David Kemper on various Farscape characters
I found these interesting discussions of Farscape characters by David Kemper on my hard drive, but I have no idea where they came from - some transcript, interview, or magazine article. If you know, I'd love to attribute. I can't believe I didn't even date the files, but I'm guessing season 2? Any typos are not mine - I must have copy/pasted this from some board, and I'm too lazy to clean it up, sorry.
Aeryn Sun
One of the things that I hear all the time, I see it on the bulletin board, and I just want to scream.
“Well why doesn’t Aeryn get together with Crichton, why does Aeryn do this, why does Aeryn do that?”
And I say, Because Aeryn’s not a human bean, and you are, and you’re writing this e-mail, and your not seeing the show clearly, you’ve lost your way.
You have forgotten that Aeryn Sun looks like a human bean, but Aeryn Sun is a Sabaceaan.
And she grew up without parents, without love, trained to kill and follow orders.
She was trained to do things that nobody here, unless you’re a Navy Seal or a Delta Force Commando, is supposed to do.
She cannot undo all those years of training and instinct, and learn to accept love in a very short amount of time.
She’s an alien, she’s more alien than if you went to the Amazon Rainforest and discovered a tribe that didn’t know anything about modern culture, and you tried to have a relationship.
Would you know their customs, would they know yours? No.
So always remember, that Aeryn Sun may be the most alien of all the creatures.
Which is the way we’ve always wanted to play her.
Zhaan, D’argo, and Chiana, and Rygel, and Pilot, they look alien.
Aeryn, the dichotomy is, that she looks the most human, and she’s the least human inside, emotionally. And, that dichotomy is what makes her, perhaps, one of the richest characters.
Which is why people love her so much and is why Crichton is having a hard time.
Now, Crichton, for all the fans who are clamoring for them and can’t understand why they keep frictioning off each other, Crichton understands, and that’s why he’s not complaining about it.
This woman you have to nurture, you have to grow her emotions in her, you have to water her to allow those emotions to come up.
Officer Sun, has them, we know it, we’ve seen it, and he’s patient, and he’s being more patient than some of the fans.
And if the fans would watch the way Crichton is behaving toward this woman, and remember that she’s an alien.
They’ll be able to interpret their relationship better, they’ll be able to follow the show better, and they’ll get a much richer experience.
Cause there’s a lot of nuance, I believe, that we’re putting into the shows, that is getting lost, because people are only see one thing.
“How come they don’t get together and fall in love?”
And they’re missing the story, and the, there’s an old saying, that the, ‘the fun is in the journey’ and if they go get together real quick, which allot of people do, ok, yeah, then they get married.
We would do that if we could get them to be that way.
Officer Sun is not a human bean.
Aeryn also knows that she is the first line of defense, against external forces.
D’argo is right there with her, but Aeryn is very intensely focused on Military, and D’argo has allot more, he’s been married, he has a son, he has emotional things that he wants.
Aeryn has always been Military, up till this point, up till this show, when she met Crichton, and she knows that if she allows herself to get all gooey and soft inside, she’s gonna screw up.
And that’s something that she carries around, and if people would understand that and interpret that, that she could.
If she started, to like, go on dates and go to movies, when the bad guys attacked, there would be a different.
That’s why they say cops are not supposed to fall in love with each other, or people in the same Military Unit, as she said many times, don’t have relationships, because you start to worry about the guy next to you, and if you turn to help this person, you both take, take the bullet.
So, Aeryn is a very responsible character, as are the other ones, but her response of, responsibility, infuriates people, who from the external part, keep watching TV, and thinking, “Ah, she’s human, why isn’t she falling into his arms, because I would.”
Chiana
Chiana is growing up and she’s found people that accept her, don’t judge her too much, they all have their own problems.
So they’re accepting her and so she’s thinking “fine I’ll stay” and the most important thing about Chiana, that Gigi is playing, is Chiana’s learning to trust.
Similarly as Aeryn, they’re all learning to trust each other.
But Chiana’s been a street kid, a street urchin, she’s lived by her wits.
If she had to eat out of a garbage can, she did, if she could pull a con on the prince, she did, if she could you know jump into the back of a limousine and steal the food off the rock stars you know spread and then get out the back door before, she did.
She lived the way she had to live, because she wanted to be free from a culture that was oppressive.
So she survives on her wits and with her own skill, and with guile and with cleverness and sass and sex and whatever it takes.
And here’s a group of people that say ‘Ah, come on, sit down, have dinner’ and she’s like ‘nah, this is unique, it’s, I did not have to like steal it or con it out of ya or’ “nah, just sit down, you’ve earned your place at the table, you’ve proven yourself to us.’
