Far and away

I'm not sure if I see the wisdom of heavily promoting the "series finale" of a show you cancelled in the middle of a production run, then have that particular episode be a cliffhanger. Which is exactly what the Sci-Fi Channel did with critically acclaimed but not heavily watched enough to justify its cost outer space saga Farscape. I had this happen to me before with V.R. 5, a not-so-good show that was one of the endless parade of partners with The X-Files back when that show was still (a) good, (b) on the air, and (c) on Friday nights. Except that was at the end of a season, and show just didn't get picked up again.

Technically, you could say the same thing for Farscape, as the arbitrarily designated "season" on the basic cable network ostensibly came to a close on Friday, with a season finale of Stargate SG-1 immediately following. But the network has always played fast and loose with timing, holding the last four or five episodes of a production run for a mini "season" of new episodes later in the year and whatnot.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I'm ready to shed a tear with the corners of the Internet community that are devastated at the loss of what some have called the best outer space series since Star Trek. While I definitely enjoyed the show, and also saw it as a proof-of-concept for the utterly miserable Star Trek: Voyager (i.e., bunch of people in space trying to get home), I think it may have jumped the shark about a season ago. The braintrust behind the series certainly offered up a clever solution to the "will they-won't they" tension between lead characters John Crichton and Aeryn Sun, and had a heck of an ongoing plot with the relentless pursuit of Crichton's wormhole knowledge by the very, very evil baddie Scorpius, but with those two arcs mostly resolved at the beginning of the season, the show looked to be going through the motions. There wasn't much of a unifying sense of purpose lately, as there had been previously, and the series suffered as a result.

Of course, if the Sci-Fi Channel had said they didn't think the show had maintained it's quality, that would have been a bit of a different situation. I'm not sure if fans would have bought it, but it's a bit more intellectually honest than citing the cost of the show and the direction of the network. It's a network for science fiction, ferchrissakes.

I haven't checked up on any of the efforts to save the show, or find a new home for it. And I'm not really that concerned. If it comes back, more power to 'em, and I hope they are able to rekindle some of the magic they had captured previously. If not, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. I think it may that too many sci-fi fans are now forced to find something to do on a Friday night. Me, I taped.