[ad_1]
Perhaps more than most beloved classic sci-fi series, Farscape (streaming on Peacock here) featured no shortage of compelling character concepts. From the shield-headed alien strangeness of Pilot to the moth-like tufts that gave Rygel his endearingly gruff personality, the SYFY show (back when it was the Sci-Fi Channel) drew immense creative power from the wildly imaginative practical-effects brain trust of The Jim Henson Company.
But in a sci-fi show so completely stacked with freaky aliens, it was Farscape’s human (or at least humanoid) characters who stood out as the most compelling of all. That, at least, was among the many impressions that Farscape’s broader legacy left on Aeryn Sun actor Claudia Black, who alongside Ben Browder (as bona fide human John Crichton) played the series’ two most people-adjacent space species.
“Just phenomenal” — Farscape’s Claudia Black on playing Aeryn Sun
Black had a lot on her mind in the early 2000s, as she spoke with BBC fan site Farscape Cult while the series wrapped production for good on its successful four-season run. Reflecting on the many ways she’d miss her voyage aboard the space vessel Moya (a sentient and living character in its own right), Black said she was proud of the way the series invited her to leave her own actor’s imprint on Aeryn — an emotionally complex ex-Peacekeeper character whose relationship with Crichton slowly teased out more of her human side.
“Aeryn was the most incredible character to play — she was just phenomenal,” Black reflected. “It may sound like bias, but she was definitely one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting, characters. Because she had the greatest development to take place and it was through a man [Crichton] and through love that it was going to happen, it just ticked a lot of my boxes as a performer. Because it was a romantic arc, it was stimulating. A lot of it at the beginning was controlled by the producers and how much they wanted to reveal of her character developing at any given time, but then the story started to take over. The character started to take over in her own way.”
Created by Rockne S. O’Bannon (Defiance, Alien Nation), Farscape ended its series run on an infamously edge-of-the-seat cliffhanger, eventually tying up its loose story ends in the concluding event series Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars (streaming here on Peacock). Thanks to a plot payoff that ultimately saw Aeryn and Crichton become new parents together, Black of course played the same vital role in The Peacekeeper Wars as she already had done in the original Farscape series.
Coming during the span between the end of Farscape as a series and the arrival of The Peacekeeper Wars, Black’s remarks at the time showed a genuine reluctance to leave Aeryn’s character development unresolved. “I can’t believe that I won’t see more of Aeryn and Crichton together on screen,” she said. “That’s really hit home for me, the fact that something about them has to crystallize and visually end where we leave it at the end of Season 4. I am, as I’ve said before, a desperate romantic and I really believe that what we created is substantial enough between the two of them that the audience will rest assured that there’s a happy ending.”
Watch all four seasons of Farscape here on Peacock, and stream Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars on Peacock here.
[ad_2]
Source link
