The Worlds of Farscape (2 page)

This book is dedicated once again to my husband and partner, Larry Williamson. Words cannot express how I feel about this man or how grateful I am for all of his support. As I have said before, thanks for being my rock, for always being there. And thanks for not being too jealous of Crichton.

Sherry Ginn

TV Guide
called
Farscape
the best science fiction show (then) on the air and ranked it #4 on its list of “The 30 Top Cult Shows Ever.” During its four-year run, it won three Saturn awards for “Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series” (in 2001, 2002, and 2003). Nominated four times for “Best Actor in a Television Series,” Ben Browder (John Crichton) won the award in 2002, and its male and female actors garnered numerous “best” nominations during the series run. Produced by Jim Henson Productions and Hallmark Entertainment,
Farscape
combined human actors with puppets and spectacular visual effects in a storyline that combined action-adventure and romance and broke many of the so-called conventional rules of science fiction. This action-adventure-romance combination ensured that it would find both male and female fan support. Unlike the majority of science fiction programming, which is filmed in Hollywood, British Columbia, or the United Kingdom,
Farscape
was filmed in Australia. The two stars of the series, Ben Browder and Claudia Black, were American and Australian, respectively; and, the majority of the cast members were Australian or New Zealander as was much of the crew. By the end of the series, seven of the major characters were female—eight if you count the ship—and the majority of the production crew was also female (Kemper). The series aired in the U.S. on the Sci Fi Channel (now Syfy) from 1999 to 2003. The channel's decision to cancel the series at the end of its fourth season sent shock waves throughout the kingdom of Scapers, as fans are known. That intense campaign has achieved almost mythic status and is generally believed to have “forced” executives at the network to order a made-for-television miniseries entitled
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars
which premiered October 2004 (see Cochran, this collection).

Farscape
broke many of the conventions of series television, such as filming on location in Australia using Australian actors and crew. Unknown in America many of these actors were very well known in Australia and New Zealand and cast and crew members reported their immense delight at the quality of the people who guest-starred on the series as well as those who wrote or directed episodes.
¹
Aliens on the series were presented as just that—alien. However, as Booker points out,
Farscape
is very much like
Stargate SG1
as

the discovery of the Stargate [and, on
Farscape
, the wormhole] allows contemporary humans (rather than humans of some distant future) to interact with advanced technology, making it easier for audiences to identify with the protagonists of the series. In addition, the fact that the characters ... come from the same cultural background as the audience facilitates the allusiveness of the series, which constantly refers to other works of 20th–century popular culture [178].

Indeed, the character John Crichton maintains a steady stream of pop culture references, which serve to link him to the home to which he desperately wishes to return, but which also serve to distinguish him from the beings that he now confronts on a daily basis. John Crichton is, after all, meant to serve as “us”—the audience. That is, Crichton serves as the window through which we observe the wonders and dangers of the universe beyond Earth and even on Earth as well. Ben Browder comments that Crichton is the proxy for the audience. According to Browder, Crichton “is actually a sci-fi geek. He is that generation that watched
Star Trek
and then wanted to be an astronaut.”
²
However, as Jes Battis has noted, Crichton cannot be considered as representative of the audience. The audience is not white, male, middle-class, highly-educated, able-bodied, and heterosexual (
Investigating
24–25).

Crichton is Alien to the beings that inhabit the section of the universe in which he is marooned; however, I contend that the other members of Moya's crew can also be considered alien (Ginn “Exploring”). Crichton's “humanness” and his penchant for spouting pop culture references make him stand out as alien; his crewmates aboard Moya are alien by virtue of the characteristics of their species as well as their actions prior to the events occurring on
Farscape
. For example, Zhaan is an anarchist and a murderer, whereas her species is spiritual and peaceful. D'Argo was accused of murdering his wife, and if he was not guilty of that offense, he was guilty to styling himself “Ka” or general in the Luxan army. Rygel is a deposed emperor, and his disgusting personal habits as well as his repulsive personality make one wonder if perhaps his subjects are not better off now that he is no longer on the throne.
Farscape
's producers were determined that these species be as “alien” as possible and used various means for depicting those differences, not simply relying upon make-up or prosthetics. Given that the Jim Henson Company, famously known as the creators of the Muppets, helped produce
Farscape
, their contribution to the series was the creation of two of its major characters, Dominar Rygel XVI and Pilot, as well as myriad other characters over the series' four-year run. Jan Johnson-Smith speculates that the use of

animatronics/Muppets in a central role suggests a youngish audience for the series, but the frequent and blatant sexuality of its often-complex physics and grim narrative and a tendency to bondage/torture scenes suggests otherwise [161].

