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Why all the Farscape Whining???
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Posted by: ehopper

OK, there has been all this weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the "cancellation" of Farscape, the alleged best show of all time (sure it is, :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: ), right?

So now Sci-Fi is running promos for the "all new" season?

So, whatchabitchinabout?

Am I missing something here? Was it ever really "canceled"? Is Sci-Fi lying? Or is the Farscape fan community that clueless that they don't know whether the show is canceled or not?

Posted by: LoadStar

ehopper: From what I understand, with both Stargate SG1 and Farscape, they split the one season into two halves, and are billing the second half of the season as an "all new season."

Those of you who actually WATCH the show can feel free to jump in and correct me if I'm wrong.

Posted by: stevel

Yes, it was really cancelled, and the sets have been dismantled. What we'll see is the remaining 11 episodes already recorded (though some of the CGI work was just completed this past week.)

My wife is the big Farscape fan in our family - though I have to say that the shows I watched were certainly very good for TV SF.

Posted by: ehopper

quote:
Originally posted by stevel
Yes, it was really cancelled, and the sets have been dismantled. What we'll see is the remaining 11 episodes already recorded (though some of the CGI work was just completed this past week.)

My wife is the big Farscape fan in our family - though I have to say that the shows I watched were certainly very good for TV SF.

If the sets are gone, the show is dead.

What is the appeal of this thing? I tried to watch it, tried to like it. But it seemed to me all visual/no substance. With the pale skinned Deborah Harry clone to assuage the sexual fantasies of 15 year old boys.

Posted by: UnionBuster

quote:
Originally posted by ehopper
If the sets are gone, the show is dead.

What is the appeal of this thing? I tried to watch it, tried to like it. But it seemed to me all visual/no substance. With the pale skinned Deborah Harry clone to assuage the sexual fantasies of 15 year old boys.

The sets are dismantled, not destroyed. As for the appeal of the show, it would be the great acting, stories, dialogue, and a vision that's quite different than other American science fiction.

Posted by: ehopper

quote:
Originally posted by UnionBuster
... As for the appeal of the show, it would be the great acting, stories, dialogue, and a vision that's quite different than other American science fiction.

Sigh... I kept looking for that stuff, never saw it.

I'll keep trying to like it, but I dunno. Maybe I'll throw some Farscape DVDs into my Netflix queue.

I really want to like this show, but it keeps turning me off. Maybe I just can't take Muppets seriously.

Posted by: jones07

It hard to get hooked on Farscape if you have not been watchin from day one. This is season four. and I tired to get my sci-fi buddies hooked on FS as much as I am. But it's hard getting to love a show that's almost at its end.

Posted by: gregpr

Had a few people at work rave about it. I tried, but I just didn't get hooked on it....

Posted by: Atomic Buffalo

Farscape didn't do it for me either. It had a certain cheesy Babylon 5 vibe to it that I just couldn't get past. But I'm happy to see that it ran for four years -- it bodes well for the genre.

For a lot of viewers, there's only so far you can go with a show, only so many adventures you can join, before interest is lost, even if the actors and writers are still doing good work.

I'd rather see Sci-Fi invest in a new show that invents a new mythology than pour more into Farscape. Let some sci-fi author crank out a paperback every six months for the die-hard Farscape fans.

::

Posted by: mrmike

Some people are "big picture" lovers, some are not. People who love Next Gen but hate DS-9 'cause it got "too much about story arc, all soap-opera like". If you like the big reset switch every week shows like Bab 5 and Farscape are not for you, it's that simple. And if you haven't seen them grow and the characters develop it's hard to see how people might care about it. People walking in on the middle of X-Files probably had the same problems. Some people can't get past the tech and the muppets and the cheesy SFX, Bab 5 certainly had their share of detractors for that reason. That's why there's lots of different shows out there. Heck, people will watch "Joe Millionaire", I don't know what kind of brain injury you need to have had to enjoy that dreck but they're out there. Me, I hit my head a lot as a kid, and I like Farscape (and Babylon 5, and DS-9).

-MM

Posted by: DaveLessnau

I love Farscape. It's one of the best shows on television. But, it possibly might have "jumped the Shark." This last season, a lot of the time it seemed like the authors must have been on serious drugs to come up with the plot. There was also a marked increase in juvenile actions (let's watch the old hag pee in a cup). What I'd have liked to have seen is when they had the two Crightons, they could have sent one back to Earth with Erin (to warn Earth and tie things up) and let the other Crighton head out with the rest of the group to find their homeworlds. That arc could have been an entirely new show. As it is now, the whole thing might end with everything still up in the air.

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

Well, I think they may have been hosed by Sci-Fi's split season--the lunacy of the first half may well have been leading up to something, but if so, leaving us hanging for several months was not a good plan!

It is to be hoped that the second half will put the crazy stuff in the first half into a better context. Perhaps the whole season will play better when it comes out on DVD, and can be seen as a single series of episodes, instead of being artificially divided into two series.

