hen the final episode of Farscape aired in 2003, many fans disappointed by its cancellation were encouraged by the appearance of three little words at the end of the last scene: "To be continued." On Oct. 17 and 18, that implied promise came true with the premiere of a four-hour miniseries titled Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.
At the center of the world of Farscape is the relationship between John Crichton (Ben Browder), a human astronaut trapped in a distant part of space, and Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black), an alien warrior exiled from a militaristic society. Over the course of the show's four seasons, Crichton and Aeryn formed a romantic bond culminating in a pregnancy and a marriage proposal at the end of the series. But shortly after the two became engaged, they were attacked by a passing ship and seemingly blasted into thousands of tiny crystal fragments.
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars picked up where the series left off, following the story of Crichton, Aeryn and the rest of the crew of the living ship Moya as they become caught up in an intergalactic war between two alien races. Browder and Black recently spoke with Science Fiction Weekly about returning to the world of Farscape and their appreciation for the fans who made it possible.
Why do you think the show has inspired such a fan following?
Black: Farscape came at a really, really good time. I don't think I had an e-mail address when we first started.
Browder: And now it's jammed every day with adoration [laughs].
The Internet was a big factor in the campaign to get the series back on the air, wasn't it?
Browder: Yeah, and the continued fan participation in the process of getting it back on air. It wasn't as though it was one initial reaction and it went away. They've actually sustained a campaign and sustained a community which is based on the show. It's really interesting, the Internet community.
Black: Yeah. Without the Internet, it wouldn't [have happened]. It just expedited matters so quickly. You can get people's attention immediately. I mean, if it had been like Star Trek and it had been canceled and there had been a public outcry, you wouldn't have heard. The concentric ripples from that pebble would take so long to spread out to the broad community to help bring it back.
Browder: It's really phenomenal. The time that I was in Australia [where Farscape was filmed], I don't think we ever did any uplink-type publicity. Australia's a long way away. Within two weeks of being canceled, I was on CNN. And I'm live on CNN from Australia two weeks after we're canceled because of the Internet community. I use "canceled" in a broad sense. By the time we finished the last show.
Black: And it's funny, because I remember going to the SCI FI Channel and seeing Marlon [Jackson] in the IT room, and he set me up with a handle because I said, "I want to be able to send some messages to the fans on the bulletin board." I know that there's a massive webring now, and Lord knows I don't know how to navigate my way around half of it, but just being able to know that there's a place where I can go ... And I know a lot of people left for a while, left the bulletin board, but it's the easiest place for me to go and leave a message.
Did you ever check the fan reactions on the boards when you were shooting?
Browder: I did. I looked at it to see what it was that they were interested in. It's a way of gauging an audience as if you're on stage, except you get a slight delay. But it's an immediate response. You can see their reaction to certain things. Particularly, one of the episodes I wrote. I went, "They're going to kill me for this. They're going to kill me when I do this." And I went and checked, and sure enough [they were]. I anticipated that a certain portion would react that way. I thought, "Well I hope they don't all react that way." But it was a portion of it. And it's interesting to see how they respond to the work.
Black: Without being influenced as a performer, if you absorb that information and take it on board, then it influences the choices you make, then it's helpful.
How are you going to pick up from where the last episode ended?
Browder: Same way we did every season where you come back. We were left with a cliffhanger. So you resolve the cliffhanger as quickly as you can. There's certain parts of the cliffhanger which are resolved quickly, and other parts which will never be resolved. There's always a lot of untold story at the end of any season of Farscape.
Black: There was at least another year or two left in that arc of us and the world of Farscape.
How much of that is included in the miniseries?
Black: [Executive producer] David Kemper could get one concept and spin that into a five-episode piece. So really it was limitless, what we could do.
So how do you narrow it down?
Black: It was a process of working [it] out. For him, it was always trying to push the envelope. We were getting notes from SCI FI Channel, which was a blessing. "Go push the envelope harder, make it edgier, make it sexier, make it more sassy. Whatever you want to do with this show, just make the tone stronger, and just go for it." Because they wanted something really original and fresh, and that's a fantastic note to get from a network. So David would let his imagination go. Part of the creative process, especially for a writer, I imagine, is you don't want to put any restrictions on your thoughts. Let them all come out, and then let the team around you tone down to what's possible, and then with the obvious restrictions of how many pages you're supposed to deliver for the script.
Did you have any idea when the show ended that you would be coming back?
Black: They'd always talked about movies. Doing a miniseries was always just a compromise to finish it off.
Browder: Doing the miniseries was a way to finish the parts of the story that we were telling.
Black: It's like an extended season four.
Browder: It was important to everyone involved that we addressed what our core audience needed to see resolved, because we're dealing with a long-arc story.
