Flutterby™! : Farscape Cancelled! 2002-09-07 17:08:10+00

Farscape Cancelled!

2002-09-07 17:08:10+00 by Shawn 18 comments

It's the end of the world!! The cast and crew are reporting that the Sci-Fi Channel is excercising their opt-out clause for season 5 of Farscape. Snail mail address, for expressing your displeasure, is included on the linked report.

Thats really wierd because Farscape is a very bankable show. It would be like NBC canceling the west wing. None of the official sites have any information about this but the rumor mill is cranking full tilt. Oh an interest site I found while snooping around Save My Show dot Com

Poking around, you'll see it has nothing to do with the show's popularity (still very strong) and everything to do with the financial difficulties of Vivendi Universal (parent company of USA Networks and SciFi) and the German company that owns Henson. Vivendi has been cutting projects with high production costs--Witchblade (moderately popular) apparently fell victim to this as well--and Henson doesn't have the money to go it alone.

I thought it maybe had to be something like that. From a marketing standpoint (the point being to acquire and keep eyeballs) it seemed insane. Sci-Fi now has no real draw for me, so they've lost a viewer completely. (Ok, I'm kinda into Stargate SG-1. But I can live without it - unlike Farscape.)

I was talking it over with Katrina at dinner last night and she's hoping some other network will pick it up - which would be really weird. It used to be that Sci-Fi was where good/interesting shows wound up after everybody else had cancelled them (Sliders, Stargate SG-1, etc.)

I don't watch the show, but my Mother has been a rabid fan of it since the beginning. She told me, before this was announced, that this season hasn't been as good as before. Until I read Nicholas' comment, I thought that was the case.

The financial situation at Vivendi Universal might also explain why they've started running episodes of "Monk" (a USA original series, and quite a good one, I might add) on ABC affiliates a couple weeks after they were first broadcast on USA. I had wondered about that.

Yeah, I thought that was strange too. Monk is good - better than I was expecting. Every time I see Tony Shalhoub I gain more and more respect for his acting ability.

I had never really noticed Tony Shaloub before, but he is just about perfect as Monk. That show keeps surprising me -- there have been several times when I've been disappointed that they've seemingly relied on an old, obvious plot device and then been delighted when they turned it on its head.

I'd love to see it picked up somewhere. It seemed like the story was actually Arcing somewhere but I am guessing the writters were on a seven year plan. I rather dislike the scorpious character but love the "harvey" character to show how fussy I am about writting. SG-1 is ok and a good warm up for Farscape but I still miss LEXX. The news is official so Scifi channel might loose me as a viewer as well. With the exceptions of SG1 and Exposure there is little reason for me to watch...

It's the interruption of an arc that always gets me boiling. I'm one of those (who either is in the minority or who the networks think of as the minority) who generally prefers story arcs to episodic shows. Katrina and I only really discovered Farscape last season, although I had seen a few early episodes. We were making our way through [purchasing] the DVDs until the economy caught up with us, and we were following season 4 religiously.

Exposure was fun but I preferred to watch it over the 'net (where I can pick which ones I want to watch) and I stopped visiting when it seemed the new additions were petering out.

Just went and visited Exposure again. Boy, they sure seem to have cut out a lot of their database. And most of the ones that I wanted to see (and haven't yet) are not available online ("watch the show"). I tried watching it on TV a time or two but it's got a weird timeslot that makes it easy to forget.

I'm not a typical Farscape viewer. Sci Fi has never been my thing. I enjoy shows like Dawson's Creek & 7th Heaven. Anyhow, my boyfriend got me into Farcape, and it is a show we do not miss. Through high school and college, I NEVER stayed in on Friday nights. But because of Farscape we usually do, or we make sure to tape the episode. We own every DVD released so far and are both really upset that Farscape is being cancelled. It is a great show, that as I saw mentioned, follows story arcs. That makes it a better and bigger build up for the season finales. If the show ends now, it won't be a true series finale, which makes it even more upsetting. And I can tell you that we will never watch Sci Fi again because there is nothing else on that channel we deem worth watching.

Gee, until this thread started, I had never even heard of Farscape. Now that it's being cancelled, should I bother to investigate? Or would that just make me upset? 11 DVDs (except #4 which is mysteriously unavailable) are all listed at netflix... what's really great about it?

Diane, I'd recomend watching the series even knowing it does not end correctly. The entertaiment value is pretty high. I also recomend you watch them in order as has been mentioned earlier the stories, plots, arc, characters grow and build on each other. I'd compare it to babylon 5 in the writting is an 11 but unlike Babylon the acting is excellent. Now that I am reflecting on it the show has had effect on me in everyday life. I was humming the 1812 overture for days after this season's opener.

Diane; I often hear Farscape touted as the "best modern sci-fi of our time" and I really believe that's a reasonably accurate assessment. The basic premise is this:

It's a Jim Henson (warning: pop-ups) production (remember The Muppet Show?), so some of the characters (and many of the aliens) are fantastic puppets and the costuming/makeup is excellent. Even the ship itself is a character in the show (and a better one than The Lexx). As todd mentioned, the script and acting are superb, as are the set, costumes, direction and camerawork (IMO).

The story is basically one of a squabbling bunch of siblings that grow to really care about each other (but still argue and bicker). The actors/characters have excellent chemistry and the show is alternately funny, touching, poignant and sad. I don't know anyone who has seen it and didn't like it, and I've heard of several people who, like Selena, are not generally sci-fi fans but have become addicted. (Katrina might say that it's partly because Ben Browder looks so good in those black leather pants ;-)

I just got an interesting reaction from a friend who runs a comic shop (we haven't seen him in awhile and were in the neighborhood, so we dropped in to catch up and retrieve our copy of Metropolis). He indicated, with some disgust, that he thought this was all nothing more than a cheap publicity/marketing stunt. But then, he was unaware of Vivendi, their financial troubles (thinking back on it, I do remember seeing recent posts from my former Humongous Entertainment co-workers regarding massive layoffs in Vivendi's game development studios as well) or their relationship to the show.