Brain Assassin

It’s been some time but I finally man­aged to clear up old things and come to terms with oth­ers. Catch­ing up isn’t always easy, is it? How­ever, I’m back for good and I’m back with a new topic. I recently bought all sea­sons of FarScape. This is the best show that has ever been aired on tele­vi­sion. Regret­tably, it’s been unjustly can­celed and a revival of the series seems very unlikely. Frell, the fifth sea­son has never been shot! There’s a mini-​​series to wrap up some of the most impor­tant plot threads because sea­son four left off with a mas­sive cliffhanger. Even this mini-​​series – named Farscape: The Peace­keeper Wars – only exists because of some inde­pen­dent back­ers who offered finan­cial support.

It’s a shame that one of the very best shows ever to have been aired on tele­vi­sion had to met a fate like this. Well, what can I say about FarScape? I guess, noth­ing I could say about it would do the series credit but I’ll try any­way. Maybe I should start by say­ing that there’s no other show quite like FarScape out there. The cre­ative team behind the show has crammed inter­est­ing dialogs and sub­tle details into every episode. That’s why intel­li­gent story telling and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment has been so impor­tant. Because of each character’s flaws the whole plot still works so well. Then there are some ani­ma­tronic char­ac­ters bestow­ing a cer­tain charm upon the show. With this unique com­po­si­tion there comes a behav­ioral dynamic that raises the emo­tional stakes to extremes.

Every­one is about to fol­low his own agenda, act­ing on pas­sions and prej­u­dices. The mix­ture of humor and drama makes for tremen­dous enter­tain­ment, while there’s plenty of action and many twists for adren­a­line junkies. There’s sel­dom a way to make a qual­i­fied assess­ment of how all the issues may turn out in the end. Its utter unpre­dictabil­ity result­ing directly from the rich­ness of the sto­ry­telling allows for so much baf­fle­ment that even shows like Lost are hav­ing dif­fi­culty in draw­ing level with it. The writ­ers have con­stantly sur­prised view­ers. Actions really have con­se­quences and noth­ing stays the same from one event to the next. Finally, there’s the ele­ment of alien­ation. Every­body has at least once expe­ri­enced the strange feel­ing of alien­ation while try­ing to con­nect to oth­ers. FarScape takes this con­cept way fur­ther than many would’ve imag­ined and still man­ages to get a mes­sage through it’s count­less twists and emo­tional cli­maxes: Be true to your­self and everything’ll work out one way or the other.

So, with all that in my mind, how would I describe the show? Spec­tac­u­lar. Mag­nif­i­cent. Bom­bas­tic. Splen­did. Superb. To my mind, FarScape does things bet­ter than “Star Wars” and still stands proud and tall as one of the most inno­v­a­tive and col­or­ful show ever. It is the genre’s bright­est bea­con. Even after all those years no other show can pos­si­bly rival this one. I still hope with all my heart that one day there will be a fea­ture film as well done as the series was. The Peace­keeper Wars served well but there are still some strands to untan­gle, some things to clar­ify, some words unsaid. All good things come to an end, though. Ben and Clau­dia are doing a nice job in the cur­rent sea­son of Star­gate SG-​​1 where the 200th episode ref­er­enced FarScape.

Resources for the curi­ous space-​​adventurer:

Far-​​what?
FarScape (Wikipedia)
FarScape Ency­clo­pe­dia
IMDB