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Is Farscape Clichéd?
Joan Hedman ¤ January 2002

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Introduction
Section 1: Overused Plots and Storylines
Section II: Overused Settings and Characterizations
Section III: Overused story events and plot devices
Section IV: Silly Science

Introduction
Intro ¤ Section 1 ¤ Section II ¤ Section III ¤ Section IV ¤ Send a Comment ¤

Back in the Spring of 1999, when Farscape was in its infancy, I posted an article on The SCI FI Channel's Farscape bulletin board titled, "Plots I never want to see on Farscape." High on my list was the type of absurd "de-evolution, re-evolution, everyone's OK at the end" story that was used a couple of times in the Star Trek universe. One of the replies pointed me to John VanSickle's Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés.

If you've never seen this list, the work of many contributors, you owe it to yourself to click over and see it in its original format, complete with the assessments of just how each cliché measures up. Some started out as good ideas but simply got worn out through overuse, and some should never have hit the page or the screen at all. John has formatted the list with handy icons for quick identification, which are not reproduced here.

One of the most common complaints you'll hear about Farscape, or any genre show, is that they're just retreading old story ideas. Any 'Scaper will tell you, "Yeah, that's Farscape's trademark: take a tired story and turn it inside out and upside down, and give you something fresh when you least expected it." Some viewers reject the idea that an old story can be made new again, but that attitude sells all genres short. Here's a relevant quote from John's introduction to the list itself:

Clichés are not in themselves necessarily bad, but their overuse shows that the writer has forgotten what separates the strong tale from the hollow: "the human heart in conflict with itself," as Faulkner said. Where there is this conflict, the tale stands; where the conflict is absent, the tale falls flat, and in neither case does it matter how many ships get blown up.

Farscape excels at telling such strong tales, and it isn't shy about using familiar storylines to do so. What follows is the original list, with annotations of where similar elements have occured throughout Farscape's first three seasons (less the final four episodes of Season 3, which have not yet aired as of this writing), along with my assessment of how successful the episode was in transcending cliché. As the series continues, I'll be updating the notes to include new instances as they occur.

One more thing before we get to it: This is a pretty long list, and already 62 episodes of Farscape have been broadcast. That's a lot of data to be processed, and I'm sure I'll miss a few. If you notice any gaping holes, please send a comment and let me know. If you find my analysis of how successful the episode was in freshening up a stale idea, I'd like to hear that, too. Much like The Score, this document will be maintained over the life of the series, and everything is subject to revision.

From now on, using The Grand List as our reference point, we'll have a concrete answer to the question, Is Farscape clichéd?

The Bottom Line:
As of 10-Mar-02: Farscape is 17% clichéd, with only 50 out of 295 total possible clichés. An additional 8% (24 of a total possible 295) clichéd instances are proposed by readers but are still under consideration. Top

Note: ¤NA¤indicates that particular element doesn't apply in the Farscape universe... so far.

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