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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.
Frell yeah!
...when I spent a whole morning standing out in the cold in front of Sci-Fi HQ handing out flyers and stuff with a bunch of strangers.
Hah!
Babylon 5 is the only scifi i ever mourned.
Earlier this week, Dark Horizons reported that he had learned the production office is open, but that he was unable to learn anything else. SOMETHING is going on but that article simply seems to be plagiarizing the Dark Horizons article.
There was a Henson press conference set for Thursday according to savefarscape.com but it was cancelled which leads me to beleive that perhaps whatever deal they had fell through.
There is a fan convention going on this weekend, so if there is an anouncement look for it soon.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Not particularly directed at Farscape, perhaps, but I see a lot of criticism about various sci-fi shows for a lack of originality, in that a lot of basic tech and plot concepts seem mirrored across many different series.
I think creating an original premise for sci-fi is now extremely hard, all the main aspects of possible futures being represented in one show or another. I know I can't think of anything new to base a story on.
Can anyone point to some recent sci-fi that is truly original? Thanks.
Excellent! Now they just need to bring back the Invisible Man and I will be happy.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
No kidding. Good shows don't get cancelled ... twice.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
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.
It's about frelling time.
Even if it's just a miniseries, maybe they can bring some closure to the series, or at the very least the end of the last season. Of course, this thing could still be a long way off, and there's a lot that could go wrong, so I'm going to try not to get too excited too early.
"Recta non toleranda futuaris nisi irrisus ridebis"
It's inaccurate to call Farscape a miniseries. It was a regular tv show, running 4 seasons with 22 episodes in each. Perhaps the author was confused after reading the article (although that would seem to imply he read the article, which on /., seems unlikely...), that mentions that the new project will be a miniseries.
"Recta non toleranda futuaris nisi irrisus ridebis"
I know that not everyone agrees with me that Farscape is possibly the best show to have graced TV since, well since, hell since forever.
But even if you don't get Farscape you have to have some sympathy for us fans.
You realize they didn't even have the common curtesy to delete the words 'To be continued' from the last scene of the last episode?
In the last 3 minutes of the last episode the 2 main characters are blown away by a previously unknown badguy, and then the other good guys are left with jaws in there laps and the words 'To Be Continued'.
If you don't have some sort of pity for us fans then you are an incompassionate slug.
I will take a miniseries and say 'Thank You'. All I ever wanted was a final episode, maybe a 2 hour one, to tie up the loose ends.
I never demanded they give us another full season.
So who do I have to thank????
If it was widely popular, why does it have to be resurrected?
;).
Because its cancellation was all about money and ownership of the show, not its popularity. (Kinda like the original Battlestar Galatica).
SciFi Channel (owned by USA networks) did not own the rights to the show as it was made by the Jim Henson company (who is owned by a German conglomerate whose name escapes me now). When the USA network changed leadership, they wanted shows that they made and produced to be shown so that all the monies from said show would go to them. Since this was not the case with Henson-owned Farscape, and the fact that the show was not cheap to make, USA (and SciFi) opted out of the 5th season. So now, all you get is USA network made crap programming on the SciFi channel as if the entire USA Network itself wasn't bad enough
Support bacteria! It's the only culture most people seem to get.
- Stephen Baxter's Ring, Manifold:Time, Anti-Ice
- Greg Egan's Quarantine, Diaspora, Distress, and Permutation City
- Ian MacDonald's Terminal Cafe and Evolution's Shore
- Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space
- Rudy Rucker's Software and sequels, which are the weirdest fiction I've encountered since Phillip K Dick
- S.M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time
- Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South, Agent of Byzantium, and World War series
- Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky
- Robert Charles Wilson's Chronoliths and Bios
- David Zindell's Neverness
For short stories, the Year's Best SF series edited by David Hartwell is quite good. Stephen Baxter and especially Greg Egan have amazing short story collections fo their own. If you know a good used bookstore, I'd also highly recommend John Varley's short story collections (most published under several titles). He's not a bad novelist, but he's incredible in short fiction.The Jim Henson company was owned by EMTV, a german conglomerate. Henson's heirs bought the company back earlier this year.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
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.
Actually, the Henson family owns the Jim Henson company. It was sold to EM.TV of Germany for $680 million in 2000. The Henson's bought it back for $89 million this year. Not bad.
