Far-out Farscape box offers four seasons, no miniseries

Sunday, December 22, 2013

What is it? Farscape, 15th Anniversary Edition, 88 episodes on 27 disks from Flatiron Film Co.

How much? $129.95

When? Now

What is Farscape? Farscape is an experimental spacecraft designed and piloted by American astronaut/scientist John Crichton (Ben Browder). While on a test flight, Crichton goes through a wormhole in space, ending up on the other side of the universe with some very strange company.

Almost immediately, he’s taken aboard Moya, a Leviathan (living spacecraft) that was imprisoned by the militaristic Peacekeepers and used as a prison vessel. Her current unwilling passengers are the temperamental warrior Ka D’Argo (Anthony Simcoe), anarchistic priestess Zhaan (Virginia Hey) and a greedy, self-centered deposed ruler named Rygel(voiced by Jonathan Hardy). When Crichton shows up, the ship is in rebellion, and when the ship, Pilot (who serves as pilot and ship liaison and is voiced by Lani John Tupu) and her passengers escape, he’s taken along for the ride.

Also along for the ride is Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black), a strict and highly skilled Peacekeeper for whom normal human emotions are undesirable.

Too bad for Crichton, he accidentally killed the brother of Peacekeeper Captain Crais (Tupu), who’s now in the mood for revenge, and Crichton’s knowledge of wormholes eventually draws the unwanted attention of the very, very evil Scorpius (Wayne Pygram).

Over the next few years, the ragtag bunch (which grows to include more characters such as rebellious teen Chiana played by Gigi Edgley) begin to bond as they fight all sorts of strange and determined enemies and try to find a way home - wherever that is.

The series was canceled after four seasons and followed by a wrap-up miniseries, but that miniseries is not included, so just know that this ends on a cliffhanger.

How is it? Far out. Literally. This is a sci-fi series so, naturally, there are spaceships, alien technology, creatures with tentacles growing out of their heads, the usual. But this series takes things even a step farther with puppets(Rygel and Pilot), heavily made-up humans (Chiana, Scorpius, Zhaan and D’Argo) and plots that bounce around from operatic tragedy to utter wackiness. There’s even an animated episode.

It works. Yes, the action scenes can be a bit sluggish, and it all gets convoluted and increasingly hard to swallow if sci-fi isn’t your thing. But the characters are likable and the fantasy world the show creates is engrossing. Plus, it does everything with a quirky sense of humor and a lot of creativity.

It helps that the Jim Henson Company, with its trademark ability to make foam and rubber come to life, was involved in the creation of the series and of the puppets.

Are there extras? Enough that you might feel like you’re going down a wormhole yourself. You can expect the usual: commentaries, deleted scenes, a gag reel, many lengthy cast and crew interviews. There are also more documentaries than you could hope to find on your average DVD release. They cover the series’ beginning and ending, special effects, characters, storylines, multiple sessions with the music composer - there’s even footage of creator/producer David Kember giving the cast and crew a farewell speech on the last day of filming. Some of the content was filmed when the series was in production and some is more recent. It all adds up to several hours of behind-the-scenes stuff.

New this week: None.

Next week: Perry Mason, Movie Collection, Vol. 1; Wolfblood, Season 1.

Style, Pages 50 on 12/22/2013