Farscape/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Broken Base: Expect a debate on whether the mini-series was a satisfying conclusion or not. Likewise, the plots and characterisations featured in the comics have very much divided the fan base.
  • Complete Monster: Durka, Natira.
    • War Minister Ahkna has no qualms about killing the last original Eidolon as well as planning to kill Aeryn and John's child.
  • Crazy Awesome - By the end of the series, everyone has had their moments, particularly Crichton. Whenever things don't go according to plan (which happens most of the time), or even in the rare cases where things do (... doesn't really happen a lot), Crichton, Aeryn, D'Argo, Chiana, Pilot, Moya... okay let's just say nearly all of the main characters, end up running on Xanatos Speed Chess with a healthy serving of Xanatos Roulette. By the middle of season 3 you have entire episodes that are just Crazy Awesome. "Revenging Angel," anyone?
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Both of the theme tunes. Also, The Last Stand—The music that plays during the destruction of the Command Carrier at the end of season 3. Since the words are the "Dies Irae", it also counts as Ominous Latin Chanting.
  • Crowning Moment of Sadness: YMMV but Talyn and Crais's sacrifice at the end of season 3, where they blow themselves up to save everyone, Crais waking Talyn up for just long enough for them to die together might count as one. Especially considering the lead-up with Talyn trying and failing to control his psychological problems to the point where he attacks his own mother.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Scorpius.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Sikozu. Okay, "evil" is a bit of a stretch, though she is the only character who ever warms to Scorpius and eventually joins him once Scorpius goes back to the Peacekeepers. But I think we can all agree on the "sexy" bit.
  • Fashion Victim Villain: Maldis appears to be wearing Elizabethan clothing, complete with a ruff... only it's all rendered in leather.
  • Foe Yay: Crichton and Scorpius. "Insert the rod, John!" Crichton lampshades it a few times.

Crichton: "Get a new girlfriend, Scorpy!"

  • Fridge Brilliance: Crichton, in one of his many flip-out moments in "Crackers Don't Matter," writes the name of the villain-of-the-week T'raltixx on a door. How does he know how to spell it, much less get it right? Then you realize: He doesn't! Nobody in the show technically speaks English except for Crichton, so he probably just made it up. Likewise when Crichton occasionally speaks in Spanish and the others have no problem understanding him (thanks to the Translator Microbes); an exception being "Crichton Kicks" where the microbes can't handle Klingon! This is explained by Sikozu not using translator microbes - her brain can't handle them, possibly because she's a bioloid. She learns languages extremely quickly but must be presented with their structure, rules, and alphabet. Because Crichton taught her English but dropped in the Klingon on a whim (actually a true-blue Throw It In by Ben Browder, which is why Raelee Hill had that look on her face after he said it), Sikozu wasn't able to process what he said. And there are actually a lot of subtle references and minor events that have significant impact episodes after they're introduced.
  • Growing the Beard: It began as a fairly generic Space Opera with outstanding special effects and above-average writing. Most fans would agree that the show grew the beard toward the end of Season 1, when Crichton first donned Peacekeeper clothing. From then on it just got darker.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In the Season 1 episode "Back and Back and Back to the Future" (one of the earliest examples of a dark episode), Crichton's forward-flashes in time depict Matala aggressively performing sex acts on him, and the scenes very much come across as though she's raping him. Flash forward to the Season 4 two-parter "What Was Lost", in which Crichton is raped by Grayza.
  • Ho Yay: Lots of it, most obviously between Scorpius and Braca. Noted by Crichton in season four. "Yeah, feel the love, Mr. Burns." Spoofed in "Scratch n' Sniff" with D'Argo and John denying they're a couple, while D'Argo later calls John (sarcastically) "sweetheart".
  • Jerkass Woobie: Xhalax Sun was forced to kill her own lover and surrender her daughter to the torturous Peacekeeper training regime; following her only chance to see said daughter again, she was prompty shoved back into another twenty straight years of assassination- which she hates- in a process that slowly and inexorably destroys any trace of pity or compassion in her.
  • Les Yay: Chiana and Jool get very touchy-feely in numerous episodes. Of particular note: their girl-on-girl dance in "Scratch n' Sniff", and their rather...intimate...placement of hands when Jool says goodbye in "What Was Lost Part 2: Resurrection".
  • Magnificent Bastard: Scorpius, who has simultaneously convinced both the Scarran Emperor and Peacekeeper High Command that he's working for them against the other side, when his real intentions are to use the Peacekeepers to get revenge on the Scarrans for the hell they put him through.
  • My Real Daddy: Rockne S. O'Bannon created the series, but stepped down as executive producer after Season 1 - leaving David Kemper to be showrunner for the next three seasons. Brian Henson also deserves mention - not because of any creative decisions, but because he spent the better part of The Nineties trying to sell the series despite constant rejection.
