59 Fun Facts About Farscape

Which writer is credited as the creator of Farscape?

Rockne S. O'Bannon, who wrote the film Alien Nation, began developing the costly series in the early 1990s but spent years trying to get it on air.

Who co-produced Farscape and built its alien characters?

The Jim Henson Company made Farscape to show off its Creature Shop, which is why two of the regulars, Rygel and Pilot, are animatronic puppets rather than actors.

Farscape was originally made for which Australian broadcaster?

Nine Network was the Australian partner on a series shot in Australia, which is why nearly all the cast apart from American lead Ben Browder came from Australia and New Zealand.

On which US cable network did Farscape premiere?

Farscape premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel as part of its Friday-night line-up, though the channel's later scheduling of the show became notoriously erratic.

Which relative of Farscape's Peacekeeper captain dies clipping Crichton's module?

Brother: his fighter clips Crichton's module in the first episode and crashes, so the captain hunts Crichton across the first season for revenge.

In which Australian city was Farscape filmed?

Sydney was the base, with filming starting at the city's Fox Studios; the producers said they chose Australia because desert, jungle and mountains all lay close by and looked suitably alien.

What is Crichton injected with in Farscape's first episode so he can understand alien speech?

Translator microbes let Moya's crew understand one another, but they cannot handle Crichton's Earth slang and pop-culture references, so his shipmates are often left guessing.

What was Crichton's Farscape module built to test?

A gravity slingshot was the experiment: Crichton hoped Earth's pull would whip his module to greater speed, but a wormhole opened in his path and swallowed the craft.

Which space agency employed Crichton?

IASA ran the Farscape project, a test flight of a theory Crichton devised with his childhood friend DK, and it was that flight which flung him across the universe.

Crichton's father, also an astronaut, is called what?

Jack is only a nickname: father and son are both John Robert Crichton, which makes the show's hero John Jr., who followed his father into space.

In Farscape, what kind of vessel is Moya, the ship the crew live aboard?

Moya is a Leviathan, a living biomechanoid ship bred for peace; she carries no weapons at all and relies on a fast-escape manoeuvre to flee.

What is the name of Moya's fast-escape manoeuvre through a tear in space-time?

Starburst lets Moya rip open a tear in space-time and leap a vast distance; Aeryn's fighter was caught in the first one, stranding her with the escapees.

What do the initials DRD stand for on Moya?

DRD stands for Diagnostic Repair Drone; the little beetle-like robots are built by the living ship herself as she grows.

Moya's offspring, a gunship that Aeryn named after her father, is called what?

Talyn was born bristling with guns after a Peacekeeper breeding experiment on his unarmed mother, and they jammed him in the birth canal until he fired a shot to free himself.

Aeryn Sun looks human but belongs to which species?

Sebaceans cannot regulate their body heat, so too much warmth sends Aeryn into heat delirium and then a permanent coma her people call the living death.

Who played Aeryn Sun?

Claudia Black played Aeryn Sun, who begins the series as a cold, by-the-book Peacekeeper soldier and ends the story married to Crichton, with a newborn son.

What type of one-person Peacekeeper fighter did Aeryn fly?

Aeryn's Prowler was dragged along when Moya broke free, stranding the Peacekeeper pilot among the very fugitives she had been sent to stop.

Ka D'Argo belongs to which warrior species?

D'Argo is a Luxan, a warrior race prone to fits of hyper-rage, which made it easy to pin a killing on him that he did not commit.

D'Argo's heavy broadsword can transform into what?

A rifle: the Qualta Blade doubles as a gun. It later saves the crew, when D'Argo's new ship cancels its self-destruct on being shown the blade he had hurled away in a temper.

D'Argo was falsely convicted of killing whom?

D'Argo was framed for the murder of his wife Lo'Laan, who was actually killed by her own brother Macton; the Peacekeepers chained him with hooks set around his collarbones.

What is the name of D'Argo's long-lost son?

Jothee was left in others' care and ended up a slave; D'Argo spent two seasons searching for him, only for the reunion to sour when Jothee slept with Chiana.

