SCIFI.COM | Farscape Memories

The show that eventually became Farscape took its first toddling steps into the world in the early '90s, long before it actually made it to television.

Series creator Rockne O'Bannon had been working on the Steven Spielberg-produced SeaQuest DSV, which broke new ground in the use of computer animation on television. He was called in by Brian Henson of the Henson Company, who wanted to develop a new property. Henson wanted to do "a ship show," something that could take advantage of his company's expertise in creature effects and animatronics, as well as CGI, which the Henson Company was beginning to move into at the time. But instead of the children's shows the company was best known for, this would clearly be a program for adults.

O'Bannon says he immediately realized that, if he wanted to create a show set on a starship, he needed to avoid recreating Star Trek. He decided the solution was to invert Star Trek's happy hierarchy and create anarchy aboard his ship. The characters would "have strong personal agendas, not just a group agenda of saving their asses each week." In addition, the characters would all be of different alien species, to give the Henson creature designers room to play.

When O'Bannon went back to Henson with a proposal, the fundamentals of Farscape were recognizable: A lone human character, cast away at the far end of the universe, surrounded by aliens, on a fugitive ship full of escaped prisoners.

Henson liked the idea, O'Bannon says, and the company was on board. The next question was which network to take the project to. They knew from the beginning that the show's sheer scope would make it a tough sale.

The young Fox network took an interest and bought the series concept, under the working title of Space Chase. O'Bannon then brought in David Kemper, who would ultimately become executive producer. Kemper had worked with O'Bannon since the Twilight Zone revival of the mid-'80s and had also written for SeaQuest. Kemper helped write some scripts to show Fox. Ultimately, however, Fox decided to pass on the show. "It was just too expensive and too daunting and strange for them, I think," says O'Bannon. That could have been the end, but Henson still believed in the concept and kept it alive.

"Over the next few years, whenever there was a potential other suitor," says O'Bannon, "another network that might be interested in something as out there as this series notion, we would trot out the little maquettes of the creatures, the little desk-sized clay models and the pilot script and show it around."

It took several years of this, but finally the show found a home.

"Ultimately, TV came up with what we needed," says O'Bannon, "which was a network dedicated to science-fiction television." The SCI FI Channel read O'Bannon's pilot script and brought them in. O'Bannon and the Henson team went through their pitch one more time and, as O'Bannon recalls it, SCI FI "said 'Yeah, go ahead and do it. I'll give you a season, 22 episodes. Let's see what we can come up with.'"

Once the SCI FI Channel gave the show the go-ahead, a huge number of elements started to fall into place, particularly the casting. A key element of Farscape was the relationship between John Crichton and Aeryn Sun. Ben Browder, who stars as the ill-fated astronaut, believes "that's the heart of the series, the sort of emotional core. And I believe that's the way Rock [O'Bannon] intended it to be."

And so the choice of actors for those parts was especially important. Luck played a major role in getting the pair together. The producers got Ben Browder the old-fashioned way: round after round of auditions. Eventually, O'Bannon says, the list was whittled down to Browder and one other actor who tested for the network. O'Bannon diplomatically claims not to remember who that other actor was, but he does say that it was obvious that Browder was the right choice. "I wanted somebody who was classically hero-handsome, but also looked and acted like he could actually have a degree in theoretical sciences, i.e., be smart. Ben gave me both of those, plus, thank God, the humor."

Finding Claudia Black, who embodied the elite soldier turned exile Aeryn Sun, was yet another of those bits of fortunate happenstance that blessed Farscape. The producers hadn't originally planned to use an Australian actress for Aeryn. "I'd done a couple test tapes that were done really to satisfy the instincts of the casting agent," says Black. "Even though the role of Aeryn was being cast abroad, she thought I was appropriate for the character anyway, and she wanted me to put something down on tape, and thank goodness."

As the show went into production, everything was still a jumble of parts coming together. O'Bannon recalls that "we were doing makeup tests on Virginia Hey literally the day before we started shooting. And the day before that, it did not look good. We were that close to having our backs up against the wall and not having a look for Zhaan."

Even the name of the show was still up in the air, although Space Chase was, thankfully, out by then and Farscape was the odds-on favorite. O'Bannon says they'd always meant to replace Space Chase as it sounded "too kid-show-oriented," and the producers were particularly eager to avoid that impression.

