f13.net

I splurged and picked up the new Farscape boxed set.  It's retailing for $60-70 for the first 4 seasons, 50 minute Australian episodes (as compared to the 42 minute cut US ones), and piles of bonus materials.  Just started my rewatch!

Eight episodes in to season one:

Pros:
- The acting is generally top notch.  Welcome change from B5!
- Production, sets, and effects are all solid.
- Claudia Black.  Claudia Black.  Claudia Black.
- Some very good character development, even in the episode of the week format, that really pays off later on.  Even this early, it's fun how the aliens opinion of Crichton goes from inferior species/rube to rolling their eyes at his wackiness.  The main relationship is being built nicely.
- It's really a gray world.  The Peacekeepers are mostly assholes, but really everyone (including our main characters) are exceptionally flawed or borderline assholes.

Cons:
- Muppets.  I don't mind them, but this is the biggest turn off for people.  Either you accept that the various puppets work for the non-humanoid species, or you don't.
- Crais is the big bad.  He's.... adequate.  Looking forward to the end of the season and the new big bad.
- Exceptionally flawed characters.  Half the time, these guys are their own worst enemies.

B5>Farscape

This was my favorite aspect of the patchwork of episodes I've seen. So many shows (in any genre) are black and white that it was fun to watch a narrative space where absolutely nobody could be trusted. Ever. Main character interactions were always enjoyable, but the episodic space-problem-of-the-week was uniformly sub-par. I've only watched as much as I have because I lived with die-hard fans.

Yes.  Relied too heavily on the problem-of-the-week to provide the environment for the characters to interact.  When you had a run of mediocre problems, you had the show really stagnate. 

Really, that's the same exact thing that killed Firefly.

you shut your whore mouth.

Farscape stops being a problem-of-the-week show around the end of season one, and goes into the best fucking storyline arcs of science fiction television, ever.  There are still occasional standalone episodes, but the series as a whole becomes very focused on major stories.  Which the sci-fi channel then fucked up with 'durr hey guise, new viewers can't understand these season-long stories, you need to make it episodic' and resulted in some of the absolute worst episodes ever.

Episodes to avoid because they are AIDS:
I, E.T. (Season 1)
Taking the Stone (Season 2)
Picture if You Will (Season 2)

There are no redeeming qualities about these episodes, no important story or character developments to miss.  You can skip them without anything of value being lost, and should.

Claudia Black!

I'll randomly insert my love for this show here as well. If they are selling the whole series at that price I may splurge, as my dvdrips are a bit all over the place.

Gigi Edgley

*High-five*

Season 1 when it first aired kind of made me feel meh about the whole thing, so it took a while before I noticed that the show was getting a lot better. Part of it wasn't just the better writing of arcs, it was that they gave Crichton a more important raison d'etre than just being Lost in Space at the end of the first season. I appreciated the way in which the show kept deepening the "alienness" of its setting as time went on. A good example of building a mythos step by step without just arbitrarily changing the rules so you can make a particular episode work the way you want. (Though Chiara's powers, if I remember right, kept changing a lot.)

I watched the first few episodes a year or three back, enjoyed them, then got distracted and forgot about the show.  I picked up the first season dvd set last night, due to this thread.  I'm just saying, if I end up hating it, it's all your fault.

I always liked Virginia Hey best. And, she was in the Road Warrior.

I just finished watching Season 2 of B5 in my rewatch pile.  I never watch Farscape so it's coming next.

Heh, I remember the third or fourth episode had the crew sawing off the Pilots arm to get a map back home. Classy characters really.  :grin:

But yeah I agree about Crias being weak as a bad guy, but He takes off in the last 4 episodes of season 1 along with the story. The guy that takes over as the big bad is a whole order of magnitude of nasty.

This. Also muppets.

