A Farscape Primer for the Stargate Fan
So, katie_m did a Stargate Primer for Farscape fans. I thought I'd try the same for the other community. All errors and omissions are mine, and Scapers, please forgive a boatload of summarizing. There's just no way to do this in any detail without scaring all the nice Gaters away.
Farscape spoilers: through season 1 in some detail, through the rest of the run in very general terms.
If Stargate is that nice guy you met on your hall freshman year, the slightly geeky guy who hangs at your table in the dining hall and shares his Chem 207 notes, Farscape is the guy who plays his guitar at midnight on the quad, already speaks three languages, and carries a flask of tequila in his backpack. Of course, he also disappears for days at a time and flunks out of the classes he doesn't ace. He's a very romantic potential trainwreck.
The show ran for four full seasons (88 episodes) on the Sci-Fi channel, from 1999 to 2003, and then was wrapped up with a 4-hour miniseries in fall 2004. You can find a very detailed and funny Farscape overview, complete with pictures, here. And this site is designed to introduce people to the series. So all I'll do is a brief overview. Well, as brief as I can. It's a complicated show.
***
Once upon a time, an astronaut fell through a wormhole and landed in the middle of a prison-break. Once upon a time, a guy whose dad walked on the moon got the opportunity to do something legendary in his own right. Once upon a time, two high school buds got into the space program to test their theory about something they called "the slingshot effect". (Needless to say, this was all the same guy.)
When all the pieces stopped moving, the astronaut, one John Crichton, found himself in another part of the universe, trapped on a sentient ship named Moya with a gang of escaped prisoners and one very pissed off soldier, who looked just like a human woman. Crichton found her humanity reassuring for about four seconds--until she kicked the shit out of him. (She does this a lot.)
The Big Alien Menace in this universe is the Peacekeepers, who bear a striking resemblance to Nazis, what with the black uniforms, big guns, and xenophobic attitudes. The Peacekeepers don't take well to prisoners escaping their custody; and one Peacekeeper captain in particular didn't take well to Crichton causing an accident that killed the captain's brother. Oh, no, best beloved: he didn't take well to that at all.
***
That's the basic premise at the end of the pilot, that they're on the run. The main characters are in place, although there will be some changes over the next few seasons. But they're always fugitives, even if other things--who they're running from, why they're running, and where they're going--change during the course of the series. This is why it's highly recommended that you watch in order. A new viewer can pick up Stargate out of order, as I did, and basically figure out what's going on. It's much harder to do that with Farscape, not just because the plot changes, but because the characters all evolve so much. Did I mention the show was character-driven yet? Well, it is.
Which is not to say there isn't a lot of action. During the run of the show Crichton and his friends get new enemies, get a new ship, get married (a couple of times), get pregnant (three of them), get found, get lost, get pardons, lose their pardons, get rich, get poor again, get raped, get into drag, get tortured, get sex (a lot), get body-swapped, get drunk, get addicted, get captured, get rescued, get cloned, and get dead (possibly more often than they get sex). Not in that order.
Sometimes the death takes; other times it doesn't. Crichton himself has died even more often than Daniel Jackson. But you can't make any assumptions about a character at risk of death: the Farscape writers will kill characters off. Sometimes gleefully. Because they're evil that way. Remember that: the writers are evil, and they glory in totally insane plot twists.
Oh, one note, before we continue: if you have bodily-fluids issues, this show may not be for you. These characters bleed, vomit, fart, piss, masturbate, drool, and spew on camera. No, I'm really not kidding. The show is made in Australia, after all.
***
(Some of) The Characters
Because it's an ensemble show and the cast is both large and evolving, I'm only going to give you the characters from the first season. The other links I've provided will cover the rest.
John Crichton, played by Ben Browder. He's a genius geek, who just happens to look like a football player. He takes his arrival on the other side of the galaxy (or the universe, it's never made clear) with remarkable aplomb, but over the course of the series even his adaptable nature is stretched too far, and he begins to fray. In season 2, he goes crazy. If you like your characters funny, dangerous, and hot, you'll love what happens to John Crichton. Plus, at the end of season 1 he ditches his cotton pants and starts wearing leather. What's not to love?
