Why I like Farscape What made Farscape so good? The characters were gritty, realistic, fallible, and loveable.

The special effects were often over-the-top for a series with a limited budget. The stories were consistently edge-of-your seat suspense, heart-rending drama and fast paced action/adventure. Farscape consistently delivered fantastic output episode after episode and season after season with few exceptions (and there are always exceptions). Sure, there were the usual clich sci-fi characters and situations: heroes and villains in incarnations of military, scientist, doctor, royalty, criminal, laborer whether flying in spaceships, falling down worm-holes, getting into battles, or facing off in a mine with an alien creature on the hunt; but unlike a lot of other popular sci-fi shows, the Farscape characters also had all of the features of good character development one finds in drama: (1) believability (2) depth (3) and consistency while still having the ability to evolve in their relationships and roles as the show progressed. The acting was also great, at least from the standpoint that acting was never obvious to the viewer.1 Compare Commander John Crichton to any of a number of other similar character roles on other shows: Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek TNG, Commander John Sheridan from Babylon 5, Commander Adama from Battlestar Gallactica and you are immediately struck with one major difference. These other characters are one-sided and on such high moral ground as to be plastic idealized caricatures of real people. They are like straw men used in argumentation; they are stone or wax statues at a museum or historical monument. Adama and Picard arent real enough for the average person to identify with. John Crichton, on the other hand, in spite of his astronaut status, is just an average guy trying to make a living and get home. Not just John, but all of the Farscape regular characters are motivated by things I can quickly and readily identify with the desire to go home to be with my family, the craving for money or recognition, the desire for love and sex, or just the need to party, relax and laugh with my friends. Star Trek TNG and Babylon 5 were great shows, but how many TV consumers hold to virtues like the prime directive or military duty to such an extent that they willingly and easily give their life, never wavering in the smallest degree? None of us are such moral paragons of virtue. Weve all cheated, lied, stolen, been lazy. Most of us would willingly die to save our children or to prevent our spouse from harm, even though we are not typically faced with these kinds of choices, we can at least understand them, but even so our fallibility causes us to hurt those we care most about. We always justify our transgressions on the basis that they are only small violations but sometimes these small things can balloon into tragedy. It is this moral fallibility of the Farscape characters that makes them immediately both likeable and believable. In addition to their fallibility the Farscape characters also have a decent sense of humor which is also important for believability. Usually when humor is explored in science fiction it is typically a special episode (like Star Treks Tribbles) that uses a plot device to
1

I would contrast this with Michael O'Hares acting in the role of Jeffrey Sinclair in the first season of Babylon 5. His acting was unnatural and his emotions seemed pasted on; Straczynski would have done better to find someone with a stronger presence and proven ability, especially for such a main character role. Farscape never seemed to suffer from such misjudgment.

make a joke. Yet, Crichton could always be funny in each episode without it ever seeming like a plot trick. Dont we all laugh and make jokes even in the midst of tragedy? Comon Adama, lighten up! I can also say the same for all of the Farscape villains, most of the villains turned out to be likeable and believable. I never could really identify with either the Shadows or the President Clark camp in Babylon 5. Their villainous roles were cartoon-like, they only show up to reek havoc and do so without any reason other than their apparent enjoyment of being evil and manipulative. Similarly the Borg in Star Trek were so alien and mechanized that viewers would never understand or identify with their motive for assimilating other species. On the other hand, in Farscape, I found myself growing to like Crais and then Scorpius and even to a lesser extent Grayza. Presumably the only reason we didnt grow to like Grayza more is that the show was canceled before her characters motivations and background could be explored further. As we were given insight into their backgrounds, we began to understand each villains motives. We also got glimpses of them weak or fragile and pretty soon we realized they werent as bad as we originally believed. We came to understand they really wanted the same things as the good guys, whether peace in the universe or a little deserved recognition, they were just going about it from a different perspective. Dont all our enemies start out as one-sided straw men and cartoon-like villains until we actually walk a mile in their shoes? Most sci-fi shows dont explore this unless they are moralizing, but Farscape never moralized in such an obvious way. We all remember Star Trek episodes where the man-eating alien at the beginning of the show turns out to have been tragically just protecting its young by the end of the show. But ultimately these are just plot devices to make some moral point or to create a story, they are not character development. In Farscape, the main protagonists Crais, Scorpius, Grayza are individuals rather than nameless or alien civilizations and like the good guys their characters have sufficient depth that they are likeable. Because of this Crichton and the other heroes of the show have a more difficult time determining whether to fight them or help them and the best course of action isnt always clear cut this just creates better and more realistic drama compared to what is available with simplistic poster-board villains. Most of the best shows have character consistency and in this I dont think Farscape is unique, but there have been some otherwise good science fiction series that suffered from inconsistent character behavior in one episode or another probably due to different storywriters in each episode that sometimes ignored the characters background. I noticed this especially in Star Trek Voyager where in some episodes a main character behaved contrary to form for reasons that were not really believable. In Farscape, however, the writers were respectful enough of the characters to maintain consistency in their underlying personalities. DArgo resists his temper and grows in his self control but he never completely eliminates the violent part of his nature and we can always expect him to have a temper tantrum now and again would he really be DArgo otherwise? Similarly we can always depend on Rigels love of food and money getting him into trouble. Yet while respecting the consistency of their individual personalities the writers also allow for their relationships and/or roles to change in significant and meaningful ways during the series. Crais starts out as the villain and later becomes a self-sacrificing ally but in all of this his

