WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!!
So your show has been axed on the penultimate day of shooting and it’s far too late to change the story.
At the last your heroes end up being turned into a big pile of crystals and your fans are demanding resolution.
What do you do?
You make a kick-arse mini series to wrap everything up of course!
When Farscape disappeared from our screens a couple of years ago most of us probably thought that would be it, I know I certainly did, so it was with great anticipation that I sat down last night to watch a further three hour slice of this wonderfully inventive piece of science fiction.
The plot picks up, some 60 days after Crichton and Aeryn were crystallised, with Scorpius making the opening moves in a Peacekeeper/Scarran war, and the crew of Moya realising that they could be the only hope of stopping the Scarran advance. In the centre of it all John Crichton is gradually being pushed into a corner as he tries to protect his new family whilst at the same time trying to prevent both sides getting their hands on the wormhole technology he possesses . . .
Right from the outset it is apparent that someone behind the scenes was shouting “Think Big!” because this feels much more like a full blown feature film than an additional couple of episodes for TV. More or less everything is more ambitious and polished than it was in the regular series and the special effects are amongst the best I have seen on TV.
But as we all know special effects don’t make a good story so was it any good?
You bet your Granny it was!
Packed with everything that made the show so enjoyable; ridiculous situations, large explosions, sets and costumes that just ooze cool and the shows trademark humour (including one of the best 2001 parodies I have ever seen), this is Farscape at it’s best and it delivers exactly what it sets out to do – wrap up the Farscape franchise with a bang (actually it’s several hundred bangs . . .).
There are a few disappointments; the lack of the show’s regular theme music (which is missed even though it probably wouldn’t have worked for this format); next to the Scarrans Scorpius seems to have been relegated to the role of token henchman; the supporting cast - especially Moya, Pilot and Rigel - don’t really get much of a look in come the final round and Aeryn’s labour is more than a tad ridiculous, but it would be churlish to complain when the standard of the rest of it is so high.
This is a refreshing slice of TV science fiction and a reminder of just what we have been missing over the last couple of years. Stargate and Enterprise - and even Firefly to a point - are here all made to look as though they are standing still whilst Farscape just steams past them without any apparent effort.
Despite Brian Henson’s insistence (in the Making Of feature) that this isn’t the last you will see of Farscape it seems clear from the way the mini-series has been made that everyone expects this to be the show’s swansong.
If it is, well, it went out at the top of the curve and I for one am not unhappy with that
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The DVD also contains a rather good, though albeit brief, making of documentary; deleted scenes (that do help to round out the story so I’m guessing they were cut for timing reasons); so called Character Info-Pods (short interviews, biographical information and galleries on the main cast and characters); behind the scenes interviews with the Kemper, Prowse and Henson; a gallery of stills; some DVD ROM material and the obligatory trailers.
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Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars is available now on DVD from the usual sources - I’d recommend Play.com where you can pick it up for a bargain £17.99 (inc. delivery!).