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Farscape (Kinda) Returns

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what-the-frell dept.

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."

17 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Farscape's strength was its weakness by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Farscape's strength was its weakness by Control+Group · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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?

      --

      Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
    2. Re:Farscape's strength was its weakness by haplo21112 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
  2. Jim Henson Company by FlopEJoe · · Score: 5, Funny

    produced by the Jim Henson Company

    It's gonna be filmed with Muppets? Talk about chintsing on the budget!

    1. Re:Jim Henson Company by haplo21112 · · Score: 2, Informative

      The original Farscape was a Henson company production.

      --
      Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
    2. Re:Jim Henson Company by MontyApollo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Uh, it was always filmed with muppets. Never seen it?

    3. Re:Jim Henson Company by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 2, Funny

      The original was from Jim Henson Company, and it had several muppets in it >:)

    4. Re:Jim Henson Company by InvisblePinkUnicorn · · Score: 4, Funny

      Several main characters in the show were "muppets", including Pilot, Rygel, and Beaker.

      Err, wait, that doesn't look right...

    5. Re:Jim Henson Company by zippthorne · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Broder and Black can't get a break. First Farscape, now Stargate. And what did they cancel stargate in favor of?
      • Some crappy British serial treknobabble-comedy trash whose principle virtue I can discern so far is that it's "been on the air a really long time"?
      • A "mutant X" ripoff complete with it's own ubiquitous and unquestioned racial epithet?
      • A "Friday the Thirteenth: the series" ripoff with (ok, it would be hard to ripoff that series without improving it...)?
      • Wrestling? wtf? how scifi is wrestling? They don't even dress like KISS anymore.
      • Ten dozen random giant snake/crocodile movies? You'd think one film would be sufficient to cover the subject.

      I'm all for ending shows with dignity, but Scifi's choices are completely irrational. I mean, if they really are having money troubles, they should go back to how they built the damn channel in the first place: showing old scifi and "b" movies. There are plenty of terrible scifi films, they don't need to go out of their way to make their own...
      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    6. Re:Jim Henson Company by fm6 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sci Fi's programming choices make no sense from the viewer's POV. But when you run a cable channel, you don't worry that much about keeping your programming non-ripoffy and consistent with your theme. You mainly worry about keeping your costs down without losing too much audience. It's not like cable companies can say, "Our viewers are sick of the Sci-Fi channel, we're going to drop it in favor of ..." For one thing, there isn't anything else that appeals to the same audience. For another, Sci-Fi belongs to NBC-Universal and is sold as part of a bundle — which cable companies have to order, because it includes must have stuff. In particular, it includes the programming from the local NBC affiliate, which they are required to show.

      If you're really pissed off by Sci Fi's programming decisions, write your congressperson and the FCC and tell them you think that bundling should be outlawed. Me, I don't care that much, because I've opted out of the whole cable TV ripoff. Which means waiting for shows to come out on DVD, but hey, I already have a 3-year backlog in my Netflix queue.

  3. hmm. by apodyopsis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why do I have this ghastly, ghastly feeling that this will do for Farscape, what "Crusade" and "Legend of the Rangers" did for Babylon5.

    I feel a grave disturbance in the.......

    *sigh*.

    Am I alone in saying bring back Firefly, bring back Farscape - but do it with the same creative team and format or just let them well alone.

  4. Re:please no! by enjerth · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Perhaps this might be a trial to see if there's an audience for a full restart?

  5. Re:please no! by changling+bob · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It worked for Dr. Who

  6. Re:Good by Arcane_Rhino · · Score: 3, Informative

    Go rent "The Peacekeeper Wars". All will be well.

  7. Re:the LEXX! by nine-times · · Score: 3, Informative

    LEXX was pretty bullshit and juvenile. It's like it was made for retarded 13 year-olds. Constant adolescent sex jokes, space ships shaped like genitalia, etc. It shouldn't be considered to be part of the same genre at Farscape, Dr. Who, or BSG.

  8. Re:the LEXX! by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's like it was made for retarded 13 year-olds.

    Wow. You nailed it precisely. Thread over. :)

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  9. Re:Forget it by Keeper · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not only that, but the SciFi channel killed the series and told everyone to go home AFTER the season finale was in the can. In other words, it was just supposed to be a typical season finale cliffhanger...