FARSCAPE Revisited Mini-caps / The Peacekeeper Wars

Takin’ it to the limit (with the Farscape minicaps) one more time…

Stewart here…and fair warning, some spoilers lie within…

Greetings fellow travelers of the Uncharted Territories, to the final (for the foreseeable future) mini-cap of Farscape. So, after a multitude of factors (like ratings), some of which couldn’t be seen coming (like lack of money), Farscape left the airwaves after four seasons. But loyal fans wanted to see the show come back (or at least get wrapped up properly), and their wishes got answered a year later, with the announcement of a miniseries in The Peacekeeper Wars. Its one of the rare occasions where the fans were able to drum up the need for more of what they want after the supposed death bell rang.

So last time we left our crew, Moya was resting on a water planet, and John just found out Aeryn was pregnant with his kid and accepted his proposal for marriage. All good, except for that pesky problem of some alien ship coming out of nowhere and turning them into crystals. Well, good news is they’re not dead, otherwise this would be an awkward miniseries to watch. But, there are some things that might feel awkward in retrospect. But, we’ll get to that in a minute…

Probably for the best the reforming thingie brought back their clothes too, otherwise this would be even more awkward.

“The Peacekeeper Wars”

So, its been two months since John and Aeryn got crystallized, and said aliens who did that have reformed them back to normal. All’s good, except they have come back to the start of a full-out war between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans. But, those crystallizing aliens are part of an ancient race that kept peace throughout the galaxy (and this goes back to season 4’s “What Was Lost”), and Moya and gang take off to get this alien race up to full power to stop the Peacekeeper/Scarran war. It’s a desperate gamble, and one with a few problems.

One: Rygel accidentally now has John and Aeryn’s baby gestating inside of him (that’s why you puke up EVERY piece of your crystallized friends). Two: Scorpius and Sikozu tag along, trying to get John to build wormhole weapons to stop the conflict (despite John being quite insistent how bad of a plan that is). And in true Farscape fashion, everyone’s plans go awry in typically bad ways. There are some tragic ends, and a game of chicken with the warring groups and John’s final wormhole solution.

You wanted a wormhole weapon, well here you go! Happy now?

Now, this might be one of the rare cases I would say a miniseries is too compact a time to tell the story it needs to tell. For a three hour story, there’s a lot of compacting of time and events (like Grayza being out of confinement for losing her marbles last season, because I guess some Peacekeeper higher-up knocked her up, or something, I don’t know) that really would have benefitted from something along the lines of a shortened final season. And unless you’re hard into the show, this is an unbelievably bad place to come in fresh, with references and character returns that only make sense if you’ve seen the whole series.

The Peacekeeper Wars is a decent enough end to the Farscape saga, but its telling there’s still interest in more adventures of John Crichton, even if a live-action retelling currently seems out of reach. A few years ago, with the help of series creator Rockne S. O’Bannon, was Farscape’s story continued in comic book form. But plans to revive the series, even in web series form, have been elusive for the moment. Whether we get to watch more Farscape is unknown, but at least we still get over 88 episodes and a miniseries to remind us why its one of the defining sci-fi shows of this generation.

–Chiana got x-ray cat eyes or something in the last two months, thanks to Greenschilk, who’s not dead! Grayza is out of confinement for some reason! Sikozu got all punk rock girl with tattoos and everything! Jothee became a Luxan captain! See what I mean when I said there’s a lot of stuff that would have been better served with a shortened season?

–Just to clarify, Greenschilk is probably dead, as is Sikozu, and if D’Argo wasn’t killed by that Scarran army, they were all killed when John’s wormhole weapon destroyed that planet.

–Speaking of body count, Jool gets eradicated with the ancient Eidelons when the Scarrans dropped that nuke on them. Not sure I feel bad about that loss.

–And Harvey’s really gone, and…do we really think Scorpius would allow that, really? However, his last appearance with that 2001: A Space Odyssey homage was a good send-off.

Oh, Harvey. I’m sure someone will miss your inopportune appearances.

–Noranti had to get written out of most of the miniseries due to an allergic reaction to makeup. So in case you were wondering why you didn’t see that much of her during that final ground battle.

–D’Argo loses his cool ship! NOOOOO!!!!

–I’m not sure when stomach tattoos stopped being interesting, but between Sikozu and Grayza, they seem to be big in Peacekeeper culture at the moment.

–Let’s all be honest, for impregnating Grayza (a plot that had to be put in to accommodate the actress’ real-life pregnancy at the time), that Commandant probably earned his death.

–A pregnant Aeryn is a particularly violent Aeryn. Just try taking that big gun away from her. On the other hand, she lets you know a lot about sounds, like the sound when you load a pulse pistol. And she puts a shot through Akhna’s brainpan after giving birth. And that’s why I love her.

Aeryn Sun: you can only dream your mom was as cool as her after giving birth.

–Woody Allen’s War and Peace sounds like a worthy return to Woody’s funnier, better movies. Way more jokes than Tolstoy’s version, you have to admit.

–Wonderful Crichton response to Scorpius’ calling his killer wormhole plan crazy: “After four years, you finally put that together?”

–I never thought we would get a Rygel line like “I miss the baby”, but here we are.

That’s right! Tell them who their daddy is!

RIP Ka D’Argo. You were a true friend to the end. And you let those Scarrans know who their “daddy” was.

–D’Argo Sun Crichton. Awwww.

–“Happy Birthday. Now get out of my sight.”

–“Thank you…for your memories.”

–“It’s a boy, in case you were wondering.”

–“This is your playground.”

And that’s it for the Farscape minicaps. I do plan on returning to the Farscape universe intermittently when I start reading the comics (which are available online through Comixology and in trade paperbacks), but maybe its best to leave the Uncharted Territories for now. John and Aeryn are new parents and need some downtime with baby D’Argo. I’m sure though, there will be a new adventure for them somewhere around the corner. Until then…this is Stewart, somewhere in the universe…