Farscape: The Complete Fourth Season [DVD] [1999] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

This is another great series and very enjoyable, with a jaw dropping finish at the end. Which rightly so caused fans to get their act together enabling the Peacekeeper Wars to be made.


WHAT WAS LOST - PART ONE   January 22, 2006
Martin Webb (United Kingdom)
24 out of 47 found this review helpful

Episodes 2 and 3 are entitled What Was Lost, also an apt description for Season 4: though this season still contained moments that made the first three seasons so wonderful, it is ultimately no better than average - and the causes can be traced back to Season 3. Though splitting the main protagonist, John Crichton, into two individuals who part ways with two separate crews may have seemed a clever idea at the time, in retrospect it was a mistake. It began the process of focusing the story more on John Crichton and his chief adversary Scorpius at the expense of every other character, and by rotating the episode from one group to another on a weekly basis while increasingly serializing the show, it discouraged new viewers and caused a ratings drop. This was an unwelcome development, especially as Farscape was one of the more expensive shows around due to unnecessary cost over-runs. This also occurred when both the makers of the show and the network broadcasting it were undergoing changes in ownership, and so though Farscape was renewed for two more seasons, there were conditions attached, including requirements to improve its ratings and to keep the costs down. That meant that much of Season 4 was altered at short notice to be simpler and cheaper.

But there is a fine line to tread between eccentric genius and messy incomprehensibility, and the hurriedly rewritten episodes that made up the first half of the season often deteriorated into a contest for which could be the loudest, confusing, and vulgar. Few were likely to win new converts, and even die-hard fans will admit that there are a few too many clunkers. And though quality improved towards the end of the season, instead of starting with a fresh story arc, it was more of the same, i.e., Crichton being wanted by two rival powers (the Peacekeepers and the Scarrens) for his knowledge of wormholes. Worse, this theme was serving as a backdrop to a deeply domestic and conservative romance. We are not talking Romeo and Juliet here, more like the tedious wish-fulfillment fan-fiction kind you find on the Internet, all angst followed by a sudden epiphany and resolution - except the resolution in Farscape's case was too soon, too abrupt, and with no explanation that it left many viewers scratching their head and thinking "What the hell?" All of the sudden they are in love and all over each other after all the angst.

All this naturally had a negative effect on the supporting characters. The two new characters, Noranti and Sikozu, were both badly ill-served by the changes, and it is plainly apparent that producers didn't know what to do with them, other to be adjuncts to the Crichton/Scorpius story arcs. Noranti was probably meant to be quirky and eccentric but frequently came over as merely cringe worthy, often used as a source of ill-advised potty humour; Sikozu ended up being used as a plot contrivance, an unbelievably over-gifted character used primarily to provide Deus Ex Machina solutions to the various hurdles our heroes have to overcome - I am not surprised by actor concerned later revealed that she wasn't given little advanced knowledge of script developments for her character, almost certainly because they were making it up as the season progressed. I find it indicative of how poorly developed these characters are when Jool, an underwritten character intended to make up the numbers in Season 3's Moya episodes, has a better defined character arc despite only having appeared in only 14 episodes to their 22.

The longer established characters of D'Argo, Chiana, Rygel, and Pilot are treated little better. Their character arcs get little development, and they get more marginalised as the story focused increasingly on the central characters (This is in marked contrast to Babylon 5, which successfully juggled several relationships and character arcs with few compromises). The increasingly one-note D'Argo is made token Captain of Moya, though it soon becomes clear that Crichton is calling the shots. Chiana is worse affected; the departure of Jool meant that the love/hate sisterly vibe developing between the two is lost, and the unwillingness of the producers to move away from the Peacekeeper/Scarren theme meant that her 'Nebari Rebel Resistance' arc was changed into the 'Kalish Rebel Resistance' to a provide a background for Sikozu that could be used as an adjunct to Crichton's own character arc. All that was left was the very demeaning eye-candy role as D'Argo's slutty girlfriend.

Nor are the main players unaffected. Crichton became more and more like the clichéd pulp hero that he thus far had avoided falling into, while Aeryn, once a character defined by action and a thinking person developing her own moral agenda becomes a stereotype defined almost entirely by her relationship with Crichton. He becomes more stronger and dominant while she gets weaker and more submissive, until she is little more than a prize to be won by Crichton. This fundamentally and negatively altered what made the Crichton/Aeryn relationship work, a relationship that originally avoided the usual male/female clichés, but by the end of Season 4 was relying more and more on those clichés instead. And it upset the ensemble feel of the show, since even though they are arguably the main focus of Farscape, originally not everything was about Crichton and Aeryn. The feeling of family from the first three seasons was greatly diminished and the various interpersonal plots were replaced by the one central relationship - Crichton and Aeryn. And it wasn't a particularly convincing relationship either as they no longer existed to tell stories, but to fulfill the expectations of their fans. (Again, compare this to Babylon 5 and the new Doctor Who - Babylon 5's Delenn was changed but not weakened due to her relationship with Sheriden, while Doctor Who's Rose Tyler was no longer the traditional imperilled screaming companion of yore, and more often than not the equal of the 9th Doctor.)

CONTINUED IN PART TWO