2. It Pioneered the "Band of Misfits on a Ship" Sub-genre of Science Fiction
Almost every "explore the universe" TV show has a uniting theme - all the characters on board the ship have to form a unit of some kind, be it a functional crew (Star Trek) or a gang of outlaws (Firefly) they must all work together to overcome their unique problems. Farscape however, provides one of the first wrinkles in this cliche: None of these characters belong together. Moya, the ship that the entire show takes place on, starts as a prison vessel half of the main cast are attempting to escape from. When John Crichton is thrown in the middle of this mess, the prisoners on board (and a few stragglers from the ensuing battle) are forced to coexist on this ship without causing grievous injury to each other - something that proves much more difficult than one would expect. These characters all have backstories and cloudy pasts ("why were you imprisoned on this leviathan?" is a one of the main tension questions of the first season) but their unwillingness to trust each other means their growing competence as a group is more forced through adversity than the will of any individual member. Another thing that defines the characters of this show is their initial eagerness to double-cross each other in pursuit of their own conflicting goals. All they want is to get off the ship, but Murphy's law prevents them from doing so, meaning they become one of the most begrudging (and ultimately heart-warming) family units in science fiction.
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