Aeryn Sun, played by Claudia Black. She's incredibly beautiful and she kicks ass. Aeryn was a Peacekeeper soldier who got caught up in the prison-break. Hanging out with Crichton made her "irreversibly contaminated," which meant permanent exile (remember that xenophobia thing). So she can't go back home, and she's kinda pissed off about that. She's funny, tough, and deadly. Over the course of the series she get into a relationship with Crichton, in part because the chemistry between Browder and Black is astonishing. More on this later.
Pa'u Zotah Zhaan, played by Virginia Hey. Zhaan is a tall blue plant, a priest imprisoned for murdering her lover, and the character who serves the doctor role on the show. She's 800 years old, likes to meditate in the nude, and is very calm and soothing, except when she goes into a murderous rage. Proximity to a strong light source gives her a happy (see above, re: plant). Virginia Hey left the show in the early part of season 3 because she wanted to have eyebrows and hair again.
Ka D'Argo, played by Anthony Simcoe. D'Argo starts off as your standard Warrior Guy: he's gruff, he's big, he has a Really Big Sword, and he has tattooes. Over the course of the show we learn that despite his ferocious temper, he's actually a complete softy. He and Crichton form my favorite buddy team ever.
Chiana, played by Gigi Edgely. Chiana is a street-kid, a thief, and probably a prostitute when she needs to be. She's an iconoclast from a world of conformists. Chiana is openly bisexual, highly sexed, and a lot more dangerous than she seems. She's canonically attracted to Crichton, but starts a relationship with D'Argo in season 2. This... does not end well.
Dominar Rygel the Sixteenth, played by Jonathan Hardy and a host of puppeteers. This is where I remind you that Farscape is made by the Jim Henson Company. Muppets, remember? But Rygel is a long way from Kermit: he's nasty, uncouth, and self-involved. He's a deposed king who is not above stealing from his crewmates or from the dead, although he also uses his cunning and political savvy to their benefit, from time to time. Oh, and he farts helium (see above re: bodily fluids).
Pilot, played by Lani Tupu and a bunch of other puppeteers. Pilot is a four-armed amphibian-type critter physically bonded with Moya, the ship. He's neurotic, easily startled, and not as smart as he'd like to be. He's also terribly sweet, and he will break your heart.
Moya, played by miles of gold and bronze hallways and a lot of pretty CGI. Moya can't talk, and does all her communication through Pilot. But she is a character in her own right: she occasionally disagrees with the rest of the crew, and given that she's the ship, what she wants usually goes. Midway through the first season, Moya gets pregnant, and the big cliffhanger at the end of that season involves the birth of her son Talyn.
Bialar Crais, played by Lani Tupu. Crais is an unstable Peacekeeper captain who responds poorly when Crichton accidentally kills his brother Tauvo. He defies his orders and takes his ship into alien territory to chase Crichton. At the end of season 1 he runs afoul of his own command structure (see above re: defying orders) and defects, taking with him Moya's son Talyn. Crais has one of the more interesting character arcs on the show.
Scorpius, played by Wayne Pygram. No discussion of Farscape is complete without a mention of Scorpius, who is Crichton's leather-clad nemesis. Scorpius is a half-Peacekeeper scientist who discovers through a fluke of fate that Crichton knows something about wormholes, and who dedicates himself to learning everything (and I do mean everything) about the inside of Crichton's mind. With the introduction of Scorpius, the Farscape team's love affair with bodily fluids reaches new heights.
***
The plot
There's no way to discuss the Farscape plotline in any detail without losing you completely. Suffice it to say that Farscape has the Ancients too. (Although instead of looking like glowy jellyfish, they look like big brown praying mantises.) These Ancients, like the ones in Stargate, know all about wormholes. Unlike the ones in Stargate, they don't meddle so much, and they're absolutely not zen. After pulling a dirty trick on Crichton, the Ancients made it up to him by embedding the knowledge of how to find and navigate wormholes in his subconscious. I'm sure they meant well.
