I watch a LOT of television, or to be more accurate, I watch an awful lot of television series but I watch them mostly on dvd so I don't catch any of those pesky advert things. Generally I watch the American stuff although I've recently picked up a few more UK series which seem to be adopting the similar production values. I'll watch pretty much anything that doesn't involve members of the public or celebrities, although I tend not to watch sitcoms either at the moment.

Farscape

This is an amazing series - all the things that science fiction should be and most importantly utterly experimental not always suceeding, but always trying. Anything goes on Farscape and you can never really guess what's going to happen, from death and betrayal all the way through to characters turning into looney-toon characters. The alien races and worlds created are so beautifully alien and realised, right through to the amazing puppets created by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. The characters are amazingly layered and acting and the sense of joy the cast and crew have for their creation shows in every second.

Farscape: Season 1

I had a sudden craving for Farscape the other day, so sat down with episode 1 and spent the next few days working my way through for the first time in 3 years or so. I was surprised by how much happened in the first season, I thought many of the events happened later than that with the first season being more stand alone episodes. But by the end of the season we've already met many of the foundation stones of the rest of the seasons - wormhole aliens, Moya's baby, Scorpius and various other people who'll make reappearances. I was impressed with how big the series could seem even with just 6 (7 if you count Moya) main characters, only 4 of whom are actually actors, thinking on to later seasons Moya does seem to get rather crowded with various hitch-hikers. A superb, if somewhat bizarrely disconcerting, start to a series that somehow manages to have been consistently innovative, entertaining and disconcerting throughout it's run.

Farscape: Season 3

Season 3 seems to be the advent of the big plot arcs and epic stories. While other season had sorta arcs they were more character development type things and hence more slow moving and less intensive. Season 3 seems to spend about 1/5 of it's time in "previously on Farscape". Sadly I just didn't really enjoy this so much, possibly because as this was re-watching I remember how these epic storylines play out and end, while the shorter stories I'd forgotten. Also the crew spend a chunk of the middle of the season split into 2, removing a lot of the interesting character interplay. I was also slightly frustrated by the pairing of Aeryn and Crichton (I generally actually don't like it when the unrequeited loves get together on shows - what makes the characters interesting is the unrequitedness) and the use of the giant reset button of doom plot device.

The other character comings and goings are interseting too, but generally not for the best. The loss of Zhaan's calming presence means the crew loses it's centre with Pilot not able to replace the calming influence well enough to stop the crew (and season) becoming much more frantic and unbalanced. Stark is going to go down as one of the most annoying characters ever at this rate and Jool doesn't quite manage to stand her ground compared to the other characters, although the bickering with Chianna is fun, particularly the others' reactions to it. Crais and Talyn never really seemed to manage to work out what their characters were, so it's kinda hard to miss them.

All in all a rather disappointing season. The best episodes I thought were still the singles, but with less of them, the season just drifts into one long epic "shall we kill Scorpius or is he actually a good guy" type thing, which I lose interest in the 2nd time round. Still good, but not as good as 1 or 2.

Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars (Mini-series)

The power of the fans got this one made following the series' abrupt cancellation, and the producers, cast and crew weren't going to let any of them down. This is in essence a whole series of the show boiled down into 4 hours. The story is epic, yet focused down for the small band of characters that we care about. The number of familiar faces cropping up gives a very end of the world feel to it and the fact that it may well be the end of the world means that anything really could happen.
I did feel that in trying to cram so much in some of the humour was lost, it was still there in phrases and looks but there just wasn't the time to dedicate entire scenes or even hours to it as they had in the past. Also the replacement of the wonderfully alien music with a much more traditional space-opera type theme was a real shame, although farscape accompanied by full orchestra was pretty cool. All in all the positives of their increased budgets were good with more locations, effects and much greater scale being used well. A noble end and a great demonstration of what fan support, a dedicated crew and some creative freedom can produce.

Special Features: A nice box set, amusingly labelled as 5.01 and 5.02. The behind the scenes documentary is excellent, informative, sweet, funny and insightful. The collection of interviews does drift a little into "everyone's so wonderful" but are interesting nevertheless. There's quite a few deleted scenes with some nice interactions between characters that don't otherwise get to share scenes. There's also a lot of static pages which i didn't bother with, and I would have loved to hear a commentary, but a nice set at a respectable price.

Television Series