I am – Hercules!!

Just because I sometimes point out “Star Trek,” “Firefly” and “Andromeda” fail to utilize muppetry (and I guess we can say the same thing about “Star Wars” now), everybody seems to assume I think muppets are a bad idea for a starship show. Me! Who decades ago came to regard Grover as a cyanotic little brother!

Whether you regard the muppets as the best thing about “Farscape” or the worst, they’re back next month for the four-hour SciFi miniseries “The Peacekeeper Wars.” Longtime spy “Gaspode” calls it “an unabashed love letter from the producers to their loyal viewers.”

Beware the following paragraphs; they swim with spoilers:

On October 17-18, the Sci-Fi Channel will present the four-hour mini series Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, which wraps up some of the story threads left dangling after the show's untimely demise a couple of years ago. You remember the Sci-Fi Channel, don't you? They were the people who made the last-minute decision to cancel Farscape after season four, thus making this mini-series necessary in the first place. Sorry, I couldn't resist pointing out the irony there. And whether or not Sci-Fi will ever realize just how short-sighted their original decision was, they've at least partly redeemed themselves by deciding to air The Peacekeeper Wars. And while a four-hour mini-series isn't quite as rewarding as, say, a 22-episode fifth season, it's still pretty damn cool.

This isn't an easy project to review. No matter what I say here, it's bound to piss off somebody who doesn't want to read any spoilers, so I'll do my best not to give away too much. Will die-hard fans be satisfied by the end? Absolutely. Can first-time viewers tune in and pick things up as it goes along? Not a chance. The Peacekeeper Wars is an unabashed love letter from the producers to their loyal viewers, and don't let anybody tell you differently. But since Sci-Fi will be re-airing all 88 episodes leading up to October 17th, it's the perfect opportunity to get up to speed.

The mini-series picks up where things left off in the aptly-named fourth season cliffhanger, 'Bad Timing,' where Crichton proposes to Aeryn, only to get attacked by an alien ship that blasts them into a gazillion crystalline fragments. I'm sure I'm not giving anything away by saying they get reassembled at some point, but it's the how and why that kicks off the story in an interesting fashion. By this point, the Peacekeeper/Scarran conflict has escalated considerably, with both forces throwing entire fleets of ships at each other. Needless to say, it isn't long before Crichton and the gang are involved, and the pulse blasts are flying in every direction.

Okay, before we go any further, let's answer some of the many questions that fans have been asking for the last couple of months. Skip ahead if you don't want to know the answers.

Which characters appear in the mini-series? Basically all the regulars, and a bunch of familiar faces. That includes an estranged son, a certain flame-haired screamer and a Servalan-like Peacekeeper commandant to name a few.

Does that include Zhaan? No, sorry.

Does Einstein appear? Two of them- sort of.

Is Aeryn pregnant? Let's just say there are three pregnancies and leave it at that.

Is there a wedding? There are three of those too.

Does Chiana see again? In more ways than one.

Is anybody killed off over the course of the mini-series? Every war has its casualties.

What's good? Gosh, several hundred outstanding visual FX shots for one thing. Sikozu's new look. The Harvey scenes, including a not-so-subtle nod to Kubrick. Guy Gross's amazing score. Just about all of the prosthetic makeups, which have been redone and improved. The last half-hour of night two, in which there won't be a dry eye in the house.

What's not so good? Well, too many characters for one thing. It's nice to see our favorites return, but some of them don't get an awful lot to do. The Tragins (one of the worst-looking alien races ever created for Farscape). Some of the scene transitions are a bit choppy (maybe it's the editing style, but it was sometimes a bit difficult to follow where everybody was).

The final verdict? If you're a long-time Farscape fan, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll enjoy The Peacekeeper Wars, particularly the aforementioned final half-hour; I can't wait to see the talk-backs on October 18th! And a final shout-out to producer/director Brian Henson, who spent the last couple of years putting together the deal to make a mini-series and finally giving a bit of long-deserved closure to the Farscape story. You did good, Brian.

Reviewed by Gaspode (who happens to like Muppets, so deal with it, Herc!)

So when does SciFi start repeating the 88? Because it costs $90 per season to buy them on DVD …

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