This commentary has been transcribed to the best of my ability and as accurately as possible.

BEN BROWDER: Hi, my name's Ben Browder and I'm an actor on Farscape. I'd like to introduce you to my two creators -- Mr. Brian Henson and Mr. Rockne O'Bannon. Rockne S. O'Bannon.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Thank you.

BRIAN HENSON: That was very beautifully done, Ben.

BEN BROWDER: Thank you, it's kind of professional.

BRIAN HENSON: So, I'm Brian Henson. We're gonna tell you a little bit about the history of this series. We started in -- I think it was about 1992. And, as a company, the Jim Henson Company, we wanted to do a show that showcased what we could do in feature films at the time, which was really the...our Creature Shop and the special effects and creature work that our Creature shop was doing. Was really becoming world renowned, and we wanted to bring that to television. And we - at first the idea sort of initially started as as something like Star Wars bar, on a weekly basis. But at that point, we didn't know if we were talking about comedy, or drama, or what.

[Silence while a scene plays out. John shows a little concern over the project going well, to DK]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: We wanted to take our time with the Crichton on Earth segment, cause we knew it was the last time we'd be seeing John on Earth for quite awhile. And we wanted to set up situations, and relationships, as quickly as we could, that would lend resonance to the series. At least certainly hope so. We were very lucky to get Kent McCord to come on board, we were trying to cast the role in Australia. Just could not find anyone to do it, and David Kemper, the Executive Producer of the series said "Look, I'm a friend of Kent's, if you...lemme call. I don't know what he's doing and I don't know if he's available." And we said "Well, call, cause we need him down here in a couple of days."

BRIAN HENSON: It was, literally, a couple of days.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah, and no, and Kent was on a plane within twenty four hours and I think, really gives the show...it's, nice to have a familiar face. Essentially the only familiar face, you know, in the series, you know, obviously, a man with a lot of t.v. history and weight, so. Great, great way to start off.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah, he looks like a hero and he reminds the audience that, you know, they all feel like that they know him and they feel like they know the astronauts. So, he plays the hero role very well and actually gives Crichton there, something to live up to.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Jack Crichton talks to John Crichton about his experience as an Astronaut and indicates how he's kind of jealous that his son gets to do something he never got a chance to.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: This scene to me, was one that was very, very important.

BRIAN HENSON: Enormously important, this scene.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah, the idea that, you know, tryin' to live in the shadow of a well known father and having to be concerned about living up to his image, and the notion of being a hero not in a way that you expect to be a hero, all of us, I feel, need to be prepared because, you, as Kent says here, you never know how you're going to be called upon to be the hero in your life, whether it's being a good parent or a good spouse or whatever it is, it's something you have to be prepared for, cause you don't know when it's gonna come about, and as I watch the series, the subsequent episodes, every single one, and I see the - what we - what's thrown at John Crichton, it always resonates back to this scene for me.

BRIAN HENSON: It was really expensive getting the shuttle, by the way, to do a special launch for us, for that sequence.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: And you operated the camera on that one, didn't you, Brian? You were up there with it-

>BRIAN HENSON: Yeah, I did. I was on a -- yeah I was on an F-14 jet.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah. And one of the things the audience usually misses when they see that shuttle, because it was specially built, if you look closely on the side, run that tape back, you'll see that it says "Colleroy" -- it's the shuttle "Colleroy". Look very closely andb - because it launched from Australia. Colleroy is a suburb of Northern Beaches in Sydney, Australia. I think it's where Andrew Prowse, who directed the episode, is from. It's a fantastic little detail that's threaded through Farscape.

BRIAN HENSON: That is good! I didn't even realize that!

BEN BROWDER: Here's our first real CGI sequence. [Farscape One coming out of the shuttle bay]

[Short silence while a scene plays out. John contacts Canaveral for the first time.]

BRIAN HENSON: I think one of the great things about Garner MacLennan, a company that did this, is their effects move in a very majestic way and they move with weight and, there's a cinematic quality to all their visual effects, which is really terrific and lends a weight and importance to the series. Which is really important to us.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Very natural and very, very real.

BEN BROWDER: And beautiful.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: And beautiful.

BEN BROWDER: All at the same time.

BRIAN HENSON: And beautiful. And always beautiful, I mean, every now and then they actually make choices with the lighting and stuff that you wouldn't find in space, but they do it because it just makes it just a little beautiful and a little bit exotic. And it's interesting. A highly creative company really good and -

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: The design of -

BEN BROWDER: And there's the helmet.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: The design of Crichton's module is based on an emergency re-entrance vehicle that NASA has in the plans for the space station. And we saw this and said "Gee that's -

BEN BROWDER: Or that IASA [pronouncing as EE-ASA] has planned. The International Aeronautical Space Administration.

