Commentary Transcript By Mary Wood This is the commentary for the Premiere episode from the U.S. DVD.
The commentary was done by Brian Henson, Ben
Browder, and Rockne O'Bannon.
This is the first time I've tried transcribing a casual conversation
like this and the first thing I was reminded of is that we humans don't speak
in real life the way we write. If I
were to include every "um," "uh," every stutter and
sentence shift, the thing would be highly difficult to read. Ergo, I've
eliminated most of the ums, uhs
and stutters leaving only enough to stay true to the conversation but without
detracting from your reading it.
Obviously, it helps if you've seen the episode, but it's not necessary
as think I've managed to keep you apprised of what's happening in the episode,
especially when it directly pertains to the conversation.
Also keep in mind that the DVD contains the
full 51 minute version of the show. If
the only version you've seen is an edited version (e.g, episodes run in the
U.S. are edited down to about 44 minutes to allow for commercials), it's
possible there are scenes being referred to that you haven't seen. All I can
advise is to follow along as best
you can ... and now's the time to go buy that DVD!
Commentary dialogue shows up in normal font.
{Bits in stylized brackets consist of that dialogue where I'm not too
sure what they're saying. If you've
seen it and can enlighten me, please do so!}
Show dialogue and screen happenings are in italics.
Ben Browder: Hi, my name's Ben
Browder and I'm an actor on Farscape.
I'd like to introduce you to my two creators, Mr. Brian Henson and Mr.
Rockne O'Bannon. Rockne S.
O'Bannon.
Rockne O'Bannon: Thank you!
Brian Henson: That was very
beautifully done Ben.
Browder: Thank you.
That was kind of professional.
Henson: So I'm Brian Henson
We ... we're going to tell you a little about
the history of this series. We started
in, I think it was about 1992. And as a
company - as the Jim Henson Company - we wanted to do a show that showcased
what we could do in feature films at the time which was really the ... our
creature shop and the special effects and creature work that our creature shop
was doing was really becoming world renowned and we wanted to bring that to
television. And we ... at first the idea
sort of initially started as something like Star Wars' bar on a weekly basis,
but at that point we didn't know if we were talking about a comedy or a drama
or whatever.
[John Crichton talking to DK
about pre-flight jitters]
John:
... right before we started this job.
Well I had that feeling last night {...}
D.K.:
This experiment that important to you?
O'Bannon: We wanted to take our
time with this, with the Crichton-on-Earth segment 'cause we knew that it was
the last time we'd be seeing John on Earth for quite a while and we wanted to
set up situations and relationships as quickly as we could that would lend a
resonance to the series. At least we
certainly hope so.
[John's father has just
entered the room (played by Kent McCord)]
We were very lucky to get Kent McCord to come on board.
We were trying to cast the role in Australia,
just could not find anyone to do it, and David Kemper - the executive producer
of the series - said "Look, I'm a friend of Kent's, if you ... let me call, I
don't know what he's doing, I don't know if he's available..." and we said "Well
call because we need him down here in a couple of days!"
Henson: It was literally a
couple of days before we needed him.
O'Bannon: Yeah, I know, Kent
was on a plane like within 24 hours.
And I think really gives the show ... it's nice to have a familiar face,
essentially the only familiar face you know in the series, and obviously met
with a lot of TV history and weight.
So, great way to start off the series.
Browder: Yeah, he looks like a
hero and he reminds the audience that ... they all feel like they know him and
they feel like they know the astronaut so he plays the hero role very well and
actually gives Crichton there something to live up to.
[John and Jack Crichton walking the halls of IASA together]
Jack:
I mean the guys in button-down collars and
the neckties, they got to use their brains.
Only thing I ever got to use was the...
John:
Guts.
O'Bannon: This
scene to me was one that was very, very important...
Henson: Enormously important
this scene was...
O'Bannon: Yeah.
The idea, you know, of trying to live in the
shadow of a well-known father and having to be concerned about living up to
his
image and the notion of being a hero not in a con-...
yes in the way you expect to be a hero.
yes All of us - I feel - need to be prepared because you ... as Kent
says here ... you never know how you're going to be called upon to be the hero in
your life whether it's being a good parent or a good Spouse, or whatever it
is. It's something you have to be
prepared for and you don't know when it's going to come about.
And as I watch the series, the subsequent
episodes, every single one, and I see what's thrown at John Crichton, it always
resonates back to this scene for me.
[Shot of space shuttle
launching]
Henson: It was really expensive
gettin' the shuttle by the way to do a special launch for us, for that sequence
[chuckling].
O'Bannon: [chuckling]
And uh, didn't you ... you operated the camera
on that one didn't you Brian?
Henson: [both laughing]
Yeah I did.
Yeah, I was on an F-14 jet.
Browder Yeah, and one of the
things the audience usually misses when they see that shuttle, because it was
specially built, if you look closely on the side - run that tape back - it says
"Collaroy." It's the Shuttle
Collaroy. Look very closely and uh ...
because it launched from Australia.
[Brian and Rockne laughing]
Collaroy is a suburb of Northern Beaches and Sydney Australia.
I think it's where Andrew Prowse directed
the {outsiders} is from. It's a
fantastic little detail. It's threaded
through Farscape.
Henson: That is good!
I didn't even realize that!
[We've just seen the space
shuttle spitting out John's module in orbit above Earth]
Browder: And there is our first
real CGI sequence.
John:
Canaveral, this is Farscape One, I am free
and flying.
Henson: I think
one of the great things about {Gardner and McClannan}, the company that ... this
is ... their effects move in a very majestic way and they move with weight and
there's a cinematic quality to all their visual effects which is really terrific
and lends a weight and importance to the series which is really important to
us.