The thing is, everyone wants wormholes, and because of that, everyone wants Crichton. The plot of the entire series revolves around the question of wormhole technology: who has it, what is it good for, can it get them home, and just how dangerous is it, anyway? There are occasional side-trips into things like marrying princesses and rescuing lost sons and getting cloned, but when it comes down to it, the question is always about wormholes.
The other main plot thread on the show is the relationship between Crichton and Aeryn. This is the Angsty Het Ship to beat all angsty het ships. The chemistry between the actors and the real cultural barriers between the characters result in four seasons of back-and-forth on the issue. This tension is occasionally brilliant, and sometimes forced. Which is not to say they don't have sex: they do. In fact, everyone gets to have sex on Farscape, even the Muppets. (This is not as funny as it might seem.)
***
The Fandom
Farscape is a het fandom. I have to say that up front. While there is some slash written, it's very much in the minority, because the canon ship is so played up in the show, and the actors work so well together, there really isn't any canonically-supportable alternative ship like you get in Stargate.
Which is not to say the show is homophobic; there's subtext everywhere, and some first season episodes suggested John/D'Argo, D'Argo/Zhaan, D'Argo/Aeryn, and John/Zhaan. The John/D'Argo subtext gets revisited semi-regularly. Additionally, Chiana is textually bisexual, so she gets paired in fic with damned near everyone; and while the ficwriters won't write Chiana/Rygel, the show suggested it twice.
The other slashy relationship is, of course, John/Scorpius. Oh, and Scorpius/Braca, which is basically canon. (You can think of Braca as the Uncharted Territories' version of Major Davis, but with less underwear and a more flexible morality.)
You can find fic in a number of places: I prefer Leviathan, for its easy searchability and breadth of material. Leviathan also includes a mailing list for fic distribution and discussion. You can find recs for Farscape fic at my site, Bright Shiny Objects, and Polyamorous Recs.
Popular boards on which to discuss the show are Watch Farscape, Kansas, and Farscape World. farscapefriday has some great fic challenges every week. farscape_chorus and snurchcons are icon communities.
***
The Cancellation
The show was cancelled by the Sci-Fi Channel on the last day of filming for season 4. This led to a huge uproar, which you can't have missed if you were even a little active in online fandom in late 2002. After about a year, the Jim Henson Company found some financiers, made a four-hour movie to resolve the cliffhanger at the end of season 4, and the Sci-Fi Channel aired it in the fall of 2004.
There was some anger in the Farscape community about Stargate, because it was perceived (rightly or wrongly) that Stargate's success on Sci-Fi had caused the decision to cancel the show. Whether this is true or not (and no, this isn't the forum for that conversation), this perception led to a not-insignificant amount of resentment on the part of some Scapers towards Gaters. Stargate was seen in parts of the Scaper community as a lesser show: less challenging, less smart, less sexy (well, that last is certainly true), less well acted.
The Casting Spoilers are going to result in a lot of crossover viewers, but this perception persists in some quarters, and any Gaters trying to get into Farscape need to be aware of it.
***
No, it is too much: I will sum up.
To mangle another metaphor, if Stargate is your dad's minivan, reliable, consistent, and frequently entertaining, Farscape is your uncle's Jaguar. Sure, it can hit 130 on the Autobahn; but god help you when the transmission goes, because it can crash spectacularly. (As it did in season 4, according to some [including me. I'm not bitter. Much].)
The show is gorgeous, well-acted, and written brilliantly (except when the writing makes no sense at all [see above]). It's also funny. But you have to do a lot of handwaving to make the plots and science work: Farscape is all about the drama and emotional believability, not logic. In a contest between logic and story impact, logic loses every time.
Give it some time, watch in order if at all possible, and see if you can make it to the end of season 1. If you can, then you're probably hooked.
Blockbuster online and Netflix both have the full run of the series. Also, they're re-releasing the entire dvd set in a cheaper version with more extras, called Starburst editions.
