Friday 19th March 1999 - Farscape - Premiere

 Friday 19th March 1999 - Farscape - Premiere

Freeze! Don't move! Or I'll fill you full of... little yellow bolts of light!

John Crichton, scientist and astronaut, accidentally travels through a wormhole and ends up in a distant part of the universe aboard Moya, a living spaceship, where he encounters a group of escaped alien prisoners.

After a slowish opening (much of what happens on Earth at the start seems unnecessary), this episode is pretty jam-packed with characters and world-building. Originally, the producers considered making this episode a two-hour opener but cut and reworked a number of scenes. It feels like it. After an "electromagnetic wave" hits Crichton's space shuttle experiment called Farscape One, he's transported to another region of space where a group of alien prisoners are engaged in trying to escape from an authoritarian, fascist human-looking civilisation calling itself Peacekeepers (they are actually Sebaceans, who only resemble humans).

Unfortunately, Crichton's spaceship encounters prowlers (fighter craft) and one of them, containing the brother of the military commander of the Peacekeeper fleet, Captain Crais, who vows revenge.

Crichton ends up on board a living spacecraft (a Biomechanoid Leviathan) called Moya which is piloted by a creature called... Pilot. Moya is helped to break free of her restraining "collar" and starburst (which I assume is a means of light speed) great distances. We see other living spacecraft like Moya as part of the Peacekeeper fleet.

The three alien characters Crichton spends most time with are: the blue-skinned - and, if I'm honest, creepy - Zhaan who is a Delvian priest; D'Argo, an aggressive Luxan warrior with a long stinging tongue; and Rygel XVI, a small frog-like being who claims to be the usurped ruler of 600 billion people.

The obvious love-interest is the cold-hearted and brutal Peacekeeper soldier, Aeryn Sun, who is forced to become part of the crew. Once she's spent time with Crichton and the Moya crew - and has been "irreversbly contaminated" - she is rejected by her people. There's a keynote scene where Aeryn declares that she doesn't feel compassion.

What's entertaining about Farscape is its weird alien-ness. There's an immediate sense that a great deal of thought has gone into the texture of the storytelling. I loved how Crichton can't understand the aliens' language until one of the little DRD droids (Diagnostic Repair Drone) injects him with translator microbes that enable him to comprehend their speech. We also get a great deal of science-y vocabulary to reinforce the sense of alien-ness: Hetch used as a measurement of speed, Metras to measure distance, time measued in arns (hours) and cycles (years). The area of space that Moya starbursts to is called the Uncharted Territories.

Another series would have saved Crichton's first experience of another planet for another, later episode - but damage to Moya means that the crew have to locate repair material from a commerce planet. On the planet there's a definite Star Wars cantina-vibe to the variety of aliens encountered.

The ending is excellent: Crichton is stranded at the other end of the universe and hunted by a crazy military leader, he is threatened by the alien crew and hated by the only human-like companion on board.

The effects and puppets hold up well - even after 25 years - and don't distract from the story beng shown.