O'Bannon: Very natural and
very, very real.
Browder: And beautiful.
[Henson and O'Bannon both agreeing with Browder]
Henson: Yeah, yeah, and always
beautiful. I mean, every now and then
they actually make choices with the lighting and stuff that you wouldn't find
in space but they do it because it just makes it just a little beautiful and a
little bit exotic and uh ... it's interesting.
They're a highly creative company.
They're really good.
[Still in test flight
sequence]
O'Bannon: The design...
Browder: And there's the helmet
[all three laughing presumably at Crichton's space helmet].
O'Bannon: The design of ... the
design of Crichton's module is based on a emergency reentry vehicle that NASA
has plans for ... for the space station, and we saw this and said "Gee guys..."
Browder: Or the ee-ASA [IASA]
has plans. International
Aeronautical Space Administration.
Henson: Well I think NASA was
real enthusiastic about our show but they asked us to use I.S. instead of NASA
cause it just is too complicated to work with NASA on that...
O'Bannon: They actually ... well
they wanted script approval ...
Henson: [laughing]
Yeah, I know!
yes They were real enthusiastic!
O'Bannon: ... and I just thought
gee, you know, we're going to get real ... once he ... after the first 6
pages of the premiere script there's not going to be a whole lot for you guys
to approve.
[Crichton's module has just been lost
through the wormhole and we're now looking at the reactions of Jack Crichton
and DK]
Browder: Andrew Prowse did a
fantastic job building this sequence and then integrating with the CGI.
And you know, like all of us, he was
learning to do it at the time and uh he just did a fantastic job.
[Crichton's module is flying
through the wormhole]
O'Bannon: This is actually a
very complicated sequence to edit because ... had to portray that Crichton ... we
see him going through this, through the wormhole.
yes But when he comes out the other side, he first comes into an
asteroid field and in an early edit it looked as though where he was coming
out, somehow Earth had been destroyed.
So we went back in and um ... just put in a tail of the father and DK
after Crichton had disappeared. So we
were certain to establish that Earth was still there so that there would never
be a thought in anyone's mind that somehow what Crichton was seeing here was
actually parts of ...
Henson: Earth.
O'Bannon: Destructed Earth,
yeah.
[Crichton has just come out
of the wormhole and Peacekeeper prowlers are whizzing past him]
O'Bannon: Here's
our first view of...
Browder: Our first encounter
with the Peacekeepers.
O'Bannon: And I just ... I love
the notion of John in his white Earth NASA style ship which is, you know, truly
cutting edge technology here on Earth suddenly eclipsed by these black, sleek,
nasty, weapon-firing prowlers.
Browder: And here's the only
main title sequence without the voiceover.
[In a lighthearted tone] My name is John Crichton.
I'm an astronaut.
yesI got ... shot ... through a wormhole.
Henson: That's right.
That's right, we didn't need to do it in
this one cause we just saw it.
[all three laughing]
Browder: Well no, we're totally
giving the story away, I mean ... "chased by an insane military commander" ... you
know? Here it is you know.
We sort of see who we're going to be
Henson: So go have some coffee,
you know? See you next week.
Browder: But uh, we're not
going to give away the whole story right now because this is the first time
you've seen it.
[Opening credits have just finished
rolling and we're watching Crichton, still in his module, still having just
come out of the wormhole and trying to make sense of what he sees around him]
Browder: This was a really
difficult sequence actually for uh ... for me to shoot because I'm in the
module which is of course on a gimble rig and they're telling me what I'm
seeing and that I have no real reference.
I didn't get to see the CGI in advance and they're saying "Ok, things
are flying over this way. Things are
flying over that way. You've just been
hit. Now you see something, what do you
see?"
[Crichton sees Moya for the
first time]
Browder: Ahh,
there it is!
O'Bannon: Our first view of
Moya.
Browder: And they're telling me
that there's a really big spaceship up there.
Crichton:
yes That's really big.
Browder: That's a really
big spaceship.
[all three chuckling]
Henson: It's interesting
actually just how difficult it was to ... in all of the pre-production and
creating the sets and the looks and everything, trying to lock in the ship
designs for Crichton's ship and for the prowlers, the Peacekeeper prowlers and
for Moya and the Peacekeeper command.
That was almost the hardest thing to get ready in time.
It's an enormous amount of work that goes
into designing those ships.
[Crichton's module is being
pulled into Moya]
O'Bannon:
yes For Crichton, I wanted to be ... to look like a classic hero, but
be someone ... there are a couple things.
One, um, definitely had to look like he could do the science.
He had to look like he had the smarts.
And the other thing was an ability to be
classically hero handsome, but also be able to play the awe and wonder and
essentially a level of - forgive me Ben - goofiness
[Browder laughs loudly]
... as a man outside a comfortable
situation. And I gotta tell you Ben ...
Browder:
yes The goofy part is the one thing that I can do...
O'Bannon:
yes It's the only thing you can do, ok?
yes "Classically handsome," I don't know...
Browder:
yes the hansome, and the smart, but man I did goofy!
Well here, just watch, you know?
[On
screen is Crichton putting out the fire in his module after his first encounter
with a DRD]
O'Bannon:
yes So we worked with him on all the other stuff, the hero stuff and
all that stuff, but the goofy, yeah, right off the bat.
Browder:
yes Goofy, yeah, check it out.
O'Bannon: It was that, that
triangle we were looking for in John Crichton.
This was obviously the pivotal role.
And um, Ben ... I first saw Ben on tape and there was just obviously
something there. Ben came in and read
for us and what sold us in a lot of ways and for me when I've cast in the past,
it isn't the reading - the reading is part of it obviously - but it really is
just talking to the guy and getting to know him and getting a sense of what he's
about and what's going on behind the eyes.
