Farscape, an hour-long series airing on the SciFi Channel, has aired about a third of its second season episodes. Season one episodes are currently being repeated until June 16, when new episodes will resume for the duration of the summer.
The basic premise has John Crichton, a second-generation American astronaut, falling through a wormhole and ending up somewhere else -- the other side of the galaxy, maybe -- or perhaps the other side of the universe.
He happens to pop out into the middle of an escape attempt, as the escaped prisoners aboard a living ship have somehow overpowered their captors and gained control. They are attempting to flee a heavily armed command carrier and its attendant fleet of attack ships, called Prowlers, when Crichton's ship appears out of nowhere.
A near miss between Crichton and a Prowler sets up one of the continuing themes, as the Prowler spins out of control and crashes spectacularly. Turns out that the Captain of command carrier is the older brother of the now-deceased Prowler pilot, and he instantly becomes obsessed with avenging his brother's death.
Meanwhile, the prisoners, hopeful that this strange craft may carry some useful technology, bring Crichton aboard, and that's when the fun begins. The diverse group of aliens inject Crichton with "translator microbes" which neatly sidesteps the communication problems, making any and all aliens instantly understandable (as long as they've got the microbes as well). Crichton manages to make himself useful pretty quickly, but their last-ditch escape attempt results in the addition of another unwilling passenger, a Peacekeeper commando whose prowler was inadvertently caught up in their wake.
At first glance, Farscape presents us with a long list of "stock" situations, but it manages to turn each of these scenarios, if not completely upside down, at least a good 90 degrees away from what you were expecting. The program has been compared to numerous other series and works of fiction, including Blake's 7 and Red Dwarf. The comparisons run from the sublime to the ridiculous, as Farscape evokes themes from The Odyssey -- or Gilligan's Island. Inevitable comparisons with all of Star Trek's incarnations are inescapable among die-hard sf television fans. Yes, Farscape echoes many of these programs, but has managed to synthesize all its borrowed elements into something truly fresh, and so far unique among sf television offerings. Let's take a look at what makes Farscape different from everything else out there, and why you should make it a habit not just to tune in, but to set your VCRs so you can create your own Farscape video library.
John Crichton asks more than once in first few episodes. It turns out that there is quite a bit "the matter" with everyone....
First of all, there's Moya, the Leviathan, the living ship which houses our renegades. While the "living ship" idea has been done to death, Farscape's writers have succeeded in giving Moya a personality even though she gets very little screen time and the crew can't communicate with her directly. Physically, Moya is a huge vessel, but she has no offensive capabilities. Her only alternative when threatened is to flee at faster-than-light speed using a technique called "star burst". The crew communicates with Moya and controls her (sort of) via Pilot, an enormous creature -- at least 10 feet tall -- with four arms and an admirable ability to multitask, who is joined to Moya in a symbiotic relationship.
Season One revealed precious few details about Pilot, who can never leave his "den" deep inside Moya's central chamber. But since Pilot speaks for himself as well as Moya, we have learned that he not only accepts his position of relative servitude, but he enjoys it. Pilot is the first of the non-humanoid characters that is a "regular" cast member. The Henson Co's Creature Shop has done a magnificent job of making Pilot come truly alive. Here is one instance where the viewer instantly believes that yes, this is a truly alien creature, fully realized and completely compelling. While the "joined ship" concept has been explored before (perhaps the most well known example is Anne McCaffrey's "The Ship Who Sang" brain/brawn stories), the relationship between Moya and Pilot is unique, and their realization is so beautifully executed that comparisons fall by the way side.
The second non-humanoid cast member is His Eminence Rygel the 16th, deposed monarch of the Hynerian Empire. Rygel is a tiny, aquatic, arrogant and apparently heartless little creature with a large mouth full of nasty teeth. At only two feet tall, Rygel compensates for his diminutive stature by perching nearly constantly on his throne sled, which enables him to zoom about the ship and keep himself comfortably at everyone else's eye level. Rygel's constant mouthing off and self-importance have inspired many fans to encourage his early demise, but his gruff exterior is an effective shield for Rygel's insecurities and soft-heartedness. Once the ruler of six billion subjects, Rygel has been imprisoned for 250 cycles (one cycle is roughly equivalent to a year), and subjected to mental and physical abuse during a good part of that time.
