Farscape 2
And more oddity—you’ll read in a few places that Farscape is wired to pop culture. This is because the main character, ‘John Crichton’ makes references to pop items like ‘Elvis’, the ‘KFC secret recipe’ and the like, which aliens naturally don’t know about. Thankfully, this joke is not pushed too far. But as well as being open in societal attitude, Farscape is also good‐humoured. Characters despair and distrust, but there’s little that’s malicious. Stories feel like they are being worked from a proposal. The place where Farscape is not good‐humoured, but is gleeful, is with Rygel. The production goes overboard with the stunts they can pull with Rygel—he’s a rubber glove—and so he gets hit over the head, swatted, plugged, choked, shot, squashed into crevices, locked into boxes, and near the end of Series Two he is throttled, smashed into concrete then tossed off a building. That’ll learn him.
And has anyone told you that Farscape is full of good lines? Four or five an episode. Not what you expected from a puppet or ‘SciFi’ show? Here are two favourites from ‘John Crichton’,
I can only fight one evil at a time!
and,
But we all know things like that [that we wish for] don’t happen to people like us.
You’ll not hear a truer line in TV. And that’s what people come to fantasy for, to hear truth in the crazy. Or, arguably, Farscape’s greatest line. I don’t think I spoil here, because you’ll need the context,
I am nobody’s puppet!
Go find.
How about we talk premises? There’s a few in outer‐space, they meet the challenges of whatever they chance on. That’s it. Even if the show cost Wikipedia reports $1,000,000 per episode, it plays out between characters. In one episode, a marriage of convenience, in another, Rigel hailed as a god, some planet saving and planet destruction, the constant roving threat of the (sarcastically‐named) Peacekeepers. So there’s fabulous weaponry but this is encountered for the drama, and some Star Wars space‐opera but in check—I can say so far, through half of it’s length, Farscape sticks to it’s storytelling base. I admit I’ve not seen the series through yet. Reports are, Farscape as it exists will play out with a finale, The Peacekeeper Wars—a battle against Reavers or whatever. But I suspect that finale will not spoil the journey.
So let’s talk character. Character is not important for science‐fiction, where technological development is the dramatic start, but in space‐fantasy it counts—at the very least fantasy requires an Alice or Dorothy to comment that,“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change”. Between the void drama of technological SciFi and the mock‐heroics of Space‐Opera, character had vanished. Which is too far long. The characters of Farscape may be chalked in cartoon, but they’re bold. People even talk of them like this—the character ‘D’Argo’, hot‐tempered and of warrior code, but compromised by mourning a lost son. This inner drama, let me tell you, is steps ahead of most drama you will find in visual SciFi. The neat sketches of Star Trek soon became a queue of hierarchical ship ‘captains’ and ‘commanders’. Subtlety, be gone!
Then to the drama, which is stoked. Sometimes by actors snapping and shouting at each other, which happens a lot. But they do have plenty to shout about. See Farscape may have commonplace virtues, but it has it’s method—‐often the bad guys and good guys make bad decisions. Which makes the drama much more interesting. I won’t tell you what ‘Scorpius’ gets up to at the end of Season One, but it’s interesting. It leads to twisted repercussions, like ‘Scorpius’ the‐bad‐guy rescuing ‘John Crichton’ the‐good‐guy during Season 2. And there’s a character ‘Crais’, stood as enemy, who gets tied into a storyline that results in him being on the lam in a dangerous ship where his position becomes ambiguous—nobody trusts him, but he seems to be mostly on the side of ‘good’. From space‐fantasy, visual or otherwise—from most visual storytelling—this is unusual.
That said, Farscape sometimes plays characters and participants that I for one recognise from Fifties SciFi magazines. For example, in a few episodes is the culture that abolishes war by brainwashing. And the standby of many Fifties SciFi novels—the covert organisation fighting the resistance, that one arrives a few times. You’ll find no depth of argument in this, not in Farscape. The causes, motivations or outcomes of revolution, for example. But I would then say that the old SciFi stories were often worse, cobbled together from unnstated general feelings and a grabbag of plot ideas. In Farsccape you will hear these stories played fast and witty. And recast for Farscape characters. And the stories will often have original moves or joins. And that’s before we credit Farscape with a willingness to try any kind of story. Because it has episodes where the story perhaps caused one reviewer to call it ‘slightly bonkers’. When Farscape gets going, it gets going.
This willingness to propose ideas surfaces in character too. The spaceship ‘Moya’—I doubt I’m spoiling here because the series makes it clear from the start—Moya is alive. Moya sometimes goes her own way. Or there is the character ‘Stark’. Stark can do strange things, like contact people as they are dying. Actually, despite this super‐spiritual ability casting Stark as something of a good guy, his character is often annoying for the rest of the crew. His plans are good, but tend to derail on human elements.