Browder: The first thought of
the script was basically "How the hell are they going to do this?"
O'Bannon: Or why the
hell are we going to do this I guess is...
[all three chuckling]
Browder: Yeah, well, I mean,
you know, you look at all the elements that have to come together and when you
factor the puppetry and animatronics and the CGI and just the scope of the
series, then you really can be sort of overwhelmed by it.
[DRDs leading John to
command]
Browder:
yes This is interesting because this is the section of the show that
really, really awed me when I saw it.
Right here...
[First wide-angle shot of
command where D'argo and Zhaan are trying to get control of Moya]]
... this is the moment, and you know it beautifully plays out, and this
is where the series really begins. This
is really the scene where the audience finds out what the series is about.
You get the background and you get thematic
information and very important stuff, but here's where it is, where John
Crichton meets aliens and ...
[Crichton says "hi" to Zhaan
and D'argo]
... aliens ...
[D'argo rushes at Crichton]
O'Bannon:
yes He realizes that he -
Browder:
yes ... attack him! This is
where it happens. This is where he
realizes he's in a hostile environment and it's not going to be the "Close
Encounters" of Steven Spielberg.
O'Bannon:
yes Well that's the line later on you know?
yes "Boy was Spielberg ever wrong" and to me that was very much an
essential of the show and this scene.
John Crichton is having the first encounter with alien life that anyone
of his own species has ever had and instead of standing there as they do in
"Close Encounters" putting their arms out and letting him look upon them with
awe and all of that, they race up and try to choke the life out of him.
Browder:
yes And it's a really good closed mystery here as well because it
makes sense how they treat him later when you understand that Peacekeepers the
are the ones that imprisoned them. At
this point, everything that they do makes perfect sense in retrospect.
They've been imprisoned by the Peacekeepers,
he looks like a Peacekeeper. But at
that moment it appears to be something that it's not - which is something that
happens all the time in Farscape.
[D'argo
is tearing out random wires trying to disengage Moya's control collar]
O'Bannon:
yes Trying to get the balance between the fact that Moya is a living
entity and as well as a ship - a metal, primarily metal ship - was something we
worked very hard to accomplish. And the
decisions in terms of what kind of mechanics and wiring and guts if you will of
Moya was something we had many a meeting about.
yes When D'argo pulls those wires out, it's ... you know ... would there
be sparking? Would there be fluid?
That sort of thing.
[Rygel
confronting Crichton as D'argo and Zhaan struggle to gain control of the ship]
Looking for D'argo and Zhaan in
particular we had whittled the list down to I think three candidates for each
of the roles. And I went down to
Australia and we got all six of them in a studio and just started to pair them
up. We had some sides, some scenes for
them to play, a Zhaan-D'argo scene that was written just for the audition
process, and we got there and started to pair them up.
And the minute we got Anthony and Virginia
together I turned to Matt Carroll, the Australian producer of the series, and
said, "If we had a 35mm camera here we could start shooting the show.""
They were that clearly the choices for those two roles.
Browder:
yes Then Brian said, "No, no.
I want to put some prosthetics and some blue paint on them first."
[all laughing]
Henson:
On Anthony, yeah, we had to. He
looked way too much like a
person. But I think Virginia was one of
those that ... boy, she walked in and she was the part!
Anthony, when you first meet him, he doesn't
actually seem to you ... he doesn't actually come across as D'argo.
He's the one ... he does an enormous shift
when he gets into that character, he shifts so far out of his own personality
it's really quite cool to watch what he does.
Virginia, was just a natural.
She walked in and that was, she was Zhaan.
O'Bannon:
yes We were so anxious for Zhaan because she's a priest and that
usually carries the baggage of being someone who keeps experience at arm's
length and we didn't want that for Zhaan.
We wanted Zhaan to be someone who felt the way to become one with the
universe was not to hold experience at arm's length but to embrace it.
Henson:
And suck the marrow out of life!
O'Bannon:
yes Yes! But truly, that is
Virginia!
[Moya
has just Starburst away and we're seeing an outside shot of Crais' command
carrier]
Henson:
I like this shot. I think it's
cool to see the three leviathans down there [below the command carrier].
Browder:
yes And it's not...
Henson:
You don't get a chance in the show to see...
[Cut
to Crais inside his command carrier]
Browder:
yes Ahh! And these are the
bad guys. You can tell, they're in
black.
[all three laugh]
Henson:
And the set is all black, white and red.
Browder:
yes And obviously ... first day of shooting, interesting, you see the
grate here on the floor ... it made a tremendous amount of noise.
yes [Ben laughs and the other two start laughing with him]
Henson: It did!
Every scene, every line needed A.D.-ing on
that.
Browder: Yeah, Andrew would be
shooting the scene and someone would be walking around in the background, they
wouldn't be in the shot, and you've got the second AD, he was learning the job
and it was the first day of shooting ... saying "Just tell that guy in the
background to stop moving around cause he's talkin' all over Lani's
lines!" There he is, see that guy in
the background? He liked pacing.
O'Bannon: We worked very hard
to get the contrast obviously between the more organic setting of Moya and the
far more military and industrial look of the Peacekeeper ships.
Moya's designs all come from ... Ricky Eyres,
the production designer, used a Spanish artist by the name of {Gallias} as an
influence and for the Peacekeeper ship, it's all kind of early 20th
century, Russian, industrial look and he ... there's a real nice contrast.
Also Moya, we always wanted to give a sense
that she isn't only meant to carry aliens that happen to be this size,
that she actually would be capable of carrying creatures that are much larger
and smaller and that sort of thing.
