Trivia / Farscape

• Acting for Two:
  • Almost any episode featuring Crais, as the actor, Lani Tupu, also voiced Pilot. Also Wayne Pygram, who plays both Scorpius and his mental clone, "Harvey". While Harvey starts out being little more than a copy of Scorpius's personality, he later develops a personality of his own in seasons three and four, taking on knowledge and appreciation of popular Earth culture from Crichton's mind and becoming a less antagonistic character concerned more with his and Crichton's survival. Numerous episodes feature both Scorpius and Harvey. And in the "Look at the Princess" storyline, Jonathan Hardy, the voice actor for Rygel, appears onscreen as one of Moya's alien "Builders" (his eyebrows are the giveaway).
  • In addition, some of the guest starring actors and actresses who have played alien characters in one season end up playing other alien characters in a later season. One of the biggest examples is Francesca Buller, wife of Ben Browder, who has played in all four seasons of the show as alien characters (M'Lee from "Bone to Be Wild" in Season 1, ro-NA in two of the "Look at the Princess" three-parter in Season 2, Raxil in "Scratch 'n' Sniff" in Season 3 and Minister Ahkna in four episodes of Season 4. Minister Ahkna is the only character she has played for more than one season, having been included in "The Peacekeeper Wars" mini-series).
  • In Season 3, Ben Browder started pulling double duty as John Crichton during the episode "Eat Me" until one of the Crichtons dies in "Infinite Possibilities (2): Icarus Abides"
  • In the Season 2 episode "My Three Crichtons", Ben does triple duty as Crichton, Caveman Crichton and Future Crichton
  • In the Season 4 episode "Prayer" Jason Clarke is billed as the Scarran officer, Captain Jenek. He also played the role of Lechner (Aeryn's fake lover) in the flashback sequences in the same episode.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Paul Goddard originaly auditioned for the role of Scorpius but lost to Wayne Pygram. Goddard was instead cast as Stark, who debuted alongside Scorpius, and was such a hit with the cast and crew that they kept bringing him back.
  • Raelee Hill auditioned for the role of Lieutenant Grayza but lost to Rebecca Riggs. The producers liked Hill's audition enough that they created the character of Sikozu for her.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • In "Won't Get Fooled Again," the Scorpius analogue is a drummer - a skill Wayne Pygram possesses and has put to good use.
  • In "Scratch 'N' Sniff", Chiana does some fire-twirling to wow a crowd of onlookers. Gigi Edgley possesses this skill in real life. Jool's gymnastics in the same scene were Tammy MacIntosh's own party piece.
  • Does Claudia Black's lizard-like tongue trick count as a skill?
  • In "A Human Reaction", Aeryn's language sounds to outsiders like Aeryn's speech backwards. The kicker is that this isn't a post-production effect: Claudia Black actually spoke backwards for the take.
• Contractual Immortality: Usually avoided, but occasionally pretty obvious, as with each of Rygel's "deaths".
• Costume Backlash: The crew wanted to bring Natira from the "Liars, Guns and Money" trilogy back but Claudia Karvan, her actress, hated the full-body prosthetics she had to wear for the role.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Descriptions of the Peacekeeper Wars online are often a variant of the following (unfortunately even on the back of some DVDs):
  "When the evil Scarran Empire engages a full-scale war the Peacekeeper Alliance^note  (Not a name they use) has only one hope: reassemble human astronaut John Crichton,^note  (Not a thing they did; someone else reassembled him when the Peacekeepers just thought he was dead) once sucked into the Peacekeeper galaxy^note  (The Peacekeeper galaxy is our galaxy) through a wormhole. Crichton's task: recreate the invaluable wormhole weapon^note  (While there was one wormhole weapon seen previously, it wasn't "the" wormhole weapon and nor is John attempting to recreate it) and flush the entire Peacekeeper race^note  (The Peacekeepers are not a race) to safety^note  (Not a plot point and never even considered) before the last war of an era brings an end to the universe^note  (While the Peacekeepers are in danger of being wiped out, the universe was never actually under threat until, ironically, Crichton activated the wormhole weapon to force both sides to stop fighting)."
