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Sci Fi Confirms Forthcoming Farscape Miniseries
Albinus writes "The Sci Fi Channel has decided to continue the Farscape series in the form of a miniseries, according to a short article on SciFi.com. Apparently, 'The four-hour miniseries picks up where the cliffhanger series finale left off and will reunite John Crichton (Ben Browder), Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) and the rest of the Moya crew.' Hopefully this will generate a renewed interest in the show and bring it back permanently." We reported on earlier rumors to this effect late last year.
This is the first "right" thing Sci-Fi has done since cancelling Farscape. Every other series they've brought on like Mad Mad House or whatever it is, is crud. Hopefully this is a sign that Sci-Fi is learning from it's past mistakes, but I doubt it.
Real people? Real spaceship? Um, were they using a real warp drive to get around the galaxy?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
It won't be so hard to move on - the alien just says he will prepare them for 'naturalization' which I assume means breaking them down into little balls of their most basic atomic components. Oh - and how exactly they are writing a 22 episode season's worth of story in 4 hours (when each episode is 1 hour anyway) is beyond me. I adore every episode of Farscape - I'd hate to see it watered down.
The show wasn't cancelled for poor ratings (it was one of thier highest rated shows), Sci-fi just decided that with it's very high production costs about to increase, it would be best to turn to some cheaper programming.
If you can get ratings with cheap crap like Scare Tactics (come on, I could produce that show for 5 bucks an episode), then why shell out 3 million an episode for some quality programming?
I imagine this miniseries would have to get some pretty spectacular ratings to sway Sci-Fi on this.
I've been thinking about this lately, having been watching some of the Anime on Adult Swim. I'm not a huge Anime freak or anything, but anyways..
The (better) animes really are sort of a miniseries format, even if they have a few seasons worth of episodes. It would seem to me that the creative force behind them spells out the plot for the entire series - or at least knows how it's going to begin and end - and the series as a whole becomes more cohesive and watchable.
American animated series' tend to be open ended. No end is planned, so they can just go on forever and ever.
For instance, Trigun. I realize that this was taken from a comic, and the series follows the comic, but the series flows. The characters evolve from the first episode til' the last. Compare to something like the Batman series (which also comes from a comic), each episode is completely independent of the last.
I guess both have advantages/disadvantages. If you miss a few episodes of Trigun, you run the risk of not knowing what the fuck is going on, especially if they were key episodes.. If you miss Batman, big deal.
Anyways, back to the 'real' sci-fi.. I'd love to see more vision put into it on TV, rather than having a series finale which was pulled from some hacks ass. "Capt Kirk and Picard travel thrrough time to ummmm tell Spock how to get Janeway pregnant so they can ummmm.. Klingons, lets think.. How about prevent a Klingon war? Sounds good lets shoot it and go home"
Ie; A plan - beginning and end - for Voyager would have made it a watchable show. Instead they just toss characters in here and there and the rest of the typical bulldink. I didnt watch the finale, but I'll bet hard cash that the day was saved with some cockamamie time traveling.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
No!!!
Support both! Both shows are getting a new lease of life, both shows are really really good and a million times better than anything else on TV at the moment.
It's hard to know what to think about the channel. It embodies (sometimes) much of what you would like to watch if you are a science fiction/horror/fantasy fan. Yet they have made so many inexplicable moves. For example they cancel a novel award winning show in its prime. In exchange we get Tremors the Series (crap)and a lot of made for TV movies (crap).
Yet inexeplicably they revive Andromeda over Farscape? They pass on Firefly?
It really seems as if their executives are either not as in touch with the genre as they should be, or are being overruled from above. Or quite simply are just fools.
They have had so many cool shows, that they could populate their line up with them, yet often they take and mangle a shows original spirit. Sliders being a prime example. Farscape another where rather then mangle the concept they just killed it.
Sadly the alternative networks for this kind of content aren't doing much with it. Showtime being the best example as the former owners of Stargate, and current owners of Jeremiah.
Ah where do we find good quality shows these days?
Farscape is one of those shows that's very difficult to break into because of its highly seralized nature. That is to say, the plotline is very involved, and trying to break into it is very difficult. ("Who is that guy? Why are they all looking at each other uncomfortably? Why the musical sting?") It got to the point where the "previously, on Farscape" section at the beginning of every episode packed in more story than most of the actual episode.
With that in mind, Farscape rewarded loyal viewers with a story that was incredibly involved and detailed (think: Babylon 5), coupled with character interactions that seemed effortlessly natural (think: completely unlike Babylon 5). I first started watching partway through season two. I'd just sorta left the TV on the Sci Fi channel (a mistake I very rarely make these days), and the conversation between my wife and I just sorta drifted off as we watched an episode called "The Way We Weren't," which remains my favorite episode to this day. It was about shame, and betrayal, and forgiveness: most importantly, it was about these things in a way which seemed to assume the best about its audience, rather than the worst. My wife, who generally dislikes space-opera style sci-fi, became a rabid viewer, as did I.
Anyway, watch a few episodes with an open mind and a sense of humor, and you're likely to be surprised with where it takes you.
"the series wasn't cancelled due to lack of interest"
So was the Family Guy.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Farscape ended up being put out way past the expiration date. The first/second seasons, maybe even third were great, but then the plots got weirder and more confusing. Granted, it was still humorous and fun to watch, but.. it was lacking.
Sliders is another example of a TV show gone bad. The first, second were completely awesome. Third started sending it down the drain. Then Sci-Fi picked up the series from Fox and completely ruined it with Seasons 4 and 5. It was still okay to watch, but Season 5 was almost unbearable. The only original character that remained was Rembrant, and Quinn got elimnated by some cockamamy plotline about being fused with an alternate Quinn (shouldn't they have looked identical anyways?) thus bringing in the new actor. It's sickening.
Technically, there's a distinction between science fiction and space opera, at least according to some writers in the Sci Fi genre. I once read an article written by one of Analog's regular contributors, who attempted to draw this distinction.
To the category of true science fiction belong works such as Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (the book, not the movie); to the category of space opera belong works such as Star Wars. The idea is that true sci fi has at least one science element, even if it's badly conceived science, that is integral to the plot; without it, the story doesn't work. In Frankenstein, you have the concept of reanimating dead tissue with electricity, and creating life from non-life. Space opera and its close relatives, on the other hand, could be re-cast in another genre with little or no difficulty (e.g., a western). The technology is just a replaceable prop.
Despite Gene Roddenberry selling the original Star Trek to NBC as a "wagon train to the stars," he hired real sci fi writers and told some pretty amazing stories that were genuine science fiction. Quite honestly, I saw nothing in Firefly that would classify it as genuine science fiction -- but if it's space opera, it's very competently written, proving that the term doesn't have to be a negative epithet.
Farscape was a bit uneven at times, but it did explore genuine science fictional themes at least some of the time. The rest of the time was spent on character development and dealing with plot arcs. It's pretty safe to say, though, that the story told by Farscape would fall completely apart without the underlying science concepts (wormhole travel, cerebral implants, etc.)