BRIAN HENSON: Well, I think NASA was real enthusiastic about our show, but they asked us to use I.S. instead of NASA cause it's just too complicated to work with NASA on daily basis.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Actually, well, yeah. They wanted script approval and -

BRIAN HENSON: Yeah, I noticed that.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Uh gee, you know -

BRIAN HENSON: They're real enthusiastic.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: You're gonna get real you know, once he went ...after the first six pages of the Premier script, there's not going to be a whole lot for you guys to approve.

BEN BROWDER: Andrew Prowse did a fantastic job building this sequence [Crichton's pod falling down the wormhole] and then integrating it with the CGI and he's, you know, like all of us, he was learning how to do it at the time and he just did a fantastic job.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: This is actually a very complicated sequence to edit, because, had to portray that Crichton he...we see him going through this...through the wormhole, but when he comes out the other side it's - he first comes into an asteroid field and in an early edit, it looked as though where he was coming out, that somehow Earth had been destroyed. So we went back in, just put in a tail of the father and D.K. after Crichton had disappeared, so we were certain to establish that Earth was still there so there was, there would never be a thought in anyone's mind that, somehow what Crichton was seeing here, was actually parts of -

BRIAN HENSON: Of Earth.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: A distructed Earth, yeah, you know.

[Short silence while a scene plays out. Crichton wondering what happened to Earth. Then Prowlers whizzing by]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Here's our first view of uh -

BEN BROWDER: My first encounter with Peacekeepers.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah. I just, I love the notion of John and his white Earth NASA-style ship, which is, you know, truly cutting edge technology here on Earth, suddenly eclipsed by these, you know, black, sleek, nasty weapon-firing prowlers.

BEN BROWDER: And here's the only main title sequence without the voice-over. "My name is John Crichton, I'm an astronaut. I got shot through a wormhole."

BRIAN HENSON: That's right. That's right.

BEN BROWDER: I hear that in my sleep.

BRIAN HENSON: But we didn't need to do it in this one, because we just saw it.

BEN BROWDER: Well no, it would have totally....but no, it would have totally given the story away. "I'm being chased by an insane military commander". Right, you know. You know who it is, you know? We sort of see who we're gonna meet.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: So go have some coffee. Yeah, you know. See ya next week.

BEN BROWDER: But, uh -- yeah, you know. We're not giving away the whole story right now, because it's the first time you've seen it.

[Short silence while a scene plays out. Prowlers zooming by, both directions. Tauvo's ship closing in]

BEN BROWDER: This was a really difficult sequence, actually, for me to shoot, because I'm, in the module, which is of course is on a gimble rig and they're telling me what I'm seeing, and I have no real reference. I didn't get to see the CGI in advance, and they're saying "Okay, things are flying over this way, things are flying over that way. Uh, you've just been hit. Uh, now you see something, what do you see?" Ah, there it is!

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Our first view of Moya.

BEN BROWDER: And they, and they tell me that there's a really big spaceship up there.

[Brief silence while a scene plays out. Crichton saying "That's really big."]

BEN BROWDER: It's a really big space ship.

[Ben and Rockne laugh]

BRIAN HENSON: What's interesting, actually, just how difficult it was in all of the pre-production, creating the sets and the looks and everything, trying to lock in the ship, designs for Crichton's ship, and for the Prowlers, the Peacekeeper Prowlers, and for Moya and the Peacekeeper command. That was almost the hardest thing to get ready in time, it's an enormous amount of work that goes into designing those ships.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: For Crichton, I wanted to be - to look like a classic hero. But be someone...there were a couple of things. One, definitely had to look like he could do the science. He had to look like he had the smarts. And the other thing was, an ability to be classically hero handsome, but also be able to play the awe and wonder and essentially a level of, forgive me Ben, goofiness [Ben starts laughing], as the man outside, you know, a, comfortable situation. And I gotta tell ya, Ben, goofy's the only -

BEN BROWDER: And the goofy part is the one thing that I can do!

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: It's the only thing that he could do! Okay? Classically handsome, no.

BEN BROWDER: The handsome and the smart, but man, I did goofy. But -- here, just watch!

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: But -- classic -- so, we worked with him on all the other stuff. The hero stuff and all that stuff, but the goofy, no, right off the bat.

BEN BROWDER: The goofy. Yeah, check it out.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: So, it was that triangle that we were looking for in John Crichton. This was obviously the pivotal role. And I first saw Ben on tape and there was just a, obviously something there. And Ben came in and read for us and what sold us in a lot of ways, and for me, when I've cast in the past, it isn't the reading. The reading is part of it, obviously. But it really is just talkin' to the guy and getting to know him and getting a sense of what he's about. And, what's going on behind the eyes.

BEN BROWDER: The first thought of the script was basically "How the hell are they gonna do this?"

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Or "Why in the hell are we gonna do this?"

BEN BROWDER: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you look at all the other elements that have to come together and when you factor in the puppetry and animatronics, and the CGI and just the scope of the series, then you really can sort of be overwhelmed by it.

