Farscape last episode spoiler and mild rant

[Sock Munkey]

Holy crap!
spoiler----->











































Oh my god they blew up John.
Those bastards!
Granted they ended it with a to be continued but still this was supposed to be the final episode.

[yosemite]

Great minds think alike Sock! My first impulse was to start a thread too. FRELL! How could they DO this?!?!?!

[Sock Munkey]

Yeah! I mean damn I hadda say something to SOMEONE yanno. I do have a notion as to how this might be fixed though since I took a good look at exactly what happened to them.

[Baldwin]

For future reference:

(spoiler)Whatever text you want(/spoiler)

is the coding you want, but with square brackets rather than parentheses.

What's the point of the Sci-Fi Channel thanking all the folks at Farscape? Shouldn't that be an apology?

[Sock Munkey]

Ahh, thank you, I didn't know how and I wanted to get this out there right away so I didn't stop to look up the proper way. My apologies.

[Sock Munkey]

SPOILER:

I made sure to pay close attention during the final attack to see if they would simply be frozen in staisis or some such thing. Clearly this did not happen, however, I notice that they were not vaporized. they seemed to be reduced to little crystals like instant coffee. Might they be reassembled? I remember the episode where john was petrified and had his head cut off, once they hade sure his had was replaced properly when he was unfrozen he was whole again. Will something similar be employed? The attacking pilot did say "netralized" and not "destroyed".

[D_Odds]

I'm too slow.

Couldn't some nimrod in post production

SPOILER:

have cut the show at the happy point?

Now I'm pissed that they cancelled one of the only shows I watch religiously, and at how they ended it.

Frelling bastards.

[D_Odds]

Baldwin, USA Networks, the owners of SciFi, are the drekheads who cancelled the show. My unfounded guess is that SciFi would have preferred to have kept a critically acclaimed show on the air if they could have justified the cost.

[Sock Munkey]

USA Networks huh? They are SO going on my list...

Too bad the fact that it's one of the few shows on sci-fi that doesn't suck doesn't seem to justify the cost.

[Fibber McGee]

*shakes head sadly*

And look what we get next week! Tremors the series! Oh joy!



How in hell do you make Tremors a series? The dad from Family Ties fighting sandworms every week? What a joke.

[RealityChuck]

You sat through that pile of crap and that's what you complain about? The show had all the reasons why Farscape stunk this season, but the ending didn't bother me at all. It was obviously filmed before they got word the show was cancelled and it was too late to change anything.

People who still rave about Farscape should go back and see the older episodes, when the characters were interesting, and they still knew how to tell a story.

[Sock Munkey]

True, I mean if they can't afford to keep farscape going how are they gonna afford giant worms and flying things and stuff every week?

[tanstaafl]

This episode was filmed before they knew they were being canceled. (They literally got the news on the last day of filming.) David Kemper, the producer, said he thought of changing things slightly to "end" the series but in the end decided to go ahead and air what they had filmed.

Originally posted by D_Odds
Baldwin, USA Networks, the owners of SciFi, are the drekheads who cancelled the show. My unfounded guess is that SciFi would have preferred to have kept a critically acclaimed show on the air if they could have justified the cost.

Bonnie Hammer, the president of Sci-Fi, was the one responsible for cancelling the series. From an interview in the Boston Globe.

Sci Fi officials, pointing to flagging ratings, say ''Farscape'' must go to make room for new and higher-profile programming such as the Steven Spielberg-produced miniseries ''Taken'' and ''Frank Herbert's Children of Dune,'' which begins tonight and stars Oscar-winner Susan Sarandon. Next, the channel introduces its first original reality series, ''Scare Tactics,''as well as a horror-comedy series that spins off the movie ''Tremors.''

and

The channel has realized, Hammer says, that traditional science-fiction shows that attempt to portray the future via space odyssies and gee-whiz technology are no longer as appealing to tech-savvy viewers as Earth-based twists on modern-day reality, such as ''The Sixth Sense'' and ''The Matrix.''