Err, that was much longer than I intended it to be. And not nearly as funny as Katie's primer, but then, that's a pretty high standard. Many thanks to Katie, for the idea, and Shaye, for lots of inspiration (if not outright plagiarism).
Farscape spoilers: through season 1 in some detail, through the rest of the run in very general terms.
If Stargate is that nice guy you met on your hall freshman year, the slightly geeky guy who hangs at your table in the dining hall and shares his Chem 207 notes, Farscape is the guy who plays his guitar at midnight on the quad, already speaks three languages, and carries a flask of tequila in his backpack. Of course, he also disappears for days at a time and flunks out of the classes he doesn't ace. He's a very romantic potential trainwreck.
The show ran for four full seasons (88 episodes) on the Sci-Fi channel, from 1999 to 2003, and then was wrapped up with a 4-hour miniseries in fall 2004. You can find a very detailed and funny Farscape overview, complete with pictures, here. And this site is designed to introduce people to the series. So all I'll do is a brief overview. Well, as brief as I can. It's a complicated show.
***
Once upon a time, an astronaut fell through a wormhole and landed in the middle of a prison-break. Once upon a time, a guy whose dad walked on the moon got the opportunity to do something legendary in his own right. Once upon a time, two high school buds got into the space program to test their theory about something they called "the slingshot effect". (Needless to say, this was all the same guy.)
When all the pieces stopped moving, the astronaut, one John Crichton, found himself in another part of the universe, trapped on a sentient ship named Moya with a gang of escaped prisoners and one very pissed off soldier, who looked just like a human woman. Crichton found her humanity reassuring for about four seconds--until she kicked the shit out of him. (She does this a lot.)
The Big Alien Menace in this universe is the Peacekeepers, who bear a striking resemblance to Nazis, what with the black uniforms, big guns, and xenophobic attitudes. The Peacekeepers don't take well to prisoners escaping their custody; and one Peacekeeper captain in particular didn't take well to Crichton causing an accident that killed the captain's brother. Oh, no, best beloved: he didn't take well to that at all.
***
That's the basic premise at the end of the pilot, that they're on the run. The main characters are in place, although there will be some changes over the next few seasons. But they're always fugitives, even if other things--who they're running from, why they're running, and where they're going--change during the course of the series. This is why it's highly recommended that you watch in order. A new viewer can pick up Stargate out of order, as I did, and basically figure out what's going on. It's much harder to do that with Farscape, not just because the plot changes, but because the characters all evolve so much. Did I mention the show was character-driven yet? Well, it is.
Which is not to say there isn't a lot of action. During the run of the show Crichton and his friends get new enemies, get a new ship, get married (a couple of times), get pregnant (three of them), get found, get lost, get pardons, lose their pardons, get rich, get poor again, get raped, get into drag, get tortured, get sex (a lot), get body-swapped, get drunk, get addicted, get captured, get rescued, get cloned, and get dead (possibly more often than they get sex). Not in that order.
Sometimes the death takes; other times it doesn't. Crichton himself has died even more often than Daniel Jackson. But you can't make any assumptions about a character at risk of death: the Farscape writers will kill characters off. Sometimes gleefully. Because they're evil that way. Remember that: the writers are evil, and they glory in totally insane plot twists.
Oh, one note, before we continue: if you have bodily-fluids issues, this show may not be for you. These characters bleed, vomit, fart, piss, masturbate, drool, and spew on camera. No, I'm really not kidding. The show is made in Australia, after all.
***
(Some of) The Characters
Because it's an ensemble show and the cast is both large and evolving, I'm only going to give you the characters from the first season. The other links I've provided will cover the rest.
John Crichton, played by Ben Browder. He's a genius geek, who just happens to look like a football player. He takes his arrival on the other side of the galaxy (or the universe, it's never made clear) with remarkable aplomb, but over the course of the series even his adaptable nature is stretched too far, and he begins to fray. In season 2, he goes crazy. If you like your characters funny, dangerous, and hot, you'll love what happens to John Crichton. Plus, at the end of season 1 he ditches his cotton pants and starts wearing leather. What's not to love?
