The Watercooler for Netflix

Or: The One Where Crichton Blows Up His Phallic Substitute, But D’Argo’s Shoots Lasers

In the first Farscape piece I wrote on here, I described John Chricton as a Star Trek hero forced to exist in a world with very little patience for that breed of non-violent idealism. There’s a narrative arc implied by that idea, a Gene Roddenberry story about one good man uplifting a fallen universe through sheer decency and rationality.

This isn’t that story.

This is a story about growing up. About realizing that there’s a point where idealism has to stop, because now you’re the liability who keeps blowing up your gun and everyone rolls their eyes when you say you have a plan. Because you’re so obsessed with impressing people that it gets you kidnapped and killed. Because you want to save people (and save them YOUR WAY) so badly you’re willing to kill them to do it. Because you keep pushing your brother or your sister away with words like “barbarian” or “coward” so you don’t have to look at how similar you are.

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Or: The One Where We Learn the Farscape Euphemism for Testicles

This is basically Groundhog Day, except that Groundhog Day is fun, and this is boring. The whole POINT of a Groundhog Day scenario is to show a) the fun of consequence-free actions, and b) how a simple situation can turn out differently based on a few simple choices.

Instead, what we get is Shouty D’Argo (have I mentioned my distaste for Shouty D’Argo?), super-simple characterizations, and (ugh)… Matala.

Look, I have no problem with the idea of the femme fatale. And it’s actually pretty clever to have a character who combines D’Argo’s desire for a home with the fact that he hasn’t had sex in 8 years. But the whole subplot where Crichton wants to or does not want to have crazy alien finger sex or whatever with her feels like padding with no point except to get D’Argo jealous, and a red herring to make us think she might have sexy mind control powers or something.

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“Moya is invaded by spawning space bugs, which produce clones of the crew. To complicate matters, a Peacekeeper retrieval squad arrives and Aeryn begins to suffer heat delirium.”

I’m glad to see that Netflix is using the airdate order for Farscape instead of the production order, both because the second produced episode, “I, E.T.” works much better slightly later in the season, and because this one is such a good re-entry to the world of Moya and her crew. It introduces several important plot points, relationships, bits of mythology and themes that we’ll be making extensive use of as time goes on.

For instance, and most prominently, we have Sebacean Heat Death, one of the least believable but most plot-important bits of the show’s often plausibility-challenged approach to biology. While I find it hard to swallow that a race with such a huge, glaring weakness (it seems to reach fatal levels at, what, 100 Fahrenheit?) could be as dominant and widespread as Sebaceans and Peacekeepers are, it does have a certain lyricism to it - the ultra-repressed Peacekeepers being portrayed as literally cold-blooded. More importantly, it puts Aeryn in a position of weakness and vulnerability, something the character probably needs at this point in the series.

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“I’m on another planet.”

That’s how he gets me. That’s the moment I fall for John Chricton. Not his pop culture wisecracks. Not his bravery or his resourcefulness (which his vast ignorance of the situation he’s in never stops him from making use of). It’s that, on a squalid commerce planet covered in burning trash barrels and rejects from the Mos Eisley cantina, John Chricton’s first reaction is one of awe. He’s on another planet.

Chricton is a different kind of sci-fi hero, and Farscape a different kind of show, despite its shopworn “Lost in Space” premise. In another show, John would be the captain, the two-fisted action hero. But Moya doesn’t have a captain - the crew makes most of its decisions by yelling at each other until things get so bad there’s only one, insane choice left to make, and John Chricton’s not a warrior, not a leader. He’s a scientist. An explorer.

Pay attention, as you watch the first season. Count the number of times Chricton fires a weapon. He’s a guy raised on Next Generation, always favoring diplomatic, non-violent solutions. The difference is, he’s not traveling through the universe on a mission of peaceful exploration with a crew of Federation-raised utopianists. He’s sharing a ship with an anarchist priestess, a rage-filled warrior, a lifelong solider, a greedy-driven royal, all of them desperate to survive.

One of the (many) joys of Farscape is watching that idealism warp, change, evolve, mature under the pressures that are coming.

And to see whether, when it’s all over, John Chricton can still look at the universe with awe.

“Space. The final frontier.”  That’s probably what astronaut John Crichton is thinking in the opening scene as he stares up at the NASA space shuttle at dawn. And he doesn’t have to wait long to go boldly where no man has gone before. Five minutes into the pilot, before the credits roll or the first commercial break, our hero is already thrust into a big alien space battle. Five minutes after that and he’s being accosted by weird, rude aliens on a freaky prison ship. And oh yeah the ship is alive. Welcome to Farscape! 

Did you know all aliens have an Australian accent? Or maybe it’s a fault with the translator microbes John gets injected with. 

As a sci-fi show made in 1999 it’d invariably be judged on it’s special effects, which happily still hold up today. But it’s the Jim Henson Production Company’s puppets and prosthetics that really sell Farscape’s aliens in a way not previously achieved in the Star Trek school of “mostly human with some forehead ridges” aliens. 

Most sci-fi stories take place from the perspective of humans expanding out and discover/fighting The Other, but Farscape flips that on it’s ear. Our protagonist is a fish-out-of-water human in an unfamiliar galaxy full of aliens who’ve never ever heard of Earth. 

There’s a deft two minute scene in that pilot that gives some nice exposition (and flirting) between two of the main alien characters. It’s a valuable chunk of time to spend in the pilot in a scene without our human protagonist, but that’s part of the point. That scene really humanizes the characters for the audience and shows it’s an ensemble show about aliens, with a human providing audience perspective. 

It’s a well crafted pilot. Small seeds of character & plot bloom naturally later on in the episode and the season. In 44 minutes the show manages to get us up to speed on the universe, characters, their relationships, and desires. And it does so in a light-hearted, thoughtful way. And the show is funny! With all the unique characters comes a lot of grounded, relatable humor. Also fart jokes. 

Of all the great scenes in the pilot my favoriate would probably be the reveal of Aeryn. A masked warrior jailed along with John, she takes off her helmet and proceeds to tackle and interrogate him about who he is and why he’s not in uniform like her. Zhann reveals that after doing some tests, while he may look like Aeryn, he’s definitely not the same species. So with even human-seeming characters not being able to be taken at face value, the pilot really leaves the door open for the series to ask a lot of interesting questions. 

John: How do i know i can trust you? 
Aeryn: That’s just another thing you don’t know. 

(The full series of Farscape is available to stream on Netflix.)

I’ve tried to resist their siren song for months but I give in. Let’s talk TV. 

I’ll be watching all three shows but you should watch any of the three that interest you:

Farscape - Season 1 - 22 eps, 50 mins each. (~4 episodes per week)

• A sci-fi show with heart and Jim Henson puppets. (Trailer)

Better Off Ted - Season 1 - 13 eps, 22 mins each (~3 episodes per week)

• A quirky and incisive office comedy. (Trailer)

Downton Abbey - Season 1 - 7 eps, 48 mins each (~2 episodes per week)

• A British costume drama set pre-WWI.  (Trailer)

Reviews of pilot episodes will go up this weekend.  Please watch along and submit any thoughts you have on them!  

Watching and discussions will happen throughout June. If people like this we’ll vote for new TV shows come July. 

(Movie reviews will go on hiatus for the summer. Recommendations will crop back up when I have time to do a round-up. Sherlock review and related titles will be out later this week. Thoughts on anything? Comment or email me.)