"I'm Just trying to find my way home..."

A few years back the BBC started to show a new Sci-Fi show. I tuned in, because I'm always happy to give these things a go. I watched most of the first season, and well frankly I wasn't all that impressed. It seemed to be working its way through every Sci-Fi TV show cliché it could find and not do anything particularly exciting with them, so shortly before it got to the end of its forst season I gave up on it and did something more exciting with that 45 minutes each week.

The show was Farscape.

Just after Christmas Steven treated himself to the first season box set of the show, for us to watch together, now we had finished watching The Prisoner. It was some trepidation I embarked on that. I hadn't enjoyed it much the first time round, and was certain it wouldn't have improved much since. Still Steven has this immense enthusiasm for everything, and soon talked me round, and we sat down and watched the start of the season in January. Last weekend we finished it with a marathon run of the last four episodes in one sitting...

I did the show a massive injustice it turns out. What I remembered as a cliché ridden show wasn't that way at all. Ok, there were some stumbling blocks along the way and the middle of the season definitely hit a bit of a dip, but generally the stories were engaging and fun to watch and there were some fantastic ideas in the mix.

I have a habit of giving up on shows just before they hit their stride. Babylon 5 I famously stopped watching just before the main story arc kicked in, in the episode "Signs and Portents" and it was the same with Farscape. I had reasonable memories of all the episodes up to the last four. I should have kept going. This was where it all started to happen. The two part story Nerve/ The Hidden Memory was amazing stuff. The introduction of their new arch-enemy Scorpius really gave the show a tremendous lift, with his quiet and calm evil manner being a definte winner for me. Then we got to the wonderful cliff-hanger, which was a definite "Nooooo! You can't end it there!" moment. Now we can't wait for the second season to come down in price!

So what is that makes it so engrossing and worth sitting through "DNA Mad Scientist" again? Purely and simply its the characters and their interplay. Initially its all a bit like "Blake's 7" with escaped convicts coming together, stealing a ship and going on the run, with the twist of a space explorer, John Chricton becoming caught up in events after accidentally created a wormhole while testing a new ship, The Farscape. His bewilderment sees us through most of the episodes as he struggles to find his place in this new universe and his new ship mates, Aeryn, Zhann, Rygel, Dhargo and later Chianna, not to mention Pilot and the living Leviathan ship they call home, Moya.

It's great to see their initial hostility turn to a grudging kind of respect for each other and then become almost friendship, even if they don't quite trust each other's motives all the time. Its the way you never know who will side with whom on board, the way Rygel will always try and sell them out if he can and the way they grow in depth all the time as their secrets come out and the slow burning romance strating between Chrichton and Aeryn.

I know there's alot of great stories to come, but for now I'm left wondering how they get out of the cliffhanger... Dhargo and Chrichton floating in space, Moya starbursting away, Aeryn trying to collect them... what's going to happen next? I can't wait to find out!