Posted by: Big_Daddy

Gotta say I agree with most everyone above. I think FS's easily the best sci fi show in recent history - eclipsed in my mind only by the original Star Trek series. I loved Next Gen, enjoyed DS9, and couldn't tolerate Voyager or Enterprise. Babylon 5 was unwatchable due to the amazingly bad acting - despite the (reportedly) good character development and story arcs. Although some of FS's special effects are obviously "made for TV", the acting is leaps and bounds above Babylon5 - or the sequel, the after-hours bar of Babylon After-5.

BTW, I like Drew Carey too.

Anyhow, it's not that I'm so upset over FS's cancellation. All good things must end, and all that stuff. It's that it's finishing without ending. The storyline - the story arc, the plot of the series - is unfinished. And for those fans who've loved it from day one, and those of us who got interested in season 3 , that's a shame. And it would be REALLY nice to see how the 1st half of the so-far uneven season 4 fits into the big picture.

One last bit - for those who tried and couldn't enjoy it. I watched 2 or 3 episodes before FINALLY starting to understand it and get into it. My first episode was unfortunately the third season episode written by the main star, Ben Browder. Fortunately he's a better actor than writer. If you know someone who's a fan, get them to recommend an episode or 2 on DVD.

My $0.02.

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

Well, there IS still the second half of Season 4! And the producer says he's found a way to end the series with the stuff that's already been filmed, so there should be some closure.

Posted by: dmdeane

The gist of this thread seems to be that people who never watched or didn't like Farscape, cannot understand those who did like and did watch it, and cannot understand why there is any fuss over its cancellation. Oh, and they don't like "muppets".

Have I got it right?

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

quote:
Originally posted by dmdeane
Have I got it right?

More accurately, it is universally accepted that whether or not you like Farscape is a foolproof test of whether or not you have good taste. :D

Unfortunately, there is some dispute as to how to interpret the results... :(

Posted by: unoriginal

quote:
Originally posted by Medieval Guy
More accurately, it is universally accepted that whether or not you like Farscape is a foolproof test of whether or not you have good taste. :D

Unfortunately, there is some dispute as to how to interpret the results... :(

There is no dispute, Otto is simply wrong. I know that is a hard concept to grasp, but he is. I know it seems like an oxymoron, but Otto is wrong.

If you think about it, you know Otto has to be wrong. This is advice from a guy who's name spelled backward is Otto and if you change the O to a P, the First T to an I, the second T to an E and throw the last letter away, you get Pie, and you know what, I like pie. Blueberry pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie. You know what goes great with pie, Icecream or other food maybe. Like the food I had last for Thanksgiving. Oh there was turkey and other stuff and... What was I saying?... Oh yeah, I was about to tell you how I invented cheese. The year was... Uh... Well the years not important, What is important was that it was 10 degrees below zero outside at the time and I was standing in 3 feet of snow while wearing a pink dress, which was the style at the time...

Posted by: Richard R1

quote:
From Loadstar: From what I understand, with both Stargate SG1 and Farscape, they split the one season into two halves, and are billing the second half of the season as an "all new season."

As a long time watcher of Stargate SG-1, I can confirm that SCI-FI is "playing" with the season status. By refering to the last half of Stargate's season 6 as the "Season Premiere", they seem to be doing it to justify the four month break since the first half of season 6 ended.

Actually, this "long break" from September to January was done last year by Showtime. At least that was the plan. They extended the "break" until March, so they could run their last episodes of Stargate SG-1 concurrently with the premiere of "Jeremiah". But, they never referred to the second half as if it were a new season.

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

Unoriginal, I must say, until this moment, I never truly understood your .sig...

:D

Posted by: TreborPugly

quote:
Originally posted by Medieval Guy
Well, there IS still the second half of Season 4! And the producer says he's found a way to end the series with the stuff that's already been filmed, so there should be some closure.

Oh NO! I predict a big explosion to wrap everything up.

Posted by: stormsweeper

quote:
Originally posted by TreborPugly
Oh NO! I predict a big explosion to wrap everything up.

No, it's not an "end" but it won't be the cliffhanger than probably was planned for the last ep.

It took a lot for me to get into Farscape as well, precisely because there are lots of characters (12 major ones, a couple dozen semi-major ones) and a lot of the show is referential to itself without being explicitly so. For example, ep 11 of this season made reference to a passing comment in a Season 3 episode, and in fact was part of a subplot that has been developing since the first season. Even if you like layered plots like that, it's hard to jump into the middle of it. At the end of the 3rd season, they had a marathon of 20-some episodes, which gave a good overview of the show (I recorded them all on TiVo and then watched them in proper order, a good argument for upgrading). Later I tracked down the other episodes and really got into it.

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

The producer said something about how he was able to rejigger the end of the season without refilming, in oirder to give the series enough closure to satisfy the fans, but not so much to preclude future adventures.