An experience like that is not easily recovered from, and the crew gets to see only glimpses of the "true" Rygel from time to time, as in an early episode when Zhaan paints a "spirit portrait" of him as a regal and compassionate monarch, explaining that the portrait portrays his true self and not just his physical appearance. Rygel's prickly attitude and often ambiguous motives are a continuous source of both humor and conflict, but he's not just the "comic relief puppet" as he comes through in the clutch, saving everyone's hides, in several episodes.
One of Rygel's chief foils is the healer-priestess Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan, called Zhaan (rhymes with "can"). Portrayed by the lovely Virginia Hey in some of the most arresting and complex makeup ever to appear on screen (much less in a weekly series), Zhaan is a bald, blue Delvian, somewhere around 800 cycles old. In the early episodes Zhaan is a voice of reason, nearly a mother figure. These episodes give scant reference to how she came to be a prisoner, but later in the season everyone learns why her home government regards her as an "anarchist", and Zhaan struggles to keep her demons in check.
Here we see the writers taking the stock character and turning it around. Yes, Zhaan is beautiful and exotic; alien women are supposed to be that way. She is also charming, very intelligent, and seething with sexuality (sometimes at inappropriate moments), also as expected. But the emergence of her "dark side", while predictable in and of itself, plays out beautifully, and the struggle she undergoes to keep herself together is wonderfully presented. Unlike other series, when a main character in Farscape undergoes a personal crisis of some magnitude, it's not immediately forgotten in the following episodes. Zhaan struggles to retain her balance in many episodes; as in real life, there is no "instant fix" for reconciling a peaceful nature with necessary but truly horrific violent acts.
The next resident alien is D'Argo, the Luxan warrior immediately interpreted as a "Worf clone" by nearly everyone. D'Argo is very tall (Anthony Simcoe himself is well over six feet tall, and D'Argo wears platform boots) and physically very imposing in prosthetics created by The Creature Shop. He carries a cool sword/energy rifle hybrid weapon called a qualta blade. Tentacled and tattooed with large metal rings embedded in his collar bones, D'Argo certainly comes off visually as a goon and not much more.
The viewer is not helped by some confusion around D'Argo's actual pre-prisoner status. When Farscape first aired, the Sci Fi Channel's Farscape website listed him as "General Ka D'Argo." In the first episode we learn that D'Argo is quite young (somewhere in his early 20s) and that he has participated in two battle campaigns. Somewhere along the line, the "General" rank was removed from D'Argo's official character description, with no explanation. But by the fourth episode we begin to see that there is a lot more to D'Argo; "appearances can be decieving" is an understatement.
The mystery of D'Argo's sudden decommissioning is eventually revealed early in the second season. But suffice it to say that the "shoot first, ask questions -- never" tag line that has been attached to D'Argo is grossly misleading. Anthony Simcoe's superb performances reveal all the pain and torture D'Argo has endured, and all the hopes he still nurtures. Yes, honor may be as big a part of the Luxan philosophy as it is to Klingons, but no Klingon character we've ever met has had to make the decisions D'Argo has. The revelation of the Romeo-and-Juliet scenario that led to D'Argo's imprisonment provides some of the most heart-wrenching scenes of the entire season.
Aeryn Sun is the at first unwilling Peacekeeper commando who was dragged along for the ride. She is the viewer's main glimpse into the workings of the Peacekeeper society. Apparently raised in a parentless "unit", trained from birth to be a commando, Aeryn had never known any other world nor was she curious about them; she was quite happy to be a Peacekeeper and a member of the superior race. Although Aeryn looks completely human, she is a Sebacean, and there are several key differences between Sebacean and human physiology. After her inadvertent trip aboard Moya, Aeryn is declared "irrevocably contaminated" by her prolonged exposure to aliens after she dares to argue with her Captain. Through a series of predictable but well-scripted scenes, Aeryn decides to stay aboard Moya rather than face execution.
