Interspecies Romance

If you want to get to heaven, you gotta go through hell

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

10/16/04

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/farscape.htm

Let’s take a break from politics for a night. You game? Yeah, so am I.

There’s a program on the Science Fiction channel this Sunday night at 9, 11 and 1, and with a second part on Monday at the same times. It’s called "Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars"

It’s not exactly something new. It’s a mini-series continuation of a television series that was cancelled in early 2003. The series wrapped up a battle between the good guys, and some truly ugly bad guys called Scarrans, and then the hero (Ben Browder) and his love interest (Claudia Black) end up in a rowboat in the middle of a placid lake, where he pulls out a diamond ring and proposes to her, and she accepts. Just then, an alien space craft appears out of nowhere and blows them to bits. Series end, finale.

For fans of Farscape, it was shocking, but not particularly surprising. Farscape, like any Sci-Fi series worth its salt, liked cliff-hanger endings.

But. But. But.

On the series finale?

It reassured fans that the best written, best directed, best produced science fiction series to ever air on television would, one way or another, continue. And now, some 18 months later, we have a four hour miniseries that, we’re told, will wrap up some of the loose ends, such as the war between the aforementioned Scarrans (we’re talking Ann Coulter ugly here) and the Peacekeepers.

A science fiction show that is a joint production of Jim Henson and Hallmark, done in Australia with a mostly Strine cast, along with a couple of muppets, doesn’t sound promising, and when I first sat down to watch, my main rationale for doing so was that there wasn’t anything else on. I didn’t expect to like it, and my fondest hope was that it wouldn’t be as bad as most television SF efforts, including much of the Star Trek series. By the end of the first episode, I was disgusted to discover it showed enough promise that I wanted to watch it again (I like good science fiction, like David Brin or early Heinlein or Roger Zelazny, which is why I’m unimpressed with most television fare). By the end of the second episode, I knew this was something special.

There have been 88 episodes over four years, and Farscape turned out not only to be superior science fiction, but superior television drama. Over the past five years, only West Wing was higher in my estimation, and as we know, West Wing has tailed off in quality over the past year.

If you decide to watch the mini-series (and in case you haven’t figured it out, I am hinting that you should), prepare to be confused. The show is largely character-driven, and the characters are complex, multi-layered, and largely the result of events that have shaped and molded them in the plot line. They aren’t going to be easy to define. (One of the wonderful things about the show is that not only does it have a terrific focus on continuity, and thus the characters are changed by the events in their lives and by their interactions with one another. They evolve like enlightened people do.)

So my thumbnail sketches of the dramatis personae won’t be of much help. In fact, it bears repeating that the characters are all complex, sophisticated, and very, very real. Think of the characters on West Wing when Sorkin was writing the show. Farscape’s characters, including the "bad guys," are on that level. But in the early going, these poor efforts to describe them might alleviate some understandable confusion.

First, there’s John Crichton. He’s an American astronaut who gets "sucked into a wormhole and ends up on a ship, a living ship, filled with aliens." I was a bit puzzled at first as to why an Australian show would have an American as the central character, but it’s the quintessentially American traits that Ben Browder brings to the show – the swagger, the never-say-die attitude, the inventiveness – that make any other nationality in that role unthinkable. It’s worth noting that as the only human on board the ship, he is inferior in strength, agility, speed, vision, smell and hearing, which means he has to use his wits. And his crewmates spent the first couple of years clearly thinking of him as deficient in wit, along with his other problems. (This attitude, like everything else on the show, evolved).

Aeryn Sun (pronounced Aaron Soon) is a Sebacean, a race that has a feared military arm called The Peacekeepers. Aeryn is a squadron leader in the Peacekeeper Army. Sebaceans look just like humans, except they all speak with Australian accents. Aeryn Sun’s first reaction, on meeting John Crichton, is to beat the crap out of him, supposing that Crichton is a defector from the Sebacean army. Later on, she becomes his love interest. Claudia Black shows impressive range as an actor in this role. In the beginning, Aeryn is largely antagonistic to the rest of the crew (this was a slaver ship in which the slaves successfully revolted against their captors, who were Sebacean. She and John start out sharing the same cell where she beats him up because the rest of the crew assumes that despite the funny accent, he is a Sebacean, and they aren’t real fond of their former masters). She ends up allied with the former captives because the Peacekeepers, assuming she has been "contaminated" by her forced interaction with the alien races as a captive, exile her. Peacekeepers are Republicans: arrogant, nationalistic, chauvinistic, bellicose and faintly perplexed that nobody is charmed by their evident superiority.

