From its berth in an industrial park in a Vancouver, Canada, suburb, a formidable warship explores the galaxy, attempting to restore the defunct Commonwealth and save the denizens of outer space from centuries of chaos ... or not.

"I want to check the Commonwealth out," says Kevin Sorbo, star of the syndicated science-fiction show Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. "It's gone, as far as I'm concerned."

Currently in its third season, which launched late last month, Andromeda originally was about the efforts of Capt. Dylan Hunt to restore the galaxy-spanning government that had existed when he was sucked into a black hole three centuries before. His mission was to bring order to an unruly, fragmented universe.

After two seasons, both Dylan and Sorbo are willing to hang all that up. "It's like, enough with the Commonwealth!" Sorbo says.

"We've got the 50 planets, so basically a charter membership is there -- so let them work on it. Let them come up with the other 5 billion planets. Let us now take this amazing ship and go out there and be Robin Hood, help who needs our help. That's pretty much what we're doing this season," he says.

While the change in direction coincided with the departure of executive producer and writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe (since replaced by Twin Peaks writer-producer Bob Engels), Sorbo takes some responsibility for the shift.

"Did I have a voice in it? Yeah, I had a voice in it," he says. "Dylan's also got to realize, 'You know what: I'll never see a million member worlds in my lifetime.' It took a thousand years to get it together in the first place, so you know what, he feels like he's accomplished that task of getting those first 50 worlds together, and now it's like, 'Let's move on. Let's have some fun.'"

Sorbo's previous series, the syndicated Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, regularly mixed humor with action and adventure, and the actor isn't the only cast member who thinks it's a good idea. Canadian actress Lexa Doig, who plays Rommie, the android embodiment of the ship, feels the same way.

"I was getting bored last year," she confesses. Now, "we're having a little more fun with it. It's getting to where now you almost have to, because some of the situations we're finding ourselves in. It's either be mocked or mock ourselves."

For Sorbo, his experience doing seven years of Hercules in New Zealand has given him a clear vision of what he thinks a syndicated action hour should be -- and can't be.

"The original idea of this show only partly materialized in the first half of the first season," he says, "and it got further and further from that. We're not even near what this show was originally pitched to me as being about."

"And so now, if we're going to take this direction, let's take it in this direction. Let's throw in some Mel Brooks. Let's throw in some Airplane! stuff. I still love scenes that have really well-written dialogue, but this isn't The West Wing."

The formula for success in this type of series, "especially if you want to sell it overseas, like this show is doing in 155 countries," Sorbo says, is "You have to make it easy for the people in other countries to watch and enjoy without getting bogged down in dialogue.

"It's that old adage: Keep it simple, stupid. We're not dumbing down the show, but we're not going to make it difficult to follow."

But even with a sense of humor, don't expect Dylan Hunt to turn into Groucho Marx anytime soon. "I'm playing another hero guy," Sorbo says. "In one way, you can be goofy about it, but in another way, you've got to be the anchor of the show."

Kate O'Hare

DIRECTION CHANGE CREATES NEW ANDROMEDA STRAIN