Oh well, onto the inventiveness—‐no, glee—in story. There’s the episode where everyone swaps bodies, so speaks in each other’s voices. Or the episode that comes on like Agatha Christie, with everyone telling and so replaying the truth, except the truth is different every time, slightly. Or the planet that is if not sentient at least alive… This is the sort of inventiveness that was the best of the Brit TV series, Red Dwarf. Though usually pitched as sitcom, Red Dwarf was solid old‐time SciFi, and I think some might agree that Farscape can be seen as a ‘straight’ equivalent. Inventiveness in outcomes also. Did I say when John finally gets some influence over Scorpius, this is not projected as some dull nemesis battle? After a few hits to make the point, John dumps Scorpius in a wastebin, then sits on the lid—point made, right there, with a laugh too.
Which brings me to another odd part of Farscape—storytelling. Not only story content. Farscape storytelling is unusually paced and… At the beginning of Series Three Crais announces that Scorpius is dead. Not one character doubts—they all know the motivations of Scorpius and what he might do, yet nobody questions if what they saw was a bluff… it was. Thankfully, the lack of doubt makes no difference to this section of plot. Throughout Farscape, the storylines are full of holes. Pick any episode of Farscape and I might complain, “Why did they do that?”, “Why couldn’t anyone see that coming?” or “Not another screwed up situation with aliens on their own agenda!”
Ah, but this is not an issue for Farscape. First, Farscape is not attempting realism—it’s cranking on invention. It’s space‐fantasy, where you play by fantasy rules. So the usual ‘Facts SciFi Gets Wrong!’ don’t apply here. Repeat, Farscape is not realistic. The important thing is to build a world, outline the rules then run a story. Which Farscape does, repeatedly. I don’t know if Farscape knew this. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. What’s important is the show acts like it knows—that’s what’s important. Second, it doesn’t matter if Farscape episodes are full of plot holes. The holes are there because the writers need to finish episodes. Can’t be done without shortcuts. See, Farscape squashes more plot into one episode than most shows squeeze into a series. Plots inevitably involve two or three reversals or new elements. In one episode a thousand slaves are destroyed and this is no more than side talk—it’s enough for motivation, and thank goodness the writers get on with it. It’s not that Farscape is full‐tilt entertainment. A episode with the character ‘Chiana’ opting into a stoner community has a weird atmosphere that obviously has something to say, but I got to wish something would happen. But then something happened, that episode moved along on the idea of jumping off rocks into a ‘trusting‐net’.
Farscape is sometimes mentioned as a series that developed between episodes. Wikipedia notes that,
…the series began as relatively unconnected episodes, but in later seasons transitioned into a complex plot with a dense mythology.
Seems like independent and compiled comment, but I don’t think anyone would argue. That said, godda say, I’m mixed about this. TV shows are episodic for a reason, and it doesn’t make a show better if it has story arcs. Consider also, Hill Street Blues ran eighteen years before Farscape. Originality challenged, I’m not the guy to ask about this, but at the time wasn’t Father Ted ‘feck’ing from 1995) and Babylon 5 playing out as a novel? Concession then, Farscape was perhaps one of the first space‐fantasies to try this. So challenged, Farscape does get milage from it’s extended stories.
Farscape had a following that much SciFi never had. It was liked by women. You can figure that how you will—was it the romantic suggestions between the characters, especially ‘Aryn’ and ‘John Crichton’, was it the presumption it’s audience could follow the development, was it the even‐handedness of male, female and alien concern? Who knows, but Farscape had and has to this day a female following. There are still a few essays on the web talking about Farscape being feminist leaning. This may be due to the presence of kick‐ass Peacekeepers, other strong women and, presumably, the soap‐opera staple of feeble men who crash about while women despair. Drizzled on the mix, these comment make Farsape sound like a coked‐up early disco. But I feel this line doesn’t represent the series well. In as much as there are male and female characters, they all drive each other nuts at times—‐ Zhaan’s sometime retreats into meditation at times of crisis, Stark’s insights not panning out, Rigel’s venality—it’s not the soap‐opera dynamic, it’s even handed. In the end, I prefer to see Farscape’s drama as a healthy attitude to life, where characters can figure out what they are and how they fit in (‘Scorpius’ included?) so let’s leave it there as another odd feature of this unusual production.
But, as you will read anywhere that Farscape is mentioned, audience ratings slid from sustainable downwards, so the planned last series was cancelled. After an outcry from fans, European backers funded a three hour, two episode, miniseries wrap called ‘The Peacekeeper Wars’. Then followed spin‐off campaigns and merchandising including web shorts, comic strips and games, which finally petered out.
If you can’t stand Farscape, or don’t get it, I hear you. I’m writing twenty years after The Peacekeeper Wars, and Farscape looks like something from the past and, without gauge, that might mean from the nineteen‐fifties—if you want to say it doesn’t hold up, I can say only that it would never have held up. There’s nothing here that strikes deep—indeed, it is odd how this production sits in a field somewhere between the modern idea of child—stupid and precious—and the ribald jokes. Farscape preluded the modern TV age—The Sopranos started three months before Farscape—with a living spaceship and helium farts. It’s got romance, it’s funny, it’s creative, it’s got Muppets and it crashes about in a riot of camera, dress and story the likes of which never got into screen SciFi. And this in a fantasy based in inner‐dramas used to build a world—exactly what a good fantasy should do.