When no one could come up with a title that was quite right, O'Bannon fell back on a favorite trick. "I listed every word my thesaurus could provide that applied to the series," he says, "then started combining them to create a new word." He tried hundreds of combinations, but liked Farscape as soon as he hit on it. "It connoted distance, and perhaps a little of the awe I hoped John Crichton would be experiencing out there." It didn't immediately win everyone over, though."There was even some discussion while we were shooting the first couple episodes of what the title would be," claims Browder. "There was discussion between Rock and Brian as to what the series should be called."

According to O'Bannon, both Henson and the SCI FI Channel were reluctant to go with Farscape precisely because it was a created word. But eventually it grew on people and the name stuck.

Finally, amid the chaos and the long hours, the cast and crew could feel the show's magic taking shape. "I think we were aware that we had something interesting fairly early on," says Browder. "There was a sense that we were doing something good, whether we had a complete handle on it or not — and in fact, I don't know that we ever had a complete handle on it."

Even Browder confesses to being a little nonplussed by the show at the very beginning, though. From a two-year stint on Fox's popular Party of Five, Browder suddenly found himself in Australia, acting among animatronic aliens.

"I had my moments where I was going 'Oh my God, my career's over, I'm working with a puppet,'" says Browder. "'I was an actor once! I played Richard III!'"

At first, viewers didn't know what to make of this unusual series. Browder blames the rough early reception on Farscape's refusal to fit into a neat category. "Farscape was sort of outside the box, even from the very beginning," he says, "and didn't get any closer to being in the box at any point." He notes that audiences have developed a set of expectations about space-based science-fiction television, derived largely from Star Trek, and Farscape didn't deliver that. "They'd go 'Wait a minute, the captain would never do this!' Well, we don't have a captain."

Indeed much of the time, Farscape's characters don't really know what they're doing, and end up just winging it and hoping for the best — a far cry from Star Trek's cool, jargon-laced professionalism. Furthermore, the Enterprise never got pregnant, as Farscape's living ship, Moya, eventually did. And the crew of the Enterprise never seemed to worry about things like running out of food in deep space and nearly starving. All in all, viewers who came aboard expecting Star Trek were in for a rude shock.

Eventually, though, viewers started to get Farscape. And then, at the end of the first season, another key relationship was established. This time between Crichton and Scorpius, the show's arch-villain. Wayne Pygram ended up playing some of the show's most intimate scenes with Browder. The two hit it off immediately. "He was one of the most welcoming actors I've ever worked with," says Pygram of how smoothly he worked with Browder, "and we had a shorthand between us. We very rarely had to negotiate or talk."

Browder also gives Pygram high marks. Not only did Pygram have to portray a very complex character and carry one of the show's central relationships — unlike Black and Browder, he also had to do it in makeup and a really uncomfortable suit modelled after a dominatrix outfit. "I have worn that outfit," says Browder. "To endure that outfit and do the quality of work that he did is no small feat."

Pygram admits the Scorpius makeup and costume were a challenge. "In the first two seasons," he says, "it was taking two and a half hours just to do that makeup." However, Pygram has the distinction of being the only Farscape actor to have the same makeup team throughout the series. They were "forever finessing and refining the makeup between seasons," he says.

Kemper is especially proud that the show remained fresh. "We liked to do things, not necessarily that other series have never done, but to do them differently," he says. "Even if you think you know where you're going, it does something different. That's our claim to fame, that we can do an old story about going back to a planet and changing time and we can do things along the way that you didn't suspect. It feels fresh and provides the viewer with an hour of entertainment where they go, 'That was satisfying, that was really cool,' instead of going, 'Yeah, yeah, I've seen that before, I guessed the ending.'"

Of course, that habit often infuriated viewers. Several episodes brought howls of protest from fans, like the third season's "Eat Me," in which — speaking of revisiting other series' ideas with a twist — several characters are duplicated by odd alien technology. Star Trek did that once or twice, but certainly never disposed of the extra copies by having them eaten by cannibals! Assuming those were the copies. ... But Kemper says he was always happiest when viewers were "throwing their popcorn at the screen."

