Cue Incoherent Squealing

Sci Fi Wire reports:
SCI FI Channel will revive its popular original show Farscape as a Web-based series of short films on SCIFI.COM's SCI FI Pulse broadband network, part of a slate of new original online programming.

SCI FI has ordered 10 webisodes of Farscape, to be produced by Brian Henson and Robert Halmi Jr. and produced by The Jim Henson Co.
Exciting as this news is, it's best to keep in mind that the webisode concept didn't work out so well for Battlestar Galactica, what with the killer celery and all (if you haven't watched Resistance, I just made it sound a hell of a lot more exciting than it actually was). That said, I trust the people involved a hell of a lot more than I trust the Galactica folks these days, and unlike Resistance and the upcoming Razor web-series (more info here) this series is probably not primarily intended to build up anticipation for traditional programming, which gives it a better chance of working as its own piece of storytelling.

Whatever the result, I think this is yet another demonstration of the Sci Fi Channel's admirable commitment to providing non-traditional, net-based content. I have a lot of problems with Sci Fi, but in this respect they've always been remarkably right-headed, and more power to them for it.

Comments

Unknown said…
Abigail,

This is great news. New Farscape? Consider me excited for one. Do you know if the original cast is coming back for this?

Dave
July 16, 2007 5:04 PM
Unknown said…
Nevermind...jumped the gun a bit there. Read the actual article now and answered my own question.
July 16, 2007 5:07 PM
Anonymous said…
Potentially very good news. Ironically Sci-Fi did of course cancel Farscape in the first place, although they at least aired the wrap-up TV movie. I could see the oddness that is Farscape working as webisodes to an extent, even though I generally find the format a little restrictive.

Razor will apparently have webisodes too, but these aren't so much a side venture as flashback scenes excised for length (when will they learn to write to their timeslot?) and due for reinstatement on DVD.
July 16, 2007 8:33 PM
Abigail Nussbaum said…
these aren't so much a side venture as flashback scenes excised for length

Oh, for crying out loud.

Above and beyond my general disillusionment with BSG, I'm dubious about the whole Razor concept - flashbacks to Admiral Cain's tenure as the Pegasus commander interspersed with Lee's period commanding the ship. These don't seem like stories that need to be told. There's been a trend towards completism in television and films - the whole prequel concept, basically - that I think has only rarely proven itself viable. I don't know if you've been watching it, but the latest episode of Jekyll is a perfect illustration. All it does is elaborate on things we've already been told about, while the present day storyline stalls.
July 16, 2007 11:57 PM
Unknown said…
It's too bad that Farscape and BSG won't be airing at the same time (if Farscape is actually revived). The juxtaposition of two shows' writing quality would be pretty funny.

I wonder about BSG not being able to write for its time slot. A problem it's had since the Pegasus arrived I think... It just seems to me that the extraneous material might be intentional: it spurs completists on to buy DVDs. I mean, you can't be a BSG fan and have missed *that* scene that everyone online is talking about.

Meh...on the upside, maybe we'll see exactly how Lee got so fat while commanding the Pegasus. Not having that expicitly depicted has always been troubling for me.

Pragmatically speaking, I think the show must be under funded and that it defaults to using those nice Pegasus sets when i tcan't afford to create new ones.
July 17, 2007 5:37 PM
Abigail Nussbaum said…
The Pegasus arc in the middle of the second season was the first time deleted scenes showed up in the 'previously on' segment, but the writers' problem with writing to their time slot goes back to the show's beginning. Sci Fi's official site used to upload deleted scenes after each episode aired. The difference between those scenes and the ones that were being deleted and dumped in the previouslies after "Pegasus" is that the earlier deleted scenes weren't necessary.

The flashbacks to the young Adama and Tigh in "Scattered", for example, were originally a great deal more extensive, and cutting them back to the brief, impressionistic glimpses we ultimately got was absolutely the right decision - the episode ended up conveying the information it needed to without getting bogged down in minutiae. After "Pegasus", the scenes getting cut were vital ones - Starbuck begging to be allowed to mount a rescue mission to Caprica, insight into Gina's character - which is clearly something the writers themselves recognized given their decision to insert them into the previouslies.
July 17, 2007 8:02 PM

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 2023 Hugo Awards: Somehow, It Got Worse

The last month has been a busy one in Hugo and Worldcon fandom. After the shock of the much-belated 2023 nominating stats, and their revelation of serious irregularities in the compilation of the award's ballot, there was a great ferment of conversation and action. Mainstream publications have caught wind of the scandal and publicized it far and wide . Turnover in the few permanent committees that oversee the Hugo trademark and intellectual property has been high . The poor folks at the upcoming Glasgow Worldcon have been scrambling to respond to the evolving situation and to distance themselves from the previous committee—including, most recently, making a laconic announcement that they would refuse any of Chengdu's passalong funds, the budgetary surplus that is traditionally bequeathed from one Worldcon to the next. And stats nerds—of which this community is, unsurprisingly, blessed with a surfeit—have been furiously crunching the nominations numbers and EPH calculations
Read more

The 2023 Hugo Awards: Now With an Asterisk

It's been a while since we've had one of these dramas. On Saturday, the nominating stats for the 2023 Hugo awards, which were announced in Chengdu, China in October 2023, were released to the public . There was a great deal of anticipation for these numbers, in no small part because of their much-delayed release. Though the WSFS constitution permits Hugo administrators to wait as long as 90 days before releasing the voting and nominating stats, most Hugo teams have them ready to go within minutes of the ceremony's conclusion. Chengdu, in contrast, waited the full allotted period, and even went a little bit over (the voting stats were released separately in December). Once the stats were released, it quickly became clear why the Chengdu Hugo team were hesitant to make them public. There are any number of irregularities and questionable choices in this document that suggest everything from erratic voter behavior, to incompetent collation and calculation of the nomination rank
Read more

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The first thing that must be said about this movie is that it should not work. It's a prequel to one of the most mind-blowing, groundbreaking, and just plain revolutionary action movies of the 21st century—and prequels are a bad idea in most cases, but all the more so when the character they revolve around has already given you their entire backstory in their original introduction, which is also the final, culminating act of their character arc. (To put it another way, if you had asked me, nine years ago, which character I thought offered more fertile ground for prequel storytelling, Imperator Furiosa or Han Solo, I would have picked Han without a moment's hesitation, and I don't even like Han that much.) And it's a follow-up to a movie whose chief virtue lies in its conciseness—in being a single, drawn-out, pulse-pounding, increasingly deranged car chase. Which means you can either try to repeat that accomplishment, which will inevitably feel a bit old hat; or you can
Read more