quality, interrupted
There are some very astute commentators out there, such as Diane Werts, a staff writer for Newsday.com. In her 21 September 03 article about the Emmys she notes:
And "Farscape" had three strikes against it: the sci-fi genre, SciFi Channel and being shot in Australia. Plus alien makeup-heaven forbid voters look past it to realize those weird galactic creatures offered some of the tube's most deeply human psychological insight.
Here's a case in point, the character Ka D'Argo, acted by Anthony Simcoe.
Werts' article brings up another interesting topic: there are a lot of people out there writing about Farscape. Not just fan fiction (although there's a lot of that, and much of it very good). People are also writing at length about the series itself. For example, there's Clare Sainsbury's opinion piece at Flakmag, which challenges the mainstream media's tendency to classify certain kinds of fandom (sports and music, for example) as acceptable, while others are deemed suspect. She writes:
One recurrent criticism of fan campaigns is that fans should be expending this time and energy on something more socially productive. But, as fans are eager to point out, many of us already do. My "day job" is as a campaigner for the rights of children and adults with autism. A life? Already got one, thanks.
And despite the cliché of science-fiction fans as teenage boys, viewers of "Farscape" are mostly adult professionals. Almost uniquely among science-fiction shows, it draws equal numbers of men and women. And a roll call of fans online turned up plenty of doctors, fire-fighters, counselors, teachers and so on — in addition to the predictable number of software engineers.