When I saw Ka D’Argo in the first show, I thought, "Right. This will be the Klingon." D’Argo (Anthony Simcoe) is big, ugly, bad-tempered and violent. D’Argo, meanwhile, was on his way to be executed for the murder of his Sebacean wife. His wife was actually murdered by his brother-in-law, a racist who couldn’t stand the thought of his sister being married to a Luxan (big, ugly, bad-tempered and violent, with big tentacles and copious amounts of hair popping out in unexpected places). His son went missing when D’Argo was convicted of the murder by the Peacekeepers, was found eventually, and then went missing again.

Dominaar Rygel is a Hynerian. Hynerians are about two feet tall, look roughly like toads with muttonchop whiskers, and are noted for their bargaining prowess, their greed, and their narcissim. The Dominaar was the deposed leader of some fifty billion Hynerians, and he, too, was en route to be executed by the Sebaceans, presumably just on the grounds that Hynerians aren’t very likeable. I had him pegged as the "Doctor Smith" role. As with D’Argo, I underestimated the range the character would develop. If you’re thinking that the character description limits the choice in actors, Rygel isn’t a human actor. He’s a muppet, and perhaps the Jim Henson studio’s finest effort. I have an embarrassing tendency to forget he isn’t "real."

Chiana (Gigi Edgley) was tacked on in the second season, presumably to maintain the prurient interest of male adolescents. She’s a waif with platinum blonde hair and silver-and-grey skin whose main motivation is her sex drive. She is slinky and feline and more than willing. She’s also a talented con artist and thief – and more than a little crazy. Again, the gifted writers have given an actress who was equal to the task considerable range and depth.

There are about a half dozen other characters who make up Moya’s crew, but those are the central ones.

That leads us to Moya. The main set for the show is also a character in the show. Moya is the ship they are in, a living creature known, sensibly enough, as a leviathan. Moya can "starburst" and thus travel immense distances in an eyeblink. She, too, was a prisoner of the Sebaceans. She gives birth (berth?) to another leviathan named Talyn a few years on in the show. For anyone harboring unpleasant memories of talking ships peopled by Arthur Dent or Lexx, you’ll be happy to know that she doesn’t speak, and communicates directly only with Pilot, a creature with whom she is in a symbiotic bond, who provides direction and communication for Moya. Pilot is the other Jim Henson creation, and while not as engaging or convincing as Rygel, is still an extraordinary effort, and plays a significant role in much of the series.

That leads us to the most intriguing character in the series. Scorpius (aka "Scorpy," "Harvey") is half Sebacean, half Scarran. That’s right – ugly -and- has an Australian accent. The exact circumstances under which Scorpy becomes possible between two wildly different races that utterly hate each other takes up an entire story arc in the third season. Scorpy is cold, calculating, methodical, brilliant, and possesses a sense of humor, albeit often a sadistic one. He was the equivalent of a five star general in the Sebacean Peacekeepers, but was disgraced (mostly by John Crichton) and had to escape the Peacekeepers, who are unamused by failure and disgrace. He is on Moya because John Crichton has knowledge that he desperately wants, both to get his old job back and save the universe from the Scarran threat. Scorpy is one of two roles played by Wayne Pygram. The other is "Harvey," who is an imaginary Scorpius who has been implanted in Crichton’s head in an effort to mine the information Crichton holds. Only Harvey has "gone native," influenced by the humanity of John’s brain. He’s now half Sebacean, half Scarran, and half American. He’s pretty frelled up.

There’s a rather incredible panoply of supporting characters, and amazing imagination and inventiveness went into the makeup, costuming, and set dressing to create a wholly convincing and engaging universe. The executive producer and lead writer is David Kemper. He’s also responsible for breaking the tabu on interspecies romance, explaining "We like sex and sexual tension. You can’t coop people up together on a ship for several years and not expect something to happen."

The show is deeply driven by the psychology of John Crichton, and this is addressed in astonishingly sophisticated forms. Nor is it humorless; in one memorable episode, John’s subconscious deals with conflict he is having with D’Argo by placing them both in a Roadrunner cartoon.

Farscape was an extraordinary show, and I have it from good sources that the standards and quality are maintained in this weekend’s miniseries.

Which means we are in for a rare treat.

This is a good time to take a little breather, and Farscape is an absolutely worthy way of doing it.

Note: the first four seasons of Farscape are available on DVD. Go to http://www.scifi.com for details.