Good 'Space Opera'
I was watching the StarGate series, and noticed the Claudia Black and Ben Browder characters who joined it midstream. They were interesting enough to entice me to try their previous SciFi collaboration.
The set is very nice, an external box with 5 internal packages, 1 for each of the 4 seasons and 1 for the 'archives'. The internal packages are compact, which is nice, but the disks are mounted 'on top' of each other, which makes getting 2, 4 and 6 out of or back into the case a little more work than I prefer. Each disk tends to have 4 episodes and some specials on it. There are no captions or languages other than English available.
The specials tend to be commentaries by various actors and staff, a few deleted scenes, and some episodes offer the ability to watch the 'original' production intercut with the final production. Including the 2 'archives' disks, there are also 'making of', interviews, promotional clips and other specials. All in all, pretty much anything a 'Farscape' fan could want, except for the follow-on mini-series 'Peacekeeper Wars' (which is said to resolve the plot threads left dangling when the series was cancelled), of course.
The series starts out a little slow, but after 3 or 4 episodes you really get drawn into it. So far I've made it into the 3rd season, and I would say that the first season starts out good and improves, and the second continues at a high level until the last episode. Not a bad episode, but annoying to those who like a basis of reality in their fantasy. Imagine a 'crack combat pilot' who allows an enemy craft to follow above their craft for several minutes, and then, after being warned, allows the enemy to 'land' on their craft, destroying it...
The third season starts out rather dark and gloomy, kind of depressing and more 'far fetched' than 'farscape', and I was enticed away to other activities, so can't say if it gets good again. It has the potential; the people involved are talented and good at what they do, and production values are of the highest quality. But it seems every time a new character is introduced, that character is more 'flighty' and obnoxious then the one before. And the 'perils' have, so far in season 3 at least, turned 'mean' and the heros' survival less believable.
I do expect to finish the series eventually, (including Peacekeeper Wars which is on order), but starting with the 3rd season, I'm not drawn into watching it every free moment like I was with StarGate or Seasons 1 & 2. Still, as TV Science Fiction goes, this is better than many.Read full review
