They came.
They saw.
They kicked ass!
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars reunites the three-peat Saturn award-winning cast and crew, answers the demands of Scapers everywhere, and raises the bar for the SciFi Channel
RATING: This one is off the charts?
Do I have an agenda in reviewing this highly anticipated and primarily fan-promoted mini-series Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars? Perhaps. Am I a fan of Farscape? The answer is “Frel, yes!” Does this mean that if The Jim Henson Company and Hallmark produced a four-hour epic-size crap sandwich, I’d be happy regardless?
I hate to disappoint you all out here, but no. If anything, my expectations were completely out-of-bounds and over-the-top. I don’t think I was alone on Sunday night in my outlandish and outrageous expectations. And with what was riding on this mini-series, the Farscape crew had a lot to face and even more to overcome.
One serious issue around this series was Jim Henson’s top dog, heir apparent, and mini-series director Brian Henson. For one thing, he put all the resources, cash, and talent behind Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, a mini-series affiliated with a show that according to SciFi Channel Exec Bonnie Hammer “no one was watching” and regardless of four seasons, three Saturn awards (the SciFi Emmy), and being hailed as some of the best TV on the air, Hammer pulled the plug on the series?after the cast and crew were promised a fifth season. So Henson had reputation, screaming SF geeks (me being one of them), and a lot of hype to live up to.
Another expectation centers around the afore mentioned Bonnie Hammer, perhaps the most hated woman in Science Fiction. Do a Google Search on “Bonnie Hammer” and some of the stuff that comes up explains exactly why she is the most hated woman in Science Fiction. In a nutshell, Hammer is taking credit for single-handedly “turning around” the SciFi Channel. How did she do this, you ask? Well, she started canceling much of the original programming that appeared on the SciFi Channel, starting with The Invisible Man and ending with Farscape, replacing it with Tremors: The Series and reality television programming. Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars was going to be the cherry on top of the “You really screwed up this one, Bonnie!” sundae. Henson and Hallmark had to get it right in order to show how dim this woman’s reasoning had been, that Scapers were not the “losers who needed lives” as she eluded to in a TIME Magazine interview, and that she really made a colossal PR blunder in not listening to the outcries of fans and critics alike.
Finally, there was the hype. The hype I generated. The hype The Dragon Page generated. The hype that Scapers everywhere on websites such as WatchFarsacape.com generated. Everywhere, fans protested, wrote in, and logged on. At conventions, the fans that Bonnie Hammer warned other network execs about pounded the pulpit, screaming for resolution. The bottom line was “We want our Farscape! We want our Friday night lights-in-the-sky back!” And even following their cancellation, Farscape earned yet another Saturn nomination, continued to pop up in magazines, television stories and even CNN, and was ranked #4 in a May/June 2004 TV Guide‘s “Top 25 Top Cult TV Shows Ever List”, beating out hardcore favorites like The Prisoner, The Simpsons, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Not only was the pressure on from a Farscape geek like me, but the pressure was on from the new fans who discovered the show on DVD and the media who were all wondering “Where the frel did these guys come from?!”
So finally, the magic date arrives. October 17, 9pm EST. Zero hour. (And what a great lead in–the umpteenth showing of Peter Benchley’s The Beast. Thanks, Bonnie, way to keep with your agenda?) The opening shot–Moya’s interior, showing battle damage. Aeryn Sun’s voice, giving a eulogy, and finally a body comes into view–our hero John Crichton. The next shot is a ringed planet with Peacekeeper command carriers in formation opening up a can of “whomp-ass” on Scarran destroyers?
Only one thought ran through my mind: WOW!!!
But I wasn’t going to give Brian Henson a hall pass because he opened strong. This was only the first ten minutes?he still had another three hours and fifty minutes to go. So I waited. I waited to see what he was going to do with this plot that promised to wrap things up from where the cliffhanger left everyone hanging over a year and a half ago?
The crew of Moya have gathered up all the various pieces of John and Aeryn. (Now for those of you who missed Farscape‘s Season Four cliffhanger, John and Aeryn agreed to not only have a baby, but get married as well. Unfortunately, a fighter gunned them down in a rowboat, reducing them to a biodegradable jigsaw puzzle.) With a pair of super-surgeons the crew knew from a past misadventure, John and Aeryn are put back together. The baby, however, is missing. The doctors discover that when Rygel was collecting pieces of John and Aeryn underwater, he did not regurgitate the piece that contained the baby. So now Rygel was pregnant with John and Aeryn’s baby.
As if that couldn’t complicate things all the more for them, the Scarrans and Peacekeepers have declared war on one another, and both sides know what they need to win: John’s knowledge of wormholes to create a super-weapon.
With all this, John has to make a choice that affects not just his friends but the child growing in Aer?er, I mean, Rygel’s womb. (Eeeewww?) And with the pressure on to deliver, John dares to show both sides exactly what makes him the most wanted man in the Uncharted Territories.
So after two nights and four hours, I can say with a clear conscience and an objective (yes, objective) opinion that yes, Brian Henson did it?and with some clever twists thrown into the mix, he’s got the potential to do it again.
