This show is an absolutely unhinged tornado of ideas and visuals. Yet it is kinda captivating for that reason.

I have an odd relationship with Farscape. I remember when it first aired in 1999; I was neck deep in Star Trek at that time. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies were all ongoing when this new show arrived. Of course, as previously discussed, Star Trek flounders almost immediately at the turn of the millennium. Meanwhile, Farscape appeared, then flared out unceremoniously.
Following an American astronaut and pilot who is shot through a wormhole and into the farthest reaches of space. John Critchon allies himself with a band of misfit alien fugitives on the run from a tyrannical military called Peacekeepers. The show was an Australian production, created by Rockne S. O’Bannon, who worked on many other science fiction shows such as Alien Nation, Defiance, and SeaQuest DSV (we might get to that one day)

But in remembering Farscape‘s appearance on television, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. A sentiment that was probably shared by many viewers, and ultimately studio heads. The show ran for four full seasons (over twenty episodes each) before being cancelled. A two-part feature would later be made to cap off the story, called Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.
Sadly, I bounced off Farscape when it first appeared. I watched between three or five episodes before giving up. Not for any particular reason; the show looked interesting, but Star Trek had such a grip on me. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was also extremely popular at this time. The air waves were very full.

So in 2026 I decided to give Farscape a chance. Trapped as it is in the gulag of Amazon Prime Video. I can safely say, I probably would have enjoyed Farscape a lot back then, during my teens. But I can see why not everyone understood it.

This show is dark. This show is not a kids’ show; it is an adult show. Which nowadays shouldn’t be a surprise, but when this show was being advertised heavily for its Jim Henson puppet work (you know, The Muppets!) there maybe was a misconception from a lot of people. Farscape includes, and is not limited to: Regular torture, gore, blood, wounds, sex, complex and conflicting relationships, unsettling imagery and violence. Especially in its middle-two seasons.

It has taken an exceedingly long time to finish watching the show. Not as long as the original Star Trek, but that was a hiatus taken before I was writing blog posts. This is to say… ultimately, I didn’t get along with Farscape. But I want to go into positives first.

The visual fidelity and creativity of this show is astounding. The sets, the costumes, the ship designs, the aliens, and quite simply the ideas. It is a fractal image, a kaleidoscope of fantastic wonder and deep surreality. The show keeps going, on and on, forever supplying new and wonderful things to see and disturbing ideas. It knocks the stuffing out of contemporaries like Stargate SG-1 in terms of visual creativity.
Unlike Star Trek, which wears on its sleeve the fact that aliens look mostly human (There’s even an episode explaining why.) Farscape is the polar opposite. Here we have a universe of the insane and alien. Brought to life with Jim Henson’s puppet work, for certain, but also in the show’s harebrained writing. Up is down and down is up. We only have one human character as an anchor, and he is lost in murky dark seas.

Our human, John Crichton (Ben Browder) is quickly forced together with alien shipmates. Ka D’Argo (Anthony Simcoe) Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan (Virginia Hey) Rygel (Jonathan Hardy) and a host of others. They are on the run from The Peacekeepers, a misnomer if ever there was one, hunting them down. They are quickly joined by Aeryn Sun, a Peacekeeper, played by Claudia Black (Pitch Black) but that’s only the beginnings of their problems.
How John got here was through a wormhole that swallowed up his experimental spacecraft near Earth. Unfortunately for him, The Peacekeepers develop a very strong desire to learn about these wormholes. And John is the only one who even vaguely understands them. What follows is four seasons of unhinged madness. Some of my notes I made along the way include: “This show is a cat on catnip”, and “this show has ADHD”.

The show is resoundingly Australian. A huge amount of supporting characters are from the land down under, and it does add to the series’ strangeness. Heck, the main cast is mostly from Oz, which leaves Ben Browder as the sole American. It works well in isolating him from the rest.
It has a lot of inspiration from sci-fi of old. An astronaut being lost in space due to an experiment is nothing new. Buck Rogers, The Planet of the Apes, use this launching point (pun intended?) Even A Princess of Mars is similar. Farscape also reminds me of the BBC’s 1970s series Blake’s 7, where a small group of rebels fight a tyrannical federation while flying inside a living spaceship.