Whereas the Peacekeeper ships are obviously built for Sebaceans who are
generally that one size.
[Moya has come out of Starburst with the
single prowler sucked in behind her. It
is decided to bring in the prowler and its pilot.
yes Finally able to relax, Rygel promptly spits on Crichton]
Crichton:
What is the matter with you ... people?!?
[D'argo tongues Crichton]
Henson:
I like the simple little effects like, well, first the spitting was
really difficult, but the... I love that moment where D'argo zaps Crichton in the
back of the neck. It's probably all of
a 10 frames visual effect but it's a great little thing.
And it's also actually pretty funny I think.
Browder:
yes Yeah!
Henson:
As Crichton gets really pissed off he gets zapped.
Crichton's finally fed up.
He's been beaten, he's scared, and he's
finally had it.
[Finally
free of the Peacekeepers for the moment, Zhaan approaches D'argo to introduce
herself]
Browder:
yes This is a beautiful scene, this scene.
O'Bannon:
yes Also you get to see a real good example of what Virginia sold us
on in her audition, that sort of playfulness and her willingness to play a
priest with a real kind of fun, wry coyness which is just so important to
making Zhaan not your traditional ascetic priest.
Browder:
yes Hmm. It's also one of the
things of this series is the tonal shifts that occur episode to episode and
within the series, that we'll hit a breakneck pace and then we slow down, and
it's a great {recetive} that occurs here.
But you know, this scene is beautiful because what you've had up 'til
now is complete chaos and you haven't had a chance to look at these
characters and get a feel for these characters and you can take in the
detail. The rings in [D'argo's] collar
which you probably haven't noticed up to this point ... and it allows you to
start to get to know these characters who are aliens and after all this chaos
you finally have this scene which is just beautiful.
yes And well written Rock.
Zhaan:
[to D'argo] How old are you?
D'argo:
Thirty cycles.
Zhaan:
[smiling coyly]
Ahh!
You are but a boy!
D'argo:
I am not.
I am a Luxan warrior. I have
seen two battle campaigns.
Zhaan:
Only two?
... And you really can start to see the
exquisite makeup on Bluie ... the detail that goes into it, you just have to see
...
Henson:
The painting detail is interesting in these early episodes, we hadn't
quite figured out the color temperature to the lighting and so it was turning
her makeup almost gray even though it was very blue makeup.
And so we quickly were making adjustments
both to the lighting - the color of the lights inside Moya - and adjustments to
the color blue of her makeup.
O'Bannon:
yes It is interesting because it mutes this ... it works really well
for that particular scene because it kind of, you know ...
Henson:
It quiets the scene down.
O'Bannon:
yes Yes, very much so.
D'argo:
This escape.
yes I doubt it will last long enough for the Peacekeepers even to
note it in their log.
Browder:
yes It's a fantastic voice that Anthony does.
It's completely done by him - it's not
digital. There's a lot of people who
thought that that's digitally enhanced and it's not.
yes That's all him. He's got
a great instrument and he uses it beautifully.
Henson:
That's wonderful. When you meet
him he's actually got quite a high pitched voice.
yes In one of the other episodes you think...
Browder:
yes That's scary isn't it?
Henson:
But this voice, he just drops it way down in his throat.
[Crichton
is waking up in a cell on Moya]
Crichton:
Oh please, let it all be a dream.
A very bad, very twisted dream.
Browder:
yes I love this scene. John
Crichton is lying on the floor, he is ... naked.
[Rygel
floats past the door to the cell to the control panel next to it]
... And there; Rygel takes a look.
[John
is coming around and getting off the floor, squinting his eyes]
... ok, I love that.
And Rock tried to convince me that he
wouldn't try to put his clothes on immediately.
yes [laughs]
O'Bannon:
yes Well, as scripted, he didn't right away.
But uh, it plays much, much better this way.
Browder:
yes Look, the first script I read, there was no "He is naked."
That came later ... cause I'd have asked for
more money [all laughing].
O'Bannon: Ok Brian, in
particular, in a scene like this with Rygel where he's pressing the buttons,
this one, how many puppeteers are working him right at that moment?
Henson: Well, there's actually
five but it's effectively a character that can kind of be worked by four.
John Eccleston is working the head with his
hand up inside the head and he's doing the lip-sync with his other hand with a
cable control on his belt. Then there's
another puppeteer doing the expressions on his face and the eye movements, and
then there's one puppeteer on each hand.
Sometimes on the face they put two on and that's why sometimes it
becomes five puppeteers. Sometimes one
puppeteer will just do the pupils to make sure they're maintaining the right ...
correct eye lines. Because if a
character misses its eye lines then it really feels dead.
Browder: Here's another great
character introduction.
O'Bannon: This is a great
way for a character to come in!
Browder: This is the first ...
all the characters in the pilot are beautifully introduced, it's beautifully
set up, it's shot, and suddenly, whoom!
[Rygel, talking with Crichton through the
cell bars, points behind him and Crichton turns around to see yet another alien
in his cell, obscured in a menacing looking black suit and helmet.
This new alien has been unconscious and is
just waking up. The alien takes her
helmet off ... it's ...]
Browder:
Ahh, yeah.
A good lookin' girl! Hey, how
'bout that!
[Crichton approaches the alien; Aeryn]
... [in a naive
tone of voice] I think I'll go over and
introduce myself. You know, go have a
little chit-chat.
[Aeryn starts beating up Crichton]
O'Bannon:
So you should have kept your clothes off.
Browder:
Yeah, if I kept my clothes off it would have
been more interesting but then they'd have made another comment.