Aeryn Sun, played by Claudia Black. She's incredibly beautiful and she kicks ass. Aeryn was a Peacekeeper soldier who got caught up in the prison-break. Hanging out with Crichton made her "irreversibly contaminated," which meant permanent exile (remember that xenophobia thing). So she can't go back home, and she's kinda pissed off about that. She's funny, tough, and deadly. Over the course of the series she get into a relationship with Crichton, in part because the chemistry between Browder and Black is astonishing. More on this later.
Pa'u Zotah Zhaan, played by Virginia Hey. Zhaan is a tall blue plant, a priest imprisoned for murdering her lover, and the character who serves the doctor role on the show. She's 800 years old, likes to meditate in the nude, and is very calm and soothing, except when she goes into a murderous rage. Proximity to a strong light source gives her a happy (see above, re: plant). Virginia Hey left the show in the early part of season 3 because she wanted to have eyebrows and hair again.
Ka D'Argo, played by Anthony Simcoe. D'Argo starts off as your standard Warrior Guy: he's gruff, he's big, he has a Really Big Sword, and he has tattooes. Over the course of the show we learn that despite his ferocious temper, he's actually a complete softy. He and Crichton form my favorite buddy team ever.
Chiana, played by Gigi Edgely. Chiana is a street-kid, a thief, and probably a prostitute when she needs to be. She's an iconoclast from a world of conformists. Chiana is openly bisexual, highly sexed, and a lot more dangerous than she seems. She's canonically attracted to Crichton, but starts a relationship with D'Argo in season 2. This... does not end well.
Dominar Rygel the Sixteenth, played by Jonathan Hardy and a host of puppeteers. This is where I remind you that Farscape is made by the Jim Henson Company. Muppets, remember? But Rygel is a long way from Kermit: he's nasty, uncouth, and self-involved. He's a deposed king who is not above stealing from his crewmates or from the dead, although he also uses his cunning and political savvy to their benefit, from time to time. Oh, and he farts helium (see above re: bodily fluids).
Pilot, played by Lani Tupu and a bunch of other puppeteers. Pilot is a four-armed amphibian-type critter physically bonded with Moya, the ship. He's neurotic, easily startled, and not as smart as he'd like to be. He's also terribly sweet, and he will break your heart.
Moya, played by miles of gold and bronze hallways and a lot of pretty CGI. Moya can't talk, and does all her communication through Pilot. But she is a character in her own right: she occasionally disagrees with the rest of the crew, and given that she's the ship, what she wants usually goes. Midway through the first season, Moya gets pregnant, and the big cliffhanger at the end of that season involves the birth of her son Talyn.
Bialar Crais, played by Lani Tupu. Crais is an unstable Peacekeeper captain who responds poorly when Crichton accidentally kills his brother Tauvo. He defies his orders and takes his ship into alien territory to chase Crichton. At the end of season 1 he runs afoul of his own command structure (see above re: defying orders) and defects, taking with him Moya's son Talyn. Crais has one of the more interesting character arcs on the show.
Scorpius, played by Wayne Pygram. No discussion of Farscape is complete without a mention of Scorpius, who is Crichton's leather-clad nemesis. Scorpius is a half-Peacekeeper scientist who discovers through a fluke of fate that Crichton knows something about wormholes, and who dedicates himself to learning everything (and I do mean everything) about the inside of Crichton's mind. With the introduction of Scorpius, the Farscape team's love affair with bodily fluids reaches new heights.
***
The plot
There's no way to discuss the Farscape plotline in any detail without losing you completely. Suffice it to say that Farscape has the Ancients too. (Although instead of looking like glowy jellyfish, they look like big brown praying mantises.) These Ancients, like the ones in Stargate, know all about wormholes. Unlike the ones in Stargate, they don't meddle so much, and they're absolutely not zen. After pulling a dirty trick on Crichton, the Ancients made it up to him by embedding the knowledge of how to find and navigate wormholes in his subconscious. I'm sure they meant well.
