Sci-Fi Storm

I finally got to watch both parts of the Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars (pre-order from Amazon) miniseries – I got delayed due to getting a new DirecTV TiVo and moving the existing one which had it recorded to replace the old standalone original TiVo, blah, blah, blah…). So, finally, here is a review…some unavoidable spoilers ahead.

Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars picks up right where the series left off – where expecting parents John Crichton and Aeryn Sun are alone in a boat and are blasted into little crystal beads after agreeing to get married. Fortunately the whole bead thing was a temporary setback, and they are reassembled – except Aeryn is no longer pregnant – Rygel is carrying the child. Half-breed Peacekeeper Scorpius and Scarran Emperor Staleek are still after Crichton for his wormhole knowledge, hoping to use it as a weapon against the other side, where the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans have broken into all out war, and the Peacekeepers are losing badly. Even Harvey still pesters Crichton’s mind.

In fact, it picks up where it left off amazingly completely. With a miniseries following some time after the end of production, and a usually bigger budget, you’d expect some changes. I noticed none – it was if it was always a part of the series. Everyone is back who was in the series at the end. Even some part-timers – Jool, Sikozu, etc. I kept expecting Virginia Hey (Zhaan) and Lani Tupu (Crais) to make appearances, but they don’t (Tupu is the voice of Pilot however). Literally, everyone. The one casting change seems to be D’Argo’s son Jothee, here played by Nathaniel Dean. Kudos to the producers for the consistency. I think they even used the same outdoor location for the Eidelons temple.

Plot/Story: As I said, this was a continuation of the series, bringing the essential plotlines to their conclusion. As such, the only new lines are the Peacekeeper/Scarran war. We did at least get a little background into the origins of the Peacekeepers – did anyone else think of Earth when they mentioned the source world as being in the outer spiral? 3/5

Character: Crichton is still Crichton – spouting jokes and jabs only some of us may get (“These aren’t your Saturday morning Sleestaks”). In general, the characters don’t progress much. The interaction between Aeryn and Chricton at times seems off – Aeryn looks like she is having second thoughts at times, but apparently that wasn’t the intent – maybe it is Claudia Black’s perpetual “pained” look. Also, D’Argo’s final scene was somewhat lacking – I think it was the lack of an emotional impact. 3/5

Visuals: On par with the series, although I was confused as to who’s ships were being shown at various times. 3/5

Nitpicks: Farscape in generally was easy to nitpick – it was often difficult to understand how they got into certain situations – I often felt like I missed something major. There was none of that here, really – it was fairly straight forward. However, the whole bit about Crichton’s wormhole knowledge – why would “Einstein” unlock the weapons knowledge in Crichton if he previously said no one should have it? In fact, I’ve never quite understood why he was given that knowledge to begin with. But nothing you couldn’t live with. 3/5

Overall: A satisfying conclusion to the series. 4/5

Average: 3.2 stars out of 5.

Is there more? Well, this pretty much wraps up all the exiting plotlines, and doesn’t introduce any more. So although it isn’t impossible to sprout a new line, it doesn’t appear as if there is any intention to due so, and I haven’t heard of any ratings numbers that may justify continuation. However, I will miss Crichton’s witticisms (most of which I get since I am a fountain of useless trivia myself).