The Worlds of Farscape Read online

  Rather than an “impossible” event, then, we might think of Farscape as a series that, in its conception, found its core narrative trajectory, and, in the course of its production and then its cancellation, gained much of its cult status from what might simply be described as an accident. The show recounts how astronaut John Crichton encounters and is sucked through a wormhole in space, and then finds himself, as he announces at the start of each episode (with slight variations over the course of the series’ four full seasons), “lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship, a living ship, full of strange alien life forms.” It is a compelling situation, one that not only offers almost infinite possibilities for the sort of adventures, discoveries, and dramatic encounters that drive much science fiction programming, but also establishes an urgent desire for communication and interaction, as he adds, “is there anybody out there who can hear me” and “help?” At the same time, this circumstance opens new models for self-discovery, for encounters with a suddenly estranged self. For Crichton, unlike the heroes of most science fiction narratives, here finds himself to be the alien creature, a homeless being who must constantly try to make a place for himself in what are described as the “Uncharted Territories” of the universe, even as he holds out a slim hope for reversing his course; for as he also episodically laments, he continues to be “just looking for a way home.”

  Of course, accidents are often integral to cult works, on television or in any other medium. As history shows, cult texts are not simply created by design, by following some tried generic formula. Rather, an element of chance, of the seemingly impossible, of the accidental—a working against the formulaic grain or against our expectations—often seems to underlie the connection of audience to text. For a television series and its audience, it may simply be a case of pushing the wrong buttons, thus accidentally landing the viewer—much like John Crichton—on an unexpected channel where he or she encounters equally unexpected yet intriguing “life forms.” Perhaps the accident is one of surprise, at becoming comfortable and immersing oneself in what seems a very simple entertainment, a distraction from the everyday, only to find a voice there that speaks with an amazing eloquence or in a tone the viewer recognizes, suggesting that there are others “out there” who also speak the language of alien-ation—or of truth. Or it might be a case of a chance scene, line of dialogue, or a single image that evokes a better time or place, that accidentally signals, even if only momentarily, what we might think of as “a way home.” What I want to suggest—and as I think those opening lines especially hint—is Farscape had from its very inception a fortuitous congruence between such cultish possibilities and parts of its narrative. Certainly, and rather paradoxically, its formulaic opening always forecast for viewers a non-formulaic potential: the sort of accidental situations, encounters, or paths that the best cult works consistently offer.

  I base this notion of the cult-as-accident—of the accidental discovery, accidental communication, and accidental path—largely on the work of the cultural critics Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer. Describing the sort of accidents that seem increasingly prevalent throughout our modern technological and thoroughly media-informed culture, one that is always speeding headlong into the future while disregarding the possible consequences of its speed (including surprise wormholes), they allow that accidents are simply inevitable, if often covered up or recast by the media as something else, something more familiar and less troubling. But they also argue that there is an important economy built into them, a payoff that accompanies any sense of failure or, in the case of a television series, one that never manages to reach a huge viewership. As they say, ultimately “the accident is positive” because “it reveals something important that we would not otherwise be able to perceive,” in fact, “something absolutely necessary to knowledge” (63), perhaps even to our survival. Yet the payoff differs from one type of accident to another. For whereas an industrial accident, if properly reported and understood, might help us to avoid some catastrophic failure in the future, might keep us from repeating the same “mistake,” an aesthetic “accident” like a television series or film could well prime us to replicate the same experience, that is, to engage in cult-like behavior that fulfills another sort of need. It might well enable us, like Crichton, to find our way in those “Uncharted Territories” of life and so discover “a way home”—which, I would offer, is the real payoff of the cult experience.

