Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars (four stars)

First the good things: It was a miracle that this got made, and I am careful about using that word. A real miracle, thanks to the hard work of the viewers and the Henson people and all the others who just wouldn't give up. At the Farscape convention, Wayne Pygram (who played Scorpius) came on stage and said: you are the most goddamn stubborn people in the universe, and he got a standing ovation.

The actors were in high form, all of them. Not one off-performance, and I think it must have been a very arduous shoot. Ben and Claudia had that magic connection immediately, and that was what it took to make the whole thing a success for me. That alone was enough. The dialogue (first d word!) was top notch. That has always been a strength of Farscape, and the miniseries was no exception. The strategic use of comic dialogue is an art, and they have that perfected.

CGI and action sequences: jaw dropping
Visuals, sets, music: excellent
The big resolution of the wormhole problem: perfect

Now, for the things that could have been better.

What they set out to accomplish was to fit a whole year of episodes (22, to be exact) into four hours. I think this was a strategic error, because they committed themselves to resolving every major plot line. Which meant that a lot of things were hinted at but not explored. I think it would have been better to focus more closely on fewer story arcs. For example: Chiana comes flying off a ship and shouts: I've got new eyes! The drunken diagnostician gave me new eyes! Resolves the problem of her being blind, but raises a lot of questions, too. At least one episode, probably two, would have been spent on this in a full season, is my guess.

So they had four hours to get John and Aeryn back together (literally), save the universe, punish the bad guys, resolve the war, clear up the mysterious connections between earth and Sebaceans, figure out what was going to happen to Chiana and D'Argo, and bring Aeryn's baby into the world. You'd think this would be enough on any screenwriter's plate, but they went ahead and complicated matters. The baby gets lost for a while, and turns out to be ... well, I said there were spoilers, and this is my only real unhappiness with the miniseries, so I'm going to say it... as a result of his part in putting John and Aeryn back together, Rygel ends up carrying the baby, so they have to find a diagnostician to transfer it from Rygel to Aeryn before it gets big enough to hurt Rygel.

In my opinion, they could have done without this whole storyline. I'm just not big on male pregnancy stories; maybe it's me. They wanted a way to give Rygel more of a role to play, is what I'm guessing, but I wish they hadn't gone there. Aeryn's reaction to pregnancy and birth was far more interesting to me and I would have liked to have had more of that. Although I think they needed to make it a little clearer that Sebaceans had been genetically modified to recover quickly from childbirth. I don't think any human being could have pulled off what she did minutes after delivery.

And the worst, saddest, most awful bit? It's going to be really hard to get more Farscape. I fear this might be the end.