Home ¤ Is Farscape Good Sci-Fi? part 2

Is Farscape Good Sci-Fi? part 2
Tom Francis ¤ Februrary 2002

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Last time in "Is Farscape Good Sci Fi?" our hero, Tom Francis, left us with this thought[1]:

In Part Two, we will examine the storylines, characters within the story lines and some of the goofiness that seems to pervade Farscape on a regular basis.

Before we start examining plots, direction, music and what ever else pops into mind in Part II, I need to explain a particular quirk that I have.

I almost never watch an episode of anything more than once. I will watch reruns if they are shown in order and over a period of time. Even then, I usually follow the order and pick the ones I liked to rewatch, consigning the others to the scrap heap of time. Actually, not unlike what most people do with books, I "keep" the ones I like and chuck the rest.

What this means is that I will be operating on the basis of impression - which episodes impressed me and I enjoyed and those that impressed me as horrible and hated. No surprise that there are episodes that I regard as so-so. We will talk about those later. I am not going to make a list of what I believe to be the best and/or the worst of Farscape. I will use one example of each to illustrate a point.

Ok, there we are - you have a basic understanding of where I am in terms of what and how I watch Farscape. With that in mind, off we go.

Farscape: The Technology

One of the more interesting aspects of the Farscape Universe is it's amazing lack of techno-detail. The writers and producers have made an obvious decision to keep the "technobabble" out of the series and this is a huge plus. Personally, I like the concept of not having to watch techno-solutions like using the tachyon beam routed through the deflector dish or recycling/resetting the transporter equipment. Farscape's approach is simple: We get to there from here and we use whatever is handy to do so. Pulse rifles/cannons/pistols work because they are supposed to work. No, we have no idea how they are powered. Moya eats space plankton. It just goes on like that and it is very refreshing.

Farscape: The Music

Another intriguing part of the Farscape Universe is the music. During Season One, we were "treated" with musical "concepts" by a group called Subvision. Now Subvision has something of a "cutting edge" image and during Season One, they pretty much proved that with some rather interesting "conceptual" music as a backdrop for Farscape. The original theme, which I initially dubbed "The Luxan Castration Chorus", was grating, extremely heavy handed and somewhat at odds with the music used in the episodes. The Theme felt, to me at least, out of place with the rest of the program. To say that Subvision's theme wasn't memorable, however, would not be true. The last part with the extremely loud off tune and jarring choral 9th chord at the end is memorable if only for it's "nails on the blackboard" wake up call.

For some reason that Farscape's Powers That Be declined to explain, Subvision was removed from the musical chair and replaced with Guy Gross. That was an interesting choice because as cutting edge as Subvision was, Guy Gross had a reputation for being somewhat pedestrian and producing music scores on time. The on-time part should be a tip off as to why Gross replaced Subvision, but that is neither here or there.

Gross restructured the Theme keeping the elements that Subvision had scored, but replacing the "Luxan Castration Chorus" with a much more subtle vocal and instrumental work. Much more telling is that while not to my taste, Subvision's work was much more suited to the visual concepts of Farscape. Gross can write and produce a good musical score, but he tends to be somewhat over powering and very unsubtle.

Let's call the music a wash - not good, not bad - average.

Farscape: The Writing

Now we get to the fun part of this treatise and one that will probably cause some fans to have a stroke or apoplexy at best.

It is my opinion that the techno-aversion relating to the science of Farscape extends to the writing and scripting of Farscape. That is to say that we aren't going to have much continuity here, let's just write episodes...and then they try and produce continuity.

Ok, what am I talking about here?

