When you're standing in the middle of all that drenn you'd better frelling know what we are talking about... Farscape is not just good television, it's cult AND culture. Well, sort of. It has to be. And it's way too big for a mini...
 

Then... how big is it?

This big! Well, not that big as it was discontinued, but still a little big... Try this list for size, either in HTML or Excel. Perhaps not as big as Xena's (she's got heavy bones) but still...
 

Farscape is coming back...

... as a mini series. But that is not enough! Why? Simply because we need answers!

• does Moya fit in a mini?
• are we all irreversibly contaminated?
• what about the blind Nebari's empire?
• will the baby have Scorpie's eyes?
• can love be reintegrated?
• did Crais and Furlow fall for eachother?
• where have all the muppets gone?

Als je miden in de dren staat kun je maar better weten waar we het frelling over hebben... Farscape is niet alleen goede televisie, het is cult EN cultuur. Zoiets dan. En veel te groot voor een mini-serie...
 

Maar... hoe groot dan?

Erg groot! Nou ja, misschien niet zo groot, maar toch wel een klein beetje groot... Bekijk deze lijst maar eens, in HTML of in Excel formaat. Misschien niet zo groot als die van Xena, maar toch...
 

Farscape komt terug!

... als een mini serie. Maar dat is niet genoeg! Waarom? We moeten antwoorden hebben!

• past Moya in een mini?
• zijn we allemaal onherstelbaar besmet?
• hoe is het met het keizerreik van de blinde Nebari?
• heeft de baby Scorpie's ogen?
• kan liefde worden gereintegreerd?
• zijn Crais en Furlow voor elkaar gevallen?
• waar blijven de muppets?

I never expected a television series to hit me that hard. I never expected a science fiction television series to hit me that hard. Repeatedly. Where it hurts.

Farscape did just that.

The series is now canceled, after its fouth season. And without a clear ending.

I guess I am about to cry.

I Am Farscape. You Are Farscape. We Are Farscape.
We're going to miss them.

But we hope we won't have to!

Although Farscape deserved much better, there was at least a mini-series after series 4 to wrap up most plotlines, thanks to continuous pressure by the fans.

Ik had nooit verwacht dat een televisie serie me zo zou raken. Vooral geen science fiction serie. Maar het heeft me geraakt. Daar waar het pijn doet.

Farscape.

De serie is nu gestopt, na het vierde seizoen. En zonder een duidelijk einde.

Ik moet er haast van janken.

Ik Ben Farscape. Jij Bent Farscape. Wij Zijn Farscape.
We zullen ze missen.

Maar we hopen dat dat niet nodig is!

Hoewel Farscape beter verdiende, is er in ieder geval (dankzij aanhoudende druk van de fans) een mini-serie gekomen na seizoen 4, welke een en ander redelijk netjes afrond.

Farscape is an original television series, created by the Jim Henson Company for SciFi channel. Farscape has been canceled before it could enter its final season five.

Farscape's themes are adult, the images challenging, the storylines complex. Yet it has more than its share of wacky humour and a love story to boot. Farscape left the regular paths and found its own way to greatness. Multiple story arcs and strong character development turned it into one of the best television series ever.

It's as someone said... Farscape might not be great science fiction, but it is great television!

Plotholes? Who cares about plotholes! Just enjoy the ride... 

...find out how astronaut John Crichton gets shot through a wormhole... ends up on the other side of the universe, makes friends and enemies
gets somewhat even leaves an atomic bomb at the bottom of an elevator in the process... All with the best intentions, of course. His prime love interest is a former Peacekeeper (can you spell: nazi's in space?) Aeryn Sun. His diabolic nemesis and arch enemy is nobody less but Scorpius. (Great villain, bad teeth.) Colourful, eventful. Totally wacko.

Gotta' love it.

Although the first episodes are not as good as the later ones, they're still the place to start. As Farscape is mostly a set of interwoven stories spread out over many different episodes (or even seasons) you just have to see them all. (Yeah, B5 lovers, Farscape has overlapping arcs as well.) So... see them all? Even the bad ones? Can't skip something? Well, in a way... yes. Fortunately, it's worth it.

