Farscape
| Name: | Farscape | |
| Abbreviation(s): | FS, Scape | |
| Creator: | Rockne S. O'Bannon | |
| Date(s): | 1999-2004 | |
| Medium: | television | |
| Country of Origin: | United States/Australia | |
| External Links: | IMDb, Official Henson Farscape site, Official SciFi Farscape site | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | ||
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Farscape was a space opera show in which anything could and did happen during its four seasons and post-cancellation wrap-up miniseries. Although based on a seemingly familiar premise -- boy gets lost, tries to get home -- Farscape took that premise and ran with it all over various genres, tropes, and levels of crackiness.
The show offered an epic romance between lost Earth astronaut John Crichton and exiled former Peacekeeper soldier Aeryn Sun, sibling-like bonding between various characters, lifelike animatronic characters with well-fleshed out personalities, a vast number of pop-culture references, and canonically played with such tropes as time travel (and losing virginity during), heists and capers, encounters with clones, alternate realities, ascended ancients, characters turning into cartoon versions of themselves, bodyswapping, the primary POV character talking to an imaginary friend for entire seasons, drug addiction, mpreg, and more.
One trope Farscape is notable for (mostly) avoiding is the reset button, especially the 42-Minute Reset. Events from previous episodes are referenced again later in the season or several seasons on, dead characters rarely come back to life (and if so, only with effort and soul-searching), and all of the main characters -- even the animatronic ones -- grow and change, permanently, over the course of the show.
Although some have noted that in the latter seasons John Crichton suffered from noticeable manpain, overall the show passes the Bechdel Test well.
The Fandom
- "This show may be just about the hardest show in fandom to pimp. On first watch it's a little too loud, a little too garish, and a little too weird. You dismiss it as "Muppets in Space," and pass on by. So did I. But I was missing out on something huge and gorgeous and epic and true. And so are you. Which brings us to ... Ten reasons to watch one of the greatest scifi shows ever made"[1]
A "puppy pile" may be called down on people new to the series. A puppy pile involves squee and encouragement from older fans, with non-spoilery teases about what's to come.
Although fans of the series are deeply enthusiastic about recruiting new fans, the first several episodes are sometimes a stumbling block:
- "I was enticed into Farscape-watching with the promise of big plot arcs, excellent continuity, and complex storytelling; as of the first few eps, the show isn't yet delivering in those areas. I don't expect epic storytelling yet — epics, pretty much by definition, require a lot of time in the telling — but the contrast to Firefly, which did introduce elements right away that could clearly lead to big arcs, is instructive. Farscape's characters are certainly interesting, but they don't yet have much depth or even much history (even the fact that they're recent prisoners, which is theoretically very interesting, doesn't yet have much urgency to it, particularly in the cases of Zhaan and Rygel). This is also true of S1 BtVS, of course; but early BtVS eps are much more tightly structured: multi-layered stories linked by a central metaphor." [2]
Forums/Mailing Lists/LJ Communities
Forums
- Kansas (2002-2004)
- Terra Firma (2005-present)
Mailing lists
LJ Communities
Fanworks
Notable Fanvids
- Be So Glad [3] by Sisabet. John and Stark.
- Wild Horses [1] by Dualbunny, John/Aeryn pairing vid.
- Ecstatic Drum Trip [2] by Luminosity.
- Mixed Nuts by Laura Shapiro, post-series show tribute.
- Hurricane by Laura Shapiro, femslash (BSG crossover).
Other fanvid resources: The Farscape Music Video Archive (link) cataloged over 1400 Farscape vids by 2009.
Fanart Links
Fanzines
- Love Makes No Sense
- Weight of the World - Analise (John/Aeryn, AU)
Other Sample Fanfiction
- In the Company of Ghosts by KodiakkeMax. Multipart novel-length John/Aeryn story in which it isn't Aeryn who ends up on Moya with John.
Fanfic Archives
- Leviathan: The Farscape Fan Fiction Automated Archive
- ScapeRoute's Unrealized Realities
- RedBeard's Farscape Fan-Fiction Archive
External Resources
- Farscape Encyclopedia Project wiki (canon resource)
- Discover Farscape (canon resource)
- What is Farscape? (canon resource)
- Farscape episode transcripts, season 1 & 2, some of season 3 & 4 (canon resource)
- Farscape article at Wikipedia (canon resource)
- Farscape fandom overview at Crack Van, September 2003 (fandom resource)
- Essays promoting various Farscape 'ships at Ship Manifesto (fandom resource)
- Essays on the Farscape characters Stark and Aeryn at Idol Reflections (fandom resource)
References
- ↑ 10 Reasons to Watch Farscape by 65pigeons, 12 March 2009. (Accessed 7 April 2011)
- ↑ notes on Farscape S1 by heresluck (Accessed April 8, 2011)
- ↑ vid announcement post without embed or current download link on LJ, viewable vid at YouTube (both accessed 26 April 2011)