I contend that the “animatronics/Muppets” are a bridge to people who grew up watching
Sesame Street
and
The Muppet Show
and are aware of the production values of The Henson Company. But these people are now adults and the other aspects of the series mentioned by Johnson-Smith attract adult viewers. I would also argue that the series is not nearly as sexual as one might think (see my essay on relationships, this collection).

Production values on the series were so high that it was never apparent that these creatures were not humans in monster suits or CGI.
Farscape
's aliens also deviated from the standard set by Gene Roddenberry of
Star Trek
fame, who had insisted all of his aliens be humanoid. Indeed, Executive Producer Brian Henson wanted a show that was primal and emotional, something that would provide a vision opposite to
Star Trek
.
³
Henson knew that he wanted something different, high-brow and literary, something special,
⁴
and several of the alien species encountered in
Farscape
were decidedly not humanoid (for example, the Scarrans and the Hynerians). The series was also very “female-friendly” with a large number of women both on and behind the screen (Kemper). Female characters of whatever species could engage in roles that were traditionally masculine, traditionally feminine, or neither (Battis “Farscape”; Ginn
Our Space
; Jowett). They could hold positions of power and authority in their worlds and frequently did. They could also be evil and dangerous and often were. And they were freely sexual.

Like
Babylon 5
,
Farscape
's writers and producers conceived of multi-episode storylines with the major story arcs spanning the entire run of the series. The series' writers presented the characters' stories in a variety of ways, including flashforwards, flashbacks, time travel, dimensional shifts, differing points of view, all with a tongue-in-cheek satiric panache. Popular culture references were liberally scattered throughout the dialogue. This served to situate the main character, Commander John Crichton, as a human being with whom the audience could identify as well as contrast him with the beings he met. Whereas most science fiction series situate humans as the norm with some non-human being as the “other” to examine humanity through the lens of otherness (for example, Spock in
Star Trek
, Data in
Star Trek: The Next Generation
),
Farscape
situated the human as the other. An astronaut who was a theoretical physicist John Crichton was presented as a man lost, a man who did not have all of the answers, and a decidedly non-macho male, who nonetheless could be considered a hero on a quest (à la Joseph Campbell) as could the major female character, Officer Aeryn Sun. With several plot diversions along the way, series creator Rockne S. O'Bannon and Executive Producers David Kemper and Brian Henson conceived of the love story between the major characters from the beginning and allowed it to proceed, to its logical conclusion. However, they were not averse to letting the characters argue, fight, and part when necessary. The writers were also not averse to killing off major characters when the need arose, doing so several times over the course of the series.

Astronaut John Crichton is a physicist who has developed a theory that involves “skipping” off the Earth's atmosphere as a means to counter Earth's gravity when launching vessels into space. On the day that he tests his theory, his module
Farscape 1
is propelled through a wormhole and shot through space. He exits the wormhole in the midst of a battle between a Peacekeeper (PK) battalion and a biomechanoid living ship of a species called Leviathan. The Leviathan ship, whose name is Moya, was herself a prisoner of the Peacekeepers. She is attempting to escape, crewed by three other prisoners: a Luxan warrior named Ka D'Argo, a Delvian priest named Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan, and the deposed Hynerian emperor, Dominar Rygel XVI.

The Peacekeepers are trying to recapture Moya and the escaped prisoners. Crichton's ship accidentally hits a PK prowler, killing the pilot, the brother of Captain Bialar Crais. Moya evades recapture using Crichton's theory to aid in “starbursting,” a propulsion technique whereby the ship can jump across vast distances of space. Moya cannot starburst on her own because she wears a “control collar,” a device used to pacify her and prevent escape. Officer Aeryn Sun is part of the prowler patrol attempting to recapture Moya. As Moya starbursts, Aeryn's prowler is sucked into the wake and she travels with the ship to its next destination. Crais vows revenge on Crichton and the first season revolves around the crew's attempts to escape from Crais and the bounty hunters who seek the reward Crais has offered for their recapture.