In every twist and turn, with every step on the way, in whatever unlikely circumstances, these are real humans... nebari, hynerians, sabeceans, whatever. You got the point. The characters face real problems (being hunted down, tortured, hungry, cheated, suffering dna changes, you name it). So far like any other show :-) But Farscape is not an episodic show. In Farscape, characters grow. Change. Make mistakes. Their actions can and will have dire consequences, the world around them changes. The characters themselfde change. Or even die. If anything, these are characters you will care about, even if you don't like them.

Looking for technobabble? Go elsewhere. Looking for simpleminded one shot episodic series? Wrong place. Farscape episodes span the whole gamut, from painfull hurting love stores, heroic fights against all odds, magnificient villains, sharp and funny dialogue, to outright silly... it's all there. Don't let graphics and effects (from poor marionatics to blockbuster quality computer stuff) or the odd bad episode get in your way. It's about... euh, humans, nebari, hynerians, sebecans, whatever. You got the point.

It's a roller coaster with many twists and turns. Sitback. Relax. Enjoy the ride. There are stories to be told. And remember...

Never give up hope.
 

Some links...

• visit SaveFarscape and the official Farscape page to check on Farscape's future
• a nice site with details, screenshots etc. on all episodes is FarscapeWorld
• another fan site, ScapeRoute, features the popular Kansas forum
• looking for other rag tag crews on old spaceships? try Cowboy Bebop, Firefly and Outlaw Star

Can't make any sense of wormhole science in Farscape? Well, as an excercise in logic, I've tried to figure it out. With, ehm, varying degrees of succes...

Attention! Spoilers ahead! DO NOT CONTINUE unless you have seen all episodes up to 'Unrealized Realities'.

Welcome back, class, to Wormholes 103... before we go on, let's quickly review what went on before, unfortunately John is not around, but we hope he will be back in the next season. Let's see... what did he tell us...
 

Part 1 (Wormholes 101).

By John Crichton (from the SciFi website)...

If D'Argo wants to get from one end of Moya to the other, he has to walk the whole distance. But if I could fold Moya in half - so that her front and back ends are close enough to be connected with a short tunnel - then I could slip through that tunnel and have my feet up and a drink in my hand by the time D'Argo arrives. That's a crude example (and Pilot would be pretty steamed if I made Moya origami), but that's how wormholes work. You don't go faster than light; you bend space-time itself and take a serious shortcut while light slogs through space the long way.

I think it's more than a coincidence that wormholes have appeared both times my Farscape Module flew a planetary slingshot maneuver during a solar flare. Before I came to the Uncharted Territories, Earth's physicists had not yet made a connection between solar flares and gravitational singularities. But here's what I think now.

When I was revving up the Farscape experiment, one of the mystery variables was that uncrewed spacecraft completing the same maneuver tended to pick up more velocity than the math should've allowed. In other words: Spacecraft using the slingshot method were zooming off faster than we expected. Some scientists speculated that intense electromagnetic charges picked up by the craft caused the anomaly. At any rate, extreme magnetic charge is only one of many possible forces strong enough to affect space-time. Couple one or more with the energy released by solar flares, and maybe that's enough to rip the universe a new one.

Some wormholes are very unstable. Fly into one of those without the right kind of shielding and you might suffer a complete cellular collapse — meaning no more body, just chunky salsa. It's as if unstable wormholes create their own destructive distortion. The good news is that, so far, only Peacekeeper ships have proved vulnerable to this problem. Don't know why, might be something in their hull composites, maybe it's their energy signatures. I need to work on this a little more.

The right equipment can identify and cancel out those wavelengths, harmonics, rantath-flux variances and photonic distortion bursts. Linfer was at first-and-goal with her phase-negative shielding, and I understand that Furlow's Phase Stabilizer even scored touchdowns before it became an unspeakable apocalyptic weapon. So far, my module's been the Volvo of wormhole transports: She ain't pretty, but she's got a five-star safety rating on the intergalactic Autobahn.

