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Drawing on Henson's traditional expertise in puppetry, two of the main characters are animatronic puppets. The show was abruptly canceled after it had completed production of its fourth season, with a fifth season contracted, effectively ending the series on a cliffhanger. A mini-series in 2004 wrapped up some of the show's hanging plot threads and new webisodes are being produced.
ProductionOriginally conceived in the early 1990s by Rockne S. O'Bannon and Brian Henson under the title Space Chase, the show's main character is present-day astronaut John Crichton (played by Ben Browder). Crichton accidentally travels through a wormhole to a distant part of the galaxy, where he is caught in the middle of conflicts between planets, empires, and the incompatible personalities of the escaped prisoners with whom he has taken refuge. The series avoids rough language problems by introducing Farscape terminology with words like 'frell' and 'dren', the analogues of which become quite clear to those already familiar with the English versions. Henson has traditionally specialized in puppetry (see Muppets), and Farscape is no exception. Two of the main characters are animatronic puppets: the miniature deposed Dominar Rygel XVI of Hyneria (voiced by Jonathan Hardy) and the ship's Pilot (voiced by Lani Tupu), a large multi-armed creature physically bonded to the living Leviathan ship, Moya. Farscape first ran on the Canadian YTV channel, then in the U.S. on the Sci-Fi Channel (which also financed the series); in Australia, the show was seen on free-to-air Channel Nine (which also co-produced the series - although as of 2007, the channel has yet to air Season Four or the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries). On Channel Nine the program was never given a stable timeslot, being shown in prime time, early afternoon (and edited severely to fit the ratings criteria) and most recently at 2am. In September 2002, the Sci-Fi Channel, which was then owned by Vivendi Universal, unexpectedly opted to withdraw its funding of the fifth season, canceling the show. While there was much fan criticism of the cancellation, the Sci-Fi Channel decided that the show was too expensive to renew as the ratings had declined during the fourth season. Fans mounted a massive letter, phone, e-mail, and advertisement campaign hoping to either pressure Sci-Fi into restoring the show or convince another network to take over the series. Early plans, to have the sets scrapped after production of the fourth season wrapped up, were quickly reversed after news of the cancellation broke, partly as a result of the fan campaign. The sets were instead put in storage pending a possible future revival of the show.
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