Farscape: Second Best Science Fiction Television Show

As the title suggests, Farscape is my second favorite science fiction television show.  Farscape follows an American astronaut named John Crichton who gets shot through a wormhole while testing out a theory while orbiting the Earth.  Crichton eventually finds himself on a living spaceship with a variety of alien companions most of which are escaped convicts.  The living ship is named Moya and is operated by a pilot that is symbiotically linked to it.   The show follows their adventures on the run from a military named Crais who is after Crichton because Crichton accidentally killed his brother after exiting the wormhole.

Farscape ran for four seasons on SciFi before it was cancelled.  There a great deal of outrage at its cancellation because the show was incredibly popular and the last season ended in a cliffhanger.  Because of the outrage, SciFi produced a miniseries called The Peacekeeper Wars to wrap up the dangling plot elements and to appease angry fans.  Farscape was also known for its use of muppets.  And we all know that muppets are cool.

Farscape was, in my opinion, a character driven show.  Nearly all of the characters in this show were interesting, compelling, and complicated.  They all had their own stories and issues that were dealt with on the show.  The characters also grew and developed over the course of the show.  By the end of the series, all of the main characters had been changed by everything they had went through.  The show also had an interesting set of villains in the form of Crais and Scorpius.  In fact, Scorpius is one of my all-time favorite villains because he has interesting motivations behind his actions.  Crais is also an interesting character who changes much over the course of the show.

My favorite character in the show is John Crichton.  He possesses many of the qualities that I respect about human beings.  He is intelligent, brave, hopeful, and batshit crazy.  Well, maybe the last one isn't a quality that I respect, but it's damn entertaining to watch.  Over the course of the show, Crichton goes through so much shit it's crazy.

Farscape is not just a great science fiction television show.  It is a great television show.  If you have never watched it before, then you should find it and watch it.  And remember, it has muppets.

Why I Love Doctor Who

In case any of you didn't know, I'm a gigantic Doctor Who fan.  I've been a Doctor Who fan since I was a child.  I was introduced to Doctor Who by my dad.  At first, I didn't care for it.  But soon I fell hopelessly in love with this quirky British science fiction television show.  My dad and I used to spend our Saturday mornings watching Doctor Who while my mom and sister occasionally went to church.  My dad had taped a bunch of episodes when it used to come on PBS, so had a decent amount of episodes to watch.  And we have some great episodes on tape.  We had every Doctor on tape except (this was before the New Series mind you) the First and Second Doctors.

The reason why I like Doctor Who so much is because of the Doctor himself.  The Doctor is my nearly perfect idea of a hero.  He is ultra smart and solves most problems using that intelligence instead of brute force.  There are times when he uses brute force, but those are usually last resorts.  He also uses his force of personality to solve problems and get people on his side.  If the Doctor doesn't know the answer to the problem, he'll figure it out.  The Doctor also is a force for good and has a strong moral sense.  He hates to see injustice and will almost always fight it.  But I also enjoy it when the Doctor acts like a cosmic chess player, moving pieces around the board to fight evil.  This comes up more in the Seventh Doctor novels, but it is really interested to read about.

I also like Doctor Who because it involves time travel which has always been one of my favorite sci-fi concepts.  The TARDIS is such a cool idea for an alien spacecraft.  I don't think I would have ever though of a ship that could travel through time and space and was also bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.  Only in the 1960's could someone have come up with that idea (well, not really, but it's fun to think that).

Well, that's it for now.  I might turn this into a series when new things come to my mind.  Good day!