O'Bannon:
It does look cool though...
[Aeryn kicks Crichton in the torso,
flipping him over on his back]
Browder:
Oh no!
And now we know a lot about this girl.
Aeryn:
[straddling Crichton's neck] What is your rank and regiment?
And why are you out of uniform?
Rank and regiment now!
... We also know
a lot about John.
Aeryn: [getting off of Crichton and
confronting Rygel] Let me out of here
your Hynerian slug.
Rygel:
Your efforts are wasted Peacekeeper.
You of all people should know that.
O'Bannon:
Talk a little bit about what you discovered
in terms of the interaction with the puppets.
Browder:
Well, you know, the interaction with the
puppets ... see the advantage to the puppets is twofold.
One is because they're not CGI you can get
your hands on them. You can play with
them, you can interact with them right then and there.
You can hit them, they can hit you.
You can, you know, you can have a scene
right there on the day. And the other
advantage to the puppets is that you have performers behind them which is live
and so you have another creative element which comes onto the floor to help
bring the words to life and to bring the images to life.
And I guess they're also quicker as
well. But it's just awesome what these
guys do with it. And you know, Rygel
and Pilot are state of the art animatronics.
They're actually worth more than me, I think they're actually paid more
than me. [All laughing]
Is that true?
Henson:
They might be more expensive than you to get
on the screen.
Browder:
I tell you, it cost much a lot more to get
Rygel through college than it did me.
What I found to be a revelation and is probably one of the secrets of
working with puppets is that I discovered I think in episode four is getting
your hands on them. You know, a
puppeteer comes out of a long line of punch and Judy and you know that the
physicality of puppets is what makes them funny, is what makes them work.
And if you get your hands on them, it makes
them real and it makes you react to them and all this actory stuff that you
know is probably not interesting to anybody...
Henson:
No, it's an action-reaction.
If you touch a puppet it pushes back at you.
Browder:
Yeah, but it does, it makes it real and it
forces ... but it forces the puppeteer to do something as well.
Sometimes they don't like it.
The first time I actually hit Rygel ...
[laughing] ... can you imagine, you know?
Cause you know, Rygel costs like twenty million dollars [O'Bannon and
Henson laugh], and if he breaks a cervo we lose a day of working.
The puppeteers, they were ... Johnny Eccleston
is underneath and he was like, cool. He
was diggin' it cause you know ... but the guys in charge of keeping Rygel in one
piece were going nuts because John and I didn't tell them.
We didn't tell them it was gonna happen and
then they saw ... we just sort of rehearsed it and the first time I did it, I
give Rygel a nice clock on the back of the head and he hits his face on the
edge of a counter and he comes up choking and gagging.
"Cut!"
Like, 12 people from ... "No, man!
Is the puppet ok? Is the puppet
ok?" But it's actually fine, you can
actually manhandle them and you can work them and you can do stunts with these
guys and you know, it's a fantastic interaction that they give us and that's
one of the great things that the show has going for it.
[Zhaan and D'argo are leading a
handcuffed Crichton and Aeryn to dinner]
Crichton:
yes Damn! You know this ship
is amazing. What kind of...
Zhaan:
She's a leviathan. A
bio-mechanoid. A living ship.
O'Bannon:
In every instance, in every scene in those
early days, I would tell the writers "Just put yourself in the room in each of
the situations. What would you do if
you were there?"
[Having their meal...]
... Here's a
perfect example of a scene where again Crichton is confronting three incredibly
different, very odd, very potentially ... apparently unfriendly aliens.
And just, those first episodes was a matter
of working very hard to establish that.
That tone of what would you ... put yourself in that room with the giant
2-foot cockroach and give me your reaction to that.
yes And it worked very well.
Aeryn:
[talking to Crichton as she slips the fork into her sleeve]
It may be the only chance we get.
Crichton:
yes We?
O'Bannon:
I remember Brian calling me after - I think
probably the shooting of this sequence - and he called me and said, "Rygel,
when he eats, looks really good, so be sure Rygel eats a lot."
Henson:
[Laughing]
Which drives the puppeteers now.
O'Bannon:
But Rygel became a glutton after that
because it really does look good when he's stuffing his face.
D'argo: [to Rygel] I've been searching
for a reason not to jettison you with the next refuse dump.
Rygel:
You'd dump me? I bribed
the maintenance {throws} at the last checkpoint.
yes I secured the cell codes at the...
Zhaan:
Gentlemen,
Browder:
It's interesting, we were shooting this
later in the shoot schedule and this is ... Claudia starts to look for more
colors in this scene so she has a different sort of facet of Aeryn that she's
showing.
Henson:
Yeah, I think this is where she ropes the
audience in.
O'Bannon:
I think she's fantastic.
Henson:
Claudia in this scene ... up until then she's
cool, and right about here they fall in love.
Browder:
Yeah, we shot ... we'd shot a lot of the later
stuff and we came back and she was concerned about it and she pulled this
flavor out of the bag. And then, Rygel
farts.
D'argo:
[voice getting progressively higher-pitched]
yes ... and this one [Crichton] is some kind of higher brain function
deficient. How he escaped the genetic
{seaming} process I do not know.
Zhaan:
Rygel?
Crichton:
yes What just happened?
Rygel:
It's a perfectly natural bodily function.
yes And it's odorless.
D'argo:
So your loyal subjects tell you!
Browder:
Another signature of Farscape; puppets who
fart.
Crichton:
yes You fart helium?
Rygel:
Sometimes. When I'm nervous, or
angry.
... Yeah, now
it's interesting to listen to the people on the Internet try and figure out how
an alien farts helium. They went
through a whole bio-chemical analysis telling us how it was impossible when,
you know...