As portrayed by Claudia Black, Aeryn is another individual that runs much deeper than her surface characteristics. At first she is openly hostile and resentful; she has literally lost her entire world, and she's justifiably upset about it. But slowly she comes to realize that, in one of the series' most powerful recurring themes, she "can be more" than what she always was, and she embraces that concept fully. Early episodes show Aeryn as stiff and unemotional, maintaining her Peacekeeper facade; later in the season, viewers are treated more often to Claudia Black's mega-watt smile. When Aeryn smiles, her joy radiates from the screen, and it's all the more poignant because we know how far she has come, to be able to smile like that. Equally compelling are Aeryn's struggles with the various attachments she is forming among the residents of Moya. Claudia Black is doing a masterful job revealing all the profound and subtle changes Aeryn is undergoing.
Last but certainly not least among the regulars is John Crichton, American astronaut and research scientist. The background on Crichton is that he has a PhD in theoretical science (nicely vague, that) from MIT. The craft he was pilotting when the wormhole appeared was his own, designed to test his own theory -- something to do with using atmospheric friction to increase velocity exponentially.
At first glance, Crichton meets all the Space Hero criteria: he's handsome, he's intelligent, he's got a never-ending supply of quips. But most Space Heroes are operating within their home space, and they usually have a whiz-bang ship of their own, plus a handy Space Armada to back them up if they get into trouble. Crichton, on the other hand, has no idea where he is, who these people are, or even how to open the doors aboard Moya. Culture shock doesn't begin to describe it.
And although the series more or less opens with a battle scene, Crichton is not a fighter and is clearly out of his element. Early in the season, if there is a physical confrontation, odds are good that Crichton is going down. While it is somewhat unsettling to see the hero get flattened, it's also quite believable in this situation. Unlike so many B-movie adventures where the hero-explorer comes upon a jungle native and then proceeds to lead her through her native territory, there is no pretense of human (or male) superiority here. Crichton does have a keen survival instinct, though, and he makes good use of what he does have. There is a scene in the Premiere which has Crichton frantically asking the other crew members for paper so he can work out some calculations; he ends up scribbling on the floor. This scene so perfectly distills the chief differentiating factor between Crichton and most other Space Heroes: his only asset is his intelligence. He has no friends, no useful equipment, and certainly no government to fall back on. Under the circumstances, it's understandable that Crichton would have some very bad days, and the viewer gets to see them, too. Mercifully his whining, and the rest of the crew's disdain for him, is mostly limited to the first third of the first season.
The developing relationships between Crichton and the rest of the crew are given depth and authenticity by Ben Browder's bravura performance. As Crichton travels through the Uncharted Territories trying to find a way home, his encounters force him to reevaluate some life-long philosophies. Watching this all play out, there are very few false notes along the way as Crichton makes the journey from "unwelcome shipmate" (as he was once dubbed by Rygel) to moral compass of the group.
Essentially, then, Farscape presents us with a stock situation: "Space Chase" (which was in fact an early working title), populated by all the expected character types, with appropriately politically correct diversity among the regular crew. As Jane Gael Rafferty wrote about in article on the Sci Fi Channel's Farscape bulletin board ("Farscape -- it's not your father's science fiction"), this series' writing is much more like a science fiction novel than a television series. The characters all have memories, apparently losing none of the experiences we have witnessed. Unlike most series science fiction, which presents us with fully-formed characters, Farscape gives us a group of individuals in a highly stressful and volatile situation, and allows them the luxury of growing and changing. Amazingly enough, most of the characters remain appealing throughout this process, even though change is difficult and often ugly.
