List of Andromeda Characters - Recurring Characters - Gaheris Rhade

Gaheris Rhade, played by actor Steve Bacic, is a Nietzschean. His name alludes to Gaheris, a figure of Arthurian legend, a knight of the Round Table. He was a son of King Lot of Orkney and Lothian and his wife Morgause (a daughter of Gorlois and Igraine, sister of Elaine and Morgan le Fay and also an older maternal half-sister of King Arthur). Gaheris' brothers were Gawaine, Agravaine, Gareth and Mordred. Before being knighted, he was squire to his elder brother Gawaine. He was accidentally killed by Lancelot during the rescue of Guinevere. The name Rhadé derives from a clan of the Montagnards who aided American soldiers during the Vietnam War.

Gaheris Rhade was Dylan Hunt's original executive officer on the Andromeda Ascendant, his best friend and was to be the best man at Dylan's wedding to Sara Riley. They had first met when both were working for Argosy Special Operations, an elite division of the Commonwealth High Guard.

Gaheris was married to a Nietzschean woman and probably had several children. Rhade's surviving family did not know of his cooperation with the Nietzschean rebels, since they immediately joined Sara Riley in founding a colony of human families and loyalist Nietzschean Prides on the planet of Terazed after the rebellion. His distant descendant Telemachus Rhade who is his exact genetic reincarnation still lives there as an Admiral of the Home Guard when the Andromeda Ascendant arrives in the episode Home Fires, Episode 208. Telemachus later becomes an officer on board the Starship Andromeda.

High Guard Admiral Constanza Stark assigned Dylan and Gaheris together on a mission to kidnap the dictator Ferrin of Mobius. During the mission Rhade saved Dylan Hunt's life and was commended by the Systems Commonwealth for his bravery. After the mission, when Dylan was promoted to captain, Rhade was also assigned to the Andromeda Ascendant as his commanding first officer.

At the outset of the Nietzschean Rebellion, Gaheris Rhade sabotaged the Andromeda and tried to kill his longtime friend and commanding officer, captain Dylan Hunt. History records that Dylan Hunt managed to kill Nietzschean warrior Gaheris Rhade before becoming trapped on the event horizon of a black hole. Gaheris Rhade was labeled a traitor who served a key role in the Nietzchean Uprising against the member worlds of the Systems Commonwealth.

Gaheris Rhade's true motives were not fully revealed to the audience until the season three episode The Unconquerable Man, where he is the victor of the fight between himself and Dylan Hunt before they were trapped inside the black hole.

Gaheris Rhade is frozen in time in Dylan Hunt's place. When he was restored, he discovers that his supposedly superior race, the genetically engineered Nietzscheans, rather than building a grand unified empire, had betrayed each other and become divided, with the surviving Prides constantly engaged in war with each other. Pride Jaguar had betrayed the ruling Drago-Kazov Pride, and the Nietzschean dream of creating an intergalactic Empire never materialized. Gaheris Rhade had betrayed his oath and killed his best friend in an attempt to protect the Nietzschean people from the terrifying race of the Magog; instead, however, he had played a direct role in destroying civilization without putting a united Nietzschean empire in its place, causing the deaths and suffering of untold billions, and leaving the galaxies defenseless against the machinations of the Spirit of the Abyss, which controlled the Magog. Having sacrificed everything—murdering Dylan, betraying his oath—in the service of allowing his people to build a united Nietzschean empire, then finding that they had thrown away that opportunity to engage in civil war, Rhade became extremely embittered, mistrustful of his fellow Nietzscheans, and hating them with a passion few equalled. He was also consumed with guilt over his role in destroying civilization in general, and murdering his closest friend in particular.

Trying to rebuild the Systems Commonwealth, Rhade enlisted Eureka Maru crew members Beka Valentine, Rev Bem, Trance Gemini, and Seamus Harper along with the infamous Nietzschean mercenary Tyr Anasazi to help him, constantly playing strategy games against a holographic version of his deceased best friend, Dylan Hunt. (The evidence suggests that Rommie was never constructed in this reality). However, his attempts were frustrated by failure. He attempts to get individual human and alien worlds to join him and restore the Systems Commonwealth, but most of them simply refuse, lacking faith in his dream of a Restored Commonwealth. He refused to allow any of the infamous Nietzschean Prides to join his fledgling Systems Commonwealth, which only numbered a few worlds, due only partly to his rational fear of Nietzschean treachery (he was motivated in large measure by the hatred he felt towards all Nietzscheans, feeling betrayed by his descendants because he had sacrificed everything in helping to destroy the original Commonwealth so they could build a Nietzschean empire, which they had failed to do.) His rival, Sabra-Jaguar Pride Arch Duke Charlemagne Bolivar blackmailed the leaders of several worlds, making them reluctant to sign on.

Although he had a romantic relationship with Beka Valentine, she eventually left him because she couldn't cope with Rhade's ruthless methods, accompanied by Rev Bem, and Gaheris Rhade was forced to kill fellow Nietzschean Tyr Anasazi when the mercenary made his long-awaited move, seeking to return to the Nietzscheans with the bones of Nietzschean Progenitor Drago Musevini, and unite them against the Spirit of the Abyss and its Magog legions, which threatened all the sentient species of the galaxies. Rhade knew that the unified Nietzschean Prides would eventually destroy his fledgling Commonwealth, and he refused to allow Tyr Anasazi to leave the Andromeda, resulting in Rhade killing him in their last confrontation. Seamus Harper stayed with Gaheris, observing Rhade was the only person he'd met who hated Nietzscheans as much as (or even more than) he did.

When Andromeda faced destruction from the tesseract machine created in an attempt to extract Harper's Magog larva, the future Trance Gemini advised him that traveling back in time to make sure Dylan Hunt lives is the only hope for a Restored Systems Commonwealth; he cannot be the man needed to restore order to the universe. Commenting that "History will remember me as a traitor for what I'm about to do", Gaheris Rhade travelled back in time and killed his past self, then took his place, reenacting his fight with his friend Dylan Hunt and deliberately allowing him to win the fight and live to restore the Systems Commonwealth. Seeking redemption, his selfless act cost him his reputation, his friendships and his life, with only a faint scar on his hand that his past self had lacked any indication of his original life (What he did with the body of his younger self was never revealed).