Many of the show’s strengths are in how insane it is. So often we see horrible wonders that even H.R Giger would be proud of. For example, John, restrained in a sci-fi contraption that locks his head in place. His eyeballs pulled out of his head, and devices being placed on the optic nerves. And he’s awake! That’s just one episode (“A Clockwork Nebari”, if you are curious) and it never happens again. It isn’t even necessarily a “horror” scene, it is played like its par of the course. A less gross out example is one episode that includes customised Mad Max vehicles. These are never used again but look incredible. The budget (or savvy production) is unbelievable a lot of the time. Every episode is distinctly baffling and different.

Creatures and makeup are also stand-out. It is all especially consistent too. Regularly with shows lasting several seasons, make-up or designs can subtly change. Farscape isn’t affected by this. We have weird and wonderful and visually memorable aliens. Just look up “Farscape NamTar”, or “Farscape Natira”, for just two examples of how far the prosthetics and make-up go. I also loved the DRDs; little voiceless robots that service the crew’s living ship. There wasn’t enough of them in the later seasons. This is all great glowing praise! Practical effects, cool visuals, great alien designs. What’s wrong?

I hate the writing.

There were several points while watching Farscape where I was keen to give up. I simply wasn’t enjoying it. I’ve heard it said that the show is “marmite”, and that could be the case. You either love it, or hate it. Personally, I persisted because there are bits I loved. But there were resoundingly long periods I did not.

This show’s zany visuals can only be equalled by its zany writing. Character consistency, motivations, relationships, agencies, flip on a dime. There is no perception of time nor place; everything seems to be occurring wherever our heroes are. There’s never a stop-gap, never a release valve. In the infinite void of space, there’s never… ever, ever a slow moment. Life and death are in the balance constantly and there’s never a moment to understand what is happening or to take stock in what is happening. I think a real stand-out moment was an episode starting with John and D’Argo arguing about what colour shirt John should wear. Okay, this is the start of the episode, this is setup for something? Nope. Nothing. We can’t have ten seconds without frivolous dialogue!

This leads to a terminal case of “weightlessness”. I don’t mean a lack of gravity. I mean a lack of stakes. Repeatedly, every few episodes, someone in the main cast is either dying, imminently dying or literally dead. You know what happens when enough cast members die only to magically revive several times? You don’t appreciate when someone… actually dies.
I won’t spoil things entirely, but my favourite character in this show doesn’t continue for the whole run. It took me nearly a full season to realize that the character did actually die. They weren’t coming back. At all. This show is so aggressively tangential, so insanely subversive, that I was sure they would come back. Why not? Everyone else seems to.
It gets worse in the show’s finale. Supposedly a very emotional moment? Was hilarious to me; I was broken. The show was broken.

Structurally, the show does whatever it wants to progress some sort of “plot”. Oh, we need someone to be on the spaceship? Boom. They are on the ship, don’t ask how. Oh, we need a cliffhanger but don’t want to spend the time resolving it properly? Boom. It is resolved. Don’t ask questions. Oh, these two characters need to hate each other. Done. How or why? Don’t ask questions.

All of these problems lead to a whole product that is very aggravating, borderline upsetting, and overall nonsensical. Oh, and it has a persistent narrative, by the way. This isn’t a monster-of-the-week show; everything is interconnected.

All of this absurdity maybe worked better in weekly episodes rather than binging. But it ruins everything. When you just want some stability, it throws episodes like Revenging Angel, or Scratch’n’Sniff. Both are season three, by the way. I think this is when the studios grew tired and perhaps saw diminishing viewership. This isn’t verified, but considering season four was the last one…

The show is a live action cartoon for adults. That’s probably the best description I can ever come up with.

There are exceptional moments, along with the insane ones. John’s primary nemesis is a torture-specialist bondage alien called Scorpius (played by Wayne Pygram). Once you get over the stupid name, Scorpius and John have this weird psychic connection that allows for some very inventive narrative devices. It is a far more interesting villain persona than a woman who seduces men with her boob sweat. Yes, I just wrote that, and yes, it is a factual statement.
Perhaps an They also do something very neat with the concept of clones, or duplicates of people. Which Farscape leans into with its persistent narrative structure very well. But again, the emotional pay-off is fleeting. The show doesn’t linger long enough on emotions.

Farscape is like sticking your head into a washing machine full of sci-fi action figures and turning it on. It is extremely painful to endure, but it is a very unique and colourful experience. The paradox of the show is: I don’t think I’ll ever watch it again, but I do appreciate that I did. There is literally nothing else like this show.