Frellin' A! Farscape is back!

I'll admit it: This isn't exactly breaking news. But my previous post had soured my mood so that I needed something happy to pick me up, and there's not much that can top new Farscape for that! The new, four-hour miniseries Peacekeeper War has wrapped in Australia, and promo shots are beginning to trickle out. I swear, it's almost like water torture. There's no way I can wait all the way 'til October to see this thing when I know it's already finished.



These first two pictures are interesting and give glimpses of the arc's setup. First, we have John and Aeryn. When last seen, these two lovers had been turned into pillars of brown ash, which then crumbled into dirty little piles. They apparently get better--as if that was ever in doubt. Other stills show Aeryn as being very obviously pregnant, so at some point the embryo she's carrying gets activated (the whole delayed gestation thing isn't something Farscape simply invented as a plot device--some marsupials have this ability to delay the development of an embryo if a previous offspring isn't sufficiently independent of the mother yet. Amazing what inspiration filming in Australia offers!). The second pic is more intriguing. Here we see Chiana looking slightly different (it's the eyes, I think), along with Stark, a somewhat greener Rygel and a mysterious bald woman in the background. Could this be Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan? Rockne S. O'Bannon told Virginia Hey he wanted the character to return in the future, Hey always said she was willing to return in a more limited role (the blue makeup was reacting badly with her skin) and her death was somewhat ambiguous. This looks to me like Zhaan 2.0 come a'callin'.



The third picture reveals hints about the plot. At the end of season four, it was revealed that Commandant Cleavage was working to sell out the Luxan worlds to the Scarrens in exchange for continued peace. Think of the Luxan worlds as a SFnal version of the Sudetenland, only instead of the British handing it over to the Nazis, the Nazis are handing it over to Satan. From this image, it looks like the Luxans don't take kindly to the deal. The fourth image shows that, yes indeed, the Scarrens are mixed up in this Peacekeeper war, and John and Aeryn are up to their eyeballs with the ugly aliens. I expect many of the dangling plot threads to be addressed here in this mini, namely John's conflicted use of the wormhole technology, the Scarren aggression, Sputnik's collaboration with the Scarrens revealed, Chiana's "second sight" and Zhaan's fate. I also would not be surprised in the slightest if Crais and Talyn reappear, in some sort of twisted man-Leviathan hybrid. What I don't expect we'll see resolved is Rygel's efforts to reclaim the Hynerian throne and the Nebari attempts to conquer the galaxy using that genetically-engineered sleeper virus we haven't heard anything about since season two. That, and the connection Earth has with the Peacekeeper worlds, as referenced in the archaeology episodes early in season four. But that's to be expected, I suppose, since all the storylines planned for a full fifth season have essentially been cut and trimmed and distilled down into the equivalent of four episodes. Ouch. Curse you, SciFi Channel!

Okay, I'd better sign off now, before the bitterness returns...

Now Playing: SubVision & Guy Gross Farscape Soundtrack