Farscape

Eh heh heh, thought I'd do another positive one before ripping a certain summer blockbuster to shreds. So here it is: Farscape.

As with Babylon 5, let's do the bad first. Um...I didn't like that Scorpy didn't get to annihilate the Scarrans.

The news programs about the aliens, after they went to earth, were a bit moronic—and the UN being in control of space matters, would be race-suicide for humanity.

And that's it.

Okay, for the good. First, puppets—come on, man, puppets! The aliens don't look like they're floating just a few degrees into another dimension—they look like they're really there. Why? Well, because they are really there. Sure, there are people that can't stand having puppets in something—they, of course, prefer bad CGI. Everything, of course, should look like a PS1 game, because the mundanes will laugh at us for watching puppet shows (but that, reader-sama, is another post—look forward to it!) But it's really hard for a show to have any good CGI, and still have any budget left over for luxuries like...writers (the reason so much eye-candy SF sucks, I'm guessing).

Second, the story. The technobabble is used as it is in comic books, not as in Star Trek or Eureka: it is there to be hand-waving, to justify the wondrous things that happen in the plot, and as stage-dressing (or cultural setting, as it’s known), not to be the plot. The whole premise of wormhole tech as the holy grail, is not there to provide some Deus Ex Tachyons; it's there to provide justification for the entire Peacekeeper military to be hunting some nobody from a planet called Earp (Um, 'Earth.')

Third, the characters. This is your band of space renegades, Kemosabe—dare I say Outlaws? Eat it, Whedon, Crighton is the coolest male lead since Han Solo. For god’s sake, he’s a Southerner and he knows it. And he quotes Monty Python! The man is like a competent version of Arthur Dent and Philip Fry. D'argo is the only "primitive bruiser" type character I can really get behind, because his culture aren't a bunch of "noble savages," they're just warlike. And he could bust Worf's head like an eggshell, let's be real clear. Stark is unmitigated joy (because he's barmy), and his and Rygel's manzai act (Rygel is the tsukkomi) is amazing. Rygel, for pity's sake, is one of the six best characters ever. I can't imagine people now able to write that complex a character: a tiny, snobby, slightly pervy little tyrant who is, when push comes to shove, a really good leader. Gasp! You might think a rational person was involved in writing this show!

The female characters are among the few good ones in anything Westerners make. Aeryn’s not a feminist Mary-Sue…because she's basically only good at one thing, ass-whup. Okay, yes, Zan is annoying, but to be fair, most clergy are. Okay, yes, Chiana is an irritating little, well, tralk. But she doesn't seem to really likeit, and she's never portrayed as terribly admirable for being a slut. Actually her sluttiness screws her over fairly often—promiscuity having consequences! Is it even legal to put that in a script anymore? And she does get better after she accidentally acquires the ability to see the future. Jool and…Sputnik, whose name I always forget… are two variants on the Chiana theme, but believable as characters in their own right.

Scorpius and Crais are among my favorite antagonists in anything. Both of them are very sympathetic, and Crais has that whole badass leather-wearing Spelljammer-captain thing, with Talyn. Sorry, folks, that’s neat, and he gets a most excellent death. Scorpius, on the other hand, is even better—he might as well be an anime character. Think about it: he’s a single-minded badass, not unworthy of respect, who’s basically a revenge-crazed mama's boy. And he makes S&M jokes! He might as well be Edward Elric.

Fourth, the fact it's not purely SF at all. There are a whole bunch of what are basically wizards, all over the place, and Stark's weird death powers couldn't even count as "scientifically plausible" in the days when Campbell was the editor of Analog. It's more speculative fiction than purely SF...and yet it doesn't have 'Heisenberg compensators' or such idiocy.

It's sorta like opera, but a little more, well, pulp. It's more Double Suicide at Amijima than it is Götterdämmerung, wouldn't you say?

Chikamatsu's ghost, I think they invented a genre: space kabuki!