But learning how to traverse a wormhole safely still doesn't mean we're ready to pass "GO" and collect $200. What I've seen so far suggests that wormholes are one-way streets. As Pathfinder Neeyala showed me, however, groups of wormholes sometimes form themselves into massive loops with various possible exits. In this case, you could enter the circuit at any point and, while never reversing direction, eventually return to that same point.

They can also contain giant snakes with really, really big teeth. Just so you know
 

Part 2 (Wormholes 102).

By John Crichton (from the SciFi website)...

Okay, everything I wrote before? That was the beginner's class, Wormholes 101. Ready for the next step?

As Albert Einstein said, it's all relative. Specifically, space and time are fused, which is why it's called space-time. A set of coordinates for each is required to locate a particular event. Motion at speed through space becomes motion through time. Wormholes bridge space-time, providing a unique ability to navigate across vast distances - and through time.

With me so far?

Wormholes also traverse other universes and dimensions than our own, and - thanks to a feature of quantum theory that states that all possible outcomes of every variable event occur simultaneously, each one branching off into its own quantum reality - they lead to a potentially infinite number of "unrealized" parallel realities within our own universe. In other words, there are an infinite number of potential realities that don't officially exist until you step into them.

"What would be so bad about visiting another universe?" you ask? According to informed sources, this apparently would result in a "cataclysmic unraveling of the precise mathematical harmony." Sorry I can't be more specific, but I think you'll agree that sounds bad enough that we shouldn't risk it.

Every wormhole system has an uncountable number of exits, each to a distinct time and place. Travel from point A to point B; now, attempt to travel back. You could arrive at point A immediately after you left. Or a cycle later. Or a cycle earlier. Or ten. Or ten thousand. There are millions of permutations - millions of chances to unravel the past and completely erase everything you ever cared about.

In other words, going forward in time is no great shakes; it's going backward that screws the pooch. A traveler who appears earlier in the timeline of his own existence is like a rock dropped on still waters; the ripples radiate from the point of disruption and cause bigger and bigger circles of change as they move outward. But if you fix the first thing that goes ape before the other temporal dominoes fall, time is elastic enough to recover its initial shape. If events are matched closely enough to their original course, they have a way of restructuring themselves to familiar outcomes.

Now, navigating a wormhole is a whole different ball of wax. Put away your machines and fancy toys; they won't help you. 

From any point of entry, a wormhole system branches into multiple paths, like a maze that loops back upon itself. The subdivision continues until you finally tumble back into space-time. The trick is to know where you want to go. Every portal has a unique space-time signature. The only destinations you can go to by design are those you already know. The more you travel to new destinations, the more signatures you learn to recognize.

Now here's the really fun part: Navigation sensations inside a wormhole are counterintuitive. The farther you are from a destination, the easier it is to track differences in its signature. But since every destination is closely surrounded by similar, unrealized realities, the closer you get to where you're going, the more you have to maintain perfect focus. Get distracted and you'll wind up pulling a Marty McFly.

And never, ever, return to a familiar place prior to the last time you left.

Study hard, kids, because I'm certain there'll be a pop quiz when we least expect it....

As posted on the Kansas board by someone hiding behind the name 'blueznl'... (The following is al fictuous and my own interpretation. All rights reserved by the original owners etc. etc. yap yap yap yap bla bla bla. Get on with it...

(Okay, I admit it, I did it. I took all 'wormhole' references (in the FarScape universe) that I could find and tried to make some sense of it. If not entirely scientifically sound, at least it was a fun excercise in logic :-))

Wormholes 103... here we go...

1. Wormholes exist in different types and shapes.... unstable (proto), stable (point to point), and stable (grouped together to form rings with many exits and entrances, as Pathfinder Neela (?) said)... Fortunately, if you don't exit the wormhole at the end, you can always go back to the place you went in... if it is still open, and the wormhole agrees with you. Uhm.

2. Some have said that wormholes are unidirectional (one way) affairs... Dunno, some might be. Perhaps only the unstable ones are. Or they come in matched sets. Once you open up a can of wormholes, it's hard to see where things lead to anyway...