Henson:
Um, it is an inert gas.
Browder:
"Well, Starburst is possible but an alien
farting helium is not" you know? Nice
one.
[Shot of transport pod flying through the
planet's stratosphere]
... Fantastic CGI
shot here.
Henson:
Yeah, that's lovely.
Browder:
Two suns.
I didn't notice that before.
Rygel [negotiating trade with an alien on
the commerce planet] You'll only expose
your ignorance if you don't concede knowledge of the {herlian} stone!
Browder:
I don't know if it's true or not but I was
told by people in the creature shop that when they rendered the drawing of this
proprietor, this creature here, that they actually got the scale wrong and
that's why he ended up so big. He ended
up taking up the entire set, they couldn't get him in.
Henson:
Well, we wanted him real big, kind of as big
as he could be so he was almost like stuck in his space.
Which he was cause it took about three hours
to wedge him into that space.
[Crichton and Aeryn in the cell on Moya;
Aeryn at the door trying to find a way to open it and Crichton sitting in the
back of the cell]
Crichton:
yes Wormhole...
Browder:
I love the deep-two.
Right here, the deep-two shot, the ... and
with foreground which is very much Andrew Prowse, he loves his foreground.
But you know, using these very deep shots
with a lot of depth there with a character playing in foreground and
background, there's a lot of detail in the way the show is constructed and
shot.
O'Bannon:
Since we're uh, ... the work of Ricky Eyres,
gentleman who has worked on "Saving Private Ryan" and "Phantom Menace,"
Browder:
"Indiana Jones,"
O'Bannon:
Yeah, and the thing that drew me to him,
Pete Coogan of the Henson Company was the one who first brought his name to my
attention and-
Henson:
Yeah, we've worked with him a few times.
O'Bannon:
But it was the fact that he'd worked on
"Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" was the thing that impressed me the most
because if you look at those shows there's a scale to them and a richness that
for an episodic series is quite phenomenal.
Plus, George Lucas used a lot of green screen set extensions and things
like that to give it that scale. So
he'd had a lot of experience in doing that.
And obviously on "Phantom Menace," Ricky told me that there was not a
single set that didn't have a green screen extension and he'd just come off of
that show.
Henson:
He worked with us for a long time, a lot
longer than a production designer would usually work on a television
series. In a television series you
might bring in the production designer as late as eight to twelve weeks before
shooting. And Ricky was working on this
probably a good seven months prior to shooting and he basically came up with a
visual language for each of the cultures.
Like Moya ... the leviathans have a visual language that you can see in
the ribs of the rooms and the shape of the furniture that are a part of Moya,
and the Peacekeepers have a visual language in the line of their ships and the
way those lines ... the heaviness. And
then basically each of the other cultures as they start to appear have the same
thing happening, but ... he just put in an enormous amount of work and created
this great look to the show that as Rock said has that bigness ... it just
has scale and power to it.
[Aeryn and Crichton have just arrived to
the commerce planet and Crichton's looking at the ships coming and going]
Browder:
This is {Wybay} Power Station ... it's a
derelict power station - incredibly dangerous - but it's got this great
architecture and we've actually gone back there a number of times using
different facets of it. We still
haven't shot in all the areas that we can there, but it's a wonderfully
rat-infested, derelict, dangerous building which we use for ... we used here and
we used in other places. And it's got
fantastic detail in it.
[In one area of this rather run-down
alien strip mall, D'argo fetches Rygel.
In another area, Aeryn fetches Crichton]
Aeryn:
Come on. I've relayed our
rendezvous point. We can get off this
wastehole of a planet.
Browder:
Claudia is ... is everything.
She's uh ... I was ... they flew me down to
Australia after I'd been cast to read with some girls for the role of
Aeryn. And we read through ... read
through the script before going in you know, with each girl.
And Claud and I walked down the hall and I
said "You wanna read this?" She said "Yeah."
We read it together and we looked at each other and one of us said "Whoa
... I think we're ready to go." And I
said "Yeah, let's go shoot it." So we
walked back in and from the first moment, she uh... she had it.
And I came back to America and said "There's
one girl. We gotta get this
girl, please! Please, please, please
get this girl." And luckily they ...
luckily they agreed with it.
O'Bannon:
Claudia was working at the time we were
casting, so I never had a chance to see her in person when I was in
Sydney. I was back in the States and
{...} our casting director sent us a tape with a lot of candidates on it and
Claudia was one of them. And so we said
"Definitely want her on the very short list."
And then when Ben went down to do some auditions with the candidates,
she was obviously and immediately the choice.
[After a scuffle with D'argo, Crais and
his soldiers show up and confront Crichton.]
Aeryn:
[to Crais] Sir, he claims to be
a human from a planet called Erp, but he's shown himself to be-
Crais:
To be what, Officer Sun? A
clever imposter. An accomplice to a
ship full of escaping prisoners. My brother's murderer.
Crichton:
yes Your brother's what?
Crais:
You charged my brother's prowler in that white deathpod of yours.
Browder:
[laughing]
The deathpod! The
deathpod! The white deathpod!
We should rename it from the Farscape module
to the White Deathpod! We should just
write it on the side.
Crais:
... It will require some study. I
will personally enjoy pulling you apart to see what you're made of.
[Nods to his soldiers who move in on
Crichton]
Crichton:
yes Hey!
Aeryn:
Wait,
Crais:
Yes Officer Sun? You know
something about this alien?
Aeryn: Only that I have spent time with
him sir and I believe him when he says that what happened to your brother was
an accident. I don't believe he is
brave enough or intelligent enough to attack one of our prowlers intentionally.
