Rockne S. O'Bannon

A frelling delight! Peak Farscape, and after all these years, like a reunion with old friends, especially the alternate timeline and flashback stories where D'Argo and Zhaan are still alive.

When the Sci Fi Channel canceled Farscape, I almost swore off science fiction television. The unique show full of puppets, bodily functions, and sex offered intelligent scripts combined with good acting and quality special effects. O'Bannon returns to the universe he created with Farscape: The Beginning of the End of the Beginning, a well-crafted direct sequel to the original series. Picking up soon after the conclusion of Peacekeeper Wars, the surviving crew helps Rigel regain his throne. show more As expected, things don't go as planned when old enemies show up. O'Bannon expertly explores John's and Aeryn's struggles with parenthood and Chyna's grief over the death of D'Argo. At times sensational, artist Tommy Patterson does an adequate job capturing the visual look of the series. The book falters by creating too many dangling plotlines. I assume these will be covered in future volumes, but here they are just distracting. While not as good as the source material, Farscape: The Beginning of the End of the Beginning offers fans the next best thing to new episodes of the original show. show less

I re-read all of these in the summer while blitzkrieging for a game. I still find myself feeling about the same for the Farscape franchize comics/graphic novels as I ever did. They are sometimes well written, but the art is really sad (because I just love the show and actors so much). Some of the stories meander too much, and Aeryn's ending still gets to me in a way where I don't absolutely agree that's where she should have ended up. But it was a fun summer reread.

Solid fun for fans of the TV series. This picks up right during the final scene from the Peacekeeper Wars, and shows us the start of Crichton and Aeryn's lives as parents, and how they cope with that while being dragged, unsurprisingly, into more dangerous messes. Story-wise, this doesn't quite measure up to the series at its best (although it's very good), but the characters ring true, and the writing is spot on. It's great that we can get more of this story than the SciFi channel let us have.