[Short silence while a scene plays out. DRD's prodding John down the corridor]

BEN BROWDER: Now this is interesting, because this is the section of the...of the show that really, really awed me when I saw it. Right here, this is the moment [D'argo and Zhaan on command, Prowlers ripping past the forward screen]. And you know, it beautifully plays out. This is where the series really begins.

[Silence while a clip plays out of John walking further onto command]

BEN BROWDER: This is really, the scene where the audience finds out what the series is about. You know, you get the background and you get thematic information and very important stuff, but here's where it is, where John Crichton meets -- aliens and - -aliens -

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah, he realizes that he is -

BEN BROWDER: Attack him! This is where it happens. This is where he realizes he's in a hostile environment and it's not going to be the Close Encounters of Steven Spielberg.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Well, that's the line later on, you know, "Boy was Spielberg ever wrong" and to me that was, you know, pretty much an essential of the show and this scene, is John Crichton is having the first encounter with alien life and any one of his own species has ever had. And instead of standing there as they do in Close Encounters, putting their arms out and letting him look upon them with awe, and all that, they race up and [chuckles] try to choke the life out.

BEN BROWDER: And it's a really good closed mystery here as well, because, it makes sense how they treat him later, when you understand that the Peacekeepers, are the ones that imprisoned them at this point, you know, that everything they do makes perfect sense in retrospect. They've been imprisoned by the Peacekeepers. He looks like a Peacekeeper. But at that moment, it appears to be something that it's not. Which is something that happens all the time in Farscape.

[Silence while a scene plays out. D'argo is pulling synapses to try to do something about the control collar.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Trying to get the balance between the fact that Moya is a living entity, and as well as a ship, a metal, a primarily metal, ship, was something we worked very hard to accomplish. And the decisions in terms of what kind of mechanics, and wiring and guts if you will, of Moya, was something we had many a meeting about. When D'argo pulls those wires out, it's you know, would there be sparking, would there be fluid? That sort of thing.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Rygel assures John that can watch each other's backs.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Looking for D'argo and Zhaan in particular, we had winnowed the list down to oh, I think three candidates for each of the roles. And went down to Australia and we got all six of them in a studio, and just started to pair them up. We had some sides, some scenes for them to play. A Zhaan/D'argo scene, that was written just for the audition process. And got them and started to pair them up. And the minute, we got Anthony and Virginia together, I turned to Matt Carrol, the Australian Producer of the series, and said "If we had a thirty five millimeter camera here, we could start shooting the show." They were that clearly the choices for those two roles.

BEN BROWDER: And then Brian, said "No, no, I want to put some prosthetics and some blue paint on them, first."

BRIAN HENSON: On Anthony, yeah, we had -

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Exactly. We've gotta cover these people up.

BRIAN HENSON: way too much in person.

[All laugh]

BRIAN HENSON: But I think Virginia was one of those that, boy she walked in, she just was the part. Anthony when you first meet him, he doesn't actually seem to you that...he doesn't actually come across as D'argo. He's the one who does an enormous shift, when he gets into that character, he shifts so far out of his own personality, it's really quite cool to watch what he does. Virginia was just a natural. She walked in and that was - she was Zhaan.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: We were so anxious for Zhaan, because, she's a priest, and that usually carries the baggage of being someone who keeps experience at arm's length. And we didn't want that for Zhaan. We wanted Zhaan to be someone who felt the way to become one with the Universe, was not to hold experience at arm's length, but to embrace it. And -

BRIAN HENSON: And suck the marrow out of it.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yes. But, truly, and Virginia, that is Virginia.

BRIAN HENSON: I like this shot [Command carrier, with other Leviathan's in formation, underneath], I think it's cool to see the three Leviathan's down there. You don't -

BEN BROWDER: Yeah, and it's another detail.

BRIAN HENSON: You don't get a chance in the show to see groups of Leviathans.

BEN BROWDER: [Crais is coming on board command] Ah! And these are the bad guys, you can tell, they're in black.

[All laugh]

BRIAN HENSON: And the set is all black -- white and red.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah. And obviously. First day of shooting, interesting, you see the grate here, on the floor, made tremendous amount of noise.

BRIAN HENSON: It did.

BEN BROWDER: So -- you know -- Andrew -

BRIAN HENSON: All -- every scene, every line needed AD on it.

BEN BROWDER: Andrew'd be shooting the scene, and someone would be walking around in the background, they wouldn't be in the shot, and you go to the second AD who's learning the job, it was the first day of shooting, saying "Just tell that guy in the background to stop movin' around cause he's walking all over Lani's lines." There he is. See that, see that guy in the background? He liked pacin'.

[All laugh]

[Silence while a scene plays out. Crais sees John's pod for the first time.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Worked very hard to get the contrast, obviously, between the more organic setting of Moya and the far more military and industrial look of the Peacekeeper ships. Moya's designs all come from Ricky, Ricky Eyres, the production designer, had used a a spanish artist by the name of Gallieus(sp?), as an influence. And then for the Peacekeeper ship, it's all very kind of early 20th century Russian industrial look. And he gives a real nice contrast. Also, Moya, we always wanted to give a sense that she isn't only meant to carry aliens, that happen to be this size. That she would actually be capable of carrying creatures that are much larger and smaller, and that sort of thing, whereas Peacekeeper ships are obviously built for Sebaceans who are generally that one size.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Pilot balks at knowing where they are, after Starburst. Rygel spits on John. D'argo knocks John out.]