It's not complex. During Season One, it was obvious that the whole idea of Farscape was to tell some good stories, have some fun and if it flies, so much the better. When it did indeed fly, The Powers That Be [TPTB] started to take things seriously and all of a sudden we started to get more continuity in the overall storyline. Late in Season One they pretty much knew they had a Season Two/Three and needed to do something about creating a viable scenario within which to operate. TPTB wanted the fans to believe that they were still producing single loosely connected stories, but what they delivered instead was a structured storyline with the occasional loosely connected story

An example of this type of schizoid behavior would be "Dream A Little Dream" or "Re:Union" Originally intended to be the Season Two opener (titled "RE:Union"), "Dream A Little Dream" opened with a flashback sequence which led into a cut back "RE:Union" and exited with a reshot tag. Examining the story line, clearly "Dream A Little Dream" was intended to be a single story set within the loose structure of somebody chasing John Crichton all over the place. However, it didn't fit within the "new" scenario, thus needed rework. Now that isn't a bad thing, but it does illustrate what I'm trying to explain. TPTB switched from the single story loosely connected structure to the more structured concepts of a Farscape continuum.

To give the Farscape PTB credit, this switch from the single story concept to the structured episode concept was very smooth and almost seamless. What screwed the transition was the obvious and glaring discontinuity between Season One and Two or, to put it another way, the obvious disconnect between "Family Ties" and "Mind the Baby".

Curiously enough, even though the Farscape PTB made this transition from single story, loosely connected to connected storylines, they can't seem to pull together a decent mini-arc. Probably the best example of this would be the "Look At The Princess" trilogy. The initial story, Part I, "A Kiss Is But A Kiss" did a good job of setting up Part II, "I Do I Think" which was a fairly good episode which then totally self-destructed in Part III, "The Maltese Crichton". It would appear that they get a little lost once they get rolling and wander off in different directions if they get a good idea.

The writing quality of Farscape varies and can sometimes can produce clinkers like "Taking the Stone", "Vitas Mortis" or my personal clinker "Eat Me" which was a total waste of my time. On the other hand, the writers can produce high quality episodes like "The Locket" or "...Different Destinations" and one that I can not talk about (Editor's note: one of the final four episodes of Season 3, most likely...), but is jaw-dropping..

Part of the problem with the writing is fairly simple - they get carried away with a good idea and don't realize that they are in conceptual overload. An example of this would be "Liars, Guns and Money" (another problematic trilogy) in which there is a huge gun battle against overwhelming odds and our gang kills about a bazillion troopers, which was total nonsense considering the situation. Basically, they took a good story and ruined it for the sake of some explosive eye candy.

While this is entirely subjective, my take on the writing is simple - occasionally stellar, overall average with some real stinkers in the closet.

Farscape: The Directors/Producers

I must confess something here. I'm not all that tuned into who directs what other than story continuity - which is to say, I have no more knowledge about how directors do their jobs with respect to the acting than I know how to build a cold fusion reactor. However, I do know a little something about what a Producer does and in this sense, Farscape is being handed a short stick.

I can't help but wonder, what with all the double duty the producers do, if they aren't letting some of the balls drop on the field of play. Producers should be aware of problems like the shoot out scenes in the "Liars, Guns, and Money" trilogy which were ridiculous beyond ridiculous. The really stupid Zhaan/Stark "headbutt" reset button in "The Locket" which, curiously, ruined what otherwise was an excellent sci fi story. They should be aware of what will work and won't work within the elements of a story or series of stories and that just does not seem to be happening.

So, overall, I would grade this as a wash - only because I don't know that much about directing.

Farscape: Characters within the Story

Farscape is blessed with some very interesting characters. However, they don't always act within character or sometimes, within concept.

Ben Browder, as John Crichton, is probably the worst offender in terms of wholesale miscues within story lines that detract from his otherwise competent acting job. A fairly good example of his "ad-lib reaction" would be the scene in Look At The Princess, Part II, "I Do, I Think" in which D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe) tells Crichton the "good news/bad news". Now I have mentioned this scene as a classic in the Farscape universe and I stand by that, but only as an example of how well Simcoe pulled off this scene. What ruined the scene was the weird "Victory" sign and bend at the knees - it was unusual and a little off-putting. And before all the fanboyz/grrlz get up in arms, the Nixonian V sign and knee bend came before the carbonite zap. So save the bandwidth to Joan.