Posted by: dmdeane

quote:
Originally posted by Medieval Guy
More accurately, it is universally accepted that whether or not you like Farscape is a foolproof test of whether or not you have good taste. :D

Unfortunately, there is some dispute as to how to interpret the results... :(

Not really; the people with good taste all like Farscape. It's just that some of them don't know that they like Farscape, yet. ;)

Posted by: Richard R1

First, I didn't know it even existed until just shortly before the beginning of the 3rd season. Not having seen it from the very beginning is a big part of my problem.

Second, I watched one of the early season 3 episodes to see what it was like, and found that it looked like a stage play that had been filmed. The background sets looked cheaply made, as they might appear in a stage play, and the characters were wooden, just standing around speaking their lines. There was no action at all, and I thought many of the aliens were in poorly designed costumes.

While I never watched another episode, I see previews for it all the time, and the other episodes don't look any different.

Is my view of Farscape anywhere near correct, or have I just put too much emphasis on the one episode I saw? Mind you, I wasn't looking for "Star Wars" shoot-um-up action, or fantastic special effects. With everything I said above, I could have been happy with what I saw, if it had just been interesting.

Posted by: laria

I think that this season has been pretty weak. I haven't been able to force myself to watch the last 3 episodes from the first half of the season yet.

Season 1-3 were excellent though.

Posted by: dmdeane

quote:
Originally posted by Richard R1
First, I didn't know it even existed until just shortly before the beginning of the 3rd season. Not having seen it from the very beginning is a big part of my problem.

Second, I watched one of the early season 3 episodes to see what it was like, and found that it looked like a stage play that had been filmed. The background sets looked cheaply made, as they might appear in a stage play, and the characters were wooden, just standing around speaking their lines. There was no action at all, and I thought many of the aliens were in poorly designed costumes.

While I never watched another episode, I see previews for it all the time, and the other episodes don't look any different.

Is my view of Farscape anywhere near correct, or have I just put too much emphasis on the one episode I saw? Mind you, I wasn't looking for "Star Wars" shoot-um-up action, or fantastic special effects. With everything I said above, I could have been happy with what I saw, if it had just been interesting.

I don't know what show you were watching, but it does not sound like Farscape. Farscape has a big budget (that's why Sci Fi Channel is dumping it), and it is critically acclaimed. Visually it is innovative and, frankly, better than most current sci fi. Its writing and acting are, frankly, an order of magnitude better than most TV sci fi. Or anything else on TV, for that matter, with the partial exceptions of shows produced/written by people like JMS or Joss Whedon.

If you want to give Farscape a fair shot, start at the beginning and rent and watch the season one DVD's. It is a lot easier to get into Farscape if you watch the episodes in their proper order. Since Sci Fi Channel refuses to run regular repeats of the old episodes, it has proven impossible to build up a larger fanbase. This is entirely Sci Fi's fault, but their pointy haired bosses just don't get it.

This isn't like Star Trek, where every episode follows the same formula, where there is no story arc or character development, and where you can watch any single episode and get a good understanding of what the show is about. Farscape takes a little bit more time and effort to appreciate.

Posted by: dmdeane

The Feb. 2003 issue of Sci Fi magazine arrived recently; check out the Farscape article.

In particular, check out page 61, a full page photo of Claudia Black in a very revealing outfit. Va va va voom!

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

On Christmas Eve day, Sci-Fi is running a marathon of all the first-half 4th-season episodes...great to jog our memories after such a long enforced vacation!

Posted by: mickeymammoth

I started watching Farscape at season 4, and I love it!! I did go to the Farscape page at SciFi.com to get some back story, and that was all I needed. I've been watching the DVDs of earlier seasons as they come out. I am so bummed it got cancelled right when I got into it.

As for other people not getting into it, like any show, there are good and bad episodes. There were some GREAT ones this season, though, so I don't agree that it "ended" at season 3. As I watch the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2, there are hits and misses there too. But overall, it's a great show. Funny and quirky and intelligent.

Sigh.

Posted by: DLiquid

As a huge Farscape fan, I didn't have the heart to read this whole thread when I saw criticism of the show. Like salt in the wound, I guess. I don't like every episode of Farscape, but some episodes are simply brilliant. And this season has had some of those brilliant episodes (John Quixote, for example). But the show is quirky, bizarre, and sometimes corny, so I can see how some people might not like it. For me, it's the best SF show on TV ever, period.

Posted by: lordargent

My first episode was unfortunately the third season episode written by the main star, Ben Browder. Fortunately he's a better actor than writer. If you know someone who's a fan, get them to recommend an episode or 2 on DVD.

You must be talking about 308. I find that I get the most enjoyment out of the David Kemper and Richard Manning episodes myself.

GREEN EYED MONSTER
AIR DATE - 06.22.01
WRITTEN BY - Ben Browder
DIRECTED BY - Tony Tilse
A giant Budong swallows Talyn, and tempers flare between Crichton, Crais and Aeryn as they attempt to find a means of escape. Aeryn makes a decision that could change her life forever.