Zhaan, the blue-skinned priestess, belongs to which plant species?

Zhaan is a Delvian, a species of sentient plants, and the priestess dies in season 3 by giving up her own life to save Moya and the crew.

Zhaan was imprisoned for assassinating which person?

Her lover Bitaal led her world and refused to step down when his term ended, hiring Peacekeepers to hold on to power; Zhaan killed him during a mental union, which shattered her own mind.

Why did Virginia Hey leave Farscape?

Health problems from the make-up and schedule forced Virginia Hey out: the blue make-up on her head and chest and the long filming days made her kidneys bleed, and she was tired of shaving her head.

Rygel XVI was once the ruler, or Dominar, of which empire?

Rygel XVI ruled the Hynerian Empire until he was deposed and handed to the Peacekeepers, and he spends the series scheming to win his throne back.

Which relative overthrew Rygel?

His cousin Bishan seized the throne more than 130 cycles before the series and handed Rygel to the Peacekeepers; much later, with war closing in, Bishan asked him to come home and reunite their people.

What gas does Rygel emit when he gets nervous, in a recurring gag?

Rygel passes helium when nervous, a trait of his species, and everyone in earshot ends up talking in a squeaky voice.

Chiana, the grey-skinned thief, belongs to which race?

Chiana is a Nebari; her homeworld is run by a rigid government called The Establishment, which mind-cleanses dissidents, and she fled it.

Who played Chiana in Farscape?

Gigi Edgley was hired for a single episode in which Chiana was meant to die, but the performance went down so well that the character stayed and became a regular.

After an encounter with an Energy Rider in season 3, what ability did Chiana develop?

Chiana gained brief precognitive visions after the Energy Rider incident in Losing Time; each use came at a cost, leaving her temporarily blind.

Lani Tupu, who voiced Pilot, also appeared on screen as which character?

Crais, played on screen by Lani Tupu, starts out as the Peacekeeper captain hunting Moya and ends by sacrificing himself to save her crew; Tupu also voiced the gentle Pilot throughout.

Which Peacekeeper technician bonded Pilot to Moya, as shown in The Way We Weren't?

Velorek, a Peacekeeper technician, grafted the young Pilot onto Moya after the original Pilot was shot dead; Aeryn, then a Peacekeeper, was among the shooters.

Scorpius is a hybrid of a Peacekeeper-race mother and a male of which reptilian race?

Scarran blood makes Scorpius run dangerously hot, hence the cooling suit and the coolant rods he has to swap in and out of his skull.

Who played Scorpius in Farscape?

Wayne Pygram also played the taunting clone of Scorpius inside Crichton's head, and later appeared in Revenge of the Sith as the young Tarkin, made up to resemble Peter Cushing.

What name did Crichton give the neural clone of Scorpius living in his head?

Harvey is Crichton's nod to the invisible rabbit of the stage play and James Stewart film Harvey, a companion that only one man can see.

The neural clone in Crichton's head first appeared in which Farscape episode?

Crackers Don't Matter gave Crichton a hallucination of Scorpius in a Hawaiian shirt, and it worked so well that the writers then wrote the clone into the story.

What device did Scorpius use in his attempt to rip the wormhole knowledge out of Crichton's mind?

Scorpius strapped Crichton into the Aurora Chair, which replays memories painfully; when it failed he implanted a neural chip instead, which is where the clone came from.

Which mysterious race hid a repository of wormhole knowledge in Crichton's brain?

The Ancients planted the wormhole knowledge in Crichton's mind in the season-1 episode A Human Reaction, and every faction in the galaxy spent the rest of the series chasing it.

Stark, the masked, half-mad crewmate, is a Stykera, a subrace of which people?

Stark is a Banik, one of a widely enslaved people, and as a Stykera he eases the pain of the dying, absorbing a fragment of each soul he helps across, which may explain his unsteady mind.

What happens when Jool, the Interion, is frightened?

Her hair turns red and her scream can melt metal; the young academic woke aboard Moya after 22 cycles frozen in stasis, where she had been kept as an organ donor.