There has been wild hopes that Farscape would come back in some incarnation now that the Henson family owns the rights. We'll have to see if these hopes become reality. The theme of the campaign to bring the show back has been "Beyond Hope."
I think you're confusing good and popular. Friends and reality shows are popular. Good shows seem to be canceled on a fairly regular basis.
Everything will be taken away from you.
hell.. i have no sympathy for you.
you know, if you played nethack most of your stories in it end that way.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
One of the reasons for the decline of the channel IMO.
I know! Farscape fans bitching about Farscapes cancelation in a story about farscapes cancelation! What hubris!
Everything will be taken away from you.
I didn't miss one.
Then they moved it to mondays during the day??! How the hell am I supposed to have a job and watch Farscape.
So I quit my job.
It was worth it.
PLEASE say it's so!
There was a post the other day on watchfarscape.com's forums, here, to the effect of:
- someone had a conversation with one of Farscape's actresses (the one who played Sikozu) at a con; she said that (summary borrowed from someone on trekbbs.com):
* All the Farscape actors are 'on hold.'
* The studios are reserved from December - February.
* The sets are being built.
* She believes a three-part miniseries with possible feature film MAY be under discussion.
* Ben Browder MAY have signed something (possibly some sort of letter of intent).
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.
So, uh, given the last episode, how do they reasonably start up the story line again? Crichton and Aeryn are dust, and I'd certainly not watch the show just to see that annoying little muppet get fried next.
If I wanted a flaky sci-fi series to come back as a movie, I'd want Lexx. They barely scraped the surface of what Zev/Xev could do ;)
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Unfortunately, that's not going to give you the ability to appreciate the show. The first season, the entire cast was getting their legs and learning to work together. Ergo, the show was craptacular. The big draw of the show after season 2 was that the quirky humor started to gel, and the actors really got more into their roles. We actually started to care about them. Really, the first three eps are not the best way to get into Farscape. You'd be better downloading the "Best of" season n material.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
There's seems to be a lot of unanswered questions about if this is actually going to happen or not and Henson & Co. aren't talking...
Truthfully I loved Farscape but I could also see where the show had serious problems. The major one being that the story arcs were so long and the stories so complicated (often based on things that happened in previous episodes / seasons) that it just couldn't attract new viewers.. I know that for a fact since I tried to get a lot of my friends to watch it and they always had a 1000 questions about why things were happening and why the characters were acting the way that they were which pretty much required giving them a two hour synopsis of every significant event from the last two or three seasons. So far everyone who I've loaned my season one and two DVD's to have really loved it once they managed to watch them all.
The second problem is that the fourth season (for the most part) just plain sucked.. there were very few good episodes from the first part of the season but it really didn't get good until the last six episodes (I think the writers realized that they needed to pull it together).. I loved the last couple with Criton running around with the fusion bomb that had "Hi There!" (a reference to Dr. Strangelove) written on it strapped to him.. that made the rest of the bad episodes somewhat worth while.
As I'm sure you're reading from other posts, Farscape was a show that didn't start out great, but developed into a great show over time (kind of the opposite of how most shows act.)
-B
I agree with your agreement. I gave this show many, many chances. And I could never get it. As stupid as it could be, I would rather have seen Lexx been brought back from the dead.
sweet.
Thanks for the info.
Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice...
Is there something inherently "bad" about Muppets in Space?
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
They were freeze dried, dummy!
All they have to do is add water and, presto! instant sequel!
Clear, Dark Skies
No, I'd take muppets in space over Farscape.
Farscape is my handy illustration for the principle that there is a fan club for everything. The internet is another handy illustration.
Yeah! I HATE it when people other than me get something that they want!
You're not a very nice person.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
They seemingly dissasembled Crichton and Aeryn. Of course both characters have been killed before ;-)
Assuming that Chricton and Aeryn are permanently gone is like assuming the Picard is dead every time they disassemble him on a transporter pad.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I guess I can't really blame SciFi for killing that one off though, since even the original Babylon 5 had ratings problems and was almost canceled after season 4.
If it was widely popular, why does it have to be resurrected?