Black: In order to creatively feel comfortable about doing a movie, you want to get to a point where you've pretty much told most of the story you want to tell. And we had so much hanging going into the fifth season with the belief that we were four and five, so we did more setup in season four than we traditionally would have done. So you want to get creatively to a point where you can then go to do a movie. The movie was always a thing which was discussed from pretty much the second season onward, where there were discussions about that.
So there was talk of doing theatrical movies?
Black: There was always a theatrical release in mind.
Browder: But the miniseries is actually more about being true to the story and being true to the audience than it is about "Is it smarter to do a movie or a miniseries?" On a financial level, maybe it's smarter to do a movie. But I think it's creatively correct, and it's actually being true to your audience, to get to a point where you can then say, "Now we can move and do the next thing."
Black: And the show was gathering momentum. I mean, yes, we had a very devoted fan base, but it was growing. And so for it to have stopped when it did, it brought additional attention to the show when it was canceled. So the miniseries has upped its value in doing another four hours of television based on the fact that that momentum and that recognition had come subsequently. So it's good to just keep the name alive.
Browder: But the day after we were canceled I don't think there was the expectation that we would ever do any more. Nor was there for a period of time. It was months later when [executive producer Brian Henson] finally called me and said, "Would you be interested in doing more Farscape?" And I said, "Do I have to work with Claudia Black?" And he said, "Oh, yeah, you have to work with Claudia Black." And I went, "Oh, I don't know, Brian. OK, let me think about it."
Black: That's so droll. I'm laughing on the inside.
Browder: I'm trying to put in some professional distance. I'm trying to dispel the rumors.
What was it like returning to the characters after so much time?
Black: For me, it was a really interesting experience because [of] her being endowed with the pregnancy. It's a completely different side to Aeryn, for the audience and for me to play. ... With Aeryn, I found that a lot of the time, it was expected because she was pregnant that she would behave like an Earth woman who was pregnant. We don't have the time for Aeryn to have all these things where she's having to ask, "What's a fetus? What's this? An umbilical cord? What's that?" There were so many different things we had to service.
How did you approach it, then?
Black: Andrew Prowse, our producer, and I were having a conversation about what Aeryn's attitude was, because it wasn't clear in the miniseries. She was part of the romantic arc. And we knew that her journey, it was a physical journey rather than a emotional journey. ... I mean, I don't have any references to what aliens are like. You just make it up and have fun. But when it comes to something as Earth-related as a pregnancy, with two people who, for all intents and purposes, look like they can breed together and have a healthy child, it's an interesting set of circumstances. And David Kemper and Andrew Prowse and I talked about, what's her attitude? And we both agreed that she probably hated the pregnancy. Just hated it. The idea of it. But she's always a miserable, miserable girl. If we had time, if it had been the Aeryn show, then we would have really played on that whole element of her not dealing with it well.
How does the story support so many characters, each with their own issues and backstories?
Black: For the fans, you want the characters to be serviced, because they all have particular characters that they relate to. And we who are playing them want to make sure that we're doing the best, with dignity, trying to find the way to service the characters that they love, and that we love as well. It's not a good day on the set when an actor says, "My character wouldn't do this," because character is a really philosophical concept.
Browder: It's interesting to watch the show, because there's times when it becomes really, really quick and dense and you can't barely follow it, and there's other times where it just sits in a very lyrical fashion and you go, "Wow, it's really beautiful."
Black: And it takes a lot for people, this whole group, to allow a performer to slip between the lines onscreen. Because the words are there for a reason.
Browder: And we don't know what that is, so we have to be true to the lines.
Black: Yeah. "I know there's a reason why this line is here, but it's a mystery."
Did you fall back easily into the routine on the set?
Black: There's some aspects of it that you take for granted. Like the way that Ben and I work together. I would take it as a given, there's going to be a certain way that we work. And you have other elements. We got most of the crew back, so it was the same feel in that sense as well.
Browder: I felt there was a lot of distance between me and the show until I put on the leathers and stepped on the set. Then I realized there's very little distance. There are things which were different about doing the miniseries, in terms of the way we did it and what we were doing. There are differences. Some of it out of personality, some of it out of the type of story you're telling. But most of it, from my standpoint, walking back in, it was weird up until the point where I put on the leathers and strapped on Winona and walked on the set and went, "OK. What are we going to do today?"
Black: I don't know why, but I always have sort of the first-night-before-school jitters. And I was going, "Can I remember what to do?" But Aeryn was put in a different circumstance with the baby and stuff.
Browder: Everybody was a little different, but that's because we had a year and a half between the time we were doing it and you're starting again. It's a weird deja vu. The danger is like going to your high school reunion, where you suddenly fall back into roles even though you've changed in life.
Was there anything else you wanted to say about the show?
Browder: I have huge thank-yous to everybody responsible, from the first person who clicked on the TV to Brian Henson, who managed to scrape it all together and make it happen.
Black: Yeah. To be shopping the show around for five years in the first place, and SCI FI Channel picked it up, and then to get it back again, it's amazing.
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