''Years ago, science fiction was based on all of these predictions about technology. Well, there is nothing new out there for kids who are so used to technology,'' she says. ''People don't care about the future that much but about new perceptions on the here and now. We're trying to develop products that deal with that.''

Hammer has said elsewhere that she is no longer interested in "space shows".

Henson Enterprises is currently looking into an animated version of Farscape but none of the original cast is currently involved.

[Sock Munkey]

Bonnie Hammer has totally missed the point of sci-fi in general and Farscape in particular.

[Revtim]

Too bad she's still interested enough in "space shows" to bastardize 'Battlestar Galactica'.

[Baldwin]

Sock Monkey, I think I came across as high-handed. Sorry; I really just intended to be helpful. (Maybe there's a reason I've been fired so many times...)

How the hell did Bonnie Hammer get to be president of The Sci-Fi Channel? She obviously has no understanding of science fiction. I'm still trying to figure this out:

''Years ago, science fiction was based on all of these predictions about technology. Well, there is nothing new out there for kids who are so used to technology,'' she says. ''People don't care about the future that much but about new perceptions on the here and now. We're trying to develop products that deal with that.''

"Years ago"? What does she think science fiction is based on now? Last time I looked, we still don't have starships and AI, and we haven't made alien contact. I really don't know what the hell she's talking about.

[Johnny L.A.]

Bonnie Hammer has totally missed the point of sci-fi in general and Farscape in particular.

I was thinking exactly the same thing.

[Mahaloth]

Rockne S. O'Bannon has written a short story that will run in the final issue of Farscape magazine. For now, it will be the final canon story(and takes place long after the events at the end of season four).

[bafaa]

I used to love Farscape but the last year or so has been pretty lame. Frankly I'm glad it's over and I wish they had just cut out the last 2 minutes of the last show so it wouldn't end with a cliffhanger.

[Sock Munkey]

Originally posted by Baldwin
Sock Monkey, I think I came across as high-handed. Sorry; I really just intended to be helpful. (Maybe there's a reason I've been fired so many times...)

Yeah, it's cool I took it the way you meant it.


The biggest reason I love Farscape is that it's plots and aliens were all so much FUN. A lot of sci-fi is edgy, scary, philosophical, gritty, or exciting but so Farscape was one of the few that bought back plain good old-fasioned fun.

[Baldwin]

I'd like to thank Virginia Hey for providing the first naked blue bottom in tv science fiction history. (Though you have to rent the DVD of that episode to see it properly.)

I also liked a crew with no command hierarchy (until they decided they needed to designate a captain), thrown together by circumstance and gradually bonding.

I would have liked to see an episode where they actually had a peaceful day, just to see what life could be like aboard Moya without somebody trying to kill them.

[Dr.One-L]

{Delurk}
Wanted to "bump" this thread to agree with bafaa about the final season being poor in compared with the previous seasons and that leaving that final, cliffhanger ending on in post-production, once they knew they'd been cancelled, was IMHO, really annoying. So I cut that last bit out of my tape of the ep and let it end on the "happy" bit. Yep, I'm a sap.

Frankly, though, I think the entire season suffered from the show's production staff becoming too in love with their own cleverness. There got to be more "twists" and "surprises" than actual story, and when it takes me two viewings AND a read of the official Farscape website's summary of the ep to figure out what happened, someone's not doing their story-telling job correctly. They also took way too many "side trips" and then crammed a bunch of resolution into the final 6 eps or so (which were the only ones I particularly liked). So while I'm annoyed at "Sci-Fi" (Ha!) Channel for cancelling the show AFTER all that hype about having renewed it for 2 years, I'm not terribly sad to see it go. I'm actually happy it ended before things got worse and it turned into another X-Files or Buffy. I'm so ending my Farscape DVD collection with season 3.
{/delurk}

[elf6c]

It was quite lame indeed. Leaving the kind of cheesy cliffhanger season ender as the series ender was a bad move. Just another slap in the face of the long suffering Farscape fans.

Best bet is to pretend it never happened, like Season 5 of Babylon 5, or any of the truly craptastic follow up series they tried to cram down our throats. Or the last 2 years of the X-Files. Never happened.