BRIAN HENSON: I like the simple little facts, like, well, first, the spitting was really difficult, but the...I, love that moment where D'argo zaps Crichton on the back of the neck. It's probably all of a ten frames visual effect, but it's a great little thing. And it's also actually pretty funny, I think.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah.

BRIAN HENSON: Crichton gets really pissed off cause he's zapped.

BEN BROWDER: Crichton's finally fed up. He's been beaten, he's scared and he's finally had it. This is a beautiful scene, this scene. [Zhaan and D'argo talking calmly to each other about their pasts]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Plus you get to see a real good example of what Virginia sold us on in the...in her audition. That sort of playfulness, her willingness to play a priest with a real kind of fun, wry, coyness, which is just so important to making Zhaan not your traditional you know, Hassidic priest.

BEN BROWDER: Mm. It's also one of the things of the series, is the tonal shifts that occur episode to episode, and within the series, that, you know, we'll hit a breakneck pace, and then we slow down and it's a great resative that occurs here. But it, you know, this scene, this scene is beautiful because what you've had up til now is complete chaos and you haven't had a chance to look at these characters, and get a feel for these characters, and if you take in the detail, the rings in the collar, which you probably haven't noticed up to this point. And it allows you to start to get to know these characters who are aliens and you know, after all this chaos, you finally have this scene, which is just beautiful, and well written, Rock.

[Silence while a scene plays out. D'argo tells his age. Zhaan teases him slightly about it, and about his military experience.]

BEN BROWDER: And you really can start to see the exquisite make up on Bluie. The detail that goes into it, you just have to see, you know.

BRIAN HENSON: You can see the painting details, interesting, on these early episodes, though, we hadn't quite figured out the color temperature to the lighting. And so it was turning her make up almost gray, even though it was very blue make up, and so, we quickly were making adjustments, both to the lighting, the color of the lights and inside Moya and adjustments to the color blue of her make up.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: But it's interesting, because it mutes this...it works really well for that particular scene, because it's kind of, you know -

BRIAN HENSON: Quiet's the scene down.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah. Very much so.

[Short silence while a scene plays out. D'argo doubts the Peacekeepers will care much about their escape.]

BEN BROWDER: Fantastic voice. That Anthony does, it's completely done by him, it's not digital and there's a lot of people who thought it's...that it's digitally enhanced, and it's not. That's all him, he's got a great instrument and he uses it beautifully.

BRIAN HENSON: It's wonderful when you meet him, he actually has quite a high pitched voice, though.

BEN BROWDER: I know, it's scary, isn't it?

BRIAN HENSON: Yeah. In one of the other episodes [laughs] But this voice, he just drops it way down in his throat. It's cool.

[Silence while a scene plays out. John is waking up and hoping it's all a dream.]

BEN BROWDER: I love this scene. John Crichton is lying on the floor, he is -- naked. Yeah, and Rygel takes a look. Ok, I loved that day, that was a good one. And Rock, Rock tried to convince me that he wouldn't try to put his clothes on immediately.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Well as, as scripted, he didn't right away, but it plays much, much better this way.

BEN BROWDER: Look, I -- look, the first script I read, there was no "he is naked". That came later. Cause, I'd have asked for more money.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: No, okay, Brian in particular, in a scene like this, with Rygel where he's pressing the buttons, this one, how many puppeteers are working on him right at that moment?

BRIAN HENSON: Well, there's actually five, but it's effectively a character that kinda can be worked by four, but John Eccleston is working the head, with his hand up inside the head and he's working, doing the lip sync with his other hand on the cable control on his belt. Then there's another puppeteer doing the expressions on his face, and the eye movements. And then there's one puppeteer on each hand. Sometimes on the face, they put two on, and that's why sometimes it becomes five puppeteers. Sometimes one puppeteer just do the pupils to make sure that they're maintaining the right, correct eye lines. Cause if a character misses it's eye lines, then it really feels bad.

BEN BROWDER: Here's another great character introduction.

BRIAN HENSON: This is a great way for a character to come in.

BEN BROWDER: This is really great, all the characters in the pilot are beautifully introduced, it's beautifully set up, it's shot. And suddenly -- whoom.

[Silence while a scene plays out. John's watching someone in his cell waking up. It's a female, human looking (Aeryn)]

BEN BROWDER: Oooooh, yeah. A good lookin' girl, hey! How about that?

[Short silence while a scene plays out. Aeryn has sat back down]

BEN BROWDER: I think I'll go over and introduce myself. Hey, you know, gonna go have a little chit-chat.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: See? You should've kept your clothes off.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah, if I'd kept my clothes off it would have been more interesting, but then there'd have been another comment.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: It does look cold.

