Sore Eyes

In some way that I've never managed to work out, I've never actually seen so much as a single minute of a single episode of Farscape. I'm sure if I did I'd thoroughly enjoy it - lots of people whose opinions I tend to share (including your own good self, John) like it a great deal. And yet somehow....

I'm sure that at some point repeats will happen, I'll suddenly spot them listed and become completely hooked though.

I share your sentiments entirely. I loved that show, and I'm really going to miss it.

I am very sad to see it go :(

Ben Browder...

Never mind Iain, I'm sure Ben will find work again before long, or one of his old movies will show up on TV. Heck, one day Channel 4 might repeat the season of Party of Five on which he guest starred for about half a dozen episodes as Neve Campbell's boyfriend.

Besides, as you've noted at your own site, there's always the DVDs. When you do get to catch up with season 4 on DVD, just grit your teeth and stick with the slowness of the first third or so of the season. The writers thought they had two remaining seasons to play with, so they didn't exactly rush into the season's story arc. Once things picked up, just past the halfway mark, things got good very fast.

that was the goddamn show ever created, the humor def made it addicting and it will really be a hard to fill spot on fri nights

too many feelings lol, dont know where to start

j crichton is such a cool character

the ending was a ... pow

Farscape is and was one of the finest Science Fiction Shows ever, but I have to be honest, I hated the ending where the two main characters were killed off. I feel more closure was needed.

I'm not saying they should have rode off into the sunset, living in a house on a hill with a white picket fence, but there could have been another narrow escape from the alien ship that attacked them on the water, and Moya flying off with the rest of the crew to continue to keep the Galaxy safe for all beings. I could have accepted the "To Be Continued" a little better.

It is hard to accept a pile of fragmented DNA and an engagement ring on top, sitting in a rowboat with Dargo screaming his head off. That was too Romeo and Juliet for me. A fine series other than the ending, which I considered a great disappointment for an otherwise fine series.

I find it hard to judge the finale dispassionately, because I know it was written, shot and all but edited before the producers discovered that the show was cancelled. Knowing that they thought they had a fifth season, I'm happy enough with the ending because I know Crichton and Aeryn would have been resurrected somehow and that the apparently abrupt ending would have turned out to be just another exciting incident in the lives of our heroes. That sort of ending appeals to me, as the ending of Babylon 5 did, because it demonstrates that the story didn't come to a neat and tidy ending. We may not be watching any more, but the characters' lives go on and there are other stories to tell. (This is one of the reasons I'm a sucker for the Tales of the Slayers stories, which tell of the lives of other Slayers before and after Buffy. The idea that we're seeing a story with deep roots and which will continue long after the series ends is tremendously appealing to me.)

I'm pretty sure that if they'd had a couple of months' warning of the show's end the Farscape writers would have ended the story elsewhere - fading out with Crichton and Aeryn in the boat having just got engaged with the alien ship just a blip on the horizon, or with Moya and her crew somehow getting away from the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers and having the chance to live out their lives in peace. But they didn't have much to work with, and I thought they made the best of a bad job. And the ending was very much in the Farscape spirit, avoiding the simple happy ending or any big moral lesson.

it kind of reminded me of the ending of hitchhiker's series by the late Douglas Adams

but he was forced by psychotic fans demanding a book he didn't want to write this was a lot different

i really hope that too be continued is followed up on

I can't believe that SciFi is replacing Farscapes timeslot with Tremors the series. Talk about something even more disappointing than Farscapes finale.

Yay for Tremors!!! I just have a feeling the series is going to be a bad idea but I want to see it for curiosity value

Tremors isn't the sort of film which strikes me as having much potential as a TV series, but since it's probably not going to show up on terrestrial TV any time soon I probably shouldn't worry too much either way.

I don't think that Farscape will ever pick up that "To be continued." It seems to me that unless another network picks up the rights to the show it'll die as a weekly series, and the idea of doing a feature film doesn't seem very sensible: feature films, even ones of cultish TV shows or books, always set out to appeal to a much broader audience than the original TV audience. I doubt that a Farscape movie would pick up where the show's plot left off. At best, they'd create a standalone storyline and never resolve what happened after episode 422. At worst they'd take the basic concept and simplify the backstory and the characters and their motivations so that they could sell the film to a broad audience. We'd lose things like the history of the Scorpius-Crichton relationship and the reasons why Moya's crew are being chased around the Uncharted Territories by the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers, and the likes of Chiana and Rygel would be pushed into the background to concentrate on the John-Aeryn story. It'd be a travesty and a tragedy.

I'd love to be proved wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it...

John, Have you seen Tremors 2 or 3?

Regardless I've very curious to see how they turn it into a series. Are they going to have one graboid every week? If they had the original cast I could see it working as a character show much like Northern exposure but that would have little to do with the films.

I suspect/hope there's a brilliant 3rd option

I've seen Tremors 2 but not the third one.

It'd be nice to see someone figure out a way to make it work as a TV series; it's just that, like you, I'm thoroughly bemused as to how they can pull it off.

