FarscapeWeekly
eZine
¤ ¤ 27-Aug-02 ¤ ¤
For easier reading, use the bookmarks below:
Site News
Farscape News
Did you know?
Quote of the Week
Free Cool Stuff
Recurring Characters
Repeat Performers
The Score
Upcoming Episodes
Ratings
FarscapeWeekly.com
is looking for
sponsors
Reasonable rates ¤ eMail and online spots
available
email jhedman@alum.mit.edu for details
Um. Yeah. At some point I will actually do some writing, but the first thing on my agenda during the hiatus is to get all the old content uploaded and redirect pages set up so that old links will still work. For the record, I loved "Unrealized Reality" for a lot of reasons, and I'm really looking forward to having the chance to sit down and do the analysis on it. Meanwhile, Ross Ruediger tells me he's working on another piece on "Coup by Clam", so stay tuned for that!
"Congratulations
from FarscapeWeekly.com!"
If you get an email with that subject, it means your name was
selected from the subscriber list to receive a free copy of The
Official Farscape Magazine. Issue #7 is wending its way
to its new owner as you read this. On August 31 I'll
be drawing TWO names to receive free copies of Issue #8. Winners
get 7 days to reply with their mailing addresses; if I don't hear
from them, I draw another name.
Again, and still -- it will be a while before all the old stuff gets put back up. I will continue to post new content as frequently as possible. If there is any old content you'd like access to, just send me an email and I will set you up with direct links.
Please feel free to forward this eZine to anyone you feel it may interest. If you would like to subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your subscription address, send an email "subscribe" in the subject line.
For a glimpse at the site's history through March 2002, take a look the eMail Update Archive and see how far we've come.
For comments, questions, or submissions, eMail jhedman@alum.mit.edu.
Available now.
Buy it.
I know, it has nothing to do with Farscape, but still. You really should buy it.
Karlsweb has posted a lively interview with Virginia Hey, "Alien of Extraordinary Ability". She speaks at some length about life on the Con circuit, and why she is doing it; there's some good info here that I have not seen elsewhere.
Ms Hey gives absolutely delightful interviews, and I was lucky to score one about a million years ago (well, only two, actually) that I originally posted on ThemeStream (now defunct). If you missed it, you can read it here, and see that Virginia hasn't changed a bit in the intervening years.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
Convention
News...
DragonCon will feature
several Farscape cast members this year,
including Virginia Hey, Lani Tupu,
and Kent McCord, along with scores of other
notables from all aspects of scifi. It's coming up fast, though:
August 30 through September 2 in Atlanta, GA. If you're nearby,
it certainly sounds like it would be well worth a visit. Check it
out!
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
Did you know...
Wormholes,
Time Travel, all that Jazz
I bet you guessed the topic of this week's "Did you
know..." before you even got here, didn't you? Well, I
debated doing something on the Jose Jiminez quote, or the
"Very Morrisey" line, but those were topics that other
Scapers educated me on, so I figured I'd stick to
something more basic.... like, you know, wormholes.
"The laws of physics do not forbid time travel." That's an actual quote written by a real physicist in one of the links I'm about to give you. It's kind of frightening, isn't it? In a neatly ordered universe, people should not be able to screw around with things that should be immutable, like Time. But you see, Time isn't immutable, we just perceive it to be... do you know, experiments have been performed with atomic clocks that have demonstrated it's possible to slow down time, because mass -- or more specifically, gravity -- has an effect on it? Freaky, I know. But also good fodder for scifi shows. It's important to have at least a pretense of possibility with these plot points, and Farscape's writers are doing a fine job there. Want to know more about them? Don't look at me like that, I'm not about to try and explain it myself -- here are those links I mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph:
For a good start, check out the Wormholes section of John Grant's "The Science of Farscape" article, originally published in the Jigsaw Farscape Special. JAG gives a nice overview, but if you're looking for more details, here's a great place to start, Taking the Cosmic Shortcut. This article, originally published in the February 2002 edition of Helix, was written by Elizabeth Warnes, and includes some beautiful cosmic photos as well as useful and amusing illustrations. One of the other things to recommend this article is its terrific list of links; of them, I highly recommend Time Travel for Beginners. This plain text site is actually a compilation of articles by several authors on different topics relating to time travel, wormhole theory, The Kerr Solution, and any number of other esoteric but related subjects.
Quote of the Week:
"Whoops."
--
Crichton, "Unrealized Reality"
Free Cool Stuff
Most
households subscribing to The SCI FI Channel also get The Cartoon
Network as part of their programming package.
