#romana watches farscape

[thethirdromana]

In my ongoing quest to find a new thing to watch, I watched the first episode of Farscape last night. Here are my impressions.

Hmm, experimenting with a new means of space propulsion are we? I'm watching this on Threshold Day, so there's a benchmark for how badly it could go.

So far we have a motley crew of escaped convicts in conflict with a fascist-coded government. Is this Blake's 7 with muppets??

If it is Blake's 7 with muppets, why the hell did no one tell me?

There's a horny blue lady, a science fiction classic. Love a horny blue lady.

And they're getting their leading man naked as soon as possible.

Oh, this is horny horny. A lady in leather astride our leading man's face in the first episode horny.

I think the creature that farts helium might be the first time I've actually found a fart joke funny in as long as I can remember.

I'm really enjoying leading man's orange cat energy.

He is very good at flying ships and looking at things with an air of gentle confusion.

Now he appears to be making friends with a cybermat.

Probably a good plan because I think everyone else on the ship has now either threatened or sexually assaulted him (at least, I assume that's what the weird blue lady ear thing was).

Well, that was extremely silly. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[thenugking]

....fuck like I know I’ve kind of moved on from the gallifandom (hopefully not forever) but it just occurred to me how much of of my current fannish life I owe to the gallifandom. like even apart from meeting some of my very best friends through here, and like, learning to interect with people on the internet, the number of fandoms I have that had their roots in Gallifrey like.

I met Charamei through Gallifrey and she’s to blame for getting me into Dragon Age. And also rpg and the Gamers and Galavant and Brooklyn 99 and the Good Place.

And then I first got interested in Adventure Time and Bubbline when I saw I’m Just Your Problem mentioned as a good Romana/Narvin song and then I started watching when Gallifandom friends talked to me about it.

I watched Farscape because Lani made an Andred fanvideo with Crichton as Andred, and I got into Defiance through Farscape. I literally only got into Marvel (even if I have since drifted away) because Jane kept comparing Coulson to Narvin.

Community and Cabin Pressure and John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme and Carmilla all came from gallifans. there’s just. so much.

so thank you gallifandom I may have moved on but I owe so much to you <3 <3

[thethirdromana]

Three episodes into Farscape and I have some updated impressions:

A fun thing about it being a quarter of a century since the series aired is that some of Crichton's pop culture references are now just as baffling to me as to his alien pals.

This makes for an oddly immersive experience where I don't know what the human is banging on about either.

A lot of sci-fi series that are very horny for their female characters then don't develop them as characters beyond them being the Sex Appeal. I'm thrilled by how much Farscape is avoiding this. There's so much going on with Blue Lady in particular, I want to study her like a disconcertingly sexy bug.

Like she's a priestess, and a telepathic healer, and has some kind of trance speed-painting aura-sensing powers, and also she's blue. But it's all coherent, it doesn't feel like they're just throwing stuff at the character to see what sticks.

Compared with Blue Lady and Peacekeeper Lady, the boys are fine, but there's just a bit less going on there, you know? Which is not what I usually expect of 90s sci-fi.

Pilot is bigger than I expected.

Just when I thought the horniness was abating, we get a slew of Peacekeepers in dramatic eyeliner getting hot and sweaty in their tight black tank tops.

So far this has one of my favourite traits for a series, which is a cast of characters that I just want to hang out with and get to know a bit better. I am actively hoping for bottle episodes.

And that ship design is gorgeous.

[thethirdromana]

Seven episodes into Farscape and I have some more thoughts:

It must be hard to write fanfic where you put Crichton into Situations because my word does that boy have a talent for getting himself into Situations completely unprompted.

Does he know what's going on? Nope! Does he understand anything about the Situation? Absolutely not! But he'll be getting into it anyway.

On this theme, I really like how the crew members have their areas of expertise, and then their areas of Not Good at This, Do Not Want. They are, for the most part, not generalists in a way that makes them feel like real people.

I enjoy that space is just full of Australians. It feels right. Space should be full of Australians.

I'm assuming that Crichton/Aeryn will be endgame [no spoilers please!] but I am more interested currently in Crichton/Zhaan, or possibly Crichton just being passed around the crew like the polycule's chew toy.

Yes, that includes the puppets.

If I have one complaint, it's that the very episodic nature of the show makes it tricky to get a sense of how long all of this has been going on for. Did Crichton rock up three weeks or three months or six months ago? Unclear! It makes it hard to get a handle on the shape of these relationships.

Aeryn just keeps getting hotter every episode. Every time, I'm like, "well, she can't possibly be hotter in *this* one, we have to have hit a peak" and then the show is like "introducing: Aeryn's incredible abs" and I have to have a lie down.

The things I would most like next are a) an ensemble bottle episode on the ship and b) a fully Zhaan-centric episode.

And I'm looking forward to learning a bit more about what's going on with Pilot, too.

[thethirdromana]

Mostly I'm doing Farscape reactions a few episodes at a time, but last night I watched DNA Mad Scientist and that is an episode that needs a post all on its own.

Sometimes Farscape is sexy. Sometimes Farscape is kinky. Those two things overlap less than you might expect.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they decided to put NamTar in full fetish gear, is what I'm saying.

You know you're in for quite an episode when it begins with someone getting a needle poked into their pupil.

(Headcanon: NamTar could have taken a DNA sample from anywhere, he just chose the creepy eye thing to filter out people who would stand up for themselves, like how scammers make obvious mistakes in order to identify easy marks).

The fact that Zhaan is all-in on stealing Pilot's body parts is fascinating to me. I expect that kind of thing of Rygel and D'Argo but not of Zhaan. Having previously grumbled about how little the passage of time is marked in this show, I very much like that we are directly and immediately seeing the consequences of her turn to sadism in That Old Black Magic.

The way that she used her powers to take Pilot's pain while mutilating him was fucking chilling.

I described Farscape as Blake's 7 with muppets, and it's not not that, but in this episode - as with a fair few others - there's also an early-season TNG vibe, which I'm very much into.

For instance learning that Rygel is "not a body breeder" feels very akin to TNG taking all of two episodes to inform us that Data is "fully functional in every way". It was important to learn that the android did fuck and it is equally important to learn that the puppet does not fuck. Despite Zhaan's best attempts.

Although I'm a bit concerned about what that implies for the imperial succession. Would Rygel - had he not been deposed - just have released some reproductive materials into the air like pollen? Or are his species all test tube babies?

Crichton/Aeryn continues to do its sweet slowburn thing, which is fine, but I also very much hope for some more chaotic love interests for each of them.

Was this too early in the 00s to hope that they might not all be straight? It suddenly occurs to me that I would really enjoy queer!Aeryn. (I am normally all about avoiding spoilers but feel free to let me know a yes or no - no details - on this one).

I'm generally not finding D'Argo that interesting relative to all the other characters, but the ending of this episode - where he plays music when Pilot expects a weapon - is an interesting nod to possible hidden depths.

Pilot though. I can't wait for that Pilot-centric episode you've all promised me will come up eventually. What a fascinating character! Who I also very much want to hug.

Just think how cuddly all the arms would be.