The Sci-Fi Channel had like six back-to-back episodes of the show “Andromeda”, whose concept was originally conceived by Gene Roddenberry (the creator of the original “Star Trek.”) What made me stop was that Nia Peeples[wikipedia][myspace] was a guest character on a particular episode. It turns out that Lexa Doig[wikipedia][IMDb] is a main character (in fact, the title character.) Why am I not aware of these things?

She plays the AI of the eponymous starship Andromeda and also plays an android (gynoid?) that has the AI as the basis of her personality. (Man, oh, man, if they ever turn ”Halo” into a movie, she totally should be [Cortana][6]. Although I don’t know about being typecast as an AI.)

“Andromeda” went off the air in 2005. Apparently the last season was ill-received by fans because a key writer quit the show and the concepts involved strayed from hard science moorings to more fantastic scenarios. There is a lot of time travelling and traversals of alternate universes, making it just a tad confusing, but it’s solid sci-fi in the tradition of “Star Trek”, “Battlestar Galactica”, and “Buck Rogers”.

[6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortana “Cortana · wikipedia”