3. For normal travellers, wormholes have only one entrance and exit. They can safely forget about the infinite number of (preferably) unrealized exceptions (great score at Scrabble), we'll get back to that later!

4. You can't travel through unstable (proto) wormholes (like John did at the very first episode) unless you're dumb ass lucky (as John was)... UNLESS... you have a stabilizer. Furlow built one. Without certain background knowledge, she only had the unstable proto wormholes to play around with, and we all know what happens to people who are a better techie than moralist. Anyway, the stabilizer worked, Furlow's money schemes did not, and many people got toasted. As it turned out to be, that little stabilizer could be converted into an awesome weapon by someone with the right knowledge.

5. For travelling through a wormhole, you need propulsion. Movement. Momentum. You either provide it yourself (make sure you've got enough fuel), or someone else provides it for you (as in being thrown into etcetera). If you want to be in control, you better provide it yourself.

6. Peacekeeper technology and wormholes don't like eachother. Period.  (Perhaps peacekeeper technology is related in nature, and this interferes? John had his suspicions)... It looks like Scorpie wasn't trying to use an existing wormhole but creating his own. If so, well, that stress had to go somewhere (and stress is supposed to turn the strongest hero into jelly, so there's your explanation).

7. Moya's 'Pilot' can see 'wormhole bubbles'... Starbursting, though, is not taking the wormhole, but launching yourself into the bits between realities, and coming out somewhere else. Which means it's not the same thing. Now, some of the effects are identical and this could mean starburst could be used to cover enormous distances like wormholes. Again, you have to know what you are doing. And dear Pilot... euh... well... He has been in and out of the seat now and again, I guess.

8. There is no need to create wormholes. Yeah, you could create them, but what's the use? The frelling things are everywhere all the time. First you gotta know where to look, and once you have one you just gotta be in the right spot in the right time. Or the wrong spot at the wrong time. I guess the universe is not that structured after all...

9. Travel a wormhole many times, and you somehow become attuned to the process. You know where you came from. You know where you are going to. You'll end up in the right spot on the right time. Most of the time. But... (ah, there's the rub-out...) Once you get the knowledge, it turns from science into a deadly art form. Who says knowing more makes things easier?

10. The wormhole knowledge put in johns head allows him to detect all variations in time and space... without that knowledge, the chance of *messing up* would be minimal. John and Einstein had an exchange on that one... Without the knowledge "the odds of anyone else actually appearing at a place they previously occupied is so remote as to be mathematically disharmonious".

11. What if you have the knowledge? And the experience? Then things get interesting... First you will be able to spot all the alternate, unrealized realities, the alternative exits of the wormhole. You might end up in one of those instead of your targeted destination if you don't pay attention. Things might be bad in there... So you've gotta' stay on top of things, don't let it slip, or you'll go down the drain through a wrong exit...

12. Now, so far for the easy part: that's all about space. There's also time. If you take a wormhole back to a place where you have been before, you must make absolutely sure don't arrive before you left. Those unrealized realities are bad enough, but you don't want to screw up your own existence or that of others. "Cataclysmic" comes to mind and it sure is a bad word. Anyway, in case you do screw up, there's a quick and easy solution: look around and fix the first thing that goes ape. Time and space are flexible and the ripples will die out. If they don't... I guess then we'll never notice because we never existed.
 

Conclusion.

Conclusion (this is the part where you all are gonna' jump upon your table, and scream unpolite words at me. Well, I feel like Jack Burton, so gimme' your best shot, pal. I can take it.)

Without the knowledge, life is easy. Wormhole travel is safe and simple. Go in, go out, be done with it. Now that's the problem with dear John...

- he has the knowledge (he's smart, but had some help from the outside)
- he travelled enough trough the frelling things to have the experience
- so now wormhole travel is dangerous... for himself and others

Let's put it differently: travelling through a stable wormhole is safe. Unless you know what you're doing.

Is this for real? DK, please bring Farscape back?