The thing is, everyone wants wormholes, and because of that, everyone wants Crichton. The plot of the entire series revolves around the question of wormhole technology: who has it, what is it good for, can it get them home, and just how dangerous is it, anyway? There are occasional side-trips into things like marrying princesses and rescuing lost sons and getting cloned, but when it comes down to it, the question is always about wormholes.
The other main plot thread on the show is the relationship between Crichton and Aeryn. This is the Angsty Het Ship to beat all angsty het ships. The chemistry between the actors and the real cultural barriers between the characters result in four seasons of back-and-forth on the issue. This tension is occasionally brilliant, and sometimes forced. Which is not to say they don't have sex: they do. In fact, everyone gets to have sex on Farscape, even the Muppets. (This is not as funny as it might seem.)
***
The Fandom
Farscape is a het fandom. I have to say that up front. While there is some slash written, it's very much in the minority, because the canon ship is so played up in the show, and the actors work so well together, there really isn't any canonically-supportable alternative ship like you get in Stargate.
Which is not to say the show is homophobic; there's subtext everywhere, and some first season episodes suggested John/D'Argo, D'Argo/Zhaan, D'Argo/Aeryn, and John/Zhaan. The John/D'Argo subtext gets revisited semi-regularly. Additionally, Chiana is textually bisexual, so she gets paired in fic with damned near everyone; and while the ficwriters won't write Chiana/Rygel, the show suggested it twice.
The other slashy relationship is, of course, John/Scorpius. Oh, and Scorpius/Braca, which is basically canon. (You can think of Braca as the Uncharted Territories' version of Major Davis, but with less underwear and a more flexible morality.)
You can find fic in a number of places: I prefer Leviathan, for its easy searchability and breadth of material. Leviathan also includes a mailing list for fic distribution and discussion. You can find recs for Farscape fic at my site, Bright Shiny Objects, and Polyamorous Recs.
Popular boards on which to discuss the show are Watch Farscape, Kansas, and Farscape World. farscapefriday has some great fic challenges every week. farscape_chorus and snurchcons are icon communities.
***
The Cancellation
The show was cancelled by the Sci-Fi Channel on the last day of filming for season 4. This led to a huge uproar, which you can't have missed if you were even a little active in online fandom in late 2002. After about a year, the Jim Henson Company found some financiers, made a four-hour movie to resolve the cliffhanger at the end of season 4, and the Sci-Fi Channel aired it in the fall of 2004.
There was some anger in the Farscape community about Stargate, because it was perceived (rightly or wrongly) that Stargate's success on Sci-Fi had caused the decision to cancel the show. Whether this is true or not (and no, this isn't the forum for that conversation), this perception led to a not-insignificant amount of resentment on the part of some Scapers towards Gaters. Stargate was seen in parts of the Scaper community as a lesser show: less challenging, less smart, less sexy (well, that last is certainly true), less well acted.
The Casting Spoilers are going to result in a lot of crossover viewers, but this perception persists in some quarters, and any Gaters trying to get into Farscape need to be aware of it.
***
No, it is too much: I will sum up.
To mangle another metaphor, if Stargate is your dad's minivan, reliable, consistent, and frequently entertaining, Farscape is your uncle's Jaguar. Sure, it can hit 130 on the Autobahn; but god help you when the transmission goes, because it can crash spectacularly. (As it did in season 4, according to some [including me. I'm not bitter. Much].)
The show is gorgeous, well-acted, and written brilliantly (except when the writing makes no sense at all [see above]). It's also funny. But you have to do a lot of handwaving to make the plots and science work: Farscape is all about the drama and emotional believability, not logic. In a contest between logic and story impact, logic loses every time.
Give it some time, watch in order if at all possible, and see if you can make it to the end of season 1. If you can, then you're probably hooked.
Blockbuster online and Netflix both have the full run of the series. Also, they're re-releasing the entire dvd set in a cheaper version with more extras, called Starburst editions.
Err, that was much longer than I intended it to be. And not nearly as funny as Katie's primer, but then, that's a pretty high standard. Many thanks to Katie, for the idea, and Shaye, for lots of inspiration (if not outright plagiarism).