Crais will be a recurring character throughout three seasons of
Farscape
. The first season finds him disobeying orders and pursuing Crichton, even into the Uncharted Territories. Crais is determined to kill Crichton and avenge his brother's death. Eventually Crais will realize that the death was accidental, and he will become an unlikely ally for Crichton as Crichton attempts to elude the Sebacean-Scarran hybrid Scorpius, who is determined to acquire Crichton's knowledge of wormholes. Crais will “bond” with the hybrid spaceship Talyn, Moya's offspring, and together they will sacrifice themselves in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Scorpius (“Into the Lion's Den Part II: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing” 3.21).

Aeryn's capture by the crew of Moya leads to her irreversible contamination, the Peacekeeper's term for any Peacekeeper that comes in too close contact with alien species: the penalty is exile or death, and most choose death. Aeryn however joins Moya's crew; we will learn that she is no ordinary Peacekeeper. The crew experiences many adventures, many life threatening, all dangerous. As noted, Season One episodes revolve around Moya's crew trying to protect Crichton from Captain Crais, who wishes to avenge his brother's death. Not completely selfless, the other crew members wish to evade recapture and return to their homes one day.

Although Moya's crew is bound together by their desire to escape the Peacekeepers and return home, they grow into a “family” over the course of the first season. Refreshingly this family contains no patriarch or matriarch, although Carlen Lavigne points out that Moya could be considered a mother figure, given that all of Moya's crew are reliant upon her home space, and Pilot, who controls Moya's functions, could be considered a father. There was some jockeying for position as Moya's captain following the escape and for some time afterwards, nevertheless each character brings his or her own strengths to the family. Decisions are made by consensus; however, during the first season decisions are always made in the interests of the child.

One of the most unique plotlines during the first season revolves around the ship's pregnancy, certainly the first time of which I am aware that a space ship bred. As noted, Leviathans are physically bonded to a pilot, who controls their internal functions and provides navigation, nevertheless they can breed. Moya, we learn, was part of a Peacekeeper experiment designed to create a hybrid, a Leviathan warship. Named Talyn after Aeryn's father, the hybrid ship is male and covered with weaponry. However, Talyn becomes increasingly unstable, eventually going insane. Talyn does not need a pilot since he is a hybrid; however, he does need a corporeal being to provide control functions and navigation, which a pilot would normally provide to a Leviathan. Talyn temporarily bonds with Aeryn, but is consumed with jealousy over her feelings for Crichton. Aeryn rejects Talyn after Talyn tries to kill Crichton. Crais and Talyn bond and leave the others to find their own destiny; however, they eventually return to Moya and sacrifice themselves to save Crichton and company.

At the end of Season One, Aeryn is badly wounded and needs treatment. Specifically she needs a graft of a piece of nerve tissue from a genetically compatible donor. Such a donor would probably be available only on a Gammak base, a top-secret military installation, which just happens to be close to their location. Obviously the crew would like to avoid such a base, since they are all wanted by the Peacekeepers for various reasons. But by this point in time, Crichton is falling in love with Aeryn and will risk everything to find help for her. Scorpius, a half–Scarran, half–Sebacean hybrid, captures Crichton. Scorpius has developed a device that allows him to extract memories from neural tissue. Scorpius places Crichton in his Aurora chair and learns that Crichton possesses wormhole knowledge. Crichton escapes from Scorpius, but Seasons Two and Three revolve around Scorpius' quest to recapture Crichton and steal the wormhole knowledge from Crichton's brain. Scorpius uses a variety of techniques to steal that knowledge, even creating a clone of himself and implanting it into Crichton's brain. These tactics will cause Crichton to go mad slowly, so slowly that no one notices. Season Four shows Crichton and crew fighting back against those who would use the wormhole knowledge as a bargaining tool and a weapon; Crichton lets all know that he will detonate such a weapon of mass destruction in order to save his friends and family.