The Farscape series revolves around a human, John Crichton, who hails from Earth. While testing a theory of his on using a planet’s gravity to increase speed in the Farscape module, which was launched on a Space Shuttle, his craft is pulled through a wormhole to a distant part of the galaxy, arriving in the middle of a space battle.
There, he ends up on board a living, bio-mechanical, and former prison, ship called Moya, which is occupied by a handful of escaped prisoners fleeing from the Peacekeepers, a somewhat freelance militaristic organisation who provide ‘police’ and enforcement services in this part of the galaxy. The Peacekeepers themselves look identical to humans, which does cause a few problems for Crichton, as he is frequently mistaken for being one of them, although there are a few differences. The reasons for the similarities are not fully explained until the mini-series. Crichton is pursued by a couple of primary antagonists during the program, who want him for revenge or for knowledge who supposedly has related to wormhole travel, but there are also plenty of lesser ones, some of whom are recurring.
In addition to using live actors, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop created various alien races that appeared in the series, notably two of the regular cast members, Pilot and Dominar Rygel XVI, who were on board Moya, but also various other races that were encountered.
Originally planned for five seasons, the series was cancelled at the end of the fourth, which resulted in it ending on a cliffhanger. This cliffhanger, and various loose ends, were resolved with a three part miniseries called Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. Since the television series was cancelled, and the mini-series has been completed, a comic book miniseries has been released, in continuity with the television series, and a web-series has been promised, but has not appeared at this point. A planned film is still in the early stages.
Both Ben Browder and Claudia Black who played lead roles in this series went on to play characters in Stargate SG-1 following the end of Farscape, towards the end of SG-1’s run.
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars