FARSCAPE: Returning To The Uncharted Territories
My name is John Crichton, an astronaut.
Three years ago I got shot through a wormhole.
I’m in a distant part of the Universe, aboard this living ship of escaped prisoners.
My friends.
I’ve made enemies. Powerful, dangerous.
Now all I want is to find a way home, to warn Earth…
Look upward and share the wonders I’ve seen.
From 1999-2003, variations of those words began each episode of what was, for the time, a groundbreaking science fiction series. One of the flagship series of the Sci-Fi Channel, Farscape introduced us to astronaut John Crichton, Aeryn Sun, Ka Dargo, Rygel, Chiana, Zhaan, and the good ship Moya and her Pilot, and their adventures in the Uncharted Territories. We met the villains who would oppose them, like Bialar Crais, Grayza, and the Scarran half-breed Scorpius, and the allies they would gain, like Stark, Jool, Noranti and Sikozu.
And we fell in love, just a bit, with Ben Browder, Claudia Black, Virginia Hey, Anthony Simcoe, Gigi Edgley, Lani Tupu, Wayne Pygram and all the rest.
For four seasons, we got to see the amazing work of the Jim Henson Creature Shop bring aliens to the TV screen like nothing anyone had seen before, and then… It was over.
The Sci-Fi Channel cancelled it.
It could be argued that this was the beginning of the descent for the channel. Opinions may vary.
We got The Peacekeeper Wars to wrap up the biggest storylines, the comics from Wildstorm and BOOM! Studios to carry on the saga of John and Aeryn and the rest of Moya’s crew, and for a time, the promise of a web-series.
A web-series that never came.
But now, well. Now things are different, it seems.
In February of this year, it was announced that series writer Justin Mongo was working on a script for a new Farscape movie, and just this last weekend at WonderCon, series creator Rockne S. O’Bannon confirmed it to the website nerdacy that yes, it is in fact true, there is a Farscape movie in development.
As Tor.com reported last month, the film would be:
Set to follow the awesome comics written by our favorite Keith R.A. DeCandido, the film would follow John and Aeryn’s son, D’Argo (or Little D, as we will always refer to him). Because their baby was exhibiting a set of interesting powers that made him a magnet for galactic villains, we find that John and Aeryn hide their son on Earth to grow up. Now the kid is 19 and ready to go into space with his parents.
D’Argo in space! With his amazing super parents! And then they could go visit Chiana and Rygel and Noranti…
THEY COULD GO VISIT SCORPIUS.
Don’t hold out on us, world. If we got a Farscape fix more than a decade after its final bow, we’d believe in fairies again.
Of course there are a lot of reasons a film “in development” could go nowhere, because “Development Hell” is in fact a thing, but there is good reason to be optimistic here. Although it’s been 10 years since the show left the air, it’s still widely regarded as one of the best science fiction shows on TV and, oddly enough, considering how much you can find the moans of frustration with Hollywood’s tendency for remakes and reboots on this very site, that tendency works in Farscape‘s favor. And it comes with a built in audience of extremely loyal ‘Scapers, which means viewers, whether it’s a TV movie or a theatrical release. Odds are good it will be a TV movie, but we’ve seen loyal fan bases like those of Veronica Mars see their beloved series comes to the big screen, and in this era of crowd-funding, well… there is reason to be optimistic.
Perhaps the best reason is that Rockne S. O’Bannon felt confident enough in this happening that he was willing to discuss it, knowing that it would hit the internet and make the genre news sites, which, it has to be acknowledged, will only make people more interested in seeing this happen. And that just increases the likelihood of seeing Farscape, Ben, Claudia and all the rest again.