If you've ever tuned into, and enjoyed, the bizarro interview
show Space Ghost Coast to Coast, you're in
for treat. HynerianDonkey has created ScapeGhost:
Carolina Style BBQ. The Ghost
interviews John Crichton (not Ben Browder) and Brian Henson;
you'll need the Flash plug-in to watch the movie. It's only about
1MB, so it's no big deal to download, and good for some laughs if
Space Ghost suits your style.
Have you found some free cool stuff? Do you have some free cool stuff you'd like to share? Send an eMail!
There was one Recurring Character this week, Murray Bartlett's DK (who was named after David Kemper, just in case you were wondering). It was also lovely to see Stark (Paul Goddard) , Jool (Tammy Macintosh), and Zhaan (Virginia Hey) again, but they don't count here as they used to be regulars. Maybe I need to have a new category, "returning former regulars"? I'll think about it!
There's a
minor mystery in "Unrealized Reality", as well: who was
the woman with the long blonde hair? I'm guessing she was Alex,
Crichton's almost-fiancee we first met in seaon one's
"Rhapsody in Blue", played by Pacific Blue's
Darlene Vogel (at left). In this episode, she
was played by Erika Heynatz (at right). If she
wasn't Alex, then Crichton must just have a thing for beautiful
blondes. At any rate, it's time once again for...
Who
is this Chick? Here's an amusing little interview with Erika
that I found on a webcrawl. You can all see for yourselves that
she is gorgeous. Pending confirmation that Erika's character was not
Alex, I've added an entry for "Alex" to the Recurring
Characters table. Photo of Erika from Lyle Skosey's
Breakfast Club. Screen captures from Rhapsody in Blue and
Unrealized Reality by Dallascaper,
available at FarscapeFantasy.
What are recurring characters? They're folks we've seen before, who pop up again, and sometimes, again and again... like, for example, Furlow, who we first met in "Till the Blood Runs Clear" in the first season, and ran into again in "Infinite Possibilities" in season 3.
No Repeat Performers this week, at least not yet. There were several uncredited actors who looked familiar. Once I track everyone down, I may have to revise this entry.
Repeat performers are the versatile actors who've appeared in more than one episode as different characters. Thomas Holesgrove is currently the record-holder (in fact, I used to do a TH watch, because for a while there he was in every single episode, or at least it seemed that way), but there are a surprising number of "guesties" who can't resist the opportunity to return to Farscape. The fan favorite? My guess would be the petite and energetic Francesca Buller, who just happens to also be Mrs Ben Browder. She was the bone-eating calcivore M'Lee in "Bone to Be Wild", the traitorous servant in "Look at the Princess", and drug-dealing Raaxil in "Scratch'n'Sniff".
The Score
through "Unrealized Reality": 53/75
Allies: 12, Enemies: 19
Uhhh... haven't we been here before? Crichton's hanging
out in space. Alone. There are a few upsides: 1) he's alive, 2)
he has found Earth, and 3) he just got a passing grade in
Wormholes 101. However, what we are left with is yet another
unresolved situation, and so The Score Remains the Same.
Oh, and let's add The Ancients back to the Allies
list. Sure, they're not exactly around right now, but
they'll be back soon. They're watching our boy Crichton and let's
be honest: they like what they see, or he wouldn't still be alive
right now.
What is The Score? It's an attempt to quantify just how well, or how poorly, our crew is doing as they traverse the Uncharted Territories, and now, Tormented Space. We count up the number of conflicts and assign points for the ones we win. We also keep track of who is on our side, and who we've ticked off enough to know that they'll be gunning for us should our paths ever cross in the future. Attitude flows freely here. One great thing about the Score is that you can get a feeling for the entire run of the series just by reading it from the bottom up.
Upcoming Episodes
check
local listings for airtimes
We're in hiatus; check out 2002 Hiatus and SCI FI Friday Night Programming to find something else to watch...
¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
January 2003: Kansas
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
Ratings
time series charts of first airing ratings for all 4 seasons
Updated
through "I Shrink, Therefore I Am
First airing ratings for all 4 seasons
Crichton Kicks 1.6
What Was Lost, pt 1 1.1
What Was Lost, pt 2 1.3
Lava's a Many Splendored Thing 1.4
Promises 1.1
Natural Election 1.2
John Quixote 1.1
I Shrink, Therefore I Am 1.1
(ratings are share of SciFi's total households)