Farscape

[Deleted User]

Of all of the science fiction series I've seen on TV, Farscape has to be one of my favourites. The story was easy to follow, the characters were engaging, the concepts/technology were cool and the aliens looked really life-like. And not only was Claudia Black easy on the eyes, but so were some of the other ladies.

What do you guys think and do you have any idea how to incorporate some of it's elements (besides the bioship Moya) into OA?

Here's the link to the wiki for those who need more help: http://farscape.wikia.com/wiki/Farscape_...:Main_Page

[Avengium]

I like that series , entertaining. But most of the time is Fantasy "in space".
Or a tale of Odisseus and greek isles.

This is the link for TV Tropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Farscape
With dozens of tropes.

[Rynn]

I always enjoyed farscape, very entertaining characters.

What do you guys think and do you have any idea how to incorporate some of it's elements (besides the bioship Moya) into OA?

Why would we want to incorporate any ideas? Terranova you have a habit of bringing up other SF franchises and asking questions like this and it confuses me. OA is it's own thing, just because another franchise is successful or well liked we shouldn't try to grab ideas from them.

[stevebowers]

My sister liked Farscape, mostly for the character development. Writing fiction for a space opera like Farscape (or OA) should be character driven, as well as driven by ideas.

I do notice that the main character Crichton is basically the same as Buck Rogers, a 20th century astronaut propelled into a futuristic and alien civilisation. The same thing happens to Charlton Heston in that ape movie. This is a useful plot device to anchor the strange happenings in the story to someone the audience might identify with, and we have considered using the same device in OA stories ourselves - but the trick is to do it in a new way. A 21st century every(wo)man could be a refugee from a historical simulation, for instance.

[Worldtree]

I'm sure you can get some decent plots and methods of telling wild stories in the Farscape universe, or Stargate universe, or the universe of Syfy's Expanse, or any number of other existing fictional universes, but in terms of world building and even storytelling, I really like how OA is it's own thing. At this point i'll use those other universes to get inspiration for basic structure of plots or how to write characters but otherwise I like to build these stories from first principles in OA.

yeah- using a 21st century woman/man from some sort of historical simulation is a good go-to narrative trick for OA stories. I really liked how that worked out in 'Dirty Hands' because you are never sure whether their memories are re-created, completely fake, or somewhere in between because no matter what their physical body definitely isn't 3000+ years old given the tech available today. The conflict of almost certainly being a 'fake' creation can give your character plenty of conflict while still letting you introduce OA through a relatable lens. They still get to figure out what type of false reality is instilled in their memories and bodies and how that relates to the near-magical seeming worlds in OA.

is the protagonist a revived personality from the early 21st (or 19th, or 5th) century?
a complete fabrication in both body and mind build as a historical recreation from that period?
an existing body of a citizen who decided to do some hardcore historical reenacting and had a transapient wipe their memories?
some combination of the three?
what if some of the historical details in the protagonist's memory are wrong? How will they know?
etc...

[Drashner1]

Personally I always found Ben Browder to be much easier on the eyes than any of the female characters, but I suppose that's a matter of taste.

As far as the show itself, I never really got into it. It just never really captured or held my interest for some reason.

As far as incorporating elements from the show into OA - I agree with Rynn:

Why would we have any interest in doing that? OA is at its best when it is being as original as possible.

Todd

[rom65536]

Farscape did have some decent writing. There was nothing jarring or feeling "out-of-place" (something that Andromeda, which we recently discussed, had problems with) to disrupt the suspension of disbelief. Being "internally consistent" is both crucial and hard to do.
The only special effect that didn't work for me was Rigel. He had too much of a "muppet" feel to him (I know, Jim Henson company...). Combine the "obviously a hand-puppet" with his over-the-top personality, and I kept wondering why they didn't throw the little miscreant out the airlock.
But that was relatively minor. My biggest issue was that it suffered from a bad case of "This Idiot Is You". I know the show was meant to be light-hearted and all, but Crichton was presented as a scientist. He shouldn't have been shoe-horned into the role of "exposition idiot" that has to have everything explained to him so the audience gets it explained too.

[Deleted User]

Could any of the planets/locations in the show be like high-tech or middle-tech polities? And could some of the species look like some of the clades of OA?

[Drashner1]

Could any of the planets/locations in the show be like high-tech or middle-tech polities? And could some of the species look like some of the clades of OA?

I don't know the show well enough to know what the specific planets/locations are. A lot would depend on how broadly you are willing to define the word 'like'.

In terms of technology, most TV SF is pretty soft science and conventional and OA aims to be neither. So I suspect that a lot of even high-tech/middletech stuff would look rather different and probably be much more advanced than what is depicted on the show.

In terms of races/clades/cultures, you might get some similarities - at least in limited cases. A culture might go through a period where it is considered fashionable to bodymod oneself to have grey skin and hair for example. There is at least one race of provolved frogs in the setting, but I don't know if they would look anything like Rigel.

If you can provide specific examples of elements from the show we can probably do a better job of saying one way or the other.

Todd

[Deleted User]

Do you think the Leviathan's might make good templates for bioships?