BEN BROWDER: Oh no! And now we know a lot about this girl.

[Short silence while a scene plays out. Aeryn sits on his neck and asks him for his rank and regiment]

BEN BROWDER: And we also know that....a lot about John.

[They all laugh]

[Silence while the scene plays out. Aeryn's demanding to be let out]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Talk a little bit about what you discovered in terms of the interaction with the puppets.

BEN BROWDER: Well, I -- you know, the interaction with the puppets - see the advantage to the puppets is two fold. One is, because they're not CGI, you can get your hands on them, you can play with them. You can interact with them right then and there. You can hit them, they can hit you, you can, you know, you can have a scene, right there, on the day. And, the other advantage to the puppets is that, you have performers behind them, which is live. And so you have another creative element which comes onto the floor to help bring the words to life, and to bring the images to life. And I guess they're also quicker as well. But you know, it's just awesome what these guys do with it. And, you know, Rygel and Pilot are state of the art animatronics, actually worth more than me, and I think they're actually paid more than me. [All laugh] Is that true?

BRIAN HENSON: They might be more expensive than you, to get on the screen.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah. It's. Let me tell ya, it costs a lot more to get Rygel through collage than it did me. What I found to be a revelation and, it's probably one of the secrets of working with puppets is that, I discovered, I think, in Episode four, is getting your hands on them. You know, puppeteering comes out of a long line of Punch and Judy, and you know, the physicality of puppets is what makes them funny. It's what makes them work. And if you get your hands on them, and it makes them real and it makes you react to them and all this actory stuff, that, you know, probably isn't interesting anybody other than me.

BRIAN HENSON: No, it's action/reaction if you touch a puppet. It pushes back at you.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah. But it does, it makes it real. It forces the puppeteer to do something as well. Sometimes they don't like it. The first time I actually hit Rygel, [laughs]. Can you imagine? You know, cause, you know, Rygel costs like 20 million dollars, and, you know, if he breaks a servo, we lose a day of workin'. The puppeteers, they were -- Johnny Eccleston, who's underneath, was like, "Cool", he was diggin' it, cause, you know. But the guys in charge of keeping Rygel in one piece were going nuts! Because John and I didn't tell 'em. We didn't tell them it was gonna happen, and they saw, you know, we just sort of rehearsed it, and the first time we did it, and I just, you know, I give Rygel a nice clock on the back of the head and he hits his face on the edge of a counter, and he comes up [makes gagging noises], chokin' and gaggin', you know, "Cut!" Like twelve people from - come "No, man, what is the puppet okay? Is the puppet okay?" They were, but you know, it's actually fine, you can actually man-handle them and you can work them and you can do stunts with these guys. And you know, it's a fantastic interaction that they give us. They -- that's one of the great things that the show has going for it.

[Silence while a scene plays out. John is stunned by the details within Moya]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: In every instance, in every scene, in those early days, I would tell the writers, just put yourself in the room, in each of the situations. What would you do if you were there? Here's the perfect example of a scene where I think Crichton is confronting three incredibly different, very odd, very potentially, apparently unfriendly aliens. Just in those first episodes, there was the matter of working very hard to establish that tone of, what would you...put yourself in that room with a giant two foot cockroach and give me your reaction to that and then - it worked very well.

[Short silence while a scene plays out. Aeryn telling John to eat while he can, and hiding a fork in her sleeve.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: I remember Brian calling me after, I think, probably shooting this sequence and he called me and he said "Rygel, when he eats, looks really good. So, be sure Rygel eats a lot." And so -

BRIAN HENSON: Which drives the puppeteers nuts.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: But Rygel became a glutton after that, because it really does look good when he's stuffing his face.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah.

[Silence while a scene plays out. D'argo's arguing with Rygel about their supplies.]

BEN BROWDER: Interesting, we were shooting this later in the shoot schedule, and this is...Claudia starts to look for more colors in this scene, so she has a different sort of facet of Aeryn that she's showing.

BRIAN HENSON. I actually think. Yeah, I think this is where she ropes the audience in.

BEN BROWDER: This is where she produced a lot out.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah, I think she's fantastic.

BEN BROWDER: Brings the elements in.

BRIAN HENSON: Claudia in this scene, up until then she's cool, and right about here, they fall in love.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah, we'd shot a lot of the other later stuff, and we came back and she was concerned about it and she pulled this flavor out of the bag, and then Rygel farts.

[Silence while a scene plays out. D'argo is griping about Aeryn and John, as his voice progressively gets higher, and then he and Zhaan talk to Rygel about his Helium farts]

BEN BROWDER: Another signature of Farscape. Puppets who fart.

[short silence as the scene plays out further]

BEN BROWDER: Yeah. No, it's interesting to listen to the people on the internet, try to figure out how an alien farts helium. They went through a complete bio-chemical analysis telling us how it's impossible, when, you know -

BRIAN HENSON: Well, it is an inert gas.

