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Farscape
Right now, in a galaxy far, far away...
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Farscape
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Starring Ben Browder, Claudia Black, Anthony Simcoe, Virginia Hey
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Created and Written by Rockne S. O'Bannon
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Sci-Fi Channel
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Premieres March 19, 8 p.m.
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Review by John Platt
 hile testing a new, ultra-fast space plane, 20th century American astronaut John Crichton (Browder) is sucked into a wormhole and catapulted across a thousand galaxies. Suddenly, he finds himself and his ship floating in the middle of an alien battlefield...with a battle in progress.
Taken on board Moya (a huge biomechanoid "living ship" desperately trying to evade captivity), Crichton is confronted by completely alien life forms: Ka D'Argo (Simcoe), a fierce, hairy Luxan warrior; Rygel XVI (puppetry by John Eccleston, voice by Jonathan Hardy), the slug-like Dominar of the Hynerian Empire; and Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan (Hey), the serene blue priestess from the planet Delvia.
While the three aliens attempt to evade capture by the merciless, humanoid Peacekeepers, Crichton finds himself locked in a cell with Officer Aeryn Sun (Black), an attractive female humanoid who's also a lethal enemy fighter pilot.
Eluding Peacekeeper capture, Moya's crew lands on a planet for repairs...and Crichton and Aeryn are able to escape. Aeryn immediately summons her evil comrades, led by the ruthless Captain Crais (Lani John Tupu). And Crais, it turns out, has launched a personal vendetta against the pilot of an unknown vehicle that accidentally killed his brother in battle: namely, John Crichton.
When Aeryn tries to stand up for John, Crais brands her a traitor, and she ends up fleeing with Crichton and Moya's crew. Now, lost in a strange and foreign universe, Crichton bonds with these fugitives in order to survive...and hopefully, to find a way home.
Anybody seen a planet called Earth?
Farscape is a well-crafted, tongue-in-cheek space adventure that strives to appeal to both young and adult audiences. Essentially a Lost In Space/Voyager plot mixed with Star Wars/Buck Rogers-type characters, Farscape succeeds on more levels than it doesn't, but it's still a mixed bag.
Simcoe is convincing as the hairy, somewhat Chewbacca-like warrior D'Argo, while Hey gives a fine performance as the blue priestess, Zhann. The villains are all played with sincere, if one-dimensional, fury by competent actors
The puppets, both Rygel and the ship's pilot, are a different story. Even though they are nicely designed and operated by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, these characters make no attempt to hide the fact that they are, indeed, puppets. This tends to undercut the reality and seriousness of the show, making Farscape seem like more of a kid's series (much like the beautifully designed, but ultimately unsatisfying, Henson film Labyrinth). But the puppets' performances are quite good, and they do occasionally allow viewers to suspend their disbelief.
The weak link in the cast, unfortunately, is Browder. He is clearly uncomfortable in this science fiction universe...and coming from Party of Five, it's easy to understand why. His performance brings to mind the miscast Gil Gerard from the Buck Rogers series: a good-looking lummox who seems totally bewildered by the genre he's found himself in. But perhaps Browder will grow into the role.
The production design and special effects are all first-rate, which is nice, but not enough to make the show a hit. But if the quality of Farscape's writing and acting develops to match its computer-generated effects, it may prove to be a show worth watching.
Someone at the Sci-Fi Channel needs to remember that two of the best science fiction shows of the last decade, Quantum Leap and Alien Nation, were fan favorites with very minimal special effects. Instead, those shows focused on good acting and original SF story-lines.
-- J.P.
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First Wave
Stop me if you've heard this one before...
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First Wave
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Starring Sebastian Spence
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Created by Chris Brancato
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Sci-Fi Channel
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Premieres March 19, 10 p.m.
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Review by Patrick Lee
 ade Foster (Spence), a reformed thief and "master of disguise," has been trying to make a new life for himself and his devoted wife, Hannah. But that's when the hallucinations start. Then someone rats him out to his employer, who promptly fires him.
Foster tries to figure out who's setting him up and finds that his house has been bugged. Following a tip, he discovers other people similarly afflicted: first a cop who shoots himself, then a millionaire who has been locked up for killing his family. "They watch us, you know. They know every detail of our lives," the millionaire tells Foster. "Who are they?" Foster asks.
He's not prepared for the answer: The first wave of an alien invasion force, who have disguised themselves as humans. The aliens have identified 117 prototypes of human psychology and have been subjecting them to extreme mental and physical tests to assess how easily the planet might be taken. Only Foster--Subject 117, whom the aliens thought was a marginal personality--has managed to survive intact.
But not before the aliens kill Hannah and frame Foster for the murder. Now he's on the run from the police and their alien overmasters. Using his thief's bag of tricks--and a force of will the aliens didn't count on--he makes it his mission to unmask the alien conspiracy, using the prophecies of Nostradamus as a guide.
In the second episode provided for review, "Blue Agave," Foster makes contact with his wife's best friend, a high-powered executive in New York City. While trying to help him clear his name, she shows him the club demimonde she inhabits--an underworld that, it turns out, is a staging ground for an alien plot to influence the rich and famous with extraterrestrial worms.
They're here...again
First Wave--executive produced by onetime X-Files writer Brancato ("Eve"), filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and TV veteran Larry Sugar--is a cut above other, similarly SF-themed shows crowding the airwaves. But not by much.
Once again, viewers are in alien invasion territory. The complicated setup results in a show that's a hybrid of The Invaders and The Fugitive, with elements of The Visitor thrown in for good measure. Like a cherry on a sundae, it tops the whole thing off with a touch of the occult in the form of tabloid perennial Nostradamus, who acts as Foster's Baedeker through the alien conspiracy, though for no apparent reason.
Like shows such as The Outer Limits, First Wave is filmed in Vancouver and has bland production design, flat lighting, passable acting by uniformly young and attractive supporting players, and some cable-ready titillation. It does, however, rise above other SF shows with pleasantly murky plots and a handful of quirky supporting roles.
But First Wave fails to generate much more than passing interest. Unlike The X-Files and its progeny, First Wave's conspiracy isn't very layered: The aliens are here, they want to take over, and only Cade Foster can stop them. Except for a few exchanges between Foster and his conspiracy theorist ally Crazy Eddie--a Lone Gunman-style Web site publisher--the show is virtually devoid of humor.
The main shortcoming, though, is the central character, Cade Foster. For someone with a checkered past and complex motivation, he's surprisingly colorless, basically a white-hat hero in a black-hat world. Though the producers have tried to dress his character up with noirish voiceovers, they come off sounding labored and artificial.
First Wave has already been running overseas for a year, and Sci-Fi Channel has committed to 66 episodes, so we can expect this show to be around for a while. Here's hoping it picks up a little more color along the way.
-- P.L.
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