Not that I have anything against Farscape. I wouldn't mind watching the whole thing as I understand it got better with Scorpius. But when the series first started coming out on DVD, it was 2 episodes per disc for $20. Fuck a bunch of that. One day I'll get back to it.

I really enjoyed B5 and Farscape a lot.  I'd have to give Farscape the edge due to smartass kickassery.

Also, Star Wars sucked: muppets.

Watch the whole thing, you opinion will go up ten notches and whether it puts it above b5 or not who knows.  I like the both but I always put farscape ahead because while b5 had a great story for the most part the characters were very unbelievable(save londo, g'kar) in the case of farscape though, yes some of the eps were problem-of-the-week but the cast all felt realistic.

Where did you buy yours from?  Most places had it for $89 - $109 that I saw.

I saw it for the $60-$70 price prior to the holidays on Amazon, so I didn't think twice when JC posted that price. Now it's listed at $150, "sale priced" at $109 (and sold out).. odd.

check other offers, there's tones of people selling it new for $74.....so tempted....

Oh yeah, I saw that. I meant the actual Amazon price is the one that's gone all wonky.

Farscape.love++

This was what stopped me from watching it. I love muppets but for some reason I couldn't take them seriously the few times I flipped by Farscape on the SciFi channel. How Yoda could look real and these muppets look like Kermit with a mustache I'll never figure out.

I picked it up from my local Best Buy for $70, since that's what I'd be looking at if I had ordered from Amazon plus shipping at the time.  Had it since around Thanksgiving, but was finishing up my B5 rewatch.

Bestbuy.com still has it for $70, but it's on backorder. 


Hate to mention it, but I end up buying alot of TV series at Walmart.  Terrible selection, but everything is dirt goddamn cheap.  My local Walmart was where I found B5 for $20 a season, and they still have Buffy/Angel seasons for $13/season.

I won Season 2 of Farscape in a youtube competition to create a youtube vid for X3: Terran Conflict. *Flex*

It was the only reason I entered  :drill:

[Edit] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_vS_kDOGRs If you are curious.

I'm up around episode 6 or so and am enjoying it.  The muppets really don't bother me, and I find the whole cast pretty engaging so far.   Compared with SGU, which I've been watching recently, Farscape feels much more sci-fi-y ^^

Major motion picture budget v. dinky syndicated TV budget.

(http://blog.kir.com/archives/yoda.jpg)(http://dreamers.com/hiperesp/Artics/farscape2/rigel.jpg)

It may also be due to the fact that Yoda has more haman-esque features, making him a more believable character in light of our natural bias.

Claudia Black.

I like my muppets. Spend the last month or so watching all four seasons and there's some great stuff in there.

Ah, Farscape. Chrichton's transition from bumbling geek to hardcore badass was well worth it, and I rather enjoy the fact that I've yet to work out who, exactly, Scorpius was working for.

If anyone. Seriously, that man was something like a quintuple agent, and capable of putting the mindfuck on people so easily that there's no trusting anything ANYONE ever said about him.

All told, though, watching Chrichton get up on a table -- atomic bomb strapped to his waist -- and proceed to tell the galatic Powers-That-Be that he's going to handle this the American way and sell his secrets to the highest bidder, or blow them all to hell -- was classic.

I've made it to Season 3, just watched the Scorpius origin episode.  THAT'S HOW YOU MAKE A SYMPATHETIC VILLAIN.  And Bracca first shows his dog-like loyalty to Scorpius.  God, I love Bracca.  He has some great moments in season 4!

Season 3 is where they start presenting the other side to the Peacekeepers.  Sure, they're ultra-pragmatic pseudofacist Imperialists...  But the Scarrans?  They'll kill everyone, maybe with a side of rape first.

B5 - season 5 = Farscape. B5 as a whole < Farscape.

Plus, Claudia. Fucking. Black.

Farscape is a good show no doubt, but every character was irritating to me.  Oh and their personalties changed almost every episode (see last season of BSG) to serve the current crisis.  B5's characters had arcs and stayed consistent, even if some of the acting was pretty meh. 

