by spudthedestroyer on Fri Mar 17, 2006 7:19 pm
I've been watching shit loads of Farscape and, although my confidence about it was battered a bit when a year or so after seeing it I started re\watching Babylon 5 and other decent scifi shows, like BSG; after rewatching farscape again, I find my doubts totally unfounded I still easily find it the best scifi tv show i've ever seen on pretty much every single front.
Farscape is by far the best scifi show i've ever seen, I understand people don't like it and often its for the very reasons i love it, and I think I know why. Its because the characters consistantly do the wrong thing, tis one of the most prominant features of the show, they screw up badly. Hardly any of their plans work first time, and when they do, a lot of people end up dying. They always screw up and end up being chased, the characters are by far the most interesting and unique in all of scifidom, even the extras are great. Visually its most certainly the most asphetically pleasing scifi tv series i've seen, I know people don't like it on this count but i think its one of the strongest qualities myself, making the show unique and appealing, they go way over the top and to be honest it works a damn sight better because of it, where the aliens actually look exotic and alien; warts, gore and all. As they are big, weird and wonderful, it allows for the stories to play of that way in the standalone episodes.
Speaking of gore, there's more blood and killing than i remember, it makes me wonder if i saw censored episodes first time round (I understand it was cut on scifi).
Watching through it all you can see how/why the series worked so damn well, character play and continual-consistant story threads.
An example of how unique it is can be found in pretty much every episode, I had forgotten about some of the stuff the characters do that put them apart from any other show. ie. where they hold down pilot and chop off one of his arms for currency.
The show is consistantly good, and gets better each series. I can only point to a couple of poorer episodes over the four series. The show also has a consistantly moving arc, there's lots of standalone episodes, but they are strongly moulded into character building exercises and there's lots of 2\3 part episodes, which are extremely high on adrenaline. By the end of series 4, its all building up ("previously on farscape" gets longer and longer) and the 'final' episode just pisses you off so much when you consider that was going to be. Seriously annoyed me to the point i started going around looking for farscape news, luckily we got the mini-series but even when it reaches a complete state... you still need more.
Even though it reached a great end with the miniseries (and if you haven't seen it, i'd still recommend watching through all the series and seeing it), I'd pay for for more farscape again that's for damn sure. I just bought the entire series 1 and need to acquire 2-4 too now. The price is still £40-50 but its worth it for me.
I'd throw away any show if it meant more farscape, even shows i love to bits are irrelevant in a trade off for me.
So my favourite show ranking, farscape moves to below red dwarf in number two slot. Its extremely close, and a lot of that comes down to mentally blocking series 7 and 8 of dwarf, and some of the poorer episodes and being a long time fan and context. If i don't farscape would be really close.
In other show news, i watched the new family guy which is as good as to be expected from that show. I also watched sopranos but somehow felt kind of detatched from the show, lots of talking and banter i just didn't find relevant but then i can see they are just setting up the current layout of the family after the arrest and you can see the introduction of characters and tensions that are going to play out. I enjoyed it, but I don't know, I think i'm growing away from it like you sometimes get with shows when they get to that many seasons long and don't change so much.
