Farscape: 1x07-1x09

Farscape rages on with its best episode yet, and two of its weakest. That’s the peril of any show based around standalone episodes, you’re going to get duds in there, and it makes it tougher to watch the show. In the post Sopranos age, a standalone structure isn’t required, and it’s tough to return to those days. But, as long as we keep getting good episodes like “PK Tech Girl,” I’ll stick around.

That episode is easily the series’ best. It takes a kind of stock plot, the hero rescues a girl and falls in love with her. The episode works for two reasons, one is the way it brings out the tension in John and Aeryn’s relationship, the other is how it develops the world of the Peacekeepers. It’s been a while for John, as we found out a few episodes ago, and when he sees a pretty girl who likes him, he’s happy about it. Aeryn and John are clearly meant to be together eventually, but this does a good job of putting a twist in things. They’ve been in this sealed world, getting closer over the course of the episodes, and the intrusion of an outsider disrupts that.

The best scene of the episode is definitely Aeryn telling John that she found him interesting, struggling to find a way to convey her feelings. Of course, neither of them are ready to say how they really feel about each other. The relationship between them is right out of 30s screwball comedy, where the two characters are always at each other’s throats, but they’re getting closer and closer all the time. I can definitely relate to the way Aeryn feels there, and it’s certainly the most emotional episode of the series. I particularly like the crazy strobing lights on the ship, which heighten the tension.

Gilina herself is a pretty compelling character, and a nice contrast to the more world weary Aeryn. I was sad to see her go at the end. It’s the same as the Karen/Pam situation on The Office, because we care about all the people involved, it makes the love triangle more engaging.

This episode also featured a great subplot with Rygel, and his memories of his time on the Peacekeeper ship. Rygel is in a lot of ways the most complex character on the show, struggling to deal with the pain in his past while keeping the appearances of a cool, collected leader. He won’t admit how far he’s fallen, even though he clearly knows it. And, the interrogator guy was pretty freaky looking.

The episode after this on paper looks great. We get back to the show’s ‘mythology’ and see Crais and Crichton clash for the first time against the backdrop of a surreal wizard’s nightmare world. Unfortunately, the surreal nightmare world feels very much like a bunch of sets, and the Crais/Crichton conflict doesn’t work for me. The reason is Crais’s hatred of Crichton is irrational. I can understand why he’d be mad, but we have no real context for understanding Crais’s feelings, no real understanding of the man. Those flashbacks here were probably supposed to do that, but just knowing a guy had a tough childhood doesn’t make his reckless pursuit of Crichton make any more sense.

The best moments on The Wire or Babylon 5 came when we cared deeply about both the heroes and the villains. When the Narn/Centauri fought or when the detail pursued Avon, I wanted everyone to come out okay, even though that wasn’t possible. Here, there’s no conflict, just a misguided guy bothering our hero. Maybe Crais will develop as time passes, but here, he’s not doing much for me. And, I think they could have done a lot more with the dreamspace where we spent most of the episode.

‘DNA Mad Scientist’ was another dud. What threw me here was the sudden, complete change in all the characters’ behavior, Zhaan in particular. I didn’t know everyone so desperately wanted to get home, so the decision to cut off pilot’s arm comes out of nowhere. This was an episode where they decided to go in without exposition and just cut straight to the story, but not having that exposition meant the character arcs didn’t make sense. It seemed like all the characters were under the influence of some strange drug, with their juvenile scheming.

Along with this, the whole Aeryn turns into weird beast storyline was classic standalone stuff, where we know she’ll be fixed by the end, and it’s just a matter of getting there. I did enjoy the weird Lovecrafty vibe when she was behind the curtain, it reminded me of the Shoggoth from The Invisibles, but other than that, there wasn’t much of note in this episode.

So, hopefully things will turn around a bit in the next set of episodes. I loved ‘PK Tech Girl,’ but since then, things have been a bit off. Any show’s going to have some duds, but it’s frustrating to watch them.

Farscape: 1x03 - 1x06

After watching a few more episodes of Farscape, I’m really impressed with the show. I’ve seen a lot of sci-fi shows, so I’ve seen most of the concepts behind these episodes before, but the show has such engaging and likable characters that the old material feels fresh. I would like to see some more ongoing storylines, but the show has a sense of history that makes you at least feel like they didn’t just forget what happened last week. It’s like Buffy in that respect, the characters change, and that’s what the show is centered around.