Crais:
Exactly how much time have you spent with this human?
Crichton:
yes Not a lot. Not much at
all.
Crais:
Because as you know, Peacekeeper High Command has very clear parameters
regarding contact with unclassified alien life forms.
yes You may have very well exceeded those parameters Officer Sun-
Aeryn:
No. Sir, I-
Crais:
- which would make you irreversibly contaminated.
Aeryn:
No, sir, I-
O'Bannon:
I'm real proud of what happens with Crais'
character and Aeryn's character with the arc of the series but through the
first season in particular.
Browder:
UmmHmm
O'Bannon:
Because right off the bat here they're both
you know, very kind of straightforward, you-get-them-right-away characters
because of their culture. There doesn't
seem to be a lot more beyond that kind of straightforward, military demeanor
and they both go through such a wonderful blossoming,
Browder:
UmmHmm
O'Bannon:
and a trial-by-fire in Crais' case through
the first season. It's real ... for me
it's real fun to look back on the arc of the whole first season-
Browder:
As do most of the characters,
O'Bannon:
- and look at these characters in
particular, yeah.
Browder:
Except for Rygel.
O'Bannon:
Well, I mean, Crichton obviously you know ...
Browder:
Sparky ... he gets better groomed.
O'Bannon:
I was just going to say that ... exactly!
His earbrows ... he finds a comb obviously
somewhere.
[Crichton, D'argo and Aeryn are being
searched by the Peacekeeper guards. One
guard finds Crichton's good luck puzzle ring and Crichton is explaining what it
is]
Guard:
A field resourcefulness exercise?
Browder:
Alright Rock.
yes A "field resourcefulness exercise?"
[both laugh
hard]
O'Bannon:
No, well yeah ... they don't understand, they
don't have toys.
Browder:
If they delivered it correctly you're right...
O'Bannon:
It's the joy of {day playing}.
[While the guards are preoccupied with
the puzzle ring, Crichton takes one of the guards' guns and puts a few feet
between himself and the guards]
Browder:
Oh, this is ... this is a great moment!
Shoot it backwards!
Crichton:
yes [shooting at the guards]
Don't move! Or I'll fill you
full of ... little yellow bolts of light.
Browder:
Ah, that's a great line.
Henson:
That's a great line, that really was what we
promoted the show on for the ... before we showed this episode.
Crichton:
yes On the ground, now!
Guard:
[as both guards lay down on the ground]
Give up now Officer Sun. You
might avoid the death sentence.
D'argo:
[to Crichton] Unlock me then I
will unlock you.
Aeryn:
[to Crichton] No.
Me.
... Come on! Losing time!
Browder:
This guy's got a hard job cause he's getting
shot at and they don't see the yellow bolts of light and neither do I.
[Crichton has just handed the keys to
D'argo, who is just figuring out that he can't unlock himself ... someone else
must unlock the cuffs]
Crichton:
yes If you run, then you're going to have to find someone else to
unlock you. Then you're going to have
to explain these Peacekeeper handcuffs.
Guard:
Give up now Officer Sun.
Browder:
See the ... we have these Peacekeeper
handcuffs, which we actually had a lot of difficulty keeping them on.
They actually fell off time after ... we're
shooting the scenes and you go running up and suddenly the cuffs would fall
off. Which was great except uh ... wasn't
supposed to happen in the scene.
O'Bannon:
Until the right moment.
Browder:
Yeah.
Crichton:
yes [to D'argo] ... away from
those over-amped rent-a-cops, away from Crais.
And we take her too.
D'argo:
What? Never!
O'Bannon:
This was a tough scene to get because
there's ... he's got to in a very short amount of time obviously get these two
convinced. First D'argo to come around
to allowing her to come, and then convince her to come along as well.
Browder:
It's a tough scene to act as well cause
there's a lot happening very quickly and then you come up ... very soon you're
gonna have another signature line which comes back to play great importance for
the Aeryn character in season two.
[Crichton is unlocking Aeryn who doesn't
want to escape with him]
Aeryn:
... duty. My breeding since
birth. It's what I am.
Crichton:
yes You can be more.
Browder:
It's a good line.
[Shot of the prowler coming back into
Moya's hangar]
Zhaan:
Say again pilot?
Pilot:
It is D'argo...
Browder:
We never did figure out how three of us got
in the prowler.
Henson:
Uh huh!
One of the little holes you can spot there.
Browder:
That's one of the things though...
O'Bannon:
Well there's room for ... there's just not a
seat belt for the third person.
Browder:
I suppose you could squeeze in.
We sort of get two in there.
But it's also the thing when ... between
getting the words on the page and then the physical reality, that a lot of
these words were written before we even knew the size of the prowler.
And there's, you know...
Henson:
You know actually at one point we actually
discussed seeing that they had stuck D'argo like in the trunk.
No listen, we actually talked about it and
thought maybe we'll have fun with it.
But of course this was ... problem with this episode is there's so much
going on that it was for Rock, boy it was so difficult for you to try and
figure out how to tell this much story in the length of one episode.
At one point we were discussing opening the
series with a two hour opening episode and I think we all would have loved to
have done that. It would have been a
lot of fun.
O'Bannon:
We really went back and forth on that a lot,
you know ... for quite a while with the network ... cause the idea of taking ...
yeah, it would still be the story but giving us that room.
There was a lot
more here too, in the script with Crichton doing calculations, discovering the
mass of Moya by relating his own weight and that sort of thing.
Browder:
And well, that's one of those things that
disappeared in the ...
O'Bannon:
Yeah, I mean for the ... necessary for pace
etc. But um...
Browder:
Well there's just so much happening.