Browder also adlibs his way through scenes using "cultural references" creating something of a "treasure hunt" for some of his better ones. As much fun as these can be, he tends to mix metaphors with unfortunate results. One of the better examples of this is "Pilot, I'm bringing Miss Kitty back from the OK Corral; any word on Aeryn or Doc Rygel yet?" in "A Clockwork Nebari". Miss Kitty was a character from Gunsmoke and the OK Corral is part of the Wyatt Erp mythos. Now, if somebody takes a closer look at this you might see something curious - in that Aeryn more than once called Earth, "Erp". If this was something of an inside joke, it is very tortured. It is, however, typical and the tortured humor does insinuate it'self into the script on a regular basis.

As much as I enjoy Claudia Black's performances there are problems with the Aeryn Sun character which may or may not be critical, but they annoy me - the main one being the concept of an "all purpose universal soldier". This concept was attempted in Space: Above and Beyond and it didn't work there. It does work in Farscape, but more for the fact that the writers/producers cheerfully ignore the realities of what Aeryn actually is - a super soldier.

My complaint about Aeryn as a character is that her reactions to situations and events do not portray the actions and reactions of a trained soldier. She made no attempt to escape Moya, made no attempt to recapture Moya, nobody consults her when military style actions are emminent, she is expected to change her entire life around for no reason other than being in love with an alien - seriously, folks, are we to pretend that Aeryn is a Sebacean woman, or just another Erp woman under the thumbs of the male oppressors? Aeryn is actually just another Earth female in Sebacean clothing and that is disappointing.

Zhaan was perhaps the biggest tragedy of the Farscape continuum because she was, at one point, a central character on an equal footing with John and Aeryn - more so than any other alien character presented to us. Zhaan, while still in the bipedal mold, was truly exotic. It is a testimony to Virginia Hey that she could take Zhaan and make her very believable. The warrior/healer/priest/mystic/mother figure concept actually worked and worked well for the first Season. Unfortunately, problems surfaced and it was readily apparent in what was happening on the screen as Zhaan became increasingly marginalized and forced out of "character". Of all the characters on Farscape, this was one that I really liked. And while I have said some unkind things about the events surrounding Zhaan's departure, and about Zhaan the character (most notably the Delvian Cheese Dip comments[Editor: believe me, you don't want to know!]) I truly wish some of the problems would be resolved and Zhaan would return. Farscape is missing something without her.

In the interests of brevity, I'll keep the following short. If you wish to discuss these ideas, drop me a line.

D'Argo - What is he? Is he just a grunt who took markings as a General to save a life? While he acts much like an inexperienced and petulant teenager, he does have some depth of feeling and sensitivity. Is he more human than alien?

Chiana - I'm not willing to conjecture about Chiana because there just isn't enough data to go on. She is portrayed as a street walker with a heart of gold, but that is a human concept - I'm not sure how that transcribes to Nebari society. I do know that she seemed fascinated with the Nebari androgen, so perhaps Chiana is an anomaly within Nebari society. I honestly can't say.

Jool - Another anomaly - is this just a highly educated mall rat teenager on a galactic shopping trip or a serious character concept that will be expanded upon and allowed some sort of role within the Farscape continuum? Personally, of all the character concepts in Farscape, Jool has possibilities and could very well surplant Zhaan as a major character if handled properly.

Scorpius - Personally, I hated the background storyline and wished they had left it ambiguous. Scorpy's early life was just a plot point and they spent an inordinate amount of time with it to no real conclusion. Scorpy as sympathetic villian just does not work for me - even as much as fun he is.

Crais - Of all the original villians, Crais was the one that bothered me the most. Just how dumb was this guy initially? I think the writers/producers thought of Crais as a kind of Captain Bly type character but just couldn't pull it off.

And what about Furlow, Natira, Stark and others who have some potential to return? Your guess is as good as mine.

I have a mixed opinion about the characters. While they are all interesting, when you really come right down to it, there are a lot of regular characters - two more and you have a baseball team. They are all complex and in some cases, fully developed, just not utilized properly. I will examine this a little further in Part Three.

So, here we are - there is light at the end of the tunnel - we are almost at the point where we can reach a conslusion, but not quite.

Next time: We will wrap this up with some odds and ends, general comments and an answer to the burning question - Is Farscape Good Sci Fi?

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[1] I always wanted to say that.
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Part 3

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