Farscape is Back

cioxx writes "FilmForce has substantiated rumors of Farscape, widely popular TV miniseries, returning as a standalone project with no new episode commitment attached, independent of Sci-Fi Channel." Previously, some rumors had been flying around that the original series would be finished off in this way, but many Farscape fans are just happy to see more of the show on the way.

Comments

Farscape

[yoder]

Excellent! Now they just need to bring back the Invisible Man and I will be happy.

Re:Babs

[TTMuskrat]

Babylon 5 at least got to tell its whole story (or at the least the story that J. Michael wanted to tell.)
Farscape was not allowed to do this and it makes me a happy scaper that they might actually be allowed to wrap up the main story arc.

I'm glad

[Scholasticus]

I was a fan of Farscape, and was saddened to see it cancelled. That the series ended with a cliffhanger was a frustrating disappointment. At least now they will be able to tidy things up a bit. I have no hope that Farscape will be revived as a series, but at least this miniseries will give it a fair ending.

Re:I'm glad

[Zero Muskrat]

I was devasted by the cancellation of Farscape as it was the only show I could truly get excited about watching. It didn't help that it was replaced by SG-1, which I consider to be both poorly written and uninteresting. I am one of those fanatics that stopped watching the Sci-Fi channel altogether after the last episode aired. Okay, so I watched Children of Dune. We are all hypocrites.

To be fair to the Sci-Fi channel, to call the 4th season of Farscape substandard is being generous. I enjoyed that the show took different directions every season. The 3rd season, while still good, was likely over the top for some. They just seemed to lose the magic from the very beginning of the 4th season. Episodes were confusing and definitely over the top. If you were not already a fan of the series, you would never watch those episodes.

If the rumors turn out to be true, I hope that they do a better job with the miniseries and give the show a proper ending. The fans deserve it.

Re:Babs

[zakezuke]

Bab 5 was cool, really cool, but I wouldn't go so far as saying I mourned it because they did manage to actually complete their 5 year story arch.

Crucade on the other hand didn't really get a chance to go anywhere, other then some hints that the shadow virus that infected earth might be nano based.

Farscape on the other hand didn't complete their 5 year story arch... we were left at a cliff-hanger awaiting a next season doomed to never come. I caught the BBC download of it, and they basicly said something to the effect of "yea that's it, it's a cliff hanger but no more episodes".

Re:Who do I have to thank for this little miracle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually DK and the FS cast/crew left that To Be Continued in there on purpose. They did it as giving the finger to the scifi channel as they only had 1 day of filming left when they heard it was cancelled and DK said he wasn't about to try to tie up the show in a day, so leave it as is..the way it was originally intended.

Re:"Widely popular"

[jnik]

This is pretty much what's up with sci fi these days. Legend of the Rangers wasn't greenlighted because the pilot's ratings were "good" but "not good enough for a show that we won't own lock stock and barrel."

One of the reasons for the decline of the channel IMO.

Re:Still just speculation

[zerocool^]

It's speculation, but the announcement came from a post by LAScaper on the savefarscape forums, which is here: http://www.watchfarscape.com/forums/showthread.php ?s=dc744150f682e3c42e1199c30d15fdf8&threadid=17172

And duplicated here:

----snip----

Hey Y'all!!

I am deliberately giving you this news in the dryest language possible, and I remind you that NOTHING IS SET IN STONE. It's so easy to get excited. But there's reason to at least keep our hopes and efforts going...

After the Jay Leno show, many of the scapers returned to the hotel. RaeLee Hill (Sikozu) was in the lobby. RoseyM and I were standing there waiting for Tiriel. Naturally, I couldn't find myself standing two feet from this adorable (and tiny!) woman without saying something to her, so we struck up a conversation. RoseyM asked RaeLee if there was anything she could tell us about the show's future. I didn't have the nerve. I assumed RaeLee would say there was nothing to tell.....

OMG! RaeLee told us several things:

1. All of the Farscape actors are "on hold".

2. The studio has been reserved for the months of December, January, and February. RaeLee said they had reserved the "big one" that they used when the show first started.

3. She said the sets were being built now.

4. RaeLee said she believes a three part mini-series and a feature movie combination is being discussed. But she's not sure....

5. She said Ben Browder had signed something. She's not sure but, RaeLee believes it was a letter of intent of some type.

You can imagine how excited RoseyM and I were to hear this news!! I asked RaeLee if it was ok to put this news on the internet because there were a lot of people who would want to hear about this. I also have no desire to get RaeLee into trouble. She said that no one had told her to keep this information a secret. It was ok to tell 5,000 of my closest friends. She just wanted me to make sure that I say clearly that NOTHING IS SET IN STONE

RoseyM and I split the pleasant task of posting this information. You will find her post on the Kanasas site.

I guess the bottom line here is that we have every reason to keep hope a alive scapers!!!

-----end snip----

Farscape not so great

[Anonymous Coward]

The first season or two were pretty interesting. Live actors and puppets working on the same stage in a dramatic setting was kinda cool. And the use of puppets allowed some variation from the common TV sci-fi convention of all aliens as humanoid knock-offs.

The show began to get tied up in multi-episode arcs (trying to outshine the Babylon 5, I suppose) and ordinary notions of story structure got lost. Attempts to wring "surprise" out of regular characters overwhelmed the growth and development that had been an enjoyable aspect of the principals up to then.

Humanoid knock-off aliens began showing up in droves, reducing the novelty level. A lot of time spent on earth allowed homo sapiens to be viewed as the "aliens." This got carried to an extreme not needed for long-time sci-fi fans. (Quibble alert: Characters who lived in the midwest of north america but tended to speak with Australian accents was somewhat disconcerting to a native north american. End of quibble)

The plots went out of control. Elements would be introduced that had no background, tensions would arise that were not resolved. The show's writers and producers promised in the trades and fan publications that upcoming episodes would knock everyone's socks off -- but what hit the screen was just more of the increasingly muddled mess that had now become Farscape.

The last scenes shown didn't really strike me as a cliffhanger ending, but just another weak set up for following episodes that wouldn't make sense or break through to new visions.

Let it go.

Re:"Widely popular"

[mbourgon]

Don't forget the football game.

From JMS:
We heard what we initially thought were disappointing figures, that we'd done a 1.7 when SFC was hoping for a 2.6 or better. It kind of
puzzled everybody because the B5 audience is generally pretty reliable.

It became even *more* puzzling when the more detailed figures came in, showing that by quarter-hours, the show *gained viewers* and did not lose them. Meaning folks who came on the show by accident, stayed to watch. It should have been much higher than it was.

Then the final market-by-marked figures came in from the studio, and we had our mystery resolved.

The east coast ratings got hammered by the football game, which was the highest rated such game in something like 5 years. The B5 male
demos are pretty much the same as for sports, and we lost heavily to football. So there we did not do well.

By contrast, on the west coast, where the show aired *after* the game had finished, we not only met but *exceeded* SFC's expectations, getting a 3.2 or 3.6 in many markets, which is actually pretty unheard of for a basic cable network.

The problem is that the average, 1.7, is still what's used for advertising. So we have to see if SFC will look past the show getting hammered by a big football event on the East Coast to look at the West Coast figures and see that there is, indeed, a market.