I watched a bunch of Farscape, a science fiction TV show from 2000 to 2005 or so, that I have just discovered in my Youtube feed; it’s having its 25 year anniversary, and somebody is showing all the episodes back to back to back streaming free on Youtube. I didn’t have the Syfy cable TV channel back in the day, and wouldn’t have watched it if I had, probably; in 2000 I was watching Pokemon, and The Busy World of Richard Scarry, and Little Bear, along with Cyberchase and The Magic Schoolbus. I remember watching Star Trek Voyager when it came out, but only late at night, alone, when children had gone to bed. Nothing on Voyager would have been too intense for my 8yo son; my youngest at the time was 3 years old and would not have sat through quietly. No, the real problem was innuendo and horror in the advertisements.

I’m enjoying Farscape with no advertising very much; it hits now quite hard. The main character is an American man, an astronaut who gets sucked into a wormhole on a test flight and never shows up on Earth again. Instead a group of escaped prisoners pick him up, wanting his wormhole technology. They take care of him long enough to sort of bond, a found family; they are all running from the same authorities. They don’t show much cohesion beyond that, but our man Crichton (pronounced Cry-ton) considers everyone important, everyone worth helping, and it’s infectious, especially after he’s saved their lives and they’ve saved his several times.

I feel his fish-out-of-water sense of loss, and his floundering ashore. The water’s gone; he’s never getting back to where he was. He’s bullheaded enough to go forward, not just stew in one place. He’s young and healthy enough to make curling up and dying a real chore, more work than living. Plus he discovers there are good things, good people, and he can make a difference, somehow, just by being himself.

There are lots of bad ideas to fight against. There’s a villain right out of He-man, a real Skeletor vibe. There are also people like Crichton, with the same basic drives for connection to other people, power, wealth, security. The main opposition look just like Crichton; he initially sides with them simply because they look familiar. But where he’s an American with egalitarian and compassionate roots, their worldview and objectives are American supremacy on steroids. They call themselves Peacekeepers; their mission is to maintain peace in the galaxy by military force. They crop up everywhere, as ubiquitous as the Galactic Empire and just as obnoxious. Crichton sees what they could be, genuinely helpful; their military hierarchy stomps any dissent and it hurts to watch.

It’s what the Federation could never become, because the Star Trek Federation allows for differing opinions. The Peacekeepers are truly the humans only club, the we-know-best force. Ouch.