  What I want to consider here, by way of helping us to understand this notion of cult status, is how a series like Farscape profitably evokes this sense of the accident. In some ways it is, after all, highly conventional, generically recalling the popular tradition of the space opera which, with its interplanetary settings, heroic figures, adventurous actions, and melodramatic situations, dominated the early and far-from-sophisticated science fiction television programming of the 1950s, typified by shows like Captain Video (1949–55), Space Patrol (1950–55), and Tom Corbet, Space Cadet (1950–55).1 The trappings of that form, further developed and explored in series like Star Trek (1966–69), Blake’s 7 (1978–81), and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979–81), have certainly become familiar and even predictable. However, Farscape also has much of the unconventional and unpredictable about it, as if it were seeking to overturn or “accident” our very expectations of the form. Its use of creations from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop (notably Dominar Rygel XVI and Pilot); its elaborate visual effects, combining computer-generated imagery with its sophisticated puppetry; its creation of a living space ship, Moya, as a kind of central character (who, in the first season, even becomes pregnant and gives birth to a sentient warship); its repeated focus on—and depiction of—various alien sexual practices, seen especially with the characters D’Argo and Chiana; its emphasis on strong, even dominant female characters, like the Peacekeeper Aeryn Sun; and, its inversion of a key feature of most science fiction narratives, as the human finds himself the sole representative of his kind, surrounded by a bewildering array of other species, and thus the real alien here—these are all signature elements of the series and attractions that readily signal its difference from our normal experience of the space opera, as well as of most other science fiction television programming. While any one of these differences might well be enough to lure a cult audience, I would suggest that no one of them would satisfactorily explain the extent of Farscape’s following, one that would lead a mainstream publication like TV Guide to proclaim it in 2007 the fourth best “cult show ever.”2

  At least one element of the accident, though, does help to suggest the larger appeal of Farscape and begin to justify that cult attribution. It is the sense of what I have termed accidental discovery that operates on multiple levels here and parallels John Crichton’s own sense of surprise at his situation. In his book-length analysis of the series, Jes Battis nicely captures some of this element of surprise, as he describes his own chance discovery of and original reaction to the show, particularly how he had encountered bits and pieces of the series, all of which initially struck him as “confusing and irredeemably silly” (Investigating Farscape 21). However, they also gradually drew his attention and led him to realize that what first bothered him was part of Farscape’s rather “innovative” approach to both televisual and science fiction narrative—its emphasis on multiple characters and multiple points of view, resulting in lines of action and of dialogue that reach across episodes and story arcs to gradually unfold in significance as viewers encountered additional characters and began to recognize and appreciate their complex relationships. Thus, while the “lost” astronaut—and only human in this mix—Crichton effectively represents the audience in the narrative, his point of view never dominates the narrative, and his sense of what is right or wrong never stands—for long—as the only rule. Rather, he, like the audience, is repeatedly surprised by new information, his perspective qualified by others as the larger narrative gradually unfolds. Thus, his comment to the rest of Moya’s crew in the opening episode,
“What is wrong with you people?,” quickly forecasts what is “wrong” with him, as subsequent episodes underscore: that he is too troubled by difference, too quick to form judgments about situations in these “Uncharted Territories,” too ready to see things only from his conventional, Earth-centric vantage, a vantage invariably challenged as episode builds upon episode to unveil a complex universe.

  And certainly, the great variety of “strange alien life forms” that Crichton encounters on Moya and in the course of his efforts at trying to find “a way home” constantly underscores that sense of difference, while also challenging his—and our—conventional values. For not only is Crichton always encountering new species, both attractive to him (such as the Sebacean Aeryn or the Interion Jool) and repellant (most obviously the Sebacean-Scarran hybrid Scorpius), but he repeatedly finds his own secure identity radically challenged by these encounters. At the start of the episode “Out of Their Minds” (2.9), for example, Moya absorbs a blast from a Halosian ship that jolts the crew and, to their surprise and irritation, shifts their personalities into other bodies, so that Rygel’s consciousness is transferred to Crichton’s body, Aeryn’s to Rygel’s, Crichton’s to Aeryn’s, D’Argo’s to Pilot’s, Pilot’s to Chiana’s, and Chiana’s to D’Argo’s. The result is that each must, for a time, walk in another’s shoes, live in another’s body—and consequently, come to a better, if also somewhat uncomfortable, appreciation of their differences. An even more telling instance of this sort of challenge to subjectivity occurs in “My Three Crichtons” (2.13) in which an alien probe strikes Moya, engulfs Crichton, and produces two genetic copies of him; one is an evolved version with advanced mental capabilities, and the other a prehistoric version with heightened sensory capacities. Even as members of the crew find themselves more attuned to one or the other versions of Crichton—causing him to wonder about his own acceptance in the group—John must come to recognize that both versions are, as he says, part of “what I am.” And when confronted with the cold, unfeeling logic of his evolved self—a self willing to sacrifice either the throwback or the original Crichton to save himself and the ship—he ends the episode worried about what this “one possible genetic path,” as D’Argo puts it, might mean for the future of humanity. It is a worry that speaks well of him and that, along with the less-evolved Crichton’s willingness to sacrifice himself for the group, helps demonstrate to the others what humans are (or should be) really like—emotional, caring, even self-sacrificing.