Browder notes that Farscape "never developed a house style in the way most shows do. If you randomly sample episodes of Farscape, you might think you're watching a different show," he says.

For four seasons, longer than any other SCI FI Channel original series has run, Farscape managed to keep up this manic energy and creative inferno. The planets kept lining up just right, and Farscape raised the bar for science-fiction series television.

Of course, the problem with planets is that they keep moving. They can't remain aligned forever. Although Farscape was richly acclaimed by fans and TV critics alike, increasing costs and stagnant ratings caused SCI FI to cancel the series after four seasons.

No one was happy to see Farscape end, but the cast and crew remain philosophical. Television has always been a shifting landscape where nothing remains in place for long.

"When this show got the go-ahead, in 1997," Kemper says, "there was a big tech boom in the stock market and everybody had money. There was lots of money to make TV shows. Now there's not that much. There are cutbacks everywhere in the business, and the SCI FI Channel is no different. I believe that, had the economy still been going 'go go go,' they wouldn't have done what they did. I believe they would have gone forward."

O'Bannon says he's "extremely proud of Farscape, because it didn't do so many of the things that conventional television does. Having said that, I think that also made it somewhat difficult for a really wide audience to tune in every week and really latch onto it. It took effort, and I don't begrudge the people who couldn't latch onto it at all. It just took people who were really interested in the show and really got caught up in it to tune in and watch every week."

For the cast, the sadness at putting down beloved characters and saying goodbye to friends is tempered by the extraordinary run they had and the experiences Farscape has given them.

"I'm very grateful to SCI FI for the job I've had for the last four years," adds Browder. "They took a chance on me when almost no one else would, and it would not have been possible to do this show anywhere else. SCI FI has been a great network to work for. I absolutely adored working on the show, to the last cut. I'm not depressed, I'm not down about it. I'm proud of it, and I'm proud of the network that brought us to the air. Do I wish that we were continuing to do more? Yes."

Alongside the hope that the Farscape property might rise again in some other format, the makers of the show are buoyed by the incredible passion of the show's core audience. Particularly as the show has not yet aired in Australia and didn't become generally well known there, Claudia Black is touched by the reception she gets overseas.

"In cities all over America, I was recognized, and people would say how much they enjoyed the show, and that gave me such a huge thrill," she says. "So I'm happy to ride that buzz for a while, just knowing that something I did was watched and well received, but also for all the Aussies who were working on the show, that it did find a home, if not in Australia then elsewhere."

On the production side, O'Bannon, too, feels Farscape is going to be a tough act to follow. "Creatively, it's one of the things that I'm the most proud of," he says. He's also touched by "the outpouring of really true passion by the viewers of the show once it was announced that it wasn't coming back.

Obviously science-fiction fans are known for that," he says, "but this went to the point where they were spending their own money and launching really elaborate campaigns. Look, I'm proud of Alien Nation. It was my first big-hit baby. But nobody was doing that for Alien Nation."

Overall, the makers of Farscape see it not as something to mourn, but something to celebrate. It was a glorious moment in television, even if it took a chain of rare and special circumstances to make it happen.

"I guess all successful television series are an example of planets lining up correctly," says O'Bannon. "Things just have to happen right. In Farscape, we had just the right cast, my mojo was working at just the right time, David had grown into the role that he assumed on the show in spades. We had that crazy Australian influence, Brian Henson was very willing to take a flier on a series that was very expensive and might not have a huge back-end return. He wanted to pursue it simply because he loved the idea creatively, something he'd obviously learned from his father. And the SCI FI Channel, which was the perfect venue for us. All those things lined up absolutely perfectly."

Could things line up again? Given the depths of the love the fans have for the show, and that the cast and crew have both for each other and the property, it could well happen.

Ben Browder sums things up, from his new home in Los Angeles where he's auditioning for other jobs and writing other scripts. "There's a temptation, when you're writing a scene, to want to say 'Frell [the Farscape equivalent of a common expletive],'" he says. "I almost used it in an audition the other day. Or, I'll be writing something that takes place in East Texas or something and an alien will walk through the door. I haven't quite gotten Farscape out of my system."

He's not the only one.

| Click Here to Subscribe to SCI FI Magazine |