Tuesday, May 31, 2011
A Re-evaluation of Farscape's place in the science fiction canon
I've been re-watching Farscape over the last several weeks. I still love the show and still think it's one of the best sci-fi shows ever, but I no longer rate it quite as highly as I used to. Before, I saw the series as the second best space opera ever made, after Babylon 5. I also would have given it high marks for its anti-fascist message and its general attention to story detail. While I think these elements still hold, they are definitely not as present in the first two seasons, as they later became in seasons 3 and 4. Although I personally like Farscape better than the Twilight Zone, Star Trek, or the new BSG, I don't know that I can any longer defend it as an overall superior series, now that I'm watching it as a whole. Then again, I would rank it just outside the top 10 science fiction series, behind only a very few of the top shows. But tell me your thoughts.
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The series got better as it built its history and mythos. It was very clever and goes a long way with me for that reason.
ReplyDeleteThe only knock I have against Farscape was it's unevenness. There were arcs and groups of episodes that seemed to double-back into the sort of S1 shenanigans that while fun, really weren't anything special. At the top of its game though, Farscape is pretty hard to beat.
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