• Creator Couple: Francesca Buller, who is married to series star Ben Browder, makes an appearance in every season as a different character.
• Development Hell The webseries actually listed contracts for producing spots before promptly disappearing without a trace. Surprisingly, however, the trope by averted big-time when the producers were able to mount the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries, complete with the TV cast (many of whom had gone on to other projects), and get it on the air within a year and half of the show's cancellation.
• Dolled-Up Installment: "Through the Looking Glass" (written by David Kemper) was based on a pitch he made to Star Trek: The Next Generation years earlier.
• Dueling Shows: With Lexx. The sexuality and sensuality of both Farscape and Lexx, were reactions of the science-fiction TV community against the (perceived) sexlessness of the Star Trek franchise.^note The idea that Star Trek was sexually sterile began to be disposed of with Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005), and has now been thoroughly sidelined thanks to post-2009 franchise installments.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Virginia Hey shaved her hair and eyebrows to become Zhaan, and suffered serious health issues because of her makeup that eventually forced her to — very unwillingly — leave the show.
  • The beard Crichton grows between "Dog With Two Bones" and "Crichton Kicks" was real, Ben Browder grew it out during the hiatus between the seasons.
• Executive Meddling:
  • A rare good example, as the newly-appointed head of the Sci-Fi Channel was a big proponent of Farscape's 'edginess'. This was partly due to the presence of Jim Henson's moniker, not to mention the family-friendly puppets; both of which were unnerving to a company that was re-styling itself as an adult network.
  • On a much less positive note, the heavily-derided opening of season 4 was the direct result of SciFi insisting on slowly reintroducing the cast for new viewers. Additionally, the series was under contract for a fifth and sixth season, but SciFi initially tried to back out of the contract by shortening the order to a 13-episode half season. When the showrunners attempted to fight for the original contract, the series was summarily canceled. And all of this after the fourth season finale cliffhanger had been filmed, leaving no time to write and film a new ending for the series. Rumor has it that the new head of the Sci-Fi Channel hated the show and sci-fi in general and purposely sabotaged it. But once he saw the ratings were still decent, he said to hell with it and cancelled it anyway. If you can recall, around that time they switched up their programming and much of their traditional science fiction content was replaced with reality shows about psychics and ghost hunters and stuff like that.
• Fake American: Whenever they had an American character who wasn't John or Jack, they were probably played by an Australian: two of the most notable were John's mom and his best friend DK. Also, Australian actors Gigi Edgely and Anthony Simcoe played their characters of Chiana and D'Argo with fairly passable American accents.
• Fake Guest Star: An unusual example: Despite appearing in almost every episode, both Lani Tupu (Pilot) and Jonathan Hardy (Rygel) aren't even credited in the main titles. They only ever get a guest star billing if they appear as a live-action character (such as recurring character Bialar Crais and the Leviathan engineer). Lani Tupu was even Promoted to Opening Titles, only for his role as Crais.
• International Coproduction: Filmed in Sydney, Farscape first ran on the Australian TV Channel Nine Network. As usual with shows filmed overseas, Australia, the UK, and Canada aired episodes months in advance, whilst Sci-Fi bludgeoned its viewers with long hiatuses.
• Prop Recycling: The puppet used for Moya's Pilot was used for every member of the species with minor alterations to their appearances (such as Rovhu's Pilot missing his arms) and different voice actors for each individual.
• The Other Darrin: Ka Jothee was originally played by Matt Newton in seasons 2 and 3. For the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries he was replaced with Nathaniel Dean.
• Out of Order: Several episodes early in the first season were aired in different orders in both the USA and the UK. The mixed-up orders often get used for DVD, Blu-Ray and streaming presentations of the season. The recap page lists the episodes in production order.
• Real-Life Relative: Francesca Buller who, as mentioned above, played four different characters over the series is Ben Browder's wife. Their son and daughter also made appearances in the "Look at the Princess" trilogy as the projected versions of Crichton's potential offspring by Princess Katralla.
