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."

Comments

Fan Funded.....

[troc]

Could be an interesting way of doing things however I can't see it really working as shows need a guaranteed, regular income stream.

I would personally love Farscape to be continued, especially having seen the cliff-hanger of a final episode last Monday on BBC 2..........

I wonder if you could do things like give people who donate over $xxx amount a walk-on part or something? Guided tours of the sets (yeah I know they need to be rebuilt)? Signed anythings. I guess you could try a fund raising event like the US PBS shows do - or the lartge charity fundraisers we have in the UK. Would work if we found some big starts who would support the thing for free......

Hmm

Troc

I feel it's all for nothing

[Mossfoot]

Campaigning may have worked for a while... but now EVERY show that gets canceled gets a campaign to save it. It's losing its potency, even if they do reinvent how its done.

When the folks at TNT told J Michael Strasinski to make Babylon Crusade "WWF wresting mixed with Baywatch" I pretty much lost any hope in being able to communicate with TV execs in English. Grunts and fist loads of money seem to be the only way.

Re:I feel it's all for nothing

[ajs]

TV is an odd bird, and more so in the last 15 years as cable networks have exploded onto the scene.

Listening to people like JMS (who you mentioned, but did you know he's written an excellent screenwriter's guide for TV and movies that goes into a lot of the politics and how to deal with them?), Joss Whedon, Aaron Sorkin and others who have managed to sneak quality television in, I'm convinced that there's a formula for getting good television on the air.

Woefully for us, you're right: it has nothing to do with the fans per se, and once it stops going our way, we have little hope of changing it. It has to do with good writers (writers in TV are like directors in movies, they have a lot of power if they use it right) who have the organization skills and drive to produce (in name or function) their own shows, and a massive focus on good timing. You really have to pick a network thats brand new or established but on the ropes (even if just in one particular time-slot) or re-inventing themselves (e.g. Showtime and Sci-Fi in recent years).

Crusade was a great counter-example to this. Straczynski ran into an established network (TNT) that didn't have any major problems to solve. That meant that internally, there were too many little drones running around trying to find ways to be useful and justify their jobs. The way he describes it, the folks in Hollywood were practically fans of his (some actually were) and they let him do his thing, but he was constantly assaulted by the folks back at the home office in Atlanta who wanted to expand the demographic of the show, and make it match their existing audience (WWF fans as you point out).

No fan can tell those execs in Atlanta to piss off, because they're convinced that there's more gold inside the goose than the few paltry eggs it lays each season. They want to cut it open, re-structure it and sell it out for condos! That's the mentality you're dealing with, and it's only broken when there's change... you have to seek out that change. To many, JMS seemed pig-headed around Crusade, and I felt that way at first, but I realized after a while that I'd rather have the show go away than have 7 seasons of B5 meets VIP :-/

Slashdot Reinventing Advertising

[chocolateboy]

How come the NYT gets an obligatory 'free registration required' warning while Salon doesn't merit an 'expensive and probably futile registration required' fatal error?

Re:How cute. Article mirrors television show.

[Darren Winsper]

The Farscape producers were under the assumption they were going into a fifth season. After all, SciFi bought it for a fourth and fifth season. Thus, they left season four on a huge cliff-hanger and were going to wrap it all up in season five, much like Babylon 5. However, the end result is a cliff-hanger that may never be resolved.

So, to answer your question, the fans want a fifth season, they want resolution of the series and they want more Farscape.

Re:am I the only person on /.

[Photon Ghoul]

Humanity has always sought a bit of fulfillment from storytelling. Stop being snobbish about the medium it's presented in. Granted most television is not what I would call true storytelling - but, you see, that is why Farscape has rabid fans.

Re:not a troll..

[Graspee_Leemoor]

"All this stuff is imaginary and it is just taking you away from reality of the real world."

When the real world is full of governments who are happy to go to war despite the people who voted them in not wanting them to, insane countries with nukes that no-one seems to want to go to war against, mysterious diseases sweeping across the world like they could turn into a millions-killing pandemic and people who think clear cases "look really cool" how can you blame people for wanting to escape it by watching shows like Farscape ?

graspee

semi-revolutionary

[phastest]

If you've watched the show from the very beginning, you have to have seen several differences between it and 'typical' American sci-fi programming.