Well she kind of like, you’ve seen, everyone’s seen, Gigi do it, that kinda, that look, that’s a look of distrust.
And you’re watching a young, alien woman, always use the word alien in front of everybody except Crichton, learn, trust.
You’re watching, by degrees, the dial get torqued, every time she goes and does that look, which I can’t do.
So put that up on the web and there’ll be a picture of me going .
She is getting, another, another, example in her memory banks of ‘oh, I can trust these people’.
That’s her journey, until somebody betrays that trust, and then, it might, as it does, it kicks you back to an earlier place.
But it’s never permanent, because we’re all on a journey, and our people are ultimately good inside, so they’re on a journey of self-discovery and revelation, and it will lead them to a better place, and it has, but it isn’t the smooth climb all the time.
Crais
Crais is striving mightily to be accepted, and to be different, and to show that he can command Talyn in a responsible way, now that’s what he’s projecting.
Wether or not, that is truly his ultimate intention, I can’t really say, because there’s allot of Crais coming in the future.
He, ah, is just like everyone else, he’s complex, he’s got his own motives, and we never should forget, that we never get to see em, because it’s hard to have Thirty Thousand people on the set, but this man commanded a Command Carrier.
One of the most powerful weapons in the universe, filled with thousands of men, and he rose up through the ranks over years and years of service.
This isn’t just some kind guy, who’s a cream puff, this is a really nasty, tough, hard nosed, bureaucratic, administrative, military Commander. Who finds himself isolated from all those things, and so has a different persona, and he has a different background than most of them.
So it allows him to slip easily into the person that we see, but I still think that the person that he was, is also apart of him, he has not cleaved it off him.
In the same way that Zhaan, the woman who murdered her lover, is now a Tenth Level Pa’u Priest, and yet, still has moments of, the flashes of, her old side.
And if Zhaan, who’s priestly ness, and her study, can’t divorce herself from her earlier personage, well, we can’t expect Crais to either.
This is an iron guy, this is a guy, who, it’s like Michael Jordon, dominated on the basketball court, now he’s on the golf course and he has the same desire to dominate on the golf course.
So Crais has things he wants and an agenda that he wants to fulfill and he hasn’t lost those personality traits that allowed him to get to be Captain of the ship.
-Scene Shown-
Lieutenant “There were casualties Sir, two ships lost and”
Crais “I don’t care about casualties”
From the beginning, Rockne said, this was going to be a journey for these people, and we had targeted Crais early to make this turn, and, uh, we knew where he was gonna end up, and so, we weren’t so surprised, because we were orchestrating it all along the way.
But it is surprising to watch how believably, Lani has made the tortured Captain, turn to a different side, and how wonderfully he’s brought that to life.
I mean if that, that’s the revelation, it’s the actor, married to the part, is perfect, in the same way that we have allot of actors who are perfectly their part.
We have, you know, I couldn’t tell you one that isn’t on our show, which is why the chemistry works so well with our seven main leads, and Rygel is perfectly suited to the rubber casing that he’s in so.
John Crichton
David Kemper says...................
Crichton is the hero, that he is, he’s already proven it.
He put himself at risk for his friends, he jumped out of a spaceship, at the end of season one and there was no hope, I mean there’s thousand of little ways, but they were lucky to be alive.
He was willing to step through, into the orb, in My Three Crichtons, rather than force the egg headed guy in, because he saw value in that guy’s argument, that the future him might be better for his friends.
That’s it, that’s all the hero you gotta to be.
Would he go back to Earth or stay with Aeryn?
A hero can see the bigger picture, and the hero will make a decision, he will factor himself in to the equation with equal weight, to the other things.
Uh, would he be bored to death?
Yep, if he went back to Earth, whether he knows it or not, and couldn’t see anyone, and was done, space travels over, and they spit him back onto Earth and he would never get to go again, and that was it, your trapped on this little globe, and your can fly around the Earth in the space capsule, and that’s it folks.
He would be one of those, yah, I, he’d be the, without having to be that way, he’d be like one of those proverbial alcoholics.
Ya know, it’s kind like, well what do ya do, how do you top that?
Uh, the guy’s that went to the moon, and that’s minuscule infinitesimal, compared to what Crichton’s done.
What do they do to top that? I mean, it’s kinda like “Well I’m never gonna get to have that much fun again.”
So, I’d think he would get back to Earth and he’d miss the adventures pretty quickly.
But on the other hand, I believe that John Crichton feels compelled to get back to Earth.