My fingers are in my ears. [loundly] NAH NAH NAH, I CAN'T HEAR YOU! [/loudly]

[El Elvis Rojo]

Okay, now that you've figured out how to use the spoilers tag, can you fill some of us in a bit more on what exactly happened throughout the rest of the episode? I really liked this series for the first three seasons, but then I lost cable, and now I catch one every now and again. The last one I saw was number T-5, so I'm really curious as to the specifics of how this show ended. I admit, what I saw of the last couple seasons was a little wacky, but it was still one of the best Sci-Fi television series ever produced, and Scorpius is the best villain I've ever seen.

[D_Odds]

SPOILER:

Having saved Earth from either Peacekeeper or Scarran domination by destroying the wormhole leading to Earth, John and Aeryn are spending a quiet interlude together while Moya heals. Aeryn reveals that her baby has been released from status (don't ask, it's a peacekeeper thing) and that she will soon be having John's baby. John is ecstatic and proposes marriage. Rigel comments "Idiot". Show should have ended here. Instead, random alien shoots out of the sky and 'neutralizes' John and Aeryn in such a way to make the viewer believe they are dead. To Be Continued, they say, right before thanking the cast and crew for their efforts. Of course, they never say when it will be continued, but I guess that's a minor point to a cliffhanger ending they could have avoided.

[Gorgon Heap]

Well I had to laugh. I was just flipping through the channels and I saw them sitting on a boat.

Married? Yay!

Uh-oh! Poof!


That constituted about two minutes out of the fifteen minutes I'd ever seen of the show.

So yeah, I laughed.

[Vengeant]

Okay, since it is the last episode of Farscape, I gotta throw in my 2 cents.

The episode was okay. Some great moments and great lines, but I thought the ending kinda sucked. Why does Rockne O'Bannon feel that he has to end the season with Crichton being really happy, then being completely (and I mean *completely*) frelled? He's done it for several seasos now... The mere fact that he felt the need to "terminator 2"-ize John and Aeryn just irritated me. (Although I did like D'argo's grieving bellow; very heat-felt.)

So, yeah, I concur, I'm sorry to see Farscape end, 'cause it has had the best moments that I've seen on TV, but I also think that it's good that it is ending now, because it has definitely gone downhill in the last season or two.

But, on the plus side, maybe now they can do a Farscape movie!!! Yeah, that'd kick @ss! I wouldn't mind seeing the battle between the Scarrans and the Peacekeeprs on the big screen...

Vengeant
-----*-----
Lost souls of little understanding and fierce deeds
rise as the enemies of the world for its destruction.
-- The Bhagavad Gita, 16:9
-----*-----

[godzillatemple]

OK, so this episode was apparently not meant to be a series finale when shot. That means it was part one of a cliff-hanger that would be resolved next season. And that means that the writers had presumably already figured out how to resolve the cliff-hanger.

Would it kill the creators to simply tell us what the proposed resolution would have been had they been allowed to have another season? Or are there some sort of confidentiality rules against that sort of thing?

I have, of course, come up with my own resolution:

SPOILER:

Note that the pilot of the attacking ship said he was going to "neutralize" John and Aeryn, not kill them. Assuming that was not just a euphemism, I'm going to assume that they are not actually dead. No, what REALLY happened is that the beam that hit them was some form of transporter ray and the two were beamed aboard the attacking vessel. This particular type of transporter beam happens to only work on organic material, however, and anything inorganic caught in the beam is reduced to a crystaline residue. What we saw collapsing and disintegrating on the boat was their clothing and equipment, not their bodies. Alternatively, the transporter works by making an exact copy of the object and recreating the object onboard the attacking vessel. The "original" is reduced to dust, but since the copy is an exact copy, this doesn't matter. The concept of exact copies was already raised in the series, what with the John clone and all, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to accept.

Just a thought....

Regards,

Barry

[RealityChuck]

The answer was obvious:

What was left in the boat was, obviously, Instant Crichton and Instant Aeryn. Just add water (especially the healing water of the planet) and presto: they're back.

There is no doubt that the "solution" to the problem was going to be as lame-ass as the entire show had been all season.