For one, the show focussed on several issues that were 'uncomfortable' to american audiences. Applause there for forcing us to stretch our brains a bit!

Also, the characters were much more involved with each other, in real ways, than most other crap you see on the 'major' networks. These relationships made several viewers addicted to the show even though they watched almost no other science fiction programming. Applause for making us re-examine our own interpersonal relations a bit!

Semi-finally, just about every major character in the show was physically different from 'human' in ways to remind us of the plurality of life. Crichton's best friend had tentacles growing off his face, and a very long tongue with an adaptive toxin in the tip. The first sexy chick you saw (at the beginning of the series) was a gorgeous sky blue in color, with no hair at all. Ear-splitting applause for showing that Different is Good!!!

I hate to use the past tense so much in this commentary. But, the show is effectively killed by corporate politics/greed/stupidity. I'd be quite surprised to see it continued by fan support.

Best chance for the show to return anew would be for the son/daughter of some ultra-rich individual finding the right button to push on daddy's emotions to force funding to flow.

Sigh.

Re:am I the only person on /.

[ajs]

[side note to SHEENmaster first: you're on my foes list, and I don't know why, but one more post like this, and you're off ;)]

I don't agree with your choice of examples (Sliders was a cool idea, but quickly devolved into bad story telling), but I agree wiht the sentiment. Let me explain Farscape for you, since you're not familliar with it, and hopefully explain why people (not me) care about it so much:

It's something like Buck Rogers. Guy from earth gets sent "away" (space in this case, not time) to a place where there are all manner of science-fictiony things to contend with. It's a classic culture-shock setup, which is a very common tool in SF and other genres as well, as it allows you to tell the story with your protagonist being the "everyman" that people can relate to.

Here are the things that have kept people watching Farscape: 1) really alien aliens including one who is totally non-humanoid (a ship) 2) the theme of the show seems to be exploring how much you can mess with the protagonist's brain before it turns to jello, and some people enjoy such story telling 3) the story evolves. Not in a B5 way where there's an end-point your moving to and a story arc on the way, but more in the Buffy style where things are allowed to change season-to-season.

Woefully for me, the most important part isn't there: writing. It's ok writing, even good writing by television standards, but I find it hard to get into a show unless the writing is exceptional, and Farscape's is not. It had some very good ideas, and ideas are fun. If they had structured it as more of an anthology, I might have watched. As it is, I watched a couple of seasons when they repeated, got the pattern (alien messes with John's mind, John acts crazy, crew acts suspicious, John quotes movie/TV line and gets better/kicks alien's ass). That was enough for me.

I'm not saying it's a bad show, just that I'm not on board with the idea that it's worth saving.

Why Farscape is great

[inkydoo]

I'm already seeing several questions about why Farscape (FS from here on out) is so good, or people talking about how they can't stand (and then admit they've only watched a few episodes). So, to answer those posts, I'm going to give you X number of reasons (where X equals the point where I get tired of typing or can't think of anymore) why FS is a fantastic show (especially SciFi show, but even among other shows).

These are in no particular order.

1. Continuity matters - What happens in one episode usually has an impact on a later episode, even if you don't realize it at the time. This ranges from X happened last epsiode, and now it has impact Y on the next one to X happened a season ago, and helps explain Y in this episode a season later. There are a few other SF shows on TV right now that do this (Enterprise), but not many. Unfortunately, this has a downside, in that grabbing new viewers midstream becomes problematic.

2. Complex characters - Sometimes the "good" guys act bad and some times the "bad" guys act good, and sometimes the "bad" guys turn out to be not so bad and really it can get a little hard to tell who the good and bad guys are a lot of the time. All of the time you're left guessing at most of the characters motives. Friendships and allegiances bend and break. Sometimes the "good" and "bad" guys have to cooperate to achieve shared goals.

