Feature: Farscape: Peacekeeper War

Last time we saw John Crichton, he'd fallen to pieces. A bit of nifty work with some superglue later, though, and we’ve managed to reconstruct star Ben Browder for a chat about Farscape: Peacekeeper War

It’s mid-week, midday LA time, and Ben Browder is home with chores to do. So, like any self-respecting person would, he’s agreed to chat about the return of Farscape in mini-series form instead. If, of course, I can get him anywhere near the subject. We start on phones. “You know the old phones? Those big, chunky, heavy things? I was looking for one of those. This is fairly old school, but I was looking for the phone that I grew up with: right after rotary dial, the first touch-tone phone. Those things had heft. They had weight. You know, you could use them to defend yourself; they were great paperweights, you could hold down stacks of books… but the new phones; the buttons get in the way, it’s just a nightmare.”

I don’t want to distract him, and I’m not in a hurry, but this Sci-Fi show…? “Yeah, we can talk about Farscape; what do you wanna know?” With the Farscape: Peacekeeper War mini a way off, there’s a slight problem, which Browder immediately spells out. “The truth is that I am, as always, contractually obliged not to discuss any plot points, which becomes a real hassle. I can talk about all of Seasons One through Four!” he offers, cheerfully. “I can talk anecdotally about the mini-series and things like that. I just can’t really talk about plot points.”

This article is obviously accompanied by pictures, which will allow you, the reader, to get some hints about what might be happening. “In the picture being 1,000 words, I was shocked at some of the pictures that came out,” says Browder. “I thought, ‘Wow, they’re gonna let them see that?’ It still doesn’t mean that you can piece everything together, and you certainly can’t piece together how it’s gonna be executed, but you do see some things in the pictures and you kind of go, ‘Oooh, wow, look at that. I wonder where that goes?’”

One thing the pictures do prove is that pretty much everyone is back. “I would say that if you’re not already dead…” which, er, his character was… “Which, basically, everybody was. Well, Crichton and Aeryn weren’t dead, they were just in pieces. With Farscape, even when you’ve pronounced the body dead and deceased and you bury it, sometimes it still comes back. Especially if it’s Scorpius. Pretty much the band of the living is back, and those who weren’t officially pronounced gone are back; it’s four hours and there’s a lot of room for people. A whole lot of stuff that David [Kemper] and Rock [Rockne S O’Bannon, executive producers] wanted to bring in in the mythical Season Five, some of that is there, some of the big picture stuff. One of the things about the mini-series is that it actually deals in a shorter space of time with much more of the big picture pieces of the show than would typically be done in that period of time. Hopefully there’s enough for everybody without being too diluted.”

by Paul Spragg

Get the full interview in
Cult Times #107

Image © Visual Imagination Ltd, Farscape © Sci-Fi Channel
Feature © Visual Imagination 2004. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Cult Times #107
August 2004
ships from Jul 22 2004
News-stand Price
UK £3.99 / US $6.99

Buy it now!

VI DIRECT
Stores Info

You can order any of
our magazines via this
secure service.
To buy this issue:

To SUBSCRIBE to
CULT TIMES, use these
links to our stores: