is born created from dust, just like a human, with life and fire breathed into it. It shines. But eventually the star grows old, and it hunches and winks out. Maybe it even goes out with a bang, and that is life. But just because there are so many of them, Beka, don't think that it's not valuable or that it doesn't make a difference. It does." ("Slipfighter The Dogs of War")
- "I am the avatar of a sun, a star. All things come from me. You are elements of the sun. As I make you, I am able to destroy you. As I destroy you, I am able to create. Awareness is where we travel. No path, I am all gravity, and we exist in all universes and those in-between. What destroys you in this universe will deliver you to the next." ("The World Turns All Around Her")
Alternate[]
In Robert Hewitt Wolfe's original plan for Andromeda, Trance's people (still solar avatars) would have been the Lightbringers, or Lucifers, who fought a war in "Heaven" (the original state of the universe as a small perfect space with all matter and energy pressed tightly together) resulting in the Big Bang. The Spirit of the Abyss would have been an embodiment of Love (the twisted stalker kind of Love, or gravity) trying to crush the universe back in on itself. Rather than being the Vedran sun, Trance Gemini would have been, "a sun in the Gemini constellation dreaming it's a person", hence the name. The original vision was lost when Wolfe was replaced as head writer/producer by Bob Engels, but was released as a 20 page online story entitled "Coda".
The difference between the storylines makes it difficult to understand exactly what facts about Trance can be considered "accurate". Upon "Coda", it becomes very obvious as to the multitude of hints dropped in the first two seasons of the series, such as in "Pitiless as the Sun", when Trance closes her meeting with Logitch with an exchange where Logitch observes that "You enjoy the chaos, don't you? According to our greatest spiritual texts, chaos is just a manifestation of evil," to which Trance responds, "Are you implying I'm some sort of devil?" It's the mix of this, along with the actual observations about Trance, as well as the implied observations made by Harper in "Into the Labyrinth" about a "naked purple girl being worshiped" that makes it difficult to determine what should apply, and what should not. Of course the conversation with Logitch and others like it can simply be written off as idle theory on the part of the characters, but it certainly wastes a lot of space coming to the same conclusion. It is generally accepted to simply "write off" most of Trance's character development in the first two seasons for this reason.
Colors[]
Multiple times, "golden Trance" is asked why she changed from purple to golden. In "Dance of the Mayflies", Beka is given 10 tries to find out; however, after the first wrong guess ("Because you are a totally different person?"), they are interrupted. The reason lies in the visible spectrum, purple/violet being a short wavelength color (380โ450 nanometre), golden (570โ590 nanometre) close to orange (590โ620 nanometre) having a longer wavelength.
Another likely explanation is that Trance's colors represent her evolution as a star. Trance first appears as a blue and purple humanoid girl with a youthful personality, purple and blue like a newly formed star. When she "changes places" with her older and more experienced self she becomes more golden much like an older, middle aged star.
Robert Hewitt Wolfe would later claim on his tumblr blog that Trance's color discrepancy was because "Tribune and Fireworks thought the purple version of Trance was too cute and not 'f---able enough'" and that "they wanted her to be sexier and seem older". (http://www.tumblr.com/writergeekrhw/739823486931009536/hi-robert-ive-been-rewatching-andromeda-with-a?source=share)
Mysterious Abilities[]
As a solar Avatar, Trance possess a myriad of multidimensional powers that are shown but not thoroughly explained or elaborated on in the series. Trance's most obvious and important power is the control of her sun as well as her physical Avatar's ability to transform into a supernova.
During several episodes Trance is implied to be a precognitive being, which is a function of her ability to jump between various universes and points in time. However her future sight extends to more than predictions, but rather to an understanding of the universe outside of temporal restrictions. An example of this would be the "accidental" transportation to the Battle of Witchhead the Andromeda experienced while Trance was being taught slipstream navigation. Due to the fact that slipstream navigation is not controlled by maps or charts but the will of the pilot, allowing the helmsman to chart a destination by merely envisioning it, Trance likely sees reality in a way devoid of time.
Trance also has the ability to manipulate time using her strange, special plants she grows by clipping them. Since Trance herself is a sun, we can infer that the relationship between Gemini and her plants to a certain extent mimics the natural connection between flora and sunlight. Just as a plant is influenced by light through photosynthesis, Trance's plants may also absorb and store her own cosmic energy so that when they are pruned this energy is released from its bonds in a controlled fashion to cause temporal distortion. Trance also seems to use the plants as a focus, the branches, stems and leaves mirroring the possibilities of different time and universes.
In "Ouroboros" Trance trades places with a "future" version with herself, marking the last appearance of the purple hued Trance Gemini and the unveiling of the more mature gold/orange version of the character. This could be another potential ability, however it is also possible she merely used the opportunity created by Harper's experimental tesseract machine, which at the time was causing all manner of chaos on board the ship.
Trivia[]
- Her name comes from the words Trance (hypnosis) and Gemini (twins).
Gallery[]
Current members
|
ยท Andromeda Ascendant ยท Andromeda Ascendant Artificial Intelligence ยท Beka Valentine ยท Doyle ยท Dylan Hunt ยท Rommie ยท Seamus Harper ยท Telemachus Rhade ยท Trance Gemini ยท | |
---|---|---|
Former members
|
ยท Fatima Novarro ยท Gaheris Rhade ยท Iskander Hassan ยท Kim Jong San ยท Kylie Vance ยท Maisus nax Sinque ยท Perim ยท Rev Bem ยท Stam ยท Thabo Xhosa ยท Tristan Selvig ยท Tyr Anasazi ยท Yukio Cooper ยท |