My good friend Otis Frampton asked me in an earlier post's comments why Farscape was such a good show. What made it so good in my opinion. That’s a long answer. See, I flirted with the show while it was on Sci-Fi from the beginning but I could never sit my ass down to watch it completely. When I finally did, I got to see the season 3 ender. I was just mad then. Then season 4 aired and I didn’t get to see any of it and by that time, they had cancelled the show. Fast forward a year or so and the Peackeeper Wars promo’s start airing, and in my mind, I’m like, what the hell is going on. So I start researching it a bit on the net and getting curious. Fast forward again and I realize, I can download these episodes and just start watching it from the beginning. So that’s what I do. Over a years’ time I download them all. And I start watching them. One by one, I start to really, get each and every character. And one by one, I start to fall in love with them all too. Now I know, by me saying that I’m “falling in love” that denotes some kind of weird love thing but I believe that when you really start liking/loving a show or a story of any kind, part of you “falls in love” with those characters. You really care about their well-being. Whether they are happy, sad, depressed, or angry, you feel that with them. I think everyone does. I feel the same way about Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly. Maybe not as strongly as I do about Farscape, but I love those shows and when “something happens” to the characters, it effects me. (Farscape and Firefly are VERY close to me, Farscape because it was able to fully tell it’s story, Firefly, had it been given the air it needed to breathe, would have been the best thing on TV ever)
But back to Farscape. The characters really just started to grow on me. I would watch the show at night, by myself as I did my inking it would play behind me so I got to experience the whole thing from beginning to end.
“My name is John Crichton, an astronaut. A radiation wave hit and I got shot through a wormhole. Now I'm lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship, a living ship, full of strange alien life forms. Help me. Listen, please. Is anybody out there who can hear me? I'm being hunted... by an insane military commander. I'm doing everything I can. I'm just looking for a way home.”
Is how every episode opened. John Crichton is an IASA astronaut working on the experimental Farscape project. During the Farscape-1 test flight, a wormhole appears, pulling John to a distant part of the universe. He arrives and finds himself in the middle of a space battle, and the Farscape One module is immediately clipped by a small craft, which then spins out of control, hits an asteroid, and explodes, killing the pilot. Crichton is then captured and brought aboard a large ship, which turns out to be a living ship of the Leviathan species, named Moya. On board are Luxan warrior Ka D'Argo, exiled Hynerian Dominar Rygel XVI, and Delvian priestess Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan, three prisoners who have taken control of Moya and are escaping from the regime of the militaristic Peacekeepers. Eventually, the prisoners manage to remove Moya's control collar and Starburst away from the battle. Pursuing Peacekeeper Officer Aeryn Sun's Prowler is caught up in the Starburst and she is taken aboard soon after Crichton's arrival. From there the series takes off in tons of different directions, some good, some sad, some hilarious. There are some good episodes, there are some not-so-great episodes, then there are some FANTASTIC episodes that make you forget the not-so-great ones. The thing that got me so invested in the series was these characters and the relationships they form throughout the series. They are ALL put through the ringer and tested to the utmost of their abilities, patience and limits as they all search for that one thing that’ll make them happy and give them peace. The same thing that I think we all look for in our everyday lives. Hell, the 2 main characters even DIE (don’t worry, they come back) at different points which, when viewing the whole thing as a huge love story, which it is, btw, sends ripples through the crew and each other as they are forced to deal with their loved ones’ death. That’s a BIG thing to deal with. Everything ended with The Peackeeper Wars. All loose or hanging plot threads were finished and resolved and like I said before, there’s really no reason for the series to continue. It ended as perfectly as you can end a show. Everyone, well, most everyone, lives happily ever after.
I’ve got some art coming, it’s been a very slow month for me, but more is coming soon. Baltimore Con in 2 weeks! Woohoo!
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