  • Nightmare Fuel: It's virtually a guarantee that everyone will find something.
  • Pandering to the Base: The Peacekeeper Wars is arguably this for the more hardcore John/Aeryn shippers.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: Even by 2002 standards, the PC game is pretty much balls.
  • Recycled Script: "Through the Looking Glass" (written by David Kemper) was based on a pitch he made to Star Trek: The Next Generation years earlier.
  • The Scrappy: Exactly who qualifies as the scrappy may vary a great deal from viewer to viewer, but a lot of people hated Jool—including the other characters... at first, anyway. This was actually deliberate on the part of the writers, but Tammy MacIntosh stated in an interview that the hate Jool - and, in some cases, Tammy herself - received reduced her to tears.
    • While much of the fandom found Stark's "quirkiness" amusing and his sadness woobifying, others found his constant screeching and endangering of the crew to be extremely grating and his constant wailing about whatever new sad thing he bumped into to be rather Wangsty.
  • Seasonal Rot: Season 3 is generally less well-regarded than the others and saw the show's ratings steadily decline as a result. Season 4, which took the series' inherent weirdness and dialed it Up to Eleven in a variety of ways, is also sometimes seen as this.
  • Special Effects Failure: In the first episode of the second season, when Crais is being hooked up with the neural interface to the baby leviathan you can clearly see a hand holding up the metal-tentacle thing, near the bottom of the screen.
    • Also, in the third season, "Jack" is switching between his human form and his actual Ancient shape and there is almost no similarity between the muppet and the CGI used for the transformation.
    • Crichton's beard in "Jeremiah Crichton". Good luck paying attention to anything else while watching that episode.
    • In "Picture If You Will", it is startlingly obvious when Zhaan's collar and gauntlets switch from hard and shiny to the dull, rubbery-looking stunt ones.
  • Stoic Woobie: D'Argo.
  • Tear Jerker: Many, including some of the most gut-wrenching Season Finales known to man. And "...Different Destinations". Anything involving Talyn where Moya is desperately trying to get her kid to listen (and he just doesn't...); anytime Moya is willing to sacrifice herself for her occupants; and when Talyn commits suicide. The last one has left people in tears. Then there's Zhaan's death. It's one for both the main characters and the audience. And the look of complete heartbreak on Stark's face is enough to make you cry.
    • Gilina's death. Especially her asking Crichton, "If things had been different, could you have loved me?" "Yes."
  • Too Good to Last: And how!
  • Ugly Cute: It's a guarantee that most viewers will see some characters as this. NamTar's original form is a good example.
  • Villain Decay:
    • Crais when the Stern Chase got old and Scorpius stepped up to became the Big Bad, eventually leading to a Heel Face Turn.
    • Harvey started out as another Scorpius who, by virtue of being in Crichton's head, could win a lot and be consistantly scary. By the end, he's cracking jokes about E=MC Hammer. He was also created to avert this trope in the original Scorpius - it allowed Wayne Pygram to show up as often as the writers wanted, without forcing them to have Scorpius defeated each week, letting him keep his menace for when the original did make an appearance.
      • Harvey's villain decay was most likely intentional, as well... he's essentially a figment of Chrichton's imagination, after all, which is established many times as a very silly and sarcastic thing. Him winding up as rather goofy was likely intentional, especially since it really ramped up the real Scorpius' bastardry in comparison.
    • Almost immediately after her introduction, Grayza is getting stomped in the villain stakes by the Scarrans. Ironically,[1] this is what makes her so dangerous within the Farscape universe: the fact that she's got all the power of a Peacekeeper Commandant but consistently makes dumb decisions and punches above her villain weight, putting lives in danger by accident and allowing the real villains to cause far more havoc than they ever would have normally.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: YTV, a Nickelodeon-flavored Canadian channel was the first to pick up the show in the Great White North, probably misled by the fact that the show was made by Henson Studios. This did not end well, since they only bought the first season and edited the crap out of it
  • The Woobie: Just about everyone on occasion, but especially:
    • Stark. Damn. You just want to wrap him in a straitjacket and give him a hug. And although his status as a Badass nearly disqualifies him, Rygel approaches Woobie territory on several occasions throughout the series.
    • Gillina earns this title following the events of her first episode. Not only is she the only survivor of her team, but she's been trapped on a Ghost Ship that's been claimed by the Sheeyangs and forced to hide under a corpse; then she's menaced by Aeryn and D'Argo, spat on by Rygel, almost gets incinerated when the Sheeyangs return, and then is forced to leave Crichton for her own well-being. And while she waits for Crais to retrieve her, she has to stay behind on the Zelbinion- not exactly the safest or the most reassuring environment.
    • Pilot. He spends the first season and a half in substantial pain because of his artificial grafting to Moya, feels every bit of damage done to her as pain to himself, and gets yelled at by everyone on board.
  1. ↑ Or at least, what Alanis would call "ironically"
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