Em takes a look @ Farscape and The Peacekeeper Wars
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Why write about it now?: For some years now it's been a rather costly affair to get hold of a boxset of Farscape with The Peacekeeper Wars. So earlier this year when Paul and I were surfing around an online store, our bargain hunting eyes set themselves upon a boxset of the series and two months of TV heaven ensued.
What is Farscape?: One of the better sci-fi shows to come out of the late '90s. The show follows the exploits of an astronaut from present day Earth, John Crichton, as he gets sucked into a wormhole whilst aboard an experimental space craft and transported to the other side of the galaxy. Here he becomes part of the crew aboard a ship named Moya, and is never quite the same again. The series lasted four seasons and one mini-series.
What's to like?: What makes this a good series is, (despite it's almost Robinson Crusoe nature,) it has heavier hitting characters and storylines than a lot of longer running series in the genre. You can tell from watching the shows up until part way through the fourth season (when the hammer of cancellation began to rain down) that a lot of thought and consideration went into the characters and story arcs.
The series is a delight to watch and I found it hard to not draw a parallel between some of Crichton's lines (for instance) and some of the dramatic soliquies of Shakespeare's male protagonists. It may be strange to make such a comparison between a sc-fi show and the work of the bard, but such is the quality of the scripting on the series, and the 'superbness' of the acting.
Even though things came to an abrupt end in the fourth series The Peacekeeper Wars does a brilliant job of trying to tie up the lose ends, and leads to a possible revival of the franchise when the time is right.
FX and creatures: The series has had some intriguing creature designs, mostly humanoid based, but the few animatronic ones were amazing. These creatures may be attributed to the genius of the Jim Henson Company.
A favourite of mine was the pilots of the Leviathan ships, (ships like Moya) and it wasn't just their physical appearance that was inventive: how they're linked up with the ships and how it's explained over the seasons is the kind of attention to detail that a good sci-fi show should always have.
And what about FX? Well, they don't look tacky and they always knew when to use gunge. There is the usual quibble of noise in space, but to call a series or a movie out on that is to condemn a great many series and films as well.
Finally: If you haven't seen the show since it was first aired, then you really need to get hold of a copy of the boxset. Farscape is one of the seminal sci-fi series of the late '90s and early 2000s, and if you haven't seen it before and are fed up with what's currently on offer: go and watch it.
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