Produced and filmed in Australia, Farscape is an unforgettable sci-fi space opera that broke new ground on television when it premiered in 1999. Rockne S. O’Bannon created Farscape after demonstrating his considerable talent as a science fiction writer for The Twilight Zone and Amazing Stories series in 1985 as well as for the popular late 1980s Fox Broadcasting sci-fi show, Alien Nation and its made-for-television movies that followed in the 1990s. He also created SeaQuest DSV, a short-lived sci-fi series that aired on NBC. Farscape is comprised of 88 episodes (1999-2003) and a 182-minute miniseries entitled Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars (2004)–all of which aired on SCI-FI Channel. DVDs are widely available today.

Of course, had it not been for Star Trek, the original series, Farscape likely would never have come to be. However, Farscape sped light years beyond all the Star Trek series and motion pictures in terms of storytelling, character development, overall acting skills, special effects, and embedded messages for its audience. Farscape truly is a stunning accomplishment on many levels.

Perhaps the most significant Farscape component is its character development. This vital aspect of a deep and rich series owes its success to a remarkable combination of excellent writing and highly skilled actors. Ben Browder (pictured, left), an actor from the United States, portrays U.S. astronaut John Crichton. While flying his experimental space shuttle named “Farscape” on short orbital mission around Earth, he is accidentally propelled through a wormhole way out to the farthest reaches of the universe. It is there that John Crichton meets a wide range of heroes and villains with whom he lives and dies and is reborn.

Talented Australian actors contribute significantly to the credibility of the series characters. Claudia Black (pictured, right) is Aeryn Sun, an officer serving in a militarist peacekeeping force, who becomes the chief love interest of John Crichton. Their friend and fellow space traveler is Ka D’Argo, played by Anthony Simcoe. One of the best-defined sci-fi villains ever to appear on television is Scorpius, brought to life by actor Wayne Pygram. Gigi Egeley is the sexy Chiana, who clearly knows best how to survive the ever threatening and often violent situations in which the Farscape characters find themselves. Virginia Hey is famous as the ethereal blue priestess Zhan, but she is not along for the entire four-season ride.

Where Farscape is most unique, however, is in its depiction of life out there where no other person from planet Earth ever has gone before. Planets are boldly amd colorfully depicted, both from orbit and on visits to the surface. Travel between various points in space and time is shown on Farscape in dazzling and compelling fashion–most notably by way of the gigantic living ship named Moya inside which John Crichton and his companions journey.

Following a path set by George Lucas with his character Yoda in the Star Wars movies, Farscape makes use of not one, but two Jim Henson muppet-type characters. Exiled king Rygel interacts with other characters throughout the series. Pilot, who is physically and mentally connected to Moya, thus cannot leave the ship. However, these two Farscape characters are portrayed straightforwardly with the same seriousness as the portrayal of Earthling John Crichton and his humanoid companions. The juxtapositioning of these two Farscape Jim Henson muppet-type characters with other characters that portrayed by human beings affords many opportunities for the writers to convey powerful idea content about the nature and value of all sentient beings, regardless of their outward appearances.

The early episodes of Farscape season one emerge as comparatively tame and orderly when contrasted with the psychedelic and mindblowing nature of later episodes, especially in the third and fourth seasons. The 2004 Farscape miniseries, produced after the untimely (if not financially unwise) network brass decision to cancel the series, wraps up all the unfinished storylines from all four seasons. Masterfully engaging on both the emotional and intellectual levels, the miniseries delivers an unexpectedly powerful impact even though it was produced for the small screen.

To observe that Farscape has a sense of humor would be a great understatement. Episodes typically feature punchy dialogue that draws much of its fun from the difficult cultural and moral adjustments that John Crichton must make in his life among otherworldly companions. In this aspect, Farscape is quite similar to Star Trek as the human struggle to interact successfully with alien life in the universe is rarely easy or simple. Farscape, also like Star Trek, provides audiences with many lessons learned by the characters that serve clear persuasive purposes the writers obviously held when crafting the storytelling. The rhetorical content conveyed through Farscape stories consistently provide viewers with ideas about personal honor, commitment to one’s friends and loved ones, relationships, warfare, death, and the purpose of life. This is not your typical good-conquers-bad kind of storytelling so common in science fiction. In fact, Farscape dares to take the opposite path occasionally.

Overall, Farscape, with hundreds of hours of total running time, stands as an example of how to write and produce science fiction stories on television with the highest level of quality and credibility–both in character development and storytelling. If ever there was a television production that deserved to morph into a theatrically released motion picture franchise so that more stories can be written and produced, it is certainly Farscape. FARSCAPE copyright © Jim Henson Company, Hallmark Entertainment, Nine Network, and NBC Universal.