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Farscape Fans Reinventing Television
JoeCotellese writes "With the recent cancellation of Farscape, this Salon story discusses the creative ways fans are trying to save the show.
Specifically it talks about how grassroots organization through the internet has helped them to the point where they are discussing fan funded production of the show."
this all reminds me of a few years ago, when a show called "brookyln bridge", got cancelled, then everyone started bitching for it to be put back on the air, then they did put it back on the air, then no one watched it again, like before, and it got cancelled, again. the studios and stations know that this is the most likely scenario already, and as such i am sure they are ready to move on to the "next big thing", unfortunately. i watched a few episodes of the show, it is pretty cool, but I am not going to lose sleep over the fact that the show got cancelled. chalk it up to "the man trying to keep you down" or something. meanwhile, you can still watch reruns.
I hate sigs.
No.
I know it's got a story arc and all, but I forced myself to watch through about 8 episodes when Sci-Fi was running Farscape and B5 back to back a year or so ago. Although I really loved B5, I couldn't stand the, um, "demented" aspect of Farscape with the creepy fetish-like costumes, torture scenes (in virtually every episode), etc.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
I might accept your argument if Farscape wasn't being replaced by Tremors, the Series.
March 13, 2003 | Like so many stories, this one begins with an ending. Or, rather, the announcement of an ending.
Early last September, thousands of fans of the science fiction television series "Farscape" logged in to a chat room maintained by the Sci Fi Channel, which distributes the series in the United States. The Jim Henson Co. actually produces the series, mainly with licensing fees paid by Sci Fi, although Henson also syndicates the show in Britain, Germany and other countries.
"Farscape's" fans (and I'm among them) consider it one of the most innovative and best-written things on TV. The show follows the adventures of astronaut John Crichton (Ben Browder), who is marooned in space after an aeronautical accident. Buff, brainy and kinda goofy, John allies himself with a band of outlaw aliens aboard a sentient spaceship that's being pursued by the military arm of a totalitarian regime.
When fans logged on in September, Sci Fi had just broadcast the first 11 episodes of the show's fourth season, with the balance to come in the spring after a short break. "Farscape's" staffers and actors celebrate the end of each season's production schedule by communicating online with the fans -- from Australia, where the show is produced -- to discuss upcoming episodes and drop "spoilers" about the season's finale.
The fans received more than spoilers this session. Immediately following a phone conference with Sci Fi programming executives, "Farscape" executive producer David Kemper, along with Browder and co-executive producer Richard Manning, informed the "Farscape" faithful that Sci Fi Channel had just reneged on its commitment to purchase the fifth and final season of the series. Effectively, the show had just been canceled, leaving the audience with a series finale that ends in a cliffhanger.
Predictably, within hours of the cancellation announcement fans had gathered on message boards and in chat rooms to create strategies for protesting Sci Fi's decision. What began as a collective of fans bemoaning the loss of their favorite show has become the Save "Farscape" campaign, one of the largest and most sophisticated fan campaigns in television history.
The Save "Farscape" campaign is hardly the first grass-roots effort to save a television series. In 1968 NBC would never have realized that people were watching "Star Trek" if superfan Bjo Trimble hadn't encouraged other viewers to protest the series' imminent cancellation. Dorothy Swanson organized a successful letter-writing campaign in 1983 to save "Cagney and Lacey," and subsequently founded Viewers for Quality Television to assist other worthy but ratings-deprived shows, such as "Designing Women." Fans of the late-night cult classic "Mystery Science Theater 3000" brought fan-based campaigns into the Internet age when they launched a Web site to find a new home for the series after Sci Fi canned it in 1999. (The site continues to bring "MSTies" together, although efforts to relaunch the show were long ago abandoned.)
In the '90s, grassroots efforts to save canceled shows have gained momentum. Fans protesting the cancellation of the ABC drama "Once and Again" persuaded the network to finance enough episodes to conclude open-ended storylines. Creative "Roswell" fans caught the attention of WB programmers and bought their show more time by sending them bottles of hot sauce as a reminder of the condiment favored by the aliens on the series.
Each successive campaign absorbs and improves upon lessons learned during previous protests. 'Scapers have taken the best from all of them; they sent Sci Fi executives packages of crackers, in homage to the title of a favorite "Farscape" episode, "Crackers Don't Matter."
But protests are perhaps also becoming more sophisticated in reaction to the insensitivity of media monopolies. Movie buffs filed class-action lawsuits in Chicago this February against two movie theater chains for screening commercials before the start of movies. People are beginning to realize that lett
Yes, I am a Muslim. No, I am not a Terrorist.
Are you kidding me? You are actually going to use a comment located in the Talkback section of Ain't It Cool to prove your point? That's analogous to using a /. quote in a Master's thesis. Take a few minutes reading some of those Talkbacks. They really are that bad.
-prator