  Such accidental encounters with the alien other, even the alien self, and with difference thus consistently create challenging mirrors, both for Crichton and for the other members of Moya’s crew. In another early episode that details an accidental replication of the crew members (this is, tellingly, a recurrent theme), “Exodus from Genesis” (1.3), the Delvian priest Zhaan sees Rygel painting a portrait of himself and, curious at the rather crude image he has produced, asks, “Is that how you see yourself?” Later, she redoes his “artwork,” producing what she terms a “spirit painting,” that is, a portrait that captures the true spirit of a person. In this case, it underscores a resemblance between Rygel and one of the most revered leaders of the Hynerian people, his ancestor Rygel the Great. More than just a kindness, Zhaan’s effort provides an ideal for which Rygel might aim, while it also points up the series’ ongoing effort at bringing characters more in line with their best possibilities, allowing them to grow. Through their encounters with difference, with other species and other characters who have dissimilar desires and motivations, the crew of Moya—themselves already accidentally thrown together in their efforts at escaping the Peacekeepers—are constantly challenged to consider how they see themselves, how others see them, and how they might, in effect, “touch up” their own images.

  Another key cult feature of the series and of Crichton’s character is a persistent media and cultural self-consciousness, as the show repeatedly refers to films, other television series, key events in American cultural history, and a broad array of pop culture icons, ranging from Albert Einstein to Marilyn Monroe and Ronald Reagan. In weaving this sort of web of cultural referentiality, the show effectively establishes a line of communication with an audience already situated in and saturated by such material, offering them an unusual perspective—for science fiction television—on the series’ plot events, a sense of accidental communication. In such situations it is as if we had suddenly stumbled onto an unexpected dimension of the scene. As an example, we might consider the “Kansas” episode (4.12) wherein the hard-edged Peacekeeper warrior Aeryn sits down in front of an Earth television and, trying to learn the English alphabet, intently begins watching Sesame Street, which is, of course, populated by muppets produced by Jim Henson’s Creature Workshop, like Farscape’s central characters Rygel and Pilot. And in the miniseries that concluded Farscape’s run, The Peacekeeper Wars (2004), a dream sequence offers a nearly shot-by-shot homage to the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) that not only serves to send up some of that film’s ponderous seriousness, but also aligns the series’ often-suggested concern with human development, even evolution (as noted in “My Three Crichtons”), with the larger science fiction tradition of such development. Such knowing references are a consistent source of humor in the series, help to establish its rather mixed tone, and point up its characteristic pop culture mode of address, even as they also point to the possibility of more serious intentions here.

