Welcome to the weekly TV thread.
The Original TV Score Selection of the Week is Guy Gross’s opening title theme from Farscape’s third and fourth seasons, without Ben Browder’s opening voiceover.
“They wanted a new theme for Seasons 3 and 4,” recalled Gross to The Companion in 2023. “And the classic brief: we want something the same, but different. It’s just an impossible brief and it took me quite a few goes to get that right. In fact, some of the similarities between the first season and the third season theme were significant enough for me to give Chris and Braedy [a.k.a. Subvision, the father-and-son duo that composed Farscape’s first-and-second-season main title theme] a slice of the royalties from Seasons 3 and 4 opening theme, because there definitely were some musical elements that I was incorporating to make sure that the two themes felt the same. The rising minor third idea is something I carried through and some of the weirder vocal arrangements are carried through a bit as well.”
Gross’s revamp was good. However, I missed the slightly more aggressive tribal rhythm track Braedy Neal brought to Subvision’s original version. Neal’s tribal drum track said to you right away, “This is a show that goes H.A.M. and is full of Aussies and Samoan Kiwis, mate.”
February 2026 at the Couch Avocados column has been Farscape February. Every Original TV Score Selection of the Week is an instrumental that was written for Farscape, the show that took the “fish out of water who’s an American astronaut” genre I was familiar with from Filmation’s Blackstar, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and the first two Planet of the Apes flicks and did wild things with it both comedically and dramatically. Like all other instrumentals I’ve picked as Original TV Score Selections of the Week, I use each instrumental as a jumping-off point to discuss an important chapter in the show’s run or one of my favorite Farscape episodes.
Week 1 focused on “Premiere,” Farscape’s first episode (the important chapter). Week 2 was about a second-season episode that body-swapped twice a whopping six main characters—two of whom were played by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop puppets, so that meant we got to see the show’s human stars imitating puppets. (“Out of Their Minds” is like a Muppet Show episode where a body-swapping machine invented by Dr. Honeydew accidentally zaps Beaker, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Janice, Animal, and special guest star Dom DeLuise backstage, and Gonzo, who, for some reason, is wearing a Mrs. Roper muumuu, tries to take control of the crisis while the minds of Beaker and the five entertainers keep getting misplaced.)
Week 3 focused on a third-season episode, so that meant this final week would have to be about a fourth-season episode. The fourth and final season is the only Farscape season I watched every episode of, but I haven’t watched the season since it first aired in 2002 and 2003. The only thing I remember about the “We’re So Screwed” three-parter—the last three episodes before Farscape’s infuriating and controversial final episode—is Crichton’s hilarious comparison of Captain Braca and Scorpius to Smithers and Mr. Burns while Braca comes to the rescue of his former commander (“Feel the love, Mr. Burns!”). I rewatched only “Crichton Kicks,” the fourth-season premiere, when it was part of one of Shout! Studios’s 24-hour Farscape livestreams on YouTube, and then I rewatched “I Shrink Therefore I Am” earlier this week on Farscape’s official YouTube channel.
I couldn’t decide between “Crichton Kicks” and “I Shrink”—two Die Hard episodes in the same season, and Die Hard episodes were always something Farscape did well—so they’re both the subject of this final post.
I have a fondness for “Crichton Kicks,” which was written by Farscape showrunner David Kemper and directed by Andrew Prowse. Crichton amusingly speaks to the episode’s pirate villains at first in Klingon, and I remember digging in 2002 the addition of the DRD known as 1812, a non-verbal robot sidekick that loves to chirp out Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” which Crichton taught it to sing, and is ruthless against intruders who are not welcome aboard Elack, the dying Leviathan where Crichton first met 1812, or Moya. The season premiere’s use of the “1812 Overture” was brilliant. It perfectly reflected Crichton’s anarchic state of mind from being isolated for so long in between seasons, and it was fitting that this Die Hard episode spotlighted the “1812 Overture” in the same way Michael Kamen and the Hollywood Studio Symphony covered Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” during the Gruber crew’s opening of the Nakatomi vault.