underlying devotion to the Talyn project is consistent. Similarly DArgo and Chiana and John and Aeryn get together, break up and get together again, all for believable reasons. Ultimately isnt this what we see in the real world? Personalities dont change, but people do change roles and relationships and its in these that we see their growth as individuals. Even if you have good characters and actors, a show can miserably miss the mark if the stories from episode to episode dont maintain your interest. Action/adventure, drama, science, and humor - the more you can have a little of each in every episode the better. Star Trek suffered because it was too much science, too much moralizing. There was only the driest humor in a typical show. Regardless of its various incarnations Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, the series always heavily relied upon technological ideas and the moral high ground to maintain interest time loops, wormholes, alternate universes, artificial intelligence from Data to the Borg, nanotechnology, etc., and how can we be successful if we always do the right thing? These ideas are interesting at first but after a while you can only say so much about them as you try to put a different spin on the same idea over and over again; eventually it just begins to feel repetitious. Similarly the all-out constant action/adventure of the Stargate SG-1 variety was hardly techno-savvy and it certainly was entertaining from episode to episode but the lack of real character drama prevented it from ever rising above the level of mediocrity of a shoot-em-up show. Contrast these with a show like Babylon 5 that had enough character drama to be considered one of the great programs overall yet it still suffered from inconsistent story writing compared to Farscape. With Babylon 5, anytime I wasnt involved in the bigger story arcs I had the feeling I was watching a filler show. The writing in Season 5 became especially repetitious and dismal. This presumably is because Straczynski closed out the story arcs of the Shadow War and the Earth War at the end of Season 4 because at that time a Season 5 was uncertain and he didnt want to end the series with too many dangling threads. When Season 5 did get approval it was as if there was nothing left to write about. I couldnt help but feel the last four or five episodes of the series in which each main character departed: Girabaldi, Molari, GKar, the Doctor, finally DLenn and Sheridan, each pausing at various points to observe the sets in a moment of silence just dragged out a goodbye the show is ended over and over and over and over again. I got fed up and thought Just how many times do we have to say goodbye already!. Straczyinski could have easily combined these into a single episode without any loss. Farscape, on the other hand, never had such filler shows they could explore a lot of different ideas and keep you on the edge of your seat without it ever being irrelevant to the overall plot, seeming repetitious, relying on flashbacks or retrospectives. Similarly the Farscape writers explored technology from episode to episode and could use it to raise questions and keep interest while not having to rely on it as the sole plot device or source of entertainment. In fact, other than a few singular episodes like My Three Crichtons and Eat Me which relied on cloning as the main plot vehicle, in most episodes the technology was just a backdrop and not really necessary to the storyline. Even the idea of wormhole navigation, a constant in the series, is kept techno-lite supposedly depending upon mysterious mathematical equations whose relevance is ironically never

explained while instead actually relying upon Crichtons zen-like sixth sense for accomplishment. Farscape relied more often on cagey under-the-table deals, arranged marriages, manipulation for money or power, diplomatic missions, sickness and disease, exploitation and prejudice, love and family, sex and pregnancy, jealousy and greed, redemption and revenge, gambling and drunkenness, and politics and war, as plot vehicles rather than science or technology. These are ideas and concepts more at home in soap opera than science fiction. The advantage is they can be explored again and again without it ever seeming repetitious, probably because theyre common in our everyday work-a-day world. In short, these are things we can relate to. Escalate it enough to require fist-fighting and shoot-outs, major brain surgery, torture, theft, kidnapping, risky expeditions, imprisonment, a few battles and big explosions, and you have edge-of-your-seat great story-writing. This doesnt mean, of course, that every episode of Farscape was of equal quality. The story writers tried to do different things from time to time as an attempt to explore artistic originality. Some of these were not successful. One example is the episode Revenging Angel which explores Crichtons thoughts while in a coma after he is attacked by DArgo. The episode was filled with Looney Tunes style animation and sound clips. We watched a cartoon DArgo, in the role of coyote, chasing around a cartoon John in the role of roadrunner. In spite of the initial comic moment of seeing Scorpio as a cartoon, the episode was too contrived to be of much value. It is something which one would expect to see while attending a Farscape convention of interest only to die-hard fans who will eat up the characters in any guise. The animation was, in fact, merely okay. The real Looney Tunes was a lot funnier in its heyday and revamping the same coyote inventions in the guise of DArgo just insults the original and better cartoon. But Looney Tunes has been outdated by better animation techniques and relevant forms of humor that werent even used in the Farscape episode. I would have preferred to see Craig McCracken or Genndy Tartakovsky have input on this episode. Even so, this by itself is not why I gave the episode poor ratings. Its because it goes against the believability which is otherwise present in the series. No sane person, in a coma and close to death after being attacked by his close friend would spend his dying moments imagining himself as a silly cartoon. Certainly larger and more serious thoughts, his love for Aeryn and his longing for home, would be in view. The cartoon framework could easily have been made more believable: a vehicle for Johns thoughts after passing out from a night of drinking and debauchery with DArgo perhaps, or as media commissioned by Rigel to entertain himself. Ultimately, however, a silly cartoon episode is just too much of a hard sell for viewers expecting drama and action/adventure. If Im really in the mood to watch an original and funny cartoon, Ill switch over to the Cartoon Network.