And you can say, “Would he leave Aeryn?” “No, he loves Aeryn.” “Would he leave his friends?” “No he wouldn’t leave his friends.”
And then there’s another color that everybody’s forgetting, it not so much, see dad, he is a sentimental guy, who cares about his family.
But he has knowledge, that can transform Earth, and I think, from my perspective, as a writer, as the Executive Producer, that John Crichton might have to go home if he got the chance.
Even if it meant leaving Aeryn.
Staying with Aeryn, if that’s what he chose to do, is, would be, a little bit selfish, in the face of what he could accomplish if he went home.
So live your twenty-five, forty good years, and then die. What could you have done if you had gone back?
If you could definitively prove, if he had all of his disks and crystals, that life existed in such a resplendent way, out in space.
Might our planet stop destroying the Ozone? Might we stop chopping down the forests, polluting the waters, depleting our resources?
I think if Earth put all of it’s resources together, we could end hunger and we could end all those social issues, so now I’m, I’m outed as a bleeding liberal.
But we could also use the technology money, to create the spaceships, that could go to Mars quick, and then maybe we could get out to circle the moons of Jupiter, and then maybe we could go beyond it, and maybe we’ll discover something with all the quantum theories we’re doing that will allow space travel.
And you know what? If Crichton gets back, then we know he got out, and we know he got back. So we could do it again, couldn’t we?
Shouldn’t we develop a technology that allows us to find another wormhole, and go and visit, and take our place out in the universe?
So Crichton has all this knowledge that could transform this isolated little dot.
And he says, “You know something, I think, I’m gonna let those.” How many billion people do we got? “Let’s, let them all sit there, and hack at each other with machetes. Let’s not unify them, because I really, I got to stay with Aeryn.”
Well, you’ve known this lady for two years, or you’ve known these other people for two years. I think he’d have a long and hard, tough, tough, decision.
He might have to martyr his own personal life and his own cause, to go back and do something good for billions, and save his planet.
Right now, his planet, should anyone of these other races discover Earth, the Nebari, we’re gone, the Scarrans, we’re toast, the Peace Keepers, we’re enslaved.
Even the Luxans, if the Luxans were enrage, and, you know, needed our planet, they’re a race of warriors, they’d come down and kick our butts, and we’d all be enslaved.
So, there’s a higher responsibility that John Crichton has to deal with, and, uh, that would make a perplexing decision for him should it come down.
D'Argo
We always say that D’argo is a Warrior, but with a Poet residing inside of him, and the Poet keeps trying to get out, and the situation keeps calling for a Warrior.
His race says, his race basically said ‘you grew up to be a Warrior’ and he went ‘oh, all right’ ya know, but he always liked other things, and, uh, he wants to settle down, he wants to be re-united with his family.
His quest isn’t for riches, it isn’t for fame, it isn’t for revenge, he wants to be re-united with his family, so, in a way, it’s a timeless quest.
You could say, that we all probably saw, the hit movie, this summer, Gladiator.
Well, that’s Maximus, he wanted to go back home, he said ‘I’ve done my war and’. Most soldiers, even Career Soldiers, want to get off the battlefield and go home.
You know, they want to see their family, Submariners want to go home, guy’s in the field want to go home.
So, uh, D’argo is a classic Soldier in that regard.
D’argo is a pillar of strength, he is the guy that Crichton and Aeryn would go to when they need somebody, he’s, he’s a really, really strong and powerful presence, and that’s infused by Anthony Simcoe, he just, is that guy himself.
So, you just, have this really, really strong, wonderful, character and I think the fans are going to enjoy what happens to him, and the journeys that he’s embarking on, and where it will lead him.
Pilot
Pilot is going to develop emotionally into someone who has stronger likes and dislikes.
He’s got to have his own agenda, and he and Moya will probably re-examine what it is they want to do.
Do they just want to fly around with these knuckleheads inside, or do they want to do something with their time, in this world, in this universe.
Also, we may find out that there is one particular character in the third season, that Pilot really dislikes, dislikes strongly, and so you get to see a little more of Pilot, branching out and becoming his own man, for somebody who’s stuck in one place.
He, ah, emotionally will continue to branch out and feel strongly about things, have an opinion, and maybe demand to vote.
Now, I think, that he’s, it’s not that he’s going to become nasty or evil, it’s just that, uh, Well what is it that we’re doing, uh, were flying around in circles, were being chased. They’re not chasing us, they’re chasing you guys, I mean let’s.
What’s your plan? You know, it’s that kinda thing of.
It’s really fun to have you aboard, but what is it that you wanna do? So we can figure out what were gonna do.
We’re willing to service you, but, we want to know what’s happening.