Sikozu, who can walk on walls by shifting her centre of gravity, is which species?

Sikozu is a Kalish who can reattach a severed limb, and she turns out to be a bioengineered double agent working to free her people from their occupiers.

Which elderly healer, nicknamed Grandma by Crichton, joins Moya's crew at the end of season 3?

Noranti, played by Melissa Jaffer, is 293 cycles old and seems half-senile, yet her potions and powders rescue the crew again and again.

What is the substance from an implanted gland that Commandant Grayza uses to control men?

Heppel oil, secreted by a gland implanted in her chest, let Rebecca Riggs's Grayza bend men to her will; she used it on Crichton early in season 4.

Which of these is a Farscape swear word used in place of English expletives?

Frell stood in for the F-word, alongside 'dren' and 'hezmana', letting the show curse freely on cable.

In Farscape's first episode, her captain declares Aeryn irreversibly what?

Irreversibly contaminated was the verdict on Aeryn for her contact with a being of unknown species, so the loyal Peacekeeper fled, reluctantly, with Crichton and the escaped prisoners.

In Farscape, D'Argo can knock an opponent unconscious with a venomous strike from which part of his body?

His tongue shoots out like a frog's, and its venom knocks the victim out cold rather than killing, which makes it D'Argo's way of stunning an enemy.

What nickname does Crichton give Chiana in Farscape?

Pip is Crichton's pet name for Chiana, a sign of the brother-and-sister bond that grows between the astronaut and the young thief.

Which cartoonist used his syndicated comic strip to protest Farscape's cancellation?

Bill Amend of FoxTrot ran a strip in October 2002 in which Jason Fox, the family's resident geek, petitions the network to bring Farscape back.

What was the title of the 2004 Farscape miniseries that finally wrapped up the story?

Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars resolved the season-4 cliffhanger in October 2004, a return its makers credited to the fans who had kept campaigning since the cancellation.

Who directed the Farscape miniseries?

Brian Henson directed the miniseries himself, after the Henson family bought their company back from its German owner in 2003 and reclaimed the rights to the series.

For what did the 2004 Farscape miniseries earn a Primetime Emmy nomination?

Special visual effects earned the miniseries its nomination, for the second night's episode, but the Emmy went to HBO's The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

Which awards named Farscape Best Syndicated/Cable TV Series three years running, from 2000 to 2002?

The Saturn Awards picked Farscape three years running and gave Ben Browder a best-actor prize, yet the third win came for 2002, the very year its network cancelled the show.

Which magazine ranked Farscape fourth on its 2007 list of the Top Cult Shows Ever?

TV Guide put Farscape fourth, behind only Star Trek, The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and ahead of Lost, The Simpsons and The Twilight Zone.

Ben Browder and the actress who played Aeryn were later regulars on which other science-fiction show?

Stargate SG-1 cast Browder as team leader Cameron Mitchell for its last two seasons, and its 200th episode spoofed Farscape, invented swear words and all.

Which big-screen space adventure did its director say was inspired by Farscape?

Guardians of the Galaxy owes a debt to Farscape, says director James Gunn, who gave Ben Browder a cameo as a Sovereign admiral in the second film.

Which UK channel carried Farscape?

BBC Two carried Farscape in the UK, and when it reached the finale it kept the closing 'To be continued' caption out of respect for the producers, who had added it after the cancellation.

What is the title of Farscape's season 4 finale, which left the story on a cliffhanger?

Bad Timing ends moments after Aeryn accepts Crichton's proposal in a rowboat, when an alien craft sweeps over and blasts the pair into tiny crystal shards.

Farscape's creator also created which undersea science-fiction series?

SeaQuest DSV starred Jaws lead Roy Scheider as a submarine captain, but he publicly attacked the show's drift from science into monster stories and asked to be released.

Under what working title was Farscape first conceived in the early 1990s?

Space Chase was the title when the idea took shape in the early 1990s; when a network finally bought it, its boss told the creator to make it as weird as he could, because he didn't want a kids' show.