• Recycled Set: The sets used for Moya were redressed to portray Rovhu in "Eat Me" and Elack at the beginning of season four. As all three ships are Leviathans it makes sense that they would look somewhat similar.
• The Red Stapler: During Harvey's first appearance in "Crackers Don't Matter" he dons a tacky Hawaiian-style shirt from Australian clothing company Mambo. Many fans of the show rushed out to buy the shirt and would go on to hold meet-ups at conventions where they'd all wear their shirts together.
• Screwed by the Network: When Sci-Fi renewed the series for a fourth season, a fifth season was also a part of the deal. However, the fifth season never materialized - much to the outrage of fans and critics. The supposed justification was declining ratings, which suffered due to the network changing timeslots in the fourth season. While simply backing out of the deal was bad enough, what really enraged people was that Sci-Fi made and announced its decision with only days to go before the last episode wrapped - leaving production no chance to even attempt wrapping up the series.
• Throw It In!: Much of the more comedic lines were reportedly ad-libbed by the actors. Also other little things, such as Crichton's nickname for Chiana ("Pip") being Ben Browder's nickname for Gigi Edgley.
  • Chiana was originally not part of the cast, and her first appearance, she was supposed to die. However, the cast and crew liked her so much they let her live and made her a main character. A side effect of this was that Edgley decided to keep the exaggerated head movements she needed to do in her first appearance thanks to her restrictive contact lenses, despite them being replaced with more comfortable ones.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Zhaan was originally intended to have been a male character. This received a Development Gag in "John Quixote" where the version of Zhaan in a video game based on Stark's memories appears as male.
  • As stated above, Chiana was meant to have died in her first episode.
  • Scorpius was originally sketched out as a puppet character, and Crais's sidekick. He was originally envisioned as some kind of insectoid creature.
  • There were plans to actually explore Rygel's backstory more extensively, and to visit the Hynerian homeworld. They were scrapped because it would have been a nightmare to operate that many puppets at once, considering how much of a pain it was even using Rygel.
  • Plans for a series of sequel webisodes were derailed by the 2007 writer's strike, plus Rygel and Pilot's puppets having decayed since the show aired. Luckily, we got the comics instead.
  • Obviously, the never-produced Season 5. The Peacekeeper Wars summarizes the basic arc that the season would've been. Among the stand-alone ideas that have surfaced was a two-part time travel story to be co-written by Ben Browder.
  • The series was originally pitched to FOX in 1991. (The series was, in fact, repeatedly rejected before being picked up Sci-Fi Channel, but Brian Henson loved it and pushed it whenever the opportunity arose.)
  • Originally, D'argo was envisioned as a much older character, a robot would have been part of Moya's crew, Zhaan was a Buddha-like male, and the Peacekeepers were formless, smoke-like creatures in humanoid armor. Moya's design also changed considerably several times.
  • Part of the original concept was for Moya to be a large ship with lots of crew, all of them bizarre aliens. Jettisoned early in the development process because of time, money, and effort constraints, the idea was that "every episode would be the Cantina Scene from Star Wars."
• Word of Saint Paul: Wayne Pygram has become mildly notorious in the fandom for having a significantly darker view of Scorpy than much of the fanbase, or even the writers. Most notoriously, he's been quoted as claiming that he thought Scorpius's revelations about his abusive childhood in "Incubator" were totally made up to make John feel sorry for him.
• Written by Cast Member: "Green-Eyed Monster" and "John Quixote" were both written by Ben Browder.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Melissa Jaffer joined the regular cast as Noranti at the end of the third season after playing two different guest roles in the second: the aged Nilaam in "Vitas Mortis" and the female Pilot in "The Way We Weren't"
  • Linda Cropper played the female Plokavoi... Plokavian interrogator in "The Ugly Truth" before being cast in the recurring role of Xhalax in the third season.
  • Actress Francesca Buller, wife of series star Ben Browder, played no less than four alien characters, one for each season (though she reprised the last role in the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries). There were plans to bring back her fourth character Ahkna, for the Season 5, and there were plans for other characters she played to make an appearance. Several other actors returned for multiple roles, but Buller is the most frequent example.

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