“Crichton Kicks” also introduced the extremely attractive Raelee Hill as Sikozu, another enjoyable fourth-season addition to both the show and the Moya crew. (A smartypants Kalish schemer who can walk on walls like a wuxia heroine, she was clearly a stand-in for Sci-Fi Channel viewers who were new to Farscape. In a Late to the Party entry on Farscape in 2020, @hanshotfirst1138 wrote, “I’ve read that [Hill] got death threats for how bad the character was, which broke her heart because she just wanted to be on this fun show with wacky puppets. Come on, sci-fi fans, what is our problem?”) But about half of the show’s cast was absent from “Crichton Kicks,” whereas all of the season’s Moya crew members were fortunately together in “I Shrink,” which was written by Christopher Wheeler and directed by Rowan Woods.
“I Shrink” is a good example of one of my favorite things about Farscape: the way that the show’s biggest villains from the Peacekeeper side would lose their power (or get kicked out of the Peacekeepers) and end up becoming permanent allies to the antiheroes aboard Moya because Farscape—kind of like Andor 22 years later—was aware that fascism eats its own.
By the time of “I Shrink,” Scorpius—the half-Sebacean, half-Scarran antagonist who, when he was a Peacekeeper commander, was obsessed with turning wormhole technology into a weapon against the Scarrans and had tortured and chased after Crichton to obtain his scientific knowledge—was a new addition to Moya and her dysfunctional family of fugitives. An invasion of bounty hunters who use shrink guns to overpower and collect the Moya crew members forces Crichton and the jailed Scorpius to team up and rescue their shrunken shipmates. (“We’ve gone from Die Hard to Honey, I Shrunk the Hostages,” quips Crichton.) It’s fun to see the former enemies collaborating while continuing to be dicks to each other—like when Scorpius discovers that the gun Crichton lent to him is empty (Crichton doesn’t completely trust Scorpy), and I love Wayne Pygram’s resigned delivery of “Thank you, John.”
Crichton calls the Coreeshi bounty hunters “Cylons” because of the way their helmets’ red eyes blink when they talk, and he’s on the money. The Coreeshi armor is my favorite Farscape alien design because the hunters’ helmets bring to mind director Hideaki Anno’s revamp of Godzilla in Shin Godzilla, and the gadgets on their exoskeletons look like the Yautja’s gadgets from the Predator movies, a franchise I prefer over the Alien movies (I never went beyond Aliens, but I did catch all of the first season of Alien: Earth).
Speaking of Predator, “I Shrink” appeals to the 12-year-old in me who was obsessed with collecting VHS releases of the latest action blockbusters when they were $24.95 or less. Someone at Farscape was in a Suncoast Motion Picture Company mood and must have wanted to recreate some of the greatest summer blockbusters of 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990. “I Shrink” combined Yautja-style gizmos (Predator) with shrink rays (Innerspace and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids), competitive bounty hunters (Midnight Run), and a hostage situation where the bad guys suffer the grisliest deaths (Die Hard and Die Hard 2).
On Serializd, I’ve been keeping track of TV series episodes that make Scorsese references, Spielberg references, or Star Trek references by stamping a “Scorsese references” tag, a “Spielberg references” tag, or a “Star Trek references” tag on them. Crichton dropped Trek references in tons of Farscape episodes, including “Crichton Kicks” and “I Shrink.” Usually, other characters either paid no attention to the homesick Crichton’s constant references to Earth pop culture or muttered in response to one of them, “Huh?”
But in “I Shrink,” Noranti—the elderly Traskan herbalist whose solution to every problem is, as someone on Reddit pointed out, to blow drugs in people’s faces without their consent—actually laughed at Crichton’s description of D’Argo as “Captain James T. D’Argo.” I love how Farscape didn’t have Noranti say something like, “It’s because we received broadcast transmissions of The Star Trek back on Traska.” It left her bizarre enjoyment of “Captain James T. D’Argo” open to interpretation.
“Being 293 cycles old, Noranti is also a veritable tome of historical information, knowing trivia on all sorts of species, events, and planets that others seem unaware of,” says the Farscape Encyclopedia Project entry on Melissa Jaffer’s character.