But then, once upon a time the idea of a TV series based on a flop film called Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't seem to clever...

The buffy analogy is a very good one. Then again there was only one buffy film. Also in the series there are more than just vampires to deal with and it's more about buffy's life.

Tremors OTOH had 2 sequels, 2 of which were set in the same small town. If sunnydale is a one starbucks town then Perfection,Na. is nothing like it. Unless they move the location or make it much bigger the focus will be to narrow with too few characters. Also whilst the vamps are "secret" the graboids are known worldwide so who'd want to move there. Also there's going to be continuity problems if all these graboids start coming from nowhere. No one see's one in thousands of years and then hundreds appear?

I'm still looking forward to it, I just hope they know what they're doing.

For the record, Tremors 3 was by far the worst and I'd wait for it to come on terrestrial TV. It sounded better on paper than Tremors 2 as well. :(

If you were just looking at the original film, you could easily argue that Buffy would make for boring TV: every week the Slayer kills another vampire whilst preserving her secret identity. Big deal! Happily, Joss got a lot more freedom to run with his idea on the small screen and the rest is history...

For some reason, when I think about how a TV series of Tremors could work I keep coming back to Northern Exposure. The basic setup was very simple - urbanite doctor finds himself stuck in the middle of nowhere - but they spun out quite a few nice little stories over however many seasons it ran. However, the reason Northern Exposure worked was that they surrounded the doctor with a large community which we got to know over time.

If the writers are willing to fudge the question of just how big Perfection was (or rather, wasn't) in the films so that they can conjure up a large community then they might just build a similar show around a group of eccentrics who occasionally get chomped. But it seems like a bit of a long shot, and I'm not sure it'd still be Tremors in any meaningful sense.

"If you were just looking at the original film, you could easily argue that Buffy would make for boring TV: every week the Slayer kills another vampire whilst preserving her secret identity. Big deal! Happily, Joss got a lot more freedom to run with his idea on the small screen and the rest is history..."

As I was saying though the fact that it was one film leaves a lot of room for them to manuvere. Tremors may have backed it's self into a corner. However they may do what buffy did and ignore the events of the film.

"For some reason, when I think about how a TV series of Tremors could work I keep coming back to Northern Exposure"

Nothing to do with the fact I mentioned it a few posts back? :) By the way, these are not the droids you're looking for.

"If the writers are willing to fudge the question of just how big Perfection was"

As I was saying. That is possible if you'd seen the last film. Even if it they hadn't made the last film they could still work a town expansion if they cared about keeping continuity with the films. They may do so since Tremors 4 starts production this summer!

If they occasionly get chomped then it won't be tremors and if they get chomped more often then it wouldn't be plausable for people to live in the town.r

ARG!!!!!!!!!!! ive just seen the last episode last week and i cant belive they done that in case u wondering y i havent seen it i was waiting for the dvd i cant watch a sesion it bits 1 episode a week crap dos my nut in. any way what do u mean "To be continued...?" PPPPPHHHHHHH!!!!! this has to be one of the best si-fi programs in years! just when things were getting really intresting too. im gutted.

"Gutted" about sums it up.

The good news is that they're working on a four hour TV movie, but I don't think it's been scheduled for broadcast yet and I don't think anyone's said whether it'll follow on directly from the end of season 4 or pick up the story somewhere down the line.

After reading of farscapes demise, i was gutted as farscape has to be one of the most original science fiction television series, to have appeared on any channel since Star Trex came to our viewing.
Though i do understand the reasons for the cancellation of Farscape, in that of spiralling production cost, surely the television companies must themselves have realised that they couldn't have left the series where it was without doing a series 5, as who has ever heard of only doing a 4th series, and not a 5th
Also nothing is explained of the other characters, and what happened to them, i mean where would Farscape have been without Dargo, Rigel and the rest of the gang, because although they weren't the main characters in the series, they played an integral part to the show, and i feel a 5th series would have led to more justification to the end of the Farscape, and Moya and her crew.
I just hope, and pray that the television executives at some later date date (though not to late) come to the realisation that a further series would indeed satisfy myself and many other fans of the series to the true end of Farscape

I'm pessimistic about the chances for a fifth season even if the TV movie does well. I suspect that the producers probably feel that way too, so I think we can hope for a reasonably well-rounded finale and some sort of closure for the main characters at the end of the TV movie.

I just saw the final episode of Farscape. I was about to write a really nice letter to Henson and Co., for letting such a beloved show and set of characters end on a positive note, so that we could remember them happily. As they have become friends, I wish them well, even if they are fiction.

Then the final conflict hits. And it, frankly, turned my stomach. Now I know that it was written and produced before the cancellation, but it sure aired after the cancellation. Given its uncertain future, couldn't they have done one small edit, and allowed the show to end on a high note, in case that was truly to be the show's last moment?

Now, I hold my breath for the reported Farscape Mini-Series that is in production to turn things back around.

But all the same, I have mixed feelings about whether I really should have stayed up to see that cliffhanger. That last minute seemed horibly out of place.