So, I started watching Farscape after reading a recommendation somewhere on this board. I have just finished season one and I am quite enjoying it.
One thing I did notice though, there seems to be an extraordinary number of Australian actors on the show. And in one episode, they were filming in Australia, or the location was supposed to be Australia anyway.
So it dawned on me. Is Farscape an Australian production?
It was filmed in Australia. I think at Fox Studios in Sydney. But not using Australian funding, I don’t think.
I think it was trying to emulate the working relationship the Hercules and Xena series had with New Zealand.
That would explain why there are so many Australian actors on the show.
Sort of ironic that the main story line is about escaped prisoners, when considering Australian history.
I remember when it was on, there was a point where it did not air in Australia. The actors would make this show and then see no sign that anyone was watching it.
When they came to conventions in the US, it felt great because they had actual proof people were seeing and loving what they made.
Claudia Black was the one I remember saying all this.
??? Australia didn’t have more escaped prisoners than any other country.
Australia was where prisoners were ‘transported’ from England.
Yeah, America was too.
I don’t believe this is true. Georgia did receive a number of convicts, but it was not founded to be a penal colony. Many people came to America to pursue religious freedom (Puritans), and as investors.
Australia, OTOH, is famous for its being a destination for convicts. One of the reasons it was settled was to have someplace to put prisoners who were overburdening the British prisons.
It’s true that prisoners were transported to America, which is what I said. So yeah, it’s true.
The IMDB entry for the series lists a number of production companies which were involved in the series, including Jim Henson Productions, Hallmark Entertainment, Sci-Fi Channel, and Nine Network Australia.
According to the series’ Wikipedia entry, the first season ran on Nine Network (and on YTV in Canada) before it ran in the U.S., on Sci-Fi. It sounds like, at least initially, the show may have been primarily produced (and funded?) by Nine Network. In the end, the decision to cancel the series came from Sci-Fi, so I suspect that, by that point, Sci-Fi was paying some, if not all, of the production costs.
And America is currently the convict capital of the world. So that’s ironic.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Which word?
I do believe, in fact, that transportation to Australia didn’t begin until 1788 because of the American revolution. Indeed, Cook didn’t discover Australia until 1770 Prior to that, north american recieved all of the UK’s transportation prisoners since the early 17th cent. Sent primarily to New England and present-day Canada, they were stopped being sent even to Canada because being so close to the former colonies the british government feared the cons might rebel themselves or flee south to find freedom in the brand new nation.
AFAIK, transportation to Australia was done as much to send settlers to colonize as to relieve overburdened gaols, and that american colonies didn’t really want for new settlers as there were lots of people willing to pay for their own passage to a new life in a new land, so penal transport was mainly just about prison overcrowding.
Australia wasn’t “founded to be a penal colony”. It was founded to be part of the British Empire; free settlement and development were always on the agenda. They used convicts as forced labour and forced colonists, but Australia was never meant to be the giant open-air prison that some modern people imagine.
The convicts were meant to be reformed by healthy labour in a healthy environment. While all sorts, including some very nasty folks, were transported, the great majority were young, often teenagers, and convicted of minor crimes of poverty; shoplifting and petty theft.
There were free colonists within a year of the first settlement, and it didn’t take long for the free colonists to outnumber the convicts.
From the Wiki page on the history of Australia:
That’s within 5 years of the founding of the first Australian colony.
Just tell me what word you think I don’t know the meaning of. Don’t be a bitch about it. Just tell me.
The first ships of settlers to Australia all carried convicts and the soldiers who were to become the guards. Sydney and Van Diemen’s land (Tasmania) were settled as penal colonies. Convicts who had served their time were released and granted land to work and settle. Guards who retired were also granted land. So the original “free” colonists were the ex-cons who had served their time. By the turn of the century you also had free born Australians coming of age.
Sydney transitioned from a penal colony to a free society in the 1820’s.
There were a few free colonists who did make it to Australia before then, but they were very few. Not until the 1830’s did free colonists outnumber convicts, and this number jumped further in the 1850’s when the Australian gold rush brought huge number of migrants. The last convict ship sent to Australia was in 1868.
The penal colonies may not have been the initial plan for the British Government, but it was none the less how they solved the overburdened prisons at home.
I should add that the over burdened prison wasn’t only due to the US revolution. The number of prisoners shipped to the US and Canada wasn’t that high in comparison, mainly because the American and Canadian societies were already established and there were a lot of complaints to the British on their shipping of prisoners.
But even before then, there had been a reformation of the judicial system in England where the death penalty had been applied for even the pettiest of crimes. When people started objecting the judicial system reformed so that capital punishment only applied to crimes such as murder, treason and forgery, but petty theft would only put you in prison for a while. That was the start of the prison overburdening problem and that is also when convicts began being sent to the Americas despite the colonial’s complaints.
The problem was also, that the prisoners were basically sold off as indentured servants in the Americas, where the contracts showed how many years they had to work off their punishment, to work fields or mines or whatever labor they had need for. But in the south they had no need for this as they had plenty of slaves, and in the north, there were a lot of free colonials who would be happy to work. So demand for the convicts were not so high. Especially when you consider the public opinion of convicts being sent over.
This was not the case in Australia. The first few settlements were penal colonies settled and worked by prisoners and their guards.
Back to the topic at hand. I am now almost through season 3 and I have to say this series has really got me hooked.
I wasn’t so sure in the first season, but I guess that is often the case for new series. They are getting their legs on in the first season.
Second season was better and now, season 3 is awesome, with a few minor irritations here and there.
By the way, am I the only one who thinks Chiana is hot? That bluish-grey skin, that hair and those lips of hers. And I mean Chiana, not the actress. I saw pictures and youtube videos of the actress Gigi Edgley without the makeup and sure she is cute, but didn’t have the same effect. But then in that Chiana outfit, I’m stunned.
Surely someone else finds Chiana hot?
Farscape is one of those shows I know I should love, and I’ve tried to watch it a few times, but I just can’t get past the M-factor.
Excuse my ignorance, but what’s the “M-factor”?