Farscape was, as far as I'm concerned, one of the best SF series on TV in a long time. Smart, really funny, great characters, a fascinating storyline… it was one of the few shows I'd go out of my way to watch every week. Of course, since it was on the Sci-Fi Channel, figuring out when to watch it was often problematic. (I was never entirely sure whether they ran the episodes in order, nor when a season REALLY started and really ended. It seemed like they started each season sometime in March then, about 4 episodes from the end of the season they'd go into repeats, then show those last 4 episodes in November or something, then back to repeats. It was a confusing schedule to say the least).
One of the things I like best about the series is the lead character, John Crichton. He's smart, resourceful, funny, blah-blah-blah—all the standard characteristics of a lead SF character—but, by sometime in the third season, they gave him an edge that I'm just not used to seeing on TV science fiction. First off, while most shows seem to feel that the "action character" and the "science character" need to be 2 different people, here we had them all rolled into one… Chrichton's a scientist who also happens to be pretty handy with a pulse pistol. But, even more interesting, by the third season he's developed this "not taking any crap from anyone" attitude that says to hell with the boring "I'm not sinking to their level" morality lesson attitude that's so prevalent in mass-media heroes. Chrichton's finally fed up with people trying to kill him and his friends and is more than willing to blast anyone and everyone that threatens them out the airlock, which he proceeds to do often enough to be really refreshing.
A few years into Farscape's run, the Sci-Fi Channel gets a new chief and she balks at renewing the series because, along with being their highest rated show, it's also their most expensive. Suddenly, in the middle of season 4, it gets cancelled. The hue and cry among the Farscape faithful was, of course, strident—but all to no avail. Farscape got cancelled and we stopped watching it (knowing that it didn't actually END, you know? Dani was so fed up with their decision that she refused to watch anything on Sci-Fi for years.)
Then we hear about the new miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. Exultation ensues as we get all excited that we're going to get new Farscape! Of course, now we've got to go back and watch the rest of Season 4. Since I'd already copied over all the Farscape tapes I'd made at the time, it was time for a trip to the Netflix vault which, sure enough, has the entire series available on DVD. So I added all of Season 4 to our rental queue (which now tops over 180 DVDs!) and we start catching up on Farscape. (Did I say in the past that Netflix has ruined me? Well, it sure comes in handy when you're looking for things the local Blockbuster simply doesn't carry!)
Along about the middle of Season 4, we come across an episode called "Unrealized Realities" in which Crichton gets sucked down one of the wormholes he's been chasing throughout the series and ends up in some strange micro-universe having a discussion with some alien being about wormholes, relativity, quantum theory and the nature of time itself. (And yes, for those of you who don't speak geek, we are definitely in heavy-duty geek mode by this time.)
Did I mention I thought this series was smart? I ended up watching the damn episode twice, and rewinding often, to get my head around the ideas they were throwing around (admittedly, time travel theories always make my head hurt). By the end of the damn thing, they've not only explained time travel in terms of the series, but they've done a pretty damn good job of discussing Einstein's Theory of Relativity and quantum theory in general terms—and STILL managed to be funny!
This was a great series and I cannot wait for The Peacekeeper Wars. And to hell with the head of the Sci-Fi Channel and her accountant's mentality towards what's going to show on her network. Yes, I've apparently joined the hordes of the Farscape faithful on this one.
One of the things I like best about the series is the lead character, John Crichton. He's smart, resourceful, funny, blah-blah-blah—all the standard characteristics of a lead SF character—but, by sometime in the third season, they gave him an edge that I'm just not used to seeing on TV science fiction. First off, while most shows seem to feel that the "action character" and the "science character" need to be 2 different people, here we had them all rolled into one… Chrichton's a scientist who also happens to be pretty handy with a pulse pistol. But, even more interesting, by the third season he's developed this "not taking any crap from anyone" attitude that says to hell with the boring "I'm not sinking to their level" morality lesson attitude that's so prevalent in mass-media heroes. Chrichton's finally fed up with people trying to kill him and his friends and is more than willing to blast anyone and everyone that threatens them out the airlock, which he proceeds to do often enough to be really refreshing.
A few years into Farscape's run, the Sci-Fi Channel gets a new chief and she balks at renewing the series because, along with being their highest rated show, it's also their most expensive. Suddenly, in the middle of season 4, it gets cancelled. The hue and cry among the Farscape faithful was, of course, strident—but all to no avail. Farscape got cancelled and we stopped watching it (knowing that it didn't actually END, you know? Dani was so fed up with their decision that she refused to watch anything on Sci-Fi for years.)
Then we hear about the new miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. Exultation ensues as we get all excited that we're going to get new Farscape! Of course, now we've got to go back and watch the rest of Season 4. Since I'd already copied over all the Farscape tapes I'd made at the time, it was time for a trip to the Netflix vault which, sure enough, has the entire series available on DVD. So I added all of Season 4 to our rental queue (which now tops over 180 DVDs!) and we start catching up on Farscape. (Did I say in the past that Netflix has ruined me? Well, it sure comes in handy when you're looking for things the local Blockbuster simply doesn't carry!)
Along about the middle of Season 4, we come across an episode called "Unrealized Realities" in which Crichton gets sucked down one of the wormholes he's been chasing throughout the series and ends up in some strange micro-universe having a discussion with some alien being about wormholes, relativity, quantum theory and the nature of time itself. (And yes, for those of you who don't speak geek, we are definitely in heavy-duty geek mode by this time.)
Did I mention I thought this series was smart? I ended up watching the damn episode twice, and rewinding often, to get my head around the ideas they were throwing around (admittedly, time travel theories always make my head hurt). By the end of the damn thing, they've not only explained time travel in terms of the series, but they've done a pretty damn good job of discussing Einstein's Theory of Relativity and quantum theory in general terms—and STILL managed to be funny!
This was a great series and I cannot wait for The Peacekeeper Wars. And to hell with the head of the Sci-Fi Channel and her accountant's mentality towards what's going to show on her network. Yes, I've apparently joined the hordes of the Farscape faithful on this one.
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