I mean even the little details like, "Paper,
I need paper" and he gets a weird look from Aeryn like, "What's paper?"
The details that just get glossed over and
other ... you could spend a day on them.
Henson:
Pilot was ... he's probably the most
extraordinary puppet we've ever built and ... I mean we keep using the term
"puppet" kind of loosely. I don't think
anybody else would create something like Pilot and call it a puppet, but that's
sort of the tradition of our company.
He's a very large character.
He's probably about six to eight feet from his waist that's at desk
level to the top of his head and his head itself is probably about three feet
deep and about two feet wide and he's uh ... he's an enormously sophisticated
puppet on the inside. It's packed with
motors and servo controls. We can work
the ... the puppeteers work the head or facial features off of a computer system
that we have called the Henson Performance Control System which can plug into a
very complicated character like that and make it possible for one puppeteer to
perform him. Pilot was probably a
little bit inspired by sort of a {geeker} sort of thing and there's probably
also a little bit of a goat thing happening in his face.
I know it sounds weird but it's ... there's a
haunting quality to a older billy goat's face that at one point sort of got us...
Browder:
Kind of looks like you doesn't he?
Henson:
... we sort of took a little bit of that, but
I mean ... put it in there. Pilot's one
of those where kind of didn't ... now that one, we didn't design him or Rygel for
very long. We tried a bunch of ideas
over a few weeks but we kind of hit on his design years before-
O'Bannon:
Yeah, this is back with the original
incarnation of the series back in '93, '94.
We did a lot of designing and {mikets}, kind of little sculptures of the
characters. The other characters -
creature characters - went through a lot of versions.
yes But Rygel and Pilot...
Henson:
Rygel, almost {never a doubt}.
From the first time we sculpted him we just
stopped and said that's it.
O'Bannon:
UmmHmm.
Henson:
And there was a tiny bit of fine
tuning when we brought him up to full scale.
Pilot had more. We sculpted him
small and we said "Wow, that's great."
Then as we brought him up to full scale there was even more work that
went into him.
O'Bannon:
And the unusual kind of lobster-like hands
and all that were that part of him from the very beginning.
[Moya's just escaped Crais]
Pilot:
He's gone.
Crichton:
yes [to Aeryn] Thank you.
Pilot:
It's gone!
Browder:
This scene was also not seen when this show
first aired. The Delvian Ear Kiss!
{Which sort of} gives you great detail!
Henson:
I think it's great.
It's a shame we didn't ...
Browder:
And we don't even bother ... we never explain
anything. That's the beautiful
thing. We don't explain what it was,
and then people have to ask what it is.
I think it explains itself
O'Bannon:
Top secret effect there.
Henson:
It was that little neck crank that explains
it.
Browder:
Look how shiny the floors are [in the wide
angle shot of command]. Did you notice
how shiny the floors are? The floors
have never been so shiny. And there's
everybody doing their thing. D'argo
with his qualta blade. Zhaan sitting
around naked. You know it's a good
ship. It made that scene; "She is naked."
Another great writer line.
O'Bannon:
I remember seeing this assembled for the
first time when we really ... when we all screened it.
yes We just ... we ourselves were blown away by it.
It worked, I mean, intangibles such as the
chemistry between the actors and just the look of things.
It just came together.
[As the each person on Moya is settling
in post-escape, Crichton is walking the corridors and is confronted by D'argo
who puts a sword to Crichton's throat]
D'argo:
I don't know who you are, where you're from, or what you want.
But if you threaten my freedom, I'll kill
you.
Henson:
The music actually has evolved during the
series and at the beginning here ... well, there's a lot of stuff going on in the
concept of the series and in the tone and in the environment.
It ... there is a slick, futuristic, science
element that's happening, but there's also sort of a primitive, more primal
energy that's coming in through Zhaan's character and D'argo's character, and
Rygel's character. And what we wanted
to do was kind of capture this sort of ... it's almost like techno fusion music
today is very modern and sometimes kind of very primitive ... and mixing some of
that together. We wanted to try to
capture some of that, the essence of some of that in the scoring of the
series. I'd say that you know, at this
point, as we were in episode one, it was only marginally successful.
I think that it's ... the show has a very cool
sound, but we were still settling in on how we were approaching the scoring of
the show.
O'Bannon:
Yeah, I mean we actually were ... knew more of
what we didn't want than what we wanted.
Henson:
Than what we did.
O'Bannon:
Exactly.
I mean it was that kind of a search and we knew we didn't want the big,
lush, orchestral sound of ... that you kind of associate with a space movie or
space show. And so we wanted something
that surprised. And um...
Henson:
And Rockne, you were real insistent ... I
think he was absolutely right, we don't want to hear-
O'Bannon:
A guitar, a drum kit, we didn't want to hear
things that would allow us to visualize how the music was being produced and
that's why you'll hear that the score is really almost 100% synthesized.
They're trying to create sounds that aren't
identifiably instruments that you'll recognize in the soundtrack.
Crichton:
yes What the hell are you doing?
Rygel:
Your equipment might be worth something in trade.
O'Bannon:
What's essential to the series is, a man
from Earth dropped into an entirely alien environment.
And the blessing of obviously the Henson
Company is that we were able to do that, with the exception of the Sebaceans
whom we run into only occasionally.
Everyone we run into is an alien presence, and so that kind of followed
through not only in terms of the creatures, but obviously in the production
design. We didn't want it to look like
anything else that might reflect on other movies or TV shows or anything that
or anything having to do with space programming that we'd seen before.
And obviously the music as well.
[End shot of Moya just before ending
credits begin to roll]
... And that's
how it all started.
"Premiere"
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