The SciFi Channel had the budget for a Kia but went out and bought a Porsche.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Maybe now someone can write a ALF episode... I've only been waiting since I was 7 for it to come. I mean it's about time, the poor guy has been reduced to shilling for 10-10-220. :)
If Farscape goes forward, they need to keep adding characters for sake of novelty AND variety. The stories are character driven.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Farscape was actually the biggest ratings winner Sci-Fi had. It was cancled because the Sci-Fi channel didn't want to be the Sci-Fi channel anymore, and instead wanted to concentrate more on horror. Even cable channels do stupid things.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
The muppets I've seen on Farscape rival good CGI. It's great to see good artistry match slick high-tech drivel.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
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.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Take off the 'to be continued' and you have a very Blake's 7-y ending, although in that case it was all but two of the regular cast who definitely got killed, and probably one more for good luck.
Horrid at the time but after all these years very satisfyingly final and a logical conclusion to the series.
Link
--- Ban humanity.
Mod me offtopic, but bring Sliders back too :(
__
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Yes, I believe he was being sarcastic, and referring quite explicitly to - wait for it..
Star Tres: TOS
Quite apropos for a Farscape discussion, since FS is so much better written than any Trek.
In the law there is no overlap between theft and copyright infringement whatsoever.
If you don't get the reference, then you don't watch the show. If you don't watch the show, why the hell are you posting on this thread?
Eat recycled food - it's good for the environment, and OK for you.
Don't forget they just have to fund "Scare Tactics". What the screaming f*ck that has to do with Sci-Fi, I don't know... it's not even that scary... it's more like "Oh shit, we screwed up, and now we're worrying about when the cops will show up."
Frankly, I'd like to start the executions with their program director and work my way up...
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I actually canceled my cable after Farscape was killed off.
I guess now I will have to get cable long enough for the miniseries.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
I've downloeaded and started watching Farscape, since I missed it on air. I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the first season. Does it get better? I've been kind of underwhelmed so far (lacks the tightly interconnected storyline of B5, and not as interesting as TNG). So does it get better, or is this just not a show to my liking?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
errr....lemme help you with that. Here are some keywords.
Claudia Black, leather, bare midriff.
: )
some episodes are still avaliable on amazon and universal's site, and this guy is offering the entire series on VHS tapes he copied off the air.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
... so very, very, very much.
Technoli
Regardless, I'd still rather see a Lexx movie, with a rating of NC-17 or higher. If Xenia's not available, I bet Jaime Pressley would make a great Xev.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
I just finished Revelation Space and Chasm City (A related novel, but not a direct sequel or prequel to rev space), and I must say, these were the best novels sci-fi novels I've read in some time. Reynolds plays a little fast and lose with the explainations of the technology at times (usually writing it off as the POV character doesn't know the details) - but that only enhances the realism of the world, since the POV character is rarely someone who would know how things work.
I'm going to buy the latest, Redemption Ark later today. It's still in hardback - but the wait to see what happens to the characters from Rev Space would be too long if I waited for a paperback. Normally I don't buy hardbacks...
man is machine
You obviously didn't listen to the audio. The command to the unknown alien is to RETRIEVE the trespassers. So when they're blown to bits, it's part of some kind of disable-and-retrieve weapon.
Hell, that one's easy. Crichton's head contains the most valuable information in the galaxy: wormhole tech. And a reconstituted Aeryn is easier to use to manipulate him with.
...
Maybe the deconstitute/reconstitute thing is just how they transport their prisoners around
Just closing out the cliffhanger that could have been eliminating in editing anyway. What Farscape really needs is a 22-episode 1-arc final season. But that isn't going to happen. Period.
I think you are confusing Farscape for a good show. My god, it was Muppets in Space! (with worse acting)
So, you just came to troll? The acting was a heck of a lot better than Grunts in Space, er, I mean Stargate. The scenes where John rebuffs and then ignores Aeryn, and when Aeryn says she's leaving, really stirred up the fans, but that's probably a little too mushy for you. Cut-and-dried kill-the-aliens SciFi may be what you're looking for, but I appreciated Farscape for exploring the human and alien interaction. And the actors are actually quite good, even if they are not familiar to most Americans.
I absolutely loved the first season, watched the whole thing back when it was new, but I felt that the quality of episodes after season one consistantly declined. Action became very sketchy and plot was too contrived and predictable. Wish they could have continued with the quality of that fist season though, that was golden.
Hey, buttplug, hey said ANY sci-fi discussion, not just one about Farscape.
Hey, genius, if he's annoyed by Farscape fans, why is he reading and posting to a Farscape article?
