Farscape (Kinda) Returns

westlake writes "In a weekend press tour, Sci Fi announced that Farscape would be resurrected on-line in ten short webisodes to be produced by the Jim Henson Company. There are hints that Ben Browder and Claudia Black will both be both "available." Browder has another project to keep him occupied, at least part of the time: Sci Fi also announced that it had picked up Going Homer, a miniseries he developed with "Farscape" director Andrew Prowse. Greek and Roman deities walk among us, but only 12 year old Homer Ulysses Jones can see them for what they truly are. When Homer and his father are forced to flee a custody battle that would likely separate them, they journey from Los Angeles to the home of their ancestors — in Ithaca, N.Y."

Comments

Farscape's strength was its weakness

[PhrostyMcByte]

Farscape's super-long story arcs meant you had to be watching from the start, or at least for a very long time, if you wanted to understand what was going on. I fear this doomed it in the end, as people weren't able to just channel surf and get into it.

I wish they'd bring back the show, but I guess this will do.

Re:Farscape's strength was its weakness

[Control Group]

Farscape's super-long story arcs meant you had to be watching from the start, or at least for a very long time, if you wanted to understand what was going on. I fear this doomed it in the end, as people weren't able to just channel surf and get into it.

Which made it perfect for release to DVD...if that had been done in a better (ie, cheaper) fashion. Not, of course, the Farscape was or is alone in charging prices that made it infeasible to buy an entire season.

Really, I think there's an untapped market segment there; not just for Farscape, but for certain kinds of TV shows in general. I think it might eventually be a successful business model to plan your show around only having a few episodes on television, solely as marketing for the DVD release of the full season.

I use the term "DVD release," but there's potential in a couple different places for a new model of on-demand viewing: Netflix' streaming rentals, for one. I could certainly see TiVo doing video push to STBs at some point. Cable already has pay-per-view and on-demand streaming infrastructures in place.

We're not there yet, but I think it could happen. How many people would have paid for more episodes of Firefly, for example?

Re:Farscape's strength was its weakness

[haplo21112]

That was only part of it the original also suffered from "going way out there" at times. It pushed the limits past where some people could bear the strangeness. It was fairly well grounded in the first two seasons, but in the third it went to places that just about (and for some perhaps did) required LSD to get the story to make sense. I had my wife into the show, she is a SCIFI fan of the BSG, Stargate, DR Who, Trek and Star Wars type. FarScape just turned out to be WAY too much for her at times.

It also honestly suffered from the same thing that every SCIFI channel show suffers from, utter lack of programming consistency. What day and time is that on? what months of the year? 13 weeks at a time and its coming back when? What other shows are on with it on SCIFI channel that night? Didn't that other show used to be on before it? after it?

SCIFI channel was doing good for a while they had both StarGates and BSG all on the same night on Fridays. That was great, sit down watch all the good shows, great. Then they moved BSG to Sundays, put something else on not as good, the shows were not even in lock step as far as premiere and finale weeks anymore. SCIFI really needs to get clued in on the whole seasons thing, thats the way most people esspecially the casual watchers that could help improve the overall ratings prefer to watch TV.

Don't even get me started on the "its getting its full run in England before its on in America" thing. Thats a great way to will ratings since the primary audiance are all going to bit torrent it so they can watch it at the same time as there peers on the otherside of the pond so the discussion boards are not a huge spoiler fest.