The thing I like most about the show is definitely the characters. Crichton started out as a kind of blank slate generic hero, but over these episodes we’ve got to see some of his flaws and personality quirks. The thing that makes him interesting is that everyone thinks he’s dumb, so the role we’d expect him to play, that of strong male leader, is undercut. He can’t lead, and when he tries to, he frequently is unable to deal with the specifics of the universe he’s found himself in.

His primary counterpart is Aeryn, whose intensity and business only attitude makes Crichton play the traditional female role in their relationship. I think that’s what makes the dynamic between the two of them so effective, the subversion of expectations. She’s the one who’s prone to violence in defense of her honor, while Crichton has a more grounded attitude. Crichton is an ordinary guy who finds himself transported from our reality to a sci-fi genre universe. He is aware of the conceits of the genre, but recognizes that people don’t need to use violence to solve their problems. So, his solutions to the problems usually run counter to our genre expectations.

Aeryn is always a joy to watch, though I’m unsure how they’ll keep her mix of heavy intensity and slight vulnerability as the series goes on. The further you go, the more humanized a character becomes, and that will change the dynamic. This may be a good thing though, if she’s outside the peacekeeper world, she should change. She’s had this culture of war instilled in her over the years, how easy will it be for her to change? It’s a bit head on, but the end of ‘Thank God It’s Friday Again’ addresses this, with her pride at solving a problem with science, not violence.

That episode is a good example of what I like about the show. Rather than just use the standalone stories as something to fill the time, most of them have some kind of interesting philosophical underpinnings. The question behind this story is what is happiness? Is a false happiness better than real sadness? They are suspicious of what happened to D’Argo, but when you see him and Zhaan out in the fields, they seem more at peace than they are on the ship. There’s a pull between wanting them to stay there and enjoy life, and the inevitable conclusion in which the false happiness is debunked.

For once, I’d like to see a sci-fi story about a utopia that isn’t built on a lie. Where would the tension come from? Perhaps it could be from our inherent resistance to anything that appears too good to be true. At the end of this story, we find out that the characters were making weapons for the peacekeepers, drugged into submission, but wasn’t that submission on some level great? Is it better to be happy and a slave, or free and unhappy? At the end, D’Argo wonders this, and there’s no easy answer. It’s a sign that the show is working that there’s great moral ambiguity in my feelings about the planet and the world they build over the course of the episode. When Crichton asks to get the worm out, is it about regaining his freedom, or is it about his desire to feel like D’Argo and Zhaan do about the world.

The revelation that the peacekeepers are behind the colony ties the episode into the overall plot nicely, and also puts what we’ve seen in perspective. It’s easier to enslave a contented populace than a troubled one? The drugs in the food are the same as the societal distractions we have that prevent us from looking deeper into the problems in our society. Aren’t all of us complicit in the production of weapons like those being built here? Every day we continue our illegal invasion of Iraq, we’re like the people on the planet here. But, it’s hard to do anything about it, perhaps our best prerogative is just to be happy.

“Throne For a Loss” features a similarly interesting philosophical subplot with Zhaan and the soldier. I didn’t particularly like the soldier’s performance, which was all bluster, but the points made were interesting, the way Zhaan is able to fight with love, not hate. It’s very Invisibles, this idea that exposing your humanity is going to do more to deter the enemy than hurling hate at them. By injecting that seed of doubt about their mission, you can change the nature of the war. The soldier may go back to fighting at the end, using the glove to try to eradicate the ambiguities he felt on board the Moya. But, you can tell that what Zhaan said made an impact on him.

Another thing that really impresses me about the show is the Muppet work on Rygel. He’s a fully realized character, and as key to the ensemble as any of the four human actors. I love the craft that goes into him, he’s a great testament to the power of old school technology over CG. He’s more ‘real’ than even a great CG character like Gollum, there’s a tangibility that CG can’t match, and that helps you accept him more as just another character, not an effect.

“Back and Back and Back to the Future” was another really strong episode. There was a lot of trippiness with Crichton’s views of the various futures, and underlying it all was this weird sexual dynamic. The episode made you think more about the Moya as a living thing, and all these emotional beings going around in it. Going into this episode, I was thinking that D’Argo was a bad character, but we got a lot more humanity out of him here.

Crichton’s uncertain feelings about Matala were interesting as well. Too many sci-fi shows avoid sex entirely, and it’s nice to see one delving into the possibilities of interspecies coupling. It’s weird territory, but worth checking out. Even Aeryn got in on things, all of a sudden wearing a cut off shirt. It’s not particularly true to the character, as I see her at least, but she wears it well, so I’ll forgive them. Her and Crichton seem to be the central relationship on the show, and I’m sure there was a ton of shipping for them back when the show was on. They’re great together, and I’m frequently wondering why they don’t just fuck already.