Everything you’ve come to expect in Farscape was there in Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, only Brian Henson went for broke. The special effects many hailed as motion picture quality had been taken to a higher level, especially in the outer space battles that could give George’s Special Editions a serious run for the money. Along with the new and improved SFX, the writing remained sharp and clever as it had been throught the series’ run. Henson and his crew reminds you quickly of how tight the writing was (and still is) for Farscape when John and Aeryn after being “re-materialized” are being sequestered for interrogation?
John: You said ‘Yes.’.
Aeryn: I did?
John: Yeah, you said ‘Yes.’. It’s been sixty days. How do you think it’s going?
Aeryn: It’s going quite well actually.
John: (to D’Argo and Chiyana) We’re getting married!
D’Argo/Chiyana: Congratulations.
And along with the rapid-fire repartee seen only in shows like The West Wing, pop icons and culture references were up for grabs. In true Farscape fashion, John’s vivid imagination with “Harvey” (a/k/a a computer image of Scorpius that materializes in crucial moments requiring judgment) pulls no punches (including a funny, if not appropriate, send-up of Kubrick’s 2001) and dares to test the envelope of the FCC (What did John write on that chalkboard?).
Finally, you cannot have a good story without great storytellers. And with storytellers like Ben Browder, Claudia Black, Anthony Simcoe, Gigi Edgley, Wayne Pygram, Raelee Hill, Paul Goddard, and Lani Tupu as the voice of Pilot all returning to reprise their roles, the magic was easy to recreate. You could tell they were all having a ball, their hearts 110% into making the mini-series fans would talk about in the same way fans remember ST:TNG‘s “All Good things” or Quantum Leap‘s final leap where Sam meets God (and he’s a bartender). And the cast, much like their director, were also “going for broke” and relishing shootouts reminiscent of John Woo films, comic exchanges that would make the teams of Abbot and Costello and The Three Stooges proud, and truly inspired performances that prove “Yes, you can do Science Fiction and still be a credit to your craft!” The chemistry this cast created only improved with time, like a fine single malt scotch. This was not their finest hour?but their finest four.
Now truth be told, coming in cold with Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars is a bit like coming in cold with the anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, only instead of watching a movie to better appreciate a series, you’d have to get through four seasons of a television series to better appreciate a four-hour mini-series. The greatest strength of Farscape?it’s writing?is also its greatest weakness, I heard Mike Pederson, editor of Nth Degree magazine and fellow Scaper, say. Much in the same vein as ST: Deep Space Nine, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel, the writers began to develop a giant story arc, making the show less episodic and more serialized. While it is a terrific exercise in storytelling, it is hard to attract new audiences. It’s similar to playing catch up with a season of 24 if you’re tuning in for the first time ten episodes into a season. There are references, characters, and situations that the loyal Scapers will get, but a new viewer might miss.
But here’s the hidden bonus that many new fans caught on DVD: acclimating yourself to a new series that’s really, really good is not necessarily a bad thing. Farscape is a series well worth your time, and Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars was well worth the wait.
In the end, it would be nice to think that Bonnie Hammer has come to understand the error in her ways, but don’t let that “Bally’s Total Fitness-Blonde Ambition” look of hers throw you. I don’t doubt she will, once again, turn a blind eye to Farscape fans and think “Well, thank God that’s over?now I can concentrate on more important projects like Snakehead Terror 2, Bride of Frankenfish, and what Baldwin brother I can hire on the cheap to host a reality TV show.” And although she looks as if she’s promising a new direction with productions like the new Battlestar Galactica, keep in mind that this is Bonnie’s Battlestar with supermodel cylons, contrived plot twists, and low-budget “Why show it when we can talk about it?” special effects. (The “jump effect” and “Read this report about the destruction of?” scenes come to mind.) I don’t doubt that Ms. Hammer is thrilled to see Farscape head off into the sunset, as it was the reminder of the “Pre-Bonnie” era at the SciFi Channel. But Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, along with answering the cry of Scapers worldwide, has now raised the quality level (as it did on a weekly basis) on The SciFi Channel, a level that Hammer has proven time and time again she cannot meet. And that is perhaps the deepest cut Henson’s epic SF series has made against her: the only credit she can claim on Farscape is that she cancelled it, and refused to acknowledge the blunder. Much like Captain Smith on the bridge of the Titanic, she is determined to go down with her sinking ship?regardless of the life preserver Henson and Hallmark has thrown her.
Too bad. It would have been nice to see Farscape raise the legitimacy of a network now known for mind-numbingly bad horror films featuring former Star Trek and Babylon 5 actors.
Anchors away, Bonnie.
I refuse to end this review/commentary/geek-rant on a downer note (and talking about Bonnie Hammer’s direction of the SciFi Channel continues to depress me to no end), so let me say to the cast and crew of Farscape, thank you. I would be surprised if you pleased everyone because as a writer and an actor, I have seen that you just can’t do that?but for this particular Scaper, I wish only the best to the cast and crew of Farscape. I wanted closure, if not a promise for things to come and I got it, complete with “In-Your-Face” action, moments that still give me goosebumps as I type, and imagery that inspires me to write. As much as we Scapers found closure, we were also given some potential avenues that could easily continue the voyages of Moya in the form of another mini-series or feature film. But as things are now, I consider Farscape to have delivered an incredible four-hours of SF television. For that, I am very appreciative.
Still, I can’t help but ask–what’s next, Sparky?