- a lot better than Grunts in Space, er, I mean Stargate
Nice characterization. I started watching Farscape because I was running out of Star Trek disks to get from Netflix. I've looked at a few other things too, including Stargate. I gave Stargate 2 disks worth of chances, and it was nothing but GI Joe lobbing grenades from a wormhole instead of foxhole. Boring as hell - a gunslinger movie with lights instead of gunsmoke.I have to agree that Farscape's earlier episodes weren't stellar. Luckily, they were just good enough to keep getting the disks. But then, from season two on, the show became amazing, like "bring tears to my eyes" amazingly good.
I feel a lot more emotion for the Farscape characters than I do for Star Trek characters - and I'm a die hard ST fan. But the truth is, the Farscape characters are far more "human" and it is very easy to get wrapped up in the story - I've found myself actually mad at a character for being a jerk, and happy or sad for a character depending on what is going on. And none of the characters are always good, always bad, always selfish, always generous - hell, even the evil nemesis is humanized to the point that, in a lot ways, I find him very likeable. Scorpius is humanized far more than the Borg ever was. This makes things much more complex and interesting.
Anyway, Farscape was not just about lights and gun battles - it was about the characters becoming real enough so that you cared what happened to them and worried for them. As far as I could tell, Stargate never got there. Neither did Andromeda for that matter (I've given that about 5 disks of chances - frelling dren).
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
If you are interested in a paper thin plot, cardboard characters, and a lot of shooting, Stargate is an awsome show.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Claudia Black, leather, bare midriff.
And let's not forget the grey, flexible, little strumpet, Chiana. :)
But the truth is, the Farscape characters are far more "human" and it is very easy to get wrapped up in the story - I've found myself actually mad at a character for being a jerk, and happy or sad for a character depending on what is going on. And none of the characters are always good, always bad, always selfish, always generous - hell, even the evil nemesis is humanized to the point that, in a lot ways, I find him very likeable. Scorpius is humanized far more than the Borg ever was. This makes things much more complex and interesting.
Well put. When you find out the bad aliens aren't really all that bad or all that alien, it makes you think. When John was dissing Aeryn, I was yelling at the screen and almost hoping his character got killed (again). Then when you find out he's doing it because he knows Aeryn's condition and good old Scorpy is eavesdropping on them, it's such a relief. I never empathized with characters in any series like I did with those in Farscape.
I've never watched Farscape and I want to start renting it from Netflix. But what's up with the weird episode ordering like Disc 1 has 1 & 7, 2 has 2 & 4, 3 has 3 & 6!? Are they out of order on purpose or do I need to watch them in numerical order by renting more than 1 disc at a time? That will really suck I think.
Besides, my very non-tech girlfriend really likes Lexx and got bored immediately with Farscape.
PS: Actually the idea of living starships was around for a while, going back at least to Jaques Vallee's "Fastwalker" and John Walker. I expect the Lexx guys picked the idea of a living starship from one of these sources.
Seastead this.
Check out Orion's Arm. It is a pretty unique sci-fi website.
After the initial shock I have come to accept the end of Farscape; and right now I really don't care if Farscape comes back. A previous poster got it right when indicating that Lexx was far superior to Farscape. I guess I didn't have it all in perspective (and Ben B didn't help when he kept talking about chainsaws being taken to Moya).
What with the news of a new series of Dr Who, which was probably not that great after all and will not be any better now, I'm beginning to regret all the campaigns to restore the sci-fi of our past.
Let Farscape, Dr Who, Blakes 7 (I know...), and Futurama (gulp) lie in our past and then maybe new, better stuff will come through.
Hell, even the Lexx website (lexx.com) was better than the Farscape one - though lately they seem to have got rid of the robot head and the poems ... oh well; you'll have to trust me on that one ...
"Anyway..." I said in an attempt to make my abrupt exit from the comment seem more amicable...
Sorry, I'm an Iowan -- not Newfoundlander.
Seastead this.
I liked Farscape well enough, I would even consider myself a fan.
But from the moment Mal pushed that guy through the engine intiake on his ship I knew that Firefly was a better show. (e.g. if the two were scheduled against one another, I would have to choose the Fly...)
So yea, I would be happy to see more Farscape, but the cancelation of Firefly should have caused riots... 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
As a series as well!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Now this is an idea I can get behind. someone start a web petition!
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
News flash. Every new show that comes out is deemed "the best X[1] show out there!"
[1] - insert genre here.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.