A little just, a little more, ah, kinda growing up.
Ya know, you just figure, your young and I’ll be buffeted by circumstance.
And now he’s saying, I want to maybe, be a little smarter and ahead of the game.
Pilot’s gotta grow, just like every other character.
Rygel
Someone asked me, when I was out on stage, they said, uh “Why is, you know, let’s get rid of Rygel? Rygel’s this awful character.” and I said “No, he isn’t, he’s great.” And they said “No, he’s just, he’s nasty.” And I said, “No, he’s selfish.”
But, how many people don’t know a really selfish person? How many people don’t know somebody who, their first instinct is to think of themselves? You know, that’s Rygel.
But we’ve seen that usually, when push comes to shove, “oh, damn!”, but he’s there for the other people. Rygel is one of my favorite characters.
Uh, he personally has never given me a hard time. Every once in a while he’ll blow a motor, he won’t show up for work. He has no demands. So I really like the guy.
I also like writing for him. If you look at my scripts, and I’m challenging the writers, People like to write Rygel as the comic relief sometimes. And I, Rygel to me is real, in The Princess Trilogy, he talks real to the Empress, he talks real to Crichton, real to Aeryn.
He is probably the most pragmatic creature on the ship. He sees the situation and knows. He could run a company and he could run a kingdom. He is not a joke ruler, he ruled 600 billion people. He might have gotten deposed, but he ruled, knew how to rule, and when you rule, you piss people off.
And I am the Executive Producer of Farscape, and I rule, and I piss people off, and I identify with Rygel.
Because you have to make hard decisions and you have to say no, and every time you say no to somebody, somebody else is aggravated, and every time you say yes, there’s somebody who wanted the no answer, who’s also aggravated.
Decisions create conflict.
Rygel makes decisions.
They’re not always right, sometimes they’re selfish, but that’s how he was raised, he was raised to be the king and think of himself first.
And, in a way, if you look at the way our Army’s structure battles, the General is not anymore on the horse out front. They protect the General in the back.
His instincts are correct.
You don’t want to lose your leadership. You want the President and the Congress to be safe in case there was a war. Other wise who in the heck is gonna run the country?
So, Rygel is a tough guy, and he also, I believe, sees the situation, the most real.
The fans have grown to love our family, they’re not a family, they were thrust together.
If D’argo had a chance to find his son, or stay with everybody, on the ship, he would probably go find his son.
Zhaan wants to rehabilitate her image, and become a better person, and she wants to go back and help her people, who are oppressed, and if someone said “You can go back, we’ll let you help your people, we’ll let you be peaceful, we’ll let you do all the things you want to do with your life, or you can ride around on this ship, get chased, get your ass kicked, and be with these crazy aliens.” She would have to go home, because you would.
Rygel wouldn’t, just, is not the kinda guy that says, “Oh, lets all, just get along, let’s all, just float and drift, like, idiots.”
He sees the situation and he’s real, and when he speaks.
There was a speech in The Princess Trilogy that got cut, for time. I wrote it, it sums up Rygel.
It’s in the first episode of The Princess Trilogy, after, uh, he jumps into Counselor Tyno, and says, “We’ll come down to the planet.” and “Fate has forged this alliance.”
He turns to Crichton, who had earlier tried to shut him up, and he says “Was I right?”
and Crichton goes “Yeah, I guess so.” “Was, I, right?” “Yes, Rygel you were right.” “Don’t, ever, forget it.”
Rygel says in the cut that aired “Don’t, ever, forget it.” well there was a line that came before “Don’t, ever, forget it.” And Rygel said, and it will show up on, probably on, the DVD’s.
He says, “I’m small”, I can’t remember it all, it was three parts.
He said, “I’m small, so you think, I’m insignificant. I’m selfish, so you think, I am shallow.” And then he had one more parable.
He said something like “I am,” uh, uh, “self serving, so you think, I am to be ignored.” And then he said “You are wrong. All those things only let” “give you” “All those things only give you, the cover, to deny, that the things I say, are often true.” “Don’t, ever, forget it.”
And they, we cut out that speech, for time, and it goes from the“was I right, was I right.” “Don’t you forget it.”
That’s how I view Rygel, and that speech, I was very, very unhappy to lose, but we had to.
Because Rygel to me, people should be looking at Rygel in a different way.
Scorpius
I think Scorpious is a man, or a half man, half Sabacian, half Scarran, He’s a creature of honor.
uh, He’s nasty as can be, and he’ll, ya know, he’d just as soon leave you dead as not, but, it’s in pursuit.
