Just one post tonight, to lament the passing of Farscape.
Unfortunately the show's cancellation was only announced as the last episode of what turned out to be the final season was being shot, so the writers had very little opportunity to adapt the storyline to give viewers a sense of closure. Even so, as it turns out the final episode did a pretty good job of wrapping things up in that unique Farscape style. You'd never see a Star Trek series close with the show's two major characters being killed off just after they'd decided to get married and confirmed that one of them was pregnant.
(I know, if season 5 had gone ahead as planned the writers would have had to find a way to bring them back. But it was still a fine way to undermine a dangerously feel good ending.)
Bad Timing was a strong end to a fine series. To my mind Farscape was easily the best science fiction TV series since Babylon 5, a rare mix of humour and high drama which was never less than entertaining and frequently brilliant. A lot of the credit goes to the regular cast members, most notably Ben Browder, Anthony Simcoe, Gigi Edgeley and Wayne Pygram, but most credit should go to the writers, who were never content to deliver Trek-style platitudes or neat little moral lessons where they could mix up the standard space opera formula a bit and stretch the characters a bit.
I'd like to think that the "To be continued..." sign at the end of the final episode was a promise rather than an aspiration, but if we never see Crichton & Co again I think we all got our money's-worth.
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.
Posted by: Jon on March 11, 2003 01:16 PMI share your sentiments entirely. I loved that show, and I'm really going to miss it.
Posted by: Avedon on March 13, 2003 01:47 AMNever 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.
Posted by: John on March 18, 2003 11:01 PMthat 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
Posted by: on March 22, 2003 06:40 AMFarscape 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.
Posted by: Debbie on March 22, 2003 09:47 PMI 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
Posted by: Quiji on March 24, 2003 01:46 PMI can't believe that SciFi is replacing Farscapes timeslot with Tremors the series. Talk about something even more disappointing than Farscapes finale.
Posted by: Brian on March 24, 2003 09:38 PMYay 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
Posted by: simon on March 25, 2003 02:57 AMTremors 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...
Posted by: John on March 26, 2003 12:42 AMJohn, 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
Posted by: simon on March 26, 2003 03:13 AMI'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...
Posted by: John on March 27, 2003 12:28 AMThe 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. :(
Posted by: simon on March 27, 2003 08:57 PMIf 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.
Posted by: John on March 27, 2003 11:17 PM"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