Uppside of the cancellation

[Sallow]

As I was plowing through the vast amounts of threads on the cancellation of Farscape I thought struck me. I searched for a post with the same content but after reading to many spoilers (I'm mid season 3) for my own good I decided to do a post about it instead.

What struck me was that in the long run the cancellation might be better for Farscape and the fans. The notion comes from especially what would have happend if the deal for 13 episodes to round of the show would have happend. How much of an outcry of you the fans would that have brought? If the many plots inFarscape would have been allowed to come to some sort of end it seems to be a fair chance that most people would have reached a point in the story that they could live with.

Instead the cancellation turned the show into a martyr for excellent shows that get cancelled and now after your huge effort (I take no credit what so ever) the possibility for a continuation beyond the mini looks plausible. Of course this all dependent on how the mini does beyond this point and how well DVD-sales concerning Farcape does, but the hoping part of me do believe that Scifi killing Farscape and your effort will bring the Farscape universe further then if it had been allowed to reach closure with a full or crippled season 5.

[waltersgirl]

first...:hi:

second...i personally agree completely. possibly for different reasons, or the same reasons from a different perspective, but, i think the cancellation is what gave Farscape the "push" it needed. it gave the critically acclaimed show buzz in the press, and more importantly, in the trades.

i don't know what would have happened had Farscape gone to a full 5th season. i'd like to think that, perhaps by different means, we'd be where we are now...a mini just aired and an open future with actual possibility. but who knows.

what i do believe the cancellation did was, as you pointed out, galvanize viewers already outraged with the lack of quality scripted shows on television. i think the cancellation of Farscape came at the right time and factors involved were in the right place and all that ultimately helped to make the miniseries happen.

the sales of the miniseries dvd will be closely watched. a profitable franchise is a franchise with a future.

i think it's also good timing that ADV is re-releasing the back 88 episodes in their new "Starburst" editions. those dvds will be 7 eps to a release and will be available for the first time in Walmarts...a very large discount retailer here in the US, in addition to all the "regular" outlets like Best Buy, and then on the internet at Amazon.com and DeepDiscountDVD. all that together exposes Farscape to a whole new potential fanbase, and growth that is tangibly measurable in sales shows the fanbase expanding...and *that* equates to a viable future.

[SabaceanBabe]

Hi, Sallow! :hi:

And don't forget, wg, syndication (yay!) in the fall of 2005, which will also open Farscape up to a much wider audience.

Ah, this is one of the times it feels really good to be a Scaper. ;)

[Lost Like Me]

For purely selfish reasons I'm kinda grateful for the cancellation. I don't know if I'd have discovered this wonderful show otherwise. It was because of all the chatter about Farscape, post cancellation, that caused me to take a look in the first place. I'd heard about it while it was on, but for some reason never thought to give it a shot, even though I've always been a scifi fan. Maybe I was being snobbery about watching a series on SciFi channel. I was a big Buffy fan at the time, so I wasn't anti genre. Whatever the reason, I wasn't watching. Maybe I would have eventually discovered it in syndication, but maybe not.

If there had been a S5, maybe it would have simply ended, especially if TPTB knew it was ending and got to write it with a sense of closure. To hardcore fans it would have been like the Friends finale, minus the media hoopla. Maybe no real push for more. I suppose we'll never know.

[Sallow]

Thanks for the greetings. My introduction post can be found here (http://www.watchfarscape.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30652) :)


Regarding syndication those are good news for Farscape and all scapers. I also hope that a channel in Sweden will catch on to this new wave of popularity for Farscape and decide to pick up the show. I hope that our public service channel (goverment owned) will pick it up. They have the broadest audience and they have previously shown all Star Trek from TNG and later so they're not alien to science fiction.


Regarding DVD-releases and such it's great that, despite what I've heard of Scifi channels ad effort outside of Scifi, Farscape has managed to pick up the interest of bigger stores and chains. Hopefully this new found interest will sustain itself long enough for the average person to remember it next fall when it should start to appear outside of Scifi channel.

[Shipscat]

I really don't know that the cancellation overall could be considered a good thing. There's no saying that Farscape would not have continued to grow even after season 5 through DVD sales and syndication, and resulted in movies and more Farscape of some kind or another, which is what we all hope for now...and we would have had a full season, instead of the mini. There's really no way of knowing.

What we do know is that we seem to have cancelled out the stigma of cancellation, and that we and the PTB have made the most of a bad situation.

[GcleffGinger]

Do you think the cancellation has helped the actors' and writers' and producers' careers?

I think it has given the main actors noteriety that they may not have had. I'm not so sure for those in the supporting roles.Also it has been favorable to Henson. He is seen in a positive light.

[Greybeard]

If the many plots inFarscape would have been allowed to come to some sort of end it seems to be a fair chance that most people would have reached a point in the story that they could live with.

While it wasn't a happy ending, for me "Bad Timing" worked perfectly as an end to the Farscape story. It didn't leave me happy, but it left me satisfied. D'Argo's scream said more in 15 seconds than could 50 pages of script.

When I saw people complaining about not getting a "happy ending", I felt like responding with the last line from "A Clockwork Nebari" (John to Chiana "I know...but since when do people like us get what we want?").

I had mixed feelings about them doing the mini-series as, while I wanted more Farscape, I was very much afraid they'd replace a hard-edged ending that was so characteristic of Farscape with a cheap attempt to produce as many tears as possible (see Babylon 5's finale, "Sleeping in Light" or, to a lesser extent, M*A*S*H's finale "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen"). Fortunately, the mini-series didn't stray too far down that path, but it easily could have.

This is just to clarify that not everyone's reasons for wanting a return of Farscape were the same, some of us wanted a happy ending, some of us just wanted more great television.

[BillFrugge]

I won't play the 'What If?' game. We don't know what might have happened without the cancellation, and there's no real way to know.

I do agree that Farscape benefitted from the cancellation. Scapers were more encouraged to spread the word of the show, and increased the size of the audience. SciFi could not have bought more effective advertising.

Not to nitpick, but I believe the finales of Babylon 5 and M*A*S*H were appropriate. We had come so close to the characters of both shows, that they felt like family.

[benaholic]

I understand the reasoning about the untimely termination bringing about well...forums like these and awarness on the part of certain persons in the media but..I want more Farscape and to me it feels like there are so many more stories to be told. I hate to think of the cast going on as they must , to other projects and leaving Farscape to rerun purgatory. So while I appreciate what most people in this thread are saying, I would trade it for another season.