Even more amazing is the balancing act that the writers have pulled off in the first season. The risk is very great, if the entire program is devoted to character development, of putting off viewers who tune in mid-season. By the fourth or fifth episode, even knowing the basic premise, you would have no idea what was happening. But Farscape so far hasn't followed The X Files pattern of having some "monster of the week" episodes which are completely stand-alone, and some "mythology" episodes, which advance the overall story arc. Each episode can be viewed independently, and while knowledge of previous episodes will certainly help the viewer, it isn't strictly necessary. Even the four-part season one finale, with events that were set in motion much earlier in the season, can be viewed as two, two-part episodes. The characters' pasts are so well-integrated into their actions and dialog that the transitions are believable and easy to follow. Admittedly, if you watch the Premiere and the season finale in one sitting, you're likely to be left scratching your head somewhat, but you certainly don't have to know everythingthat has gone on between the two episodes.
Without compelling stories and characters we care about, art design and special effects are smoke and mirrors used to hide the fact that there's no substance. Farscape breaks out of the typical series' mold again here as well. Filmed in Australia, on sound stages recently vacated to make way for the next installment in the Star Wars saga, Farscape has the look and feel of a feature film. Thanks largely in part to the marvelously talented Australian production crews, who routinely leap frog between television and movie projects. Apparently, in Australia, there is no discernable difference between the two, and Farscape has a polish unlike any other series, in any genre. Perhaps it is the Australian influence that makes the overall art design so unusually appealing. Of particular note is how organic Moya and all her interiors appear, in contrast to the stark colors and the strict geometrics of everything PeaceKeeper-related. The CGI effects are outstanding, whether they involve a star burst, a pulse-rifle battle, or touch-up work on an alien jungle.
The participation of The Creature Shop also gives Farscape the most truly alien aliens every brought to the small screen, with superbly designed and realized guest creatures appearing regularly. Even the makeup and costume design is extraordinary, ranging from the elegant Zhaan to Chiana's chalky gray sexiness (Chiana is a late-season edition to the regular cast, played by Gigi Edgely), to Aeryn's scrubbed-clean face and practical outfits. Even if the scripts were completely uninteresting and the characters repulsive, Farscape would rate a second and a third look on the strengths of its visuals alone.
Ultimately, the success of any program rests on how much an audience can identify with the characters. Farscape takes a contemporary human -- albeit an unusually intelligent and adaptive human -- and puts him far from home with little chance of ever getting back. The fundamental themes of alienation and loss are instantly recognizeable and very powerful, and they are at the core of each character's struggle. But the redemptive themes of survival, finding a new home, and growing beyond ourselves also recur, in realistically measured doses.
The writers do not beat us over the head with relentless cheerfulness, unconvincing friendships, or even improbable cleanliness, for that matter. But they do provide welcome comic relief, in the true sense of that phrase. Crichton has a habit of making contemporary cultural references, much to the dismay of his crewmates, who of course have no idea what he's talking about. Crichton's early "Close encounters, my ass" whine is nothing compared to hearing him try to talk Aeryn out of needing a weapon by invoking Kung Fu, "Kung Fu! Yeah! He never carried a weapon!" Or his impromptu assumption of the aliases Butch and Sundance for himself and Aeryn in "Till the Blood Runs Clear." The in-jokes not only serve to lighten the mood, but they remind us again that Crichton really is still one of us. And more importantly, they give the series a feel most reminiscent of the original Star Trek: Farscape does not take itself too seriously. As Crichton says, "I mock us all." This is a show that isn't afraid to laugh at itself a bit, even while exploring some very serious and deep material.
The best science fiction uses unfamiliar settings and alien characters to reveal fundamental truths about humanity. In that tradition, Farscape explores issues ranging from loneliness to prejudice, only rarely falling into the trap of moralizing or preaching. With very few missteps, Farscape delivers thought-provoking scenarios involving fully realized and likeable characters, presented with absolutely top-notch production values. Over the course of the first season every major character has undergone significant growth and change against a backdrop of difficult circumstances, and it doesn't look like things are going to get any easier. But you can be certain whatever happens will never be dull, and it will most assuredly be both stirring and stunning to watch.
Every science fiction television series has to deal with the same technology issues. Here's how Farscape handles a few of them: