The Wonders We Have Seen

I came late to Farscape. It started showing over here whilst I was at university. As a result I was barely even aware of it for its first two years except as a vague, nebulous concept that would get mentioned every so often in magazines or on usenet. It was usenet that got me into it, finally, at the start of the third season. Between them, Andrew, Iain and Liz persuaded me to give it a go. And that autumn, I'd just moved into a house, rather than a college room. I had a regular schedule, too, since I was working in a lab five days a week. Somehow, that made it easier to put aside time for TV watching.

I was a sceptic at first. It didn't help that 'Season of Death' was a cliffhanger resolution episode; I don't think I understood a single thing that happened in those forty-some minutes. Even now, though, I don't think the start of S3 is any great shakes, and the early two-parter ('Self-Inflicted Wounds') almost made me give up entirely.

A couple of weeks later, however, was 'Eat Me'. Standard pulp sci-fi plot: Bad guy has a device that he can use to duplicate our heroes, wackiness ensues. It was a good episode. Tense and atmospheric. Creepy. The thing I remember most, though - the thing that sticks in my mind - is the ending. Two Crichtons. Two Crichtons, sitting there, playing scissors, paper, stone. No words - just the game. And every time, coming up a draw.

The end credits played, and it dawned on me that the writers had just duplicated their lead character, and kept the duplicate around. I was impressed. I was even more impressed in subsequent weeks, as they played the plot out to its logical conclusion without any ducking of the obvious questions, or the hard answers.

Something else was happening at the same time: I was learning to love the Farscape universe. This is a show that tells its tales through a fractured prism. Fragments of story, narrative flickering around their edges. It makes sense, but not when you expect it to. And it does it with exuberance: A riot of colour and sound and idea and difference. Sensory overload. It takes a bit of getting used to - and then, when you think you've adjusted, they smack you upside the head with 'Scratch 'n Sniff' or 'Revenging Angel'.

And now, it's done. The last episode aired on BBC2 last night.

Above everything else, Farscape was about the ride, about the journey. At its best, there was an incredibly liberating sense that nobody - not even the writers - was in control, and that there were no limits. Sense of wonder?

You don't know the half of it.

Freedom Fries

"The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings changed the name of 'french fries' to 'freedom fries', in a culinary rebuke of France stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the US position on Iraq."

Say whatnow?

I'd write something about how utterly crazy this is, except that thebratqueen has already done so.