No villain thinks he’s a villain, no villain ever say’s gee this morning I’m going to wake up and be a terrible, you know, guy. No, he wakes up and says I have to accomplish these things, I’ve got to do XYZ.
So Scorpious is in his mind not a villain. He’s a got an agenda and he’s trying to save his race and his people the Sabacians from outside pressures on them.
I don’t want to give away who but ya know there’s some indications already who that might be and Scorpious is a man with a mission.
You watch him in the Princess Trilogy he talks to Dargo pretty openly and calmly and he’s capable of sitting down and having a meal with you if that suits his agenda.
He’s a negotiator, he’s a businessman, uh, I think that there’s some real good stuff to be mined between Rygel and Scorpious.
I think they’d be all on about cutting a deal with each other and what can you do for me and what can you, be like two heads of giant corporations.
Well, we’re going to close this plant and forty thousand workers in Ohio are going to be out of jobs.
But it’s good for the overall company and it’s good for the overall economy, and that’s how the world works.
And so those forty thousand people, here’s your severance check, I’m sorry this is happening to you.
That’s kinda Scorpious, you know, and if he has to execute those forty thousand people, he also would, but he wouldn’t he’s not a malicious guy.
He would never do it for the pleasure of, he’s not one of those guy’s, who says I’ve got this prisoner here, I will shoot this prisoner because it gives me pleasure.
He will only shoot the prisoner if he has to or there’s a reason to that’s compelling.
He’s not, we kinda like Scorpious.
Scorpious, I’m sure, he’s got friends but when in the business setting he’s kinda like the head of a media corporation say, uh, pick one of all the big conglomerates.
They tend to be viewed as tyrannical from below but to the other media moguls they’re all very good friends, and they get along great, it’s you’ve got to maintain an image over the people above you. Kinda like executive producing.
Stark
Stark, is one of those people that you meet in life, you meet somebody, you don’t see them again for quite a long while, and they come back into your life, and you end up working with them, especially in our business, and then you don’t see them for four years and then you work with them again together and here’s a guy who has just come back into our orbit, to use the astronomical word.
And, uh, is perhaps, going to collide off some of the other orbiting bodies while he is with us.
Simply and truly there was something about the actor, Paul Goddard.
The character was a small bit part character, and this actor, Paul Goddard, who incidentally appeared in The Matrix, uh, is a phenomenal actor, and hugely, which we haven’t been able to touch on, funny.
He is an extraordinarily, funny man, and so a little bit of that, there’s a joyous, impish, elfish, performance, that comes out of the him that you can’t resist.
So we saw him do his famous ‘my side, your side, your side, my side’ routine, and I said ok, we need to meet this guy, talk to him, and we got to know him as an actor and talked to him a little bit, and the realization was there, that, oh man, is this a great character.
So we all started to give thought to it, and we crystallized, who he is, what he is, and we explain his face, and we got all that down, and you, you, all of you, will learn that, as the show progresses.
Stark will be come a very real, rich, deep, detailed, and like all of our characters, disturbed, character.
Zhaan
How can Zhaan be so spiritual, be relied upon by the crew, to be an ombudsman of morality, when she has such darkness residing within her?
She’s the best we got.
Your on a boat, in the middle of the Atlantic, you cut yourself, and your bleeding pretty bad, and you need that cut stitched up, and there’s a Baker, and a Bricklayer, and a Nurse, and you take the Nurse, you want a Doctor, but you’ll take the Nurse.
Now, the Nurse isn’t there, but a Seamstress is, well you’d like to have a Nurse or Doctor, but you’ll take the Seamstress, because she can throw a stitch through your skin, you don’t want the Bricklayer, you know, so Zhaan, is kind of a Seamstress.
She’s a very moral person who’s striving toward a better life.
The thing to remember about Zhaan, the key to Zhaan, and I don’t let anyone forget it in the writing room.
Everyone says, “Well how can she do that? She’s a Priest.”
Well, yeah, but she started as a youthful radical, who turned into a murderer, and she became a Priest later.
She’s not a Priest who fell, she’s a fallen woman trying to became a Priest.
She is a 10th level P’au now, and some day, striving to be an 11th level, but it’s a quest, and her roots are darker.
And, metaphorically speaking, as a plant, there you go.
Her roots come from a dark place that she’s trying to banish within her.
You can have a Priest, who’s always been good, and just a wonderful, pious person, and then they, you know, steal a pack of gum, and forever their, feeling bad, and, then they’ll recover.
What we have is a murderer, who essentially killed the religious leader of her planet, during sex, and then, she’s now trying to atone for it, and she’s reaching for spirituality.
She’s the best we got.