Farscape: The Complete Series – 25th Anniversary Edition

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Wow, it’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since Farscape came on the scene and took over TV with one of the best science fiction shows ever produced. While there’s been many DVD and Blu-ray releases since the show ended in 2003, none of them were truly complete as they never included the follow-up series “The Peacekeeper Wars”. 

Shout Studios has fixed this and added a ton of extras to boot in the massive Farscape: The Complete Series – 25th Anniversary Edition set with 22 discs containing all 88 episodes, the peacekeeper wars, and a disc with all the special features to give fans and newcomers a collection that’ll starburst them into a galaxy of excitement.

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The story follows astronaut John Crichton (Ben Browder) who just happens to get pulled into a wormhole while flying in space. He soon ends up on a living spaceship named Moya where some escaped prisoners are using it to evade the peacekeepers, human looking folks that are something like a mix between the police and military. 

After a rough introduction to the prisoners, John slowly becomes allies with them, aka Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) a former peacekeeper, Ka D’Argo (Anthony Simcoe) an alien warrior that will remind Trekkies of the Klingons, Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan (Virginia Hey) who is a spiritual, humanoid plant woman, Dominar Rygel XVI (Jonathan Hardy) a small, obnoxious exiled ruler, and lastly the pilot of Moya named (conveniently) Pilot who is from a race of aliens that are forced to fuse to these living ships by the peacekeepers to control them.

As the show goes on, it’s one adventure after another as John and the crew do their best to survive being hunted by the peacekeepers as well as trying not to kill each other while John tries to find a way back home. Another alien joins the crew not long afterwards named Chiana (Gigi Edgley) who is a thief on the run that puts her talents to use for the crew, and villains start to come into play such as Bialar Crais (Lani Tupu who also voices Pilot) who wants John dead as Crichton’s ship accidentally collided with Crais’ brother’s when he came out the wormhole.

But the real fun villain is known as Scorpius (Wayne Pygram), a leather suit wearing, freakish-looking alien that toys with John as much as possible, from playing mind games with him and constantly placing him and his friends in danger, to torturing him to find out what he knows about the wormhole that brought him to their galaxy. He does all of this while usually having a calm, psychotic demeanor that truly makes him a delight to watch whenever he’s on screen.

I can say this amazing series holds up well after all this time, as it’s always fun to see how John and his friends will get out of the tricky situations they often find themselves in, as well as seeing how the show blends hilarious humor, romance, and dark moments together effortlessly. I also have to talk about the amazing puppetry the Jim Henson Company brings here as it’s some of the best they’ve ever done (especially with Pilot and Rygel), and the special effects aren’t bad either.

The series looks and sounds better than what I remember thanks to being presented in high-definition video and audio. I’ve seen some heated discussions online with some fans stating the original masters of the show were destroyed by Brian Henson, and that the ones they provided to Shout Studios are basically the same ones shown on TV but touched up some. Either way, the show does look and sound great here, and here’s hoping we’ll get a true remastered version of the series sometime in the near future.

Lastly we have disc 22 of this massive set containing all of the special features that will keep fans happy and busy going through them all. There’s too many to mention, but some of the ones that stand out are “A Look Back at Farscape” featuring executive producer Brian Henson and series creator/writer Rockne O’Bannon discussing the series with Adam Savage hosting the event, another extra where music composer Guy Gross talks about making the score and theme for the show as well other extras where he deep dives into a few of the episodes and how he made the music for them.

Other cool extras are “Zhaan Forever” with actress Virginia Hey going over her awesome character, there’s also some “Inside Farscape” featurettes that go into the villains of the show and some of the visual effects from the series, deleted scenes, director’s cut scenes, an alternate version of the season two premiere, behind the scenes Interviews with the cast creative team, and other cool stuff like a poster, some pins, and much more.

Fans of the show as well as newcomers can’t go wrong with the Farscape: The Complete Series – 25th Anniversary Edition set. It showcases everything that made the series great and tosses in some awesome extras to round out an amazing collection you’ll want to prepare to starburst into.