BEN BROWDER: Well, Starburst is possible, but an alien farting helium is not, you know, I [laughs] Nice one, that's a good look [reference to Claudia's cold stare when Zhaan takes her fork] Fantastic CGI, here.

[Shuttle pod coming in for a landing on the commerce planet]

BRIAN HENSON: Yeah. That's something.

BEN BROWDER: Two suns. I didn't notice that before.

[Short silence while a scene plays out. Rygel bartering with the Proprietor.]

BEN BROWDER: I don't know if it's true or not, but I was told by people in the Creature Shop that the...when they rendered the drawing of this - the Proprietor, this creature here, that they actually got the scale wrong, and that's why he ended up so big. He ended up taking up the entire set, he couldn't get him in.

BRIAN HENSON: Well, we wanted him real big, kind of as big as he could be, so he was almost like stuck in his space. Which he was, cause it took about three hours to wedge him into that space.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Aeryn is trying to get the cell doors open.]

BEN BROWDER: I love the deep two, right here, the deep two shot, that...and with foreground, which is very much Andrew Prowse, he loves his foreground. But, you know, using these very deep shots with a lot of depth there, with a character playing in foreground and background was a lot of detail in the way the show is constructed and shot.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: The sets work - the work of Ricky Eyers, gentleman who has worked on Saving Private Ryan, and Phantom Menace -

BEN BROWDER: Indiana Jones. The series.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah, and the thing that drew me to him, Pete Coogan, of the Henson Company was the one who first brought his name to my attention.

BRIAN HENSON: Yeah, we'd worked with him a few times.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah and he, yeah, that's right, and it was, but it was the fact that he'd worked on the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was the thing that impressed me the most, because, if you look at those shows there's a scale to them and a richness that, for an episodic series, is quite phenomenal. Plus, George Lucas used a lot of green screen set extensions and things like that to give it that scale. So, he'd had a lot of experience in doing that, and obviously Phantom Menace, Ricky told me there was not a single set that didn't have a green sequence - a green screen extension. He'd just come off of that show.

BRIAN HENSON: He worked for us for a long time, a lot longer than a production designer would usually work on a television series. In television series you might bring in the production designer as late as eight to twelve weeks before shooting. And Ricky was working on this, probably a good seven months prior to shooting, and he basically came up with a visual language for each of the cultures. Like Moya, the leviathans, have a visual language that you can see in the ribs of the rooms and the shapes of the furniture that are part of Moya. And the Peacekeepers have a visual language in line and their ships and the way those lines, and the heaviness and then basically each of the other cultures, as they start to appear had the same thing happening, but, he just put in an enormous amount of work and just created this great look to the show, that, as Rock said has a bigness, it just has a scale and power to it.

[Silence while a scene plays out. John is watching with awe, the traffic and locals of the commerce planet.]

BEN BROWDER: This is White Bay Power Station, which, also White Bay Station's a derelict power station. Incredibly dangerous and - but it's got this great architecture and we've actually gone back there a number of times, using different facets of it. We still haven't shot in all of the areas that we can there, but it's a wonderfully rat infested derelict, dangerous building, which we used here and we used in other places. And it's got fantastic detail in it.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Rygel is still bartering while D'argo's trying make him leave. Fade to Act 3. Aeryn's telling John she's made arrangements for their pick up.]

BEN BROWDER: Claudia is everything. She's. I was...they flew me down to Australia after I'd been cast, to read with some girls for the role of Aeryn. And we read through the script before going in, you know, with each girl, and Claud and I walked down the hall, and I said "Do you want read this?", she said "Yeah" and we read it together, and we looked at each other and one of us said "Whoa, I think we're ready to go." And I said "Yeah, let's go shoot it." So, we walked back in and from the first moment, she had it. And I came back to America and said "There's one girl, you gotta get this girl. Please, please, please, please get this girl." And luckily, they agreed with me.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Claudia was working, at the time we were casting. So, had...I had never had the chance to see her in person when I was in Sydney. I was back in the states, and Maura Fay, our casting director sent us a tape with a lot of candidates on it, and Claudia was one of them. And so we said, yeah, definitely we want her on the very short list. And then when Ben went down to do some auditions with the candidates, she was obviously immediately the choice.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Aeryn tries to tell Crais that Crichton isn't a threat. Crais blames John for his brother's death.]

BEN BROWDER: [chuckles] Death pod. The death pod. The white death pod. Should rename it from the Farscape Module to The White Death Pod. They should just write it on the side. [laughs]

[Silence while a scene plays out. Crais is talking about pulling Crichton apart to see what he's made of. Aeryn stands up for Crichton. Aeryn's deemed irreversibly contaminated.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: I'm real proud of what happens with Crais' character and Aeryn's character with the arch of the series, but through the first season, in particular. Because, right off the bat, here, they're both, you know, very kind of straight forward. You get them right away characters, because of their culture, there doesn't seem to be a lot more beyond kind of a straight forward military demeanor, and they both go through such a wonderful blossoming and a trial by fire, in Crais' case, through the first season. It's real - for me , it's real fun to look back on, on the arch of the whole first season -

BEN BROWDER: As do most of the characters.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: and look at these characters in particular, yeah.

