Shout! Factory is celebrating a milestone year of a beloved 1999-2003 sci-fi epic with an updated release which includes a brand-new featurette! Although there are varying options which edition of Farscape, The Complete Series (25th Anniversary) is best to acquire, the difference lies in how much swag one wants!
What I received for evaluation is the basic one. I didn’t really need the prism stickers, poster from industry artist Joe Corroney, and the enamel pins from Gutter Garbs (link). They would’ve been nice, but honestly I’m all out of wall space to show off my love for this show! Thankfully there’s a mid-priced set too (link). But when all I want is to revisit this world created by Rockne S. O’Bannon again, and the timing of this release couldn’t be any better!
Also, prior editions didn’t include “The Peacekeeper Wars” as part of the set. I’m glad this distributor corrected the oversight, and it’s pleasant to show this collection off on my shelf. When I’m in the mood to binge, I can watch a disc or two per day.
In a story about misfits running away from a galactic group of enforcers, what I like the most is how The Henson Company helped make the universe come to life! Not everyone was humanoid looking. And in the later seasons, this team had to deal with a crazy scientist who could give Davros from Doctor Who chills! Scorpius is hell-bent on tearing open Crichton’s brain to learn the secrets of wormhole technology. This astronaut thought his trip to the moon would be easy, but when a malfunction sends him to some unknown corner of the galaxy, his life is literally rear-ended!
What some fans know and others don’t know is that this package also includes the European edit of some episodes! Usually that means there were segments which censors did not like, and they had to be taken out.
Some fans wondered about what was used when the recordings underwent the remastering process. Whether that’d be film or tape, what’s converted is crisp! I could not find any compression artefacts. Although some latex prosthetics look out of place because of the finer resolution, suspension of belief is required.
The sturdy keepsake box houses four amaray cases representing each season and the Peacekeeper Wars. Honestly, I was waiting for the eventual ultimate Blu-ray edition. Previous releases had this finale sold separately, and I’m glad this distributor has taken it upon themselves to package it all together. Although the fourth case has two discs, that’s because it was easier to put everything here instead of making the featurettes its own thing.
Thankfully, no matter which edition fans want, the hour-long Q&A titled, “A Look Back at Farscape with Executive Producer Brian Henson and Series Creator/Writer Rockne O’Bannon, Hosted by Adam Savage,” is in all editions. It rounds out why this series stands the test of time to this day! Here, they talk about the four years spent in pre-production. They also look back at when it was first pitched, and what was involved to get the pilot made. That also includes how involved crafting the puppets were and why the sets weren’t built in-house! That is, some of the production required shipping them to Australia, where it was filmed!
Afterwards, I checked out “Farscape Undressed.” This made-for-TV special gets amusing in how or mixes up some meta moments between performers as they talk about their characters. It had some great moments to laugh at as it also gets viewers up to speed about where the story is at, and who loves whom–it was made before the release of season three.
However, to watch it all would mean spending more than a weekend shifting through all the content. It’s all well organised into subsections to make navigating easy. I can at least say now that I’ve seen enough, I can enjoy the series at a slower pace, perhaps a disc a day so I can enjoy all the snarkiness that goes on in the spaceship. They just want to go home, and when compared to newer series, what this series established back then when it was first broadcasted did set the bar for what today’s show must follow.
Other Farscape, The Complete Series (25th Anniversary) extras include:
- 30 Audio Commentaries
- “Memories of Moya” Retrospective Documentary
- In the Beginning: A Look Back with Brian Henson
- Making of a Space Opera
- Farscape Undressed
- Composer Guy Gross Discusses Season 3 Theme
- Season 3: A Look Back
- Zhaan Forever with Virginia Hey
- Farscape: The Story So Far
- Three “Inside Farscape” Featurettes: Villains, Visual Effects, and Save Farscape
- Twelve “Listening in with Composer Guy Gross”
- Featurettes:
The Way We Weren’t; My Three Crichtons; The Locket; Die Me, Dichotomy; Eat Me; Revenging Angel; The Choice; Into the Lion’s Den, Part II: Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing; Crichton Kicks; John Quixote; Te - Deleted Scenes, Director’s Cut Scenes, and an Alternate Version of the Season Two Premiere
- Behind-The-Scenes Interviews with the Characters, Cast, and Creative Team of Farscape: Jonathan Hardy, Lani John Topu, David Franklin, Claudia Black, Anthony Simcoe, Ben Browder, Wayne Pygram, Gigi Edgley, Rebecca Riggs, Paul Goddard
- Video Profiles: Creator/Executive Producer Rockne O’Bannon and Executive Producer/Writer David Kemper
- Season 2 Bloopers
- Original TV Promos
Discover more from Otaku no Culture
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
