Yet Again Still More Farscape

I just finished listening to a radio interview Farscape producer David Kemper gave a few days ago. (You can download it from here. It's kind of long, but the whole thing's well worth listening to.) And he had a lot of really interesting things to say. To begin with, he seems really optimistic about a possible future for the show. He says he believes that Sci Fi realized almost immediately that they had made a mistake but just don't want to admit it, that they seem to be treating the show better now than would be reasonable if it wasn't doing something for them, and that if the ratings for the second half of season 4 are high they might very well be willing to reconsider. He also repeated something we've heard many times from him and from other people who've worked on the show: that they are incredibly proud of the upcoming 11 eps, that they're among the best episodes they've ever done, and that they constitute the longest run of consistently superior episodes they've ever done. (And early praise from critics who've seen some of them already would seem to support that assertion, too!) He also talked a lot about a particular upcoming episode: 4.17. No spoilers, but he says that it took seven months to film, that it's as unique and different as the cartoon ep, and that it's guaranteed to get conversations started. (Aaargh, now I'm really feeling impatient!)

He also talked about various other possibilities for getting more Farscape made, including an idea that I know has been discussed a bit among fans. Consider this: if there are three million Farscape fans, and every one of those people chipped in twenty bucks, it would be enough to get the series made. Kemper says the legal logistics of something like that would be insanely complicated, and he makes a careful point of not encouraging FS fans to try it, because the financial risks are so great, but adds that he believes something like that is bound to happen eventually. And you know what? The more I think about that idea, the more I like it. Not just as a possible means of bringing back Farscape, but the whole principle of the thing, the idea that, as viewers, we're not content to simply sit back and passively accept whatever pap the networks see fit to foist on us. Power to the people! Yeah! Seriously, even if it doesn't happen for Farscape, I would like to see it happen sometime...