BEN BROWDER: Accept for Rygel.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Only Crichton obviously, you know - yeah, exactly.

BEN BROWDER: Sparky. He gets better groomed.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: He does. I was just gonna say that.

BEN BROWDER: It's a grooming issue, you know, but -

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: He's...his ear brows. He finds a comb obviously, somewhere.

[Short Silence while a scene plays out. A Peacekeeper soldierswonders about Crichton's puzzle ring.]

BEN BROWDER: Alright, Rock, a field resourcefulness excersize?

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Well, not yet. They don't understand, they don't have toys.

BEN BROWDER: If they delivered it correctly, it would work.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: It's the joy of day claim(?)

[Silence while a scene plays out. The Peacekeeper soldiers fight about the puzzle ring, and Crichton steals a gun.]

BEN BROWDER: Ah! This is a great moment. Shoot it backwards.

[Silence while a scene plays out. John fires the gun several times, then tells them not to move or "Or I'll fill you full of - little yellow bolts of light"]

BEN BROWDER: Ah, that's a great line. That's a great line.

BRIAN HENSON: That's a great line, that was really what we promoted the show on, for the - before we showed this episode.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Crichton is demanding the soldiers get down, the soldiers are begging Aeryn to give up now.]

BEN BROWDER: Those guys got a hard job, cause of getting shot at, and they don't see the yellow bolts of light and neither do I. [laughs]

[Silence while a scene plays out. John tells D'argo why he should be unlocked first.]

BEN BROWDER: See, and then here we have Peacekeeper handcuffs, which, we actually had a lot of difficulty keeping them on. They actually fell off time after...we were shooting the scenes, and you go running up and suddenly the cuffs would fall off. Which is great, accept it wasn't supposed to happen in the scene.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Until the right moment.

BEN BROWDER: Yeah.

[Silence while a scene plays out. John wants to know if D'argo can get him off the planet. He insists on taking Aeryn with them. D'argo resists.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: This was a tough scene to get, because there's - he's gotta, in a very short amount of time, obviously, get these two convinced. First, D'argo to come around to allowing her to come and then to convince her to come along as well.

BEN BROWDER: It's a tough scene to act, as well. Cause there was a lot happening, very quickly. And you come up, very soon, you're gonna have another signature line, which comes back to play great importance for the Aeryn character, in season two.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Aeryn explains that she only knows how to be a Peacekeeper. John tells her she can be more.]

BEN BROWDER: It's a good line.

[Silence while a scene plays out. The Prowler is landing on Moya. Zhaan talks to Pilot]

BEN BROWDER: We never did figure out how three of us got in the Prowler.

BRIAN HENSON: Ah ha! One of the little holes you can spot.

BEN BROWDER: Well, it's one of the things, no, there's -

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: No no no. No no no. There's room for it, it's just there's not a seatbelt for a third uh -

BEN BROWDER: I suppose you could squeeze in...we sort of get two in there. But it's also the thing when, you know, the between the getting the words on the page and then the physical reality that a lot of these words were written before we even knew the size of a Prowler. And there's, you know, a moot point.

BRIAN HENSON: Well, you know, at one point we actually discussed seeing that they had stuck D'argo like in the trunk. No, listen, we actually -

BEN BROWDER: Yeah, no, actually we talked about all of this.

BRIAN HENSON: We had actually talked about it and thought, well, maybe we'll have fun with it. But of course this was...the problem with this episode, that there's so much going on, that it was, for Rock, boy it was so, it was difficult for you to try and figure out how tell this much story. In the length of one episode. At one point we were discussing opening the series with a two hour opening episode. And I think we all would have loved to have done that, it would have been a lot of fun.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: We really went back and forth on that a lot, you know, for quite awhile with the network, cause the idea of taking...yeah, just, it would still be this story, but giving us that room. And there was a lot more, here, too, in the script with Crichton doing calculations, discovering the mass of Moya by relating his own weight, and that sort of thing.

BEN BROWDER: And, well that was one of those things that disappeared in the -

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah, it just, yeah, I mean, for the -

BEN BROWDER: In the edit room.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: necessary for pace, etc. But, uh -

BEN BROWDER: Well there's just so much happening. I mean even, even the little details like "Paper, I need paper", and he gets a weird look from Aeryn, like "what's paper?"

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah, I mean -

BEN BROWDER: The details, they just get glossed over for other, you know - you could spend a day on it.