That could explain why Noranti, like Captain America, understood that reference.
Bonus track: And now, here again is the Guy Gross version of the Farscape theme, this time with Ben Browder’s opening voiceover for the final season. The combination of his voiceover with Gross’s theme and the most epic clips from the show still owns.
Ten weeks from now: For Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May, I’ll be giving the Farscape February treatment to Warrior, a show I recently watched for the first time right before it left Netflix, and like I did with Farscape, I’ll be spotlighting four of my favorite Warrior episodes.
Like Farscape, Warrior is a wild ride worth taking. (An example of that wildness was Dianne Doan, who was previously best known as Mulan’s daughter in the Disney Channel’s Descendants TV-movies, getting as far away from Disney as possible when she choked Joe Taslim in a BDSM bedroom scene that’s straight out of Farscape.) It was filmed in a country that’s far away from its showrunners’ home turf of Hollywood—just like Farscape was. South Africa posed as 1870s San Francisco, the Sonoma wine country, and, in two of Warrior’s annual road trip episodes, Mexico and Georgia.
Bruce Lee’s first two kung fu movies were about men fighting against oppressive systems. Warrior, which creator/showrunner Jonathan Tropper based on a TV series pitch Lee wrote, continued in that vein and revolved around Chinese men fighting against discrimination (as well as white, Chinese, and Mexican businesswomen standing up to industrialists who try to force them out of business simply because they’re women). The show warmed my jaded Asian American heart.
Speaking of POC representation, Black History Month is nearly over, but you still have time to watch or revisit a Black-made show as a way to celebrate it before its end if that’s something you do like I have sometimes done. I recommend Insecure, which I resumed watching last year—Lawrence and Molly were so frustrating to watch when Insecure first aired on HBO that I needed a break from their mistakes, and it ended up lasting eight years—and quickly finished in June because it was about to leave Netflix. Creator/star Issa Rae and showrunner Prentice Penny’s depiction of the friendship between Stanford buddies Issa and Molly—as well as their professional and sexual dilemmas in certain sections of L.A. that don’t get as much love on the screen as the L.A. River culvert does—is one of the best and most beautifully shot 2020s single-camera comedies that’s not a mockumentary.
Last night marked the return of Scrubs—a show Penny happened to write for during its poorly received Kerry Bishé/Dave Franco era, as well as a show I avidly watched when it first aired—to ABC, which leads me to today’s prompt: Which sitcom or dramedy does not need a revival? And my answers to this are Gilligan’s Island, Farscape, and Insecure.
Sure, Farscape was a space opera with a lot of heavy moments and a depressing time travel episode that made the end of “The City on the Edge of Forever” look like R.E.M. and Kate Pierson’s “Shiny Happy People” video. But it was also a dramedy that was often funnier than most multi-cam sitcoms and was home to aliens who frequently butcher Earth expressions and a deposed frog dictator who farts helium.
James Gunn and Charlie Kaufman pitched a horror comedy movie based on Gilligan to Warner Bros., but Gilligan creator Sherwood Schwartz objected to it, and after Schwartz’s death, Gunn has been still trying to get it made. Ten-year-old me—a Gilligan viewer who also watched Filmation’s barely animated Gilligan’s Planet and some of the live-action Gilligan reunion TV-movies—would have loved that horror comedy movie. Present-day me—a guy who hasn’t watched Gilligan since high school—isn’t so interested in it.
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars ended the pre-Boom! Studios era of the franchise perfectly. Insecure ended Issa, Molly, and Lawrence’s series-long arcs perfectly. I don’t want a sequel series about the grown-up version of Lawrence and Condola’s baby. (“I have no desire for a reboot of Insecure,” said Rae about Insecure fans’ wishes for a reboot on 7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony.) I want the money HBO Inc. would use for the revival of an IP like Insecure, Girls, or True Blood to go towards a feature-length epilogue to a show that, unlike Insecure, Girls, and True Blood, didn’t get the opportunity to say a proper farewell to its fans: Warrior.