marycrawford (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marycrawford) wrote2011-06-11 09:56 pm
marycrawford) wrote2011-06-11 09:56 pm
Farscape first reactions, also DVD sale!
I've been watching Farscape for the first time the last week or so -- I'm still in season 1 and have managed to avoid all spoilers so far, so please DO NOT SPOIL in comments, thank you! But please do join in if you've watched the series.
I never caught this show while it was on the air, and I have been hearing from a lot of people that I missed out. So far, I'm definitely inclined to agree. The show looks amazing, and has a lot of actually alien aliens, which is one of my favorite things in SF. They live on Moya, a ship that is a sentient being, with a pilot who is in a symbiotic relationship with her! J'adooore.
It also doesn't hurt that this isn't a standard Trek-ish story of human explorers with token aliens; the main cast has exactly one human, John Crichton, whom I really like so far. He has Very Nice Arms, and keeps making these completely inappropriate geeky cultural references that nobody else gets, because duh, he's the only human on board. This could be really annoying, but instead it just delights me. In the very first eps he calls a planet Dagobah, and later on he introduces himself and Aeryn to alien bounty hunters as "I'm Butch. This is Sundance. We're the Hole in the Sky Gang."
I also enjoy how everyone else thinks John's kind of a backward species from a primitive planet, and he can't really disagree. "Human. It’s kinda like Sebacean, but we haven’t conquered other worlds yet, so we just kick the crap out of each other." And in the episode I just watched, John tells Aeryn that yes, he does want to go back to Earth even though it's primitive and has wars and disease and no spaceflight -- "but you guys don't have chocolate."
One of the aliens looks human, but she really isn't. That's Aeryn Sun, whom I ADORE. Oh Aeryn. Snarky, gorgeous, stiff-necked and supremely competent. I think she stole my heart first when she got annoyed at John flirting with someone else and expressed her feelings by lifting a massive piece of equipment over her head. She then carried it down the corridor, glaring and yelling something like "Am I the only one around here who gets any work done?". <3
And then there is Zhaan (spelling thanks toflambeau, I sure couldn't tell from the dialogue) -- lovely blue alien priestess who gets orgasms from sunlight and who seems very relaxed and zen at first, right up until she cuts off someone's arm. And D'Argo the Luxan warrior, who has just mournfully said that he and Crichton can never be friends. I bet he is wrong wrong wrongity wrong. At least I hope so, having seen sdwolfpup's adorable Moving Right Along vid. And Rigel, who is a muppet but that is just to fool you -- he is not cute. He is mean, and will sling snot at you if you displease him. Which you will. When you die, he will be first in line to steal your shoes.
I got the complete Farscape dvd set thanks to an Amazon sale that is still ongoing: the Farscape: The Complete Series dvd set for just $50
. They last had this sale around Christmas, and I waffled about ordering the set, and then when I finally decided to do it, the price had gone back up again. But it's been $50 now for a while.
Caveat: this dvd set has a lot of commentaries and other extras, but it doesn't have The Peacekeeper Wars
, which is a miniseries made after Farscape the series ended. But I figure by the time I've gotten through all the seasons of Farscape, I'll be able to pick it up for cheap; it's less than 10 bucks now.
The British DVD set does have Peacekeeper Wars
, but it's also well over 60 pounds, so that doesn't seem like such a great deal in comparison.
I never caught this show while it was on the air, and I have been hearing from a lot of people that I missed out. So far, I'm definitely inclined to agree. The show looks amazing, and has a lot of actually alien aliens, which is one of my favorite things in SF. They live on Moya, a ship that is a sentient being, with a pilot who is in a symbiotic relationship with her! J'adooore.
It also doesn't hurt that this isn't a standard Trek-ish story of human explorers with token aliens; the main cast has exactly one human, John Crichton, whom I really like so far. He has Very Nice Arms, and keeps making these completely inappropriate geeky cultural references that nobody else gets, because duh, he's the only human on board. This could be really annoying, but instead it just delights me. In the very first eps he calls a planet Dagobah, and later on he introduces himself and Aeryn to alien bounty hunters as "I'm Butch. This is Sundance. We're the Hole in the Sky Gang."
I also enjoy how everyone else thinks John's kind of a backward species from a primitive planet, and he can't really disagree. "Human. It’s kinda like Sebacean, but we haven’t conquered other worlds yet, so we just kick the crap out of each other." And in the episode I just watched, John tells Aeryn that yes, he does want to go back to Earth even though it's primitive and has wars and disease and no spaceflight -- "but you guys don't have chocolate."