3. Unpredictability - Farscape has done some stuff I never saw coming (or my wife, who's better at guessing plot twists than I). They killed off a main character in the middle of a season. They "cloned" the main character and had both walking around for nearly a season. Normally, you sort of realize that the central character can't get killed off, but when there's two of him, you never know if/when one might get wacked.

4. Somewhat more creative aliens - This is due in part to the Henson involvement. It allows them to create non-humanoid aliens that are very believable. Among those are the "ship" itself, the somewhat symbiotic pilot of the ship and Rygel. Even the humanoid aliens are fairly different from one another. One of the main characters is a humanoid meat-eating vegetable. Nearly a season's worth of episodes are focused on the pregnancy of the ship, how the crew deals with it, how it affects their run from the law, etc.

5. A great ensemble cast - For the most part, every main character is well acted (and via some episodes we get to see them stretch their abilities) and well written. This interplays with having complex characters, but unlike some shows, there's hardly a dud in the bunch (I'm looking at you Harry Kim or, sorry Wil, Wesley Crusher).

6. Comedy - I know a lot of SF shows are good at inserting humor, but Farscape does it as well as any other. I would rank it right up there with Firefly. If nothing else, the voices in the main character's head are handled perfectly, just skirting the edge of slapstick but not quite turning into the stooges.

7. Fresh characters - The cast has been changing since the first season. New characters show up, others leave the show. And this isn't just "add a hot babe to boost ratings" changes. Think more along the lines of old ugly witch-doctor woman who cooks meals and occasionally drugs the crew.

There are so many other reasons, but I can't think of them all right now. If you can get your hands on them, go rent the first few DVD's which will have the first six episodes or so. Watch them all, and I think you'll see what I mean.

Full Text

[finny]

Can "Farscape" fans reinvent TV?
When the Sci Fi Channel canceled "Farscape," angry fans launched the usual protest movement. Now they're dreaming of a rebellion that could overthrow TV empires.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Adrienne Crew

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 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 actor Ben Browder and co-executive producer Richard Manning, informed the "Farscape" faithful (known as "'Scapers") 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

This is the end of it for me

[adipocere]

I could yammer on and on why I like Farscape, points you've all heard before about, hey, finally we have aliens who don't just look like people with a little makeup on their foreheads, and whatnot, but I'd like to bring up two things:

1) You know the Sci Fi Channel is full of it. Okay, so maybe the show cost a little to produce. Heck, maybe it even cost a lot to produce. But, if there was some kind of funding shortfall, I'm pretty sure that just one of those godawful Sci Fi Original Movies would have paid for it. Take Epoch or Antibody. I'm under the impression that the Sci Fi Channel actually pays people to put out these films. If so, the budget from one of two of these forgettable disasters could easily cover a Farscape shortfall.

2) This is the end of it for me and the Sci Fi Channel. First, the end of MST3K. Well, I'll live. I was kind of peeved about them cutting off The Invisible Man, which had been a much better series than I had intended. Farscape is now the last show they have that I'm interested in. They're replacing it with Tracker ... hey, this guy, with superpowers like ... sucks light out of the bad guys, at least one an episode. Same guy as Highlander. Same show as Highlander. Oh, and let's not forget Tremors: The Series, which was supposed to be cheap, but is months late because it ran over budget, etc. And this is going to be better than Farscape how?

The Sci Fi Channel has totally lost its mission and has no sense of who its viewers are. How does a remake of Psycho belong on a channel about science fiction? And that Viper show ... wow. They couldn't rerun The Flash? Where's Max Headroom in this lineup? It had a short run, but no shorter than the incessantly-played (if still good) Brimstone. The most sci-fi thing they have going for them now, aside from Stargate: SG-1 is, well, their little station bits with the melting sumo wrestlers and big-eared alien tongue-touching pets.

It's as if they have decided to stop running decent science fiction shows in exchange for ... vaguely sciency programming that cost them a dollar to buy the rights for. They no longer understand who their audience is. Once the last show I cared to watch is gone, I doubt I'll do more than flicker over the station on my cable box. Goodbye, Sci Fi. Goodbye, Advertising Dollars.

That having been said, I'm going to run out and buy some Farscape DVDs. Here's hoping for a movie or a six-episode wrapup show released straight to DVD.