  In fact, those self-conscious references create the context for a more significant dimension of that address, another level of communication that we consistently encounter in Crichton’s own peculiar dialogue. For it too is full of references to contemporary popular culture, especially movies and television, as we see when Crichton repeatedly refers to his nemesis Scorpius as “Harvey,” after the character of the imaginary rabbit in the film Harvey (1950); when faced with the odd variety of life on Moya he observes, “Boy, was Spielberg ever wrong; Close Encounters my ass” (“Premiere” 1.1); or when he peppers his conversations with mentions of Cameron Diaz, Yuri Gagarin, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, Dr. Strangelove, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, The Wizard of Oz, and even the poem “Casey at the Bat.” M. Keith Booker suggests that such repeated allusions serve to produce “a sort of dramatic irony in that audiences will generally understand his references, while no one else on Moya has any idea what he is talking about” (163). However, while this sort of allusive dialogue is an important and recurring device, and even part of the series’ cult attraction, it is not simply because of the passing sense of irony it invariably produces.

  What we see in this persistently reflexive manner of speech is an interesting commentary on the nature of communication here and on Crichton himself. Of course, in the world of Farscape the act of communication is usually not itself a problem, thanks to the presence of “translator microbes” that effectively explain how different species can all seem to speak the same language, and that recall similar efforts at explaining such a narrative necessity in other series, most famously in Doctor Who’s reliance on his Tardis’ translator function. But as Crichton demonstrates, that communication is often at odds—full of slips, confusion, and only partial understanding, as is dramatized when, in “Look at the Princess, Part I” (2.10), he finds himself accidentally caught in a situation where he is betrothed to a planet’s hereditary ruler and slated to be frozen as a statue for 80 cycles simply because he agreed to kiss her (after a fight with Aeryn). Against such a backdrop Crichton’s comments take on an added resonance, as they seem aimed both at himself and also at us. In fact, the impression is that we are accidentally overhearing someone’s thoughts, as he talks to keep himself sane, or that we have by chance tuned in to a kind of message being sent out into the ether that only we can understand. As such, it recalls his introductory commentary wherein he wonders “is there anybody out there who can hear me?” Hearing Crichton, understanding him in ways that no one else in his strange environment can—knowing, for example, that when he ima
gines himself and Scorpius preparing to fight the Scarrans as the Crash Test Dummies from television safety ads, he sees little hope for survival—we become more than a typical television narrative’s audience. We are effectively invited to share Crichton’s complex situation, as he resolves to struggle even in the face of apparently impossible odds. His immersion in, yet ironic detachment from this strange universe, in fact, becomes evocative of our own cultural situation. This accidental recognition that others do speak the same language as we do, that we share certain touchstones and interpretations, thus becomes another crucial part of the cult-ural glue that binds audiences to the series.3

  Yet perhaps the most important element in that cult pattern is Farscape’s development of what I have termed the accidental path. In his discussion of how cult films work, Bruce Kawin describes the encounter with such texts as always something of a chance encounter, an inadvertent intersection of paths, as if one were to go walking out “after midnight,” “searching for the films that are searching for me” (25). What Farscape envisions is just that sort of “searching” but on a grand scale, literally across the universe by way of both the accidental and intentional use of wormholes. While participating as an astronaut in conventional space exploration, Crichton is thrown into an unknown part of space, what is constantly referred to as the “Uncharted Territories,” and, as we have noted, he subsequently tries to discover a way of using wormholes to find “a way home.” Yet at the same time, he is constantly being chased—by the character Scorpius, by Peacekeeper forces, by the Scarran empire—by all those who would use whatever knowledge of wormholes he has in his head, including that which has subsequently been implanted there by the Ancients (an interdimensional race of advanced beings), for military means, for purposes of destruction or conquest. Crichton, consequently, realizes that what he knows about wormholes represents both his only hope to ever reach home again and the primary obstacle preventing him from realizing that goal. It is the sort of paradoxical situation that allows for elaborate plot complexities, but also one that speaks to Farscape’s cult appeal, particularly its ability to bind up the sort of difficult choices and irrational situations that seem so much a part of the postmodern condition, while it also presents those choices and situations as escaping easy or convenient solutions. It is part of this characteristic that Jan Johnson-Smith observes when she describes what she finds to be the series’ key attraction, its tendency for “stripping individual moments and events of narrow and short-term considerations, and replacing them with broader, more contextualized concerns” (165–66).