One of the aliens looks human, but she really isn't. That's Aeryn Sun, whom I ADORE. Oh Aeryn. Snarky, gorgeous, stiff-necked and supremely competent. I think she stole my heart first when she got annoyed at John flirting with someone else and expressed her feelings by lifting a massive piece of equipment over her head. She then carried it down the corridor, glaring and yelling something like "Am I the only one around here who gets any work done?". <3
And then there is Zhaan (spelling thanks to
flambeau, I sure couldn't tell from the dialogue) -- lovely blue alien priestess who gets orgasms from sunlight and who seems very relaxed and zen at first, right up until she cuts off someone's arm. And D'Argo the Luxan warrior, who has just mournfully said that he and Crichton can never be friends. I bet he is wrong wrong wrongity wrong. At least I hope so, having seen sdwolfpup's adorable Moving Right Along vid. And Rigel, who is a muppet but that is just to fool you -- he is not cute. He is mean, and will sling snot at you if you displease him. Which you will. When you die, he will be first in line to steal your shoes.I got the complete Farscape dvd set thanks to an Amazon sale that is still ongoing: the Farscape: The Complete Series dvd set for just $50
. They last had this sale around Christmas, and I waffled about ordering the set, and then when I finally decided to do it, the price had gone back up again. But it's been $50 now for a while.Caveat: this dvd set has a lot of commentaries and other extras, but it doesn't have The Peacekeeper Wars
, which is a miniseries made after Farscape the series ended. But I figure by the time I've gotten through all the seasons of Farscape, I'll be able to pick it up for cheap; it's less than 10 bucks now.The British DVD set does have Peacekeeper Wars
, but it's also well over 60 pounds, so that doesn't seem like such a great deal in comparison.
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Your post made me all burbly with glee. :D
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I don't watch any live tv anymore, so I'd never watch anything at all without fellow fans telling me of things that are especially my cup of tea. And they've been telling me of Farscape for years. :-)
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Your fellow fans are wise. It's a great show. Can't wait to see what else you have to say about it!
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Rigel is the Anti-Kermit.
And you didn't mention Pilot, who is *adorable*, for a value of adorable that includes giant, four-armed alien Muppets. And his voice actor is Lani John Tupu -- who also plays Capt. Crais, if you hadn't realized that by reading the credits yet.
I love how Farscape managed to make alien worlds a lot more alien than Star Trek did, by the clever use of Muppets, body paint, and non-Western material culture like clothing and hair-styling.
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No idea that it was the same actor as Capt. Crais! I have not been good at reading credits, which I probably should just so I know how to spell everybody. (Crais was Kreis in my head.) He is very good, I love the quietly sarcastic inflections he does as Pilot.
And yeah, absolutely more alien than Trek -- I love Trek a lot, but especially in later incarnations, I think they got very far away from the sense of wonder that makes SF so intriguing. I also love how Farscape deals with cultural differences so far.
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It's hard to believe I first saw the show a decade ago; it hasn't aged at all, really, which is marvelous. I'm very pleased you're enjoying it so early, because it's only going to get better. Also more heart-breaking.
I will use one of my less spoilery FS icons here. *g*
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New Scaper!!!
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I don't think it's spoilery to say that indeed, Aeryn Sun is every single kind of awesome rolled into one leather-clad, gun-toting, ass-kicking package. ALL the characters are awesome on toast, but I think most of the fandom has an extra special soft spot for Aeryn's particular brand of awesome.
I also don't think it's spoilery to say that Season 1 is kind of...uneven. But if you've already hit the parts where John meets Gilina and later, Zhaan cuts off Pilot's arm, you've already hit the part where everything starts clicking for the show and the average quality of the episodes goes up. The end of Season 1 is awesome, Season 2 and Season 3 are both ridiculously awesome on a weekly basis, and then Season 4 starts getting uneven again.
There are some incredible, amazing episodes in Season 4, don't get me wrong, but the show is less *consistently* awesome in that season. The consistency picks up again in a big way towards the end of Season 4 (it's kind of like Season 1 that way, with most of the wobbles concentrated in the first half of the season), and the miniseries is pretty awesome too.
I'm not trying to ruin your buzz, but I know when I was mainlining the show a year and a half ago, nobody warned me that the first half of Season 4 is kind of wobbly, so I was completely confused when we got several episodes in a row that I felt were below the high bar the show had set for itself. I finally asked someone, and got the response of, "Yeah, the quality drops off for a while. Just keep watching and know that the show DOES get back on track."
Oh, and late in Season 1 there's an absolute stinker of an episode called "Jeremiah Crichton", which you should only watch when you're drunk. It's seriously that bad, in every way. Although the DVD commentary track for it is hilarious and must be watched, because everybody commentating (cast, writer, producer) acknowledges that this is the single worst episode the show ever produced, and they totally make fun of its hilarious badness, even though it means making fun of themselves. I don't *think* the commentary track is spoilery for later in the season or later in the series, although I couldn't swear to it. I'm not saying don't watch that ep, just saying don't watch it sober.
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Thanks so much for the info about uneven eps/seasons! I think that will help so I don't lose interest/enthusiasm in the rough spots.
We're just about coming up on "Jeremiah Crichton" and it's good to know in advance that that's a one-off in terms of quality. The "Spock's Brain" of Farscape, sounds like. Though now I'm pretty much looking forward to watching it with the commentaries. :-)