BRIAN HENSON: Pilot was...is probably the most extraordinary puppet we've ever built. I mean we keep using the term puppet kind of loosely, I don't think anybody else would create something like Pilot, and call it a puppet, but that's sort of [laughs] a tradition of our company. He's a very large character, he's probably about six to eight feet from his waist, that's at desk level, to the top of his head. And his head itself is probably three feet deep and about two feet wide and he's a...it's an enormously sophisticated puppet, on the inside, packed with motors and servo controls. We can work...the puppeteers work the head, or facial features, off of a computer system that we have called the Henson Performance Control System, which can plug into a very complicated character like that, make it possible for one puppeteer to perform it. Pilot was probably a little bit inspired by a sort of a Geeger sort of thing, and there's probably also a little bit of a goat sort of thing happening, his face, which I know sounds weird, but, it's... there's a haunting quality to a older billy goat's face, that at one point, sort of got us -

BEN BROWDER: Kinda looks like you, doesn't it?

BRIAN HENSON: Sort of took a little bit - [laughs] - within there, but, Pilot's one of those where kinda didn't - now that one we didn't design him or Rygel for very long. We tried a bunch of ideas over a few weeks, but we kinda hit on his design years before production.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah this was back with the original incarnation of this series, back in '93/'94, we did a lot of designing and maquettes, the little -

BRIAN HENSON: Sculpts.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: kinda sculpts of the characters, and the other characters, Creature characters, went through a lot of different versions, but you got Rygel and Pilot.

BRIAN HENSON: Rygel, almost nabbed 'em. From the first time we sculpted, we just stopped and said "That's it" and we...there was a tiny bit of fine tuning when we brought him up to full scale. Pilot had more. We sculpted him small and we said "Wow, that's great" and then as we brought him up to full scale, there was more work that went in.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: [says something at the last half of Brian Henson's comments, but I can't understand what he's saying] And the unusual kinda lobster-like hands and all that were, were that part of him from the beginning.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Crais is glaring ahead because Moya has just gotten away. Fade. Moya gliding slowly in space. The crew recovers from the journey.]

BEN BROWDER: This scene was also not seen [Zhaan ear-kissing Crichton] when the show first aired. The Delvian Ear Kiss. Which I think it's a great detail.

BRIAN HENSON: I think it's great, too, it's a shame we didn't - yeah.

BEN BROWDER: We don't even bother, we never bother to explain anything, that's the beautiful thing. We don't even explain what it was. People have to ask what is it. No, I think it explains itself.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Obviously very effective.

BRIAN HENSON: It was a little neck krink that explains it.

BEN BROWDER: Look how shiny the floors are, did you notice how shiny the floors, the floors have never been so shiny.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Crichton gets a few things from his pod. D'argo sharpening his blade.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: I remember seeing this assembled for the first time when we really, when we all screened it, you know, we just, we ourselves were blown away by it. Just, it worked. I mean, intangibles such as the chemistry between the actors, and just the look of things. It just came together.

[Silence while a scene plays out. D'argo has Crichton pinned to a wall, threatening him over freedom. D'argo walks off]

BRIAN HENSON: The music actually has evolved during the series, and at the beginning here, well, there's a lot of stuff going on in the concept of the series and in the tone, and in the environment. It - there is a slick, futuristic, science element that's happening, but there's also sort of a primitive, more primal energy that's coming in through Zhaan's character and D'argo's character and Rygel's character. And what we wanted to do is kind of capture this sort of...it's almost like technofusion music today. Is very modern and sometimes kind of very primitive, and mixing some of that together...we wanted to try to capture some of that, the essence of some of that in the scoring of the series. I'd say that, you know, at this point, cause we were in episode one, it was only marginally successful. I think that it's...the show has a very cool sound, but we were still settling in on how we were approaching the scoring of the show.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Yeah, I mean it...we actually were...knew more what we didn't want, than what we wanted.

BRIAN HENSON: Than what we wanted, yeah.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Exactly, it was kind of a search. And we knew we didn't want the big, lush, orchestral sound of -

BRIAN HENSON: We didn't want an orchestra.

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: Which you kind of associate with space. With a space movie or space show. And so we wanted something that surprised and -

BRIAN HENSON: And Rockne, you really, you were real insistent, I think was absolutely right, we don't hear a guitar, a drum kit. We didn't want to hear things that would allow us to visualize how the music was being produced. And that's why you'll hear the score is really almost a hundred percent synthesized, they're trying to create sounds that aren't instruments that you recognize on a soundtrack.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Rygel is trying to take John's equipment.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: What's essential to the series, is a man from Earth dropped into an entirely alien environment, and the blessing of the...obviously the Henson Company is that we were able to do that. And with the exception of the Sebaceans, whom we run into only occasionally, everyone we run into is an alien presence, and so in -- that kind of followed through not only in the terms of the creatures, but obviously the production design, we didn't want it to look like anything else that might reflect on other movies or t.v. shows or anything like that, or anything having to do with space programming that we'd seen before, and obviously the music as well.

[Silence while a scene plays out. Shot fades out from Crichton, to Moya flying through space, towards a bright star/galaxy.]

ROCKNE S. O'BANNON: And that's how it all started. END OF COMMENTARY.