The Worlds of Farscape by Sherry Ginn Read Free Book Online

situations, one of the ways in which “disaster is paradoxically creative” (327). As Virilio and Lotringer offer, “the accident of art is the accident of knowledge” (109), and in a series like Farscape with its clearly artistic intentions knowledge finally is the real payoff. Over its course the series drives home a great variety of truths, including the strength and leadership of women, the value of diverse cultures, the wisdom of compassion, the worth of other ways of knowing. Yet it seems to afford such knowledge almost accidentally, since in a world bound by conventions and constrained by certain ways of seeing—such as those typically afforded by network television and its popular genres—this may well be the only way we might encounter, or be willing to accept, such different, potentially subversive concepts. In this context we might consider the point that Crichton makes, rather off-handedly, in the very first episode when Aeryn hesitates to join the other escapees on Moya, insisting that she must remain true to her Peacekeeper training which forbids her from having compassion for others, questioning commands, or resisting the aims of the Peacekeepers—in this key instance, simply helping her companions escape their pursuers. He insists, however, that she “can be more,” that she can learn to be a better being. That she accepts that challenge forecasts the strength of character she will manifest throughout the series, but it also demonstrates one of the most important pieces of knowledge or messages we might find in a cult text, that of our abiding ability, despite all conditioning, to “escape” our own cultural bonds, not to do the impossible , but simply to “be” something better.
    Finally, we might emphasize how this term “escape” seems to resonate tellingly with the series title and its cult appeal. For the title Farscape immediately suggests a text that is playing at extremes, affording a vision or horizon far beyond the normal range, if not of the impossible then certainly far beyond the boundaries typically set by our world and visualized in our mainstream texts. That sort of expanded vision only further underscores the series’ cult potential, for as Kawin reminds us, the cult work is one that, by its very nature as a radically different sort of experience, usually situates itself at the margins of our culture, “a culture that eats and breathes and oils itself with compromise” (24), with the stuff of sameness, with the normative vision, in this case of conventional broadcast television. In contrast, Farscape as an unfolding text consistently suggests how we might look beyond that world, escape from that everyday realm to other possibilities. Through its group of “strange alien” types, thrown together by chance yet gradually transformed— almost impossibly , against their natures—into “friends,” it visualizes various ways out, as it takes us into and helps us explore the “Uncharted Territories” of culture and of self.

Notes
    1. For a detailed discussion of the early television space opera, see Wheeler Winston Dixon’s essay “Tomorrowland TV: The Space Opera and Early Science Fiction Television.”
    2. TV Guide first compiled this listing in 2004, shortly after Farscape was canceled. That it would still rank the show as one of the top cult series in 2007 suggests its continuing importance. See “ TV Guide Names the Top Cult Shows Ever.”
    3. Bruce Kawin suggests that this sort of effect is the real key to a cult work’s satisfaction. As he offers, “what this sacred text gives its worshippers, and what they are grateful for, is a mirror. It tells them something they realize as the truth, something they have been waiting to hear and to have validated” (24).
    4. In the series’ later seasons, Crichton’s introductory commentary adds a