Maybe that's an Aussie TV thing, but it drove me nuts.  But, yes, Farscape had some great moments, it was just weird as fuck.

So, made it through the lot.

Season 2:

Really, the first 1/2 to 3/4 of the season is pretty weak with a couple of exceptions.  Crackers Don't Matter is probably one of the best episodes of the series, and is in the beginning of that season.  Crackers pretty much set the tone for the rest of the show in how far it pushed the limits, introducing Harvey, and the main character's insanity. 

Won't Get Fooled Again is pretty solid as well.  Crichton wakes up back on Earth and he knows it's a hallucination, then things go wierd.

The last portion of season 2 is solid.  The two 3 part episodes are wonderful.  Look at the Princess really gives us the first Scarran antagonist, and Scorpius figures prominently.  Liars and Guns and Money is just solid action/intrigue scifi with heavy doses of Farscape weirdness and insantity.

The final episode of this season, Die Me Dichotomy, is heart-wrenching.  The bad guy wins, a major character is killed, and our hero wants to die.  "I condemn you John Crichton...  to live!"

The entire cast takes a couple of Levels in Bad Ass during this season.

Season 3:

Almost every episode is a keeper, building up to a wonderful season finale.  We get the origins of Scorpius, a couple of main character deaths (and one resurrection), good character growth all around.  At this point, Crichton has become infamous as a criminal and terrorist and that works in as a plot point in several of the episodes.

Eat Me is a favorite, and sets up the midseason story arc.  The game of rock-paper-scissors at the end is just.... 

The last episode ends on an "oh shit" cliffhanger.

Season 4:

Enjoyable.  Some dross problem-of-the-week episodes, but lots of great arc episodes.  The season finale 3 parter (We're So Screwed) is wonderful, and includes Crichton walking around with a fission bomb hooked up to multiple dead man's switches.

The series finale ends on a cliffhanger, and is a hugely powerful moment.

Miniseries:

It's.... alright.  Feels rushed, though it does do a good job of resolving the outstanding story threads from the series.


Overall:

It's character based with long running story elements.  Being character based, that means you need to have flawed characters who tend to be their own worst enemy.  Some of this gets a little tired in a 22 episode season because it feels like they go to the same well a time too many...  Partly fixed in season 3 and 4 by introducing a bunch of new recurring characters that let the writers play out new character interactions.

This is a show that would have benefited by either having reduced season lengths, thus eliminating some of the filler episodes, or by being more aggressive about pushing story/continuing arc episodes.

They did a great job with providing ongoing stories with actual resolution, rather than milking them till the end of the series.  The main romance moves along at a good clip, many of the important character stories get resolutions (D'Argo and his son), and John gets a chance to return to Earth... only that's not what is most important to him anymore.

The complete series is back down to $60 on Amazon, for the easily swayed!

Scorpius is the best space drama bad guy since Darth Vader.  If it weren't for what's his name in No Country for Old Men, he'd be THE best bad guy since Darth Vader.  If you're currently fighting the urge to mention anything related to Star Trek, you're just wrong.  Keep fighting it.

Too true. WAY too true.

Even at the end, it's impossible to tell where his loyalities really lie. And despite this, and despite the fact that no one trusts him and everyone is aware he's like a quintuple agent playing every side against the other in pursuit of some motive, at any given moment his state motivations are absolutely believable. Even to the people he's screwed.

Willing to trade wormhole knowledge for the destruction of that flower was probably the closest he'd get to admitting a true motivation, and yet his character is such that six months later he could believably claim it was all part of some Xanatos gambit.....

Damn good villian. :)

I caught a few episodes when they first aired and about ten years later I drunk posted this in the T&A thread:
Which got me wondering so I bought the DVD set and really enjoyed watching the entire thing.

I guess a good plot and performance can really linger in ones mind.