Farscape: Looking Backwards
Feb. 9th, 2005 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kilroyI haven't been doing a lot of media reviews of late, but this one brought me to the point of speaking again.
Over the past few months, I've been watching Farscape. The show is frequently uneven, but more often than not it's bloody amazing. Even in the middle of crappy episodes with contrived plots, they manage to have more genuine character development than any three episodes of Babylon 5. And when the Farscape crew is on, believe me, they're on. More than a few times I've actually jumped out of my chair to cheer them on.
Now, Farscape is another one of those stupid television tragedies. They were always meant to be a five season story. They got cancelled after they'd already filmed the last four episodes of the fourth season. So the fourth season ended on a big, fat cliffhanger that left the fans screaming. And scream they did, for months, until eventually the Scifi Channel gave them a miniseries to cap everything off.
Let's do a quick bit of math here: normal television season is 22 1-hour episodes, and a miniseries is four hours. They had to somehow compress an entire season of pre-plotted series into three hours of actual screen time.
And they did it. Seriously, they really did it. And the result is three hours of the most compelling television I've ever seen. It was at least as good as the end of B5, and probably better. It was fantastic.
"But shooting makes me feel better!"
If for some reason you ever have 91 hours spare, I know how you should spend it.
Over the past few months, I've been watching Farscape. The show is frequently uneven, but more often than not it's bloody amazing. Even in the middle of crappy episodes with contrived plots, they manage to have more genuine character development than any three episodes of Babylon 5. And when the Farscape crew is on, believe me, they're on. More than a few times I've actually jumped out of my chair to cheer them on.
Now, Farscape is another one of those stupid television tragedies. They were always meant to be a five season story. They got cancelled after they'd already filmed the last four episodes of the fourth season. So the fourth season ended on a big, fat cliffhanger that left the fans screaming. And scream they did, for months, until eventually the Scifi Channel gave them a miniseries to cap everything off.
Let's do a quick bit of math here: normal television season is 22 1-hour episodes, and a miniseries is four hours. They had to somehow compress an entire season of pre-plotted series into three hours of actual screen time.
And they did it. Seriously, they really did it. And the result is three hours of the most compelling television I've ever seen. It was at least as good as the end of B5, and probably better. It was fantastic.
"But shooting makes me feel better!"
If for some reason you ever have 91 hours spare, I know how you should spend it.