So, I’m really enjoying the show. It’s not as outright great as something like The Wire or The Sopranos, but it’s hitting that Buffy spot of great character based storytelling, throw in a sprinkling of interesting philosophy and it’s looking good for the future. And, notably, most of the episodes have gotten better as they go along, I’m eager to check out the next batch.

Farscape: 1x01 & 1x02

The first few scenes of Farscape’s “Premiere” did not have me optimistic. The father/son relationship between Crichton and his father felt clichéd, and the entire launch sequence reminded me of the worst episode of The X-Files: “Space.” I got no sense of these characters as real people, and the dialogue was firmly in movie world, with little connection to reality.

However, the show’s not about our world, it’s about the fantastic world Crichton finds himself transported to, and once he goes through the wormhole, the show picks up and becomes a really solid adventure. Most of the big sci-fi shows from the past few years, Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 most notably, are all about big political ideas and galaxy spanning conflicts. They’re shows with a cerebral edge, that only occasionally verge into pulpy adventure. They draw from the Star Trek school of sci-fi.

After watching the first two episodes, it seems like Farscape is the descendant of Star Wars. The myriad weird aliens and general focus on a serial adventure tone reminded me a lot of what those films did. There is some of that Star Trekky trouble of the week thing to the second episode, but it seems like the series’ mythology is tied back to the trilogy. Hell, Crichton even makes a reference to Yoda in the second episode, a bit odd considering we’ve got a guy who looks like Yoda’s cousin up on the ship.

Let me first cover the issues I’ve got with the series. At this point, I just don’t really care about standalone episodes. The second episode wasn’t particularly bad, but after watching countless Battlestar, Buffy, Babylon 5 and X-Files standalones, it’s hard to find new ground. I’m not particularly looking forward to going through a whole bunch of standalones on the way to the good stuff. Now, standalones can work really well, as long as they are used to explore character and not just tell the story of the week. Season five of The Sopranos, the series’ strongest, has very little arc per se, but the stories are so tight and revealing of character, it feels like everything is building to something. That’s a luxury that a late season show has, here, it’s tougher.

The second episode reminded me of an early Buffy standalone, entertaining enough in spite of the story, not because of it. I want to get to know these characters more, and the story seemed to get in the way. Not to mention, how many different planets can they encounter along the way? I liked the moment where Crichton kissed the woman, but I just didn’t care that much about these people.

And, there is a bit of goofiness to the goings on. It’s not the muppets, they’re really expressive and fun to watch. Rather, the over the top acting of D’Argo kills the scenes with him. He reminds me of Olaf the Troll from Buffy, and that lack of subtlety doesn’t work for a long term character. Aeryn, John and the blue lady are likable, but on the whole, the acting doesn’t have the immediate intensity of recent great shows. Now, maybe this will be a Buffy situation, where we get unforeseeable depth from the players. Hopefully it won’t be like Babylon 5, where the acting is serviceable, but with a few exceptions, not particularly inspiring.

So, that’s what’s bad, what’s good? I really do like the main two characters, and they’ve got great chemistry. John is a bit of a blank slate, classic pulp hero, but he’s fun to hang out with, and a good straight man for the various wacky goings on. And, in the second episode, you get a strong sense of his conflicted feelings. He’s excited to be in this new world, but also sad when he realizes he might never get home again.

Aeryn is my favorite so far. She reminds me a bit of Starbuck, though less self destructive. I can see some good potential in John helping her discover more of her humanity, and opening her up emotionally. It’s pretty clear a romance between them is getting set up, and that should be fun to watch. When the two of them are together, the show is always solid, it’s only when they get split up that things can get a bit slow.

In the first episode, I really liked the Peacekeepers, and I think they’ll be a strong villain. They definitely recall the Empire from Star Wars, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Freedom vs. oppression is an eternal conflict, and one well suited to the kind of stories they’re telling here. The space battles in that episode had a majesty, and there were moments that just hit me on a deep level. That’s what a great show does, touch something deep in the subconscious.

The other moment that did that for me was Zhaan taking the ship’s pain in episode two. I love that metaphysical stuff, and the scene had a real magical quality. The power of that moment made up for any of the other goofiness going on in the episode. As long as the standalones deliver enough good moments like that, I’ll stick with the show.

So, I’m going to seek out some more episodes, and see where things go with the show. I’m not completely sold yet, but I’m liking it so far and hopefully things will get even better. We shall see.