Comic Con Report, volume 1: Farscape Edition

I spent the day in room 7AB, getting there early so I could have a decent seat for the Farscape 20th anniversary panel. Here's the footage I got:

The section at the end where Browder describes the scene in "Durka Returns" was in response to a fan who asked if Crichton and Chiana had a "brother and sister" relationship. As Chiana herself points out in "Taking the Stone", their relationship wasn't so easily defined. But given that scene in "Durka Returns" and the kiss they share at the end of season one, if it's a sibling relationship, it would certainly be an incestuous one.

One of the most exciting moments, as you can see in the clip, was the hinting from Brian Henson that Farscape may return eventually. It sounds like Farscape being on Amazon Prime has introduced it to a lot of new fans. The impression I had is that Henson hopes a deal can be worked out with Prime to shoot a new season of Farscape. Considering Prime rescued The Expanse when it, like Farscape, was cancelled by the Sci-Fi Channel, I'd say that's not an unreasonable thing to hope for. I'll keep my fingers crossed. It'd be nice to see the show return at this point, especially since Crichton and Aeryn's child would be a teenager now.

I have no idea why Gigi Edgley managed to remain in focus in my photos more than anyone else.

I sat through several panels waiting for Farscape and I'll talk about them at length in a longer post after Sunday. For to-day there is more Con . . .

Twitter Sonnet #1258

A kitten face regards the silent stones.
A talking quake conveys a shaky term.
The earth records a dream in brittle bones.
A sudden plate arrests the drifting worm.
A door was glass or ice or nothing real.
The window drained its colour late at night.
A green or blue decides to-day it's teal.
A safty pin would signal throats to fight.
A purple planet grows a set of limbs.
A loop of pitches brought to trial die.
The piping dream of dragons hardly dims.
A ruler measures sev'ral inches high.
A heavy radish weighs the muppet down.
But healthy veggies built the Fraggle town.

Cinco de Cyborg

I wanted an appropriate Doctor Who episode to watch for Cinco de Mayo but I guess there really isn't one. I suppose the best would be The Aztecs from the First Doctor era but I'd already rewatched that one kind of recently. So I looked up "Mexico" in the TARDIS wiki and was reminded the Eleventh Doctor had been trying to go to Mexico in the 2012 episode "A Town Called Mercy". So I watched that. It is kind of Cinco de Mayo-ish, it's set in 1870, less than a decade after the battle Cinco de Mayo commemorates. Written by Toby Whithouse, it's a decent Western homage episode.

It's set in the U.S. but filmed in Spain like several of the greatest Westerns ever made. With a presumably modest budget the show manages to get something of a Spaghetti Western feel using a standing backlot. It might have been much more effective as a Twelve Doctor story as Matt Smith in his irrepressible pluckiness never conveys the weight of conflicted conscience like Capaldi. Unexpectedly confronted with essentially an intergalactic Josef Mengele, we see the Doctor uncharacteristicly ready to blow someone's head off with a revolver.

He's stopped, of course, by Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), who seems absolutely sure he shouldn't execute this guy. I think it would've been nice if she'd come off as more conflicted but it is nice to see her again.

This is from her big shoulder pads period, though. I don't quite understand this. Was it to make her look more mature? There had to be a better way.

The episode also features Gillan's costar from Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Ben Browder. Well, he had a cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. There as here his presence is likely a nod to the great and most underrated Science Fiction series of the 21st century, Farscape. That show will exert its influence for a long, long time to come.

Browder is good as the sheriff of a little Western town and hearing him deliver dialogue about the town's name being Mercy reflecting their philosophy of acceptance feels very classic Western. It's too bad he's not in the episode for very long. Well, it's too bad there hasn't been a Farscape revival.

The end feels like it could've used more time to develop properly--the Doctor's final decision on the moral question seems kind of odd, as does how he decides to leave things with the cyborg. I was so happy the Twelfth Doctor's second season was primarily two part episodes, I still hold out some hope they'll switch back to a serialised format on a permanent basis. This show needs those wide open spaces.