Throwback Thursday: A Sexy Space Opera Summer Binge

This ain’t your parents’ space show!

Hey Fleshbot fans! There’s nothing better in a summer heat wave than a good binge watch inside in the air conditioning, but how do you find something you haven’t seen before? You can scroll endlessly through your streaming apps, start several series and lose interest, rewatch stuff you’ve already seen, or you can listen to me and check out this week’s Throwback Thursday pick, which is Farscape, which aired from 1999-2004 on The Sci-Fi Channel (now known as Syfy). It was produced by The Jim Henson Company and Hallmark Entertainment, and most of the cast hail from Australia and New Zealand. We’re going sci-fi this week also because of International Moon Day, coming up on July 20, which of course celebrates the anniversary of humankind’s first landing on the moon in 1969. Stories about space travel and aliens, and stuff, were around long before Moon Day, but it certainly inspired a lot of new stories in the decades since. Let’s starburst off on an adventure (you’ll learn what that is, it’s not the candy!).

I chose this series that I have loved since it was originally aired because, well, I’m a fan-being, and it’s possible that my babyqueer college student self underwent a lot of sexual awakenings when this first aired. The show centers on a human astronaut from Earth named John Crichton (Ben Browder) who ends up going through a wormhole, which is a rift in space that acts as a shortcut to a distant part of the galaxy. Crichton literally crashes into and meets a ragtag ship of weird-looking aliens, each with their own issues and agendas, some of which are fugitives because the ship was being used as a prison transport. Even the ship herself, called Moya, is a living being, in a symbiotic relationship with an ancient multi-armed alien named Pilot, who, well, pilots the ship.

Farscape is a lot more gritty and raw and outright horny than the polished politeness and military conformity that you find in many Star Trek shows, in fact, the sleek leatherclad military folks, the Peacekeepers, are the bad guys, except tough-ass bitch Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black), who is aboard Moya and realizing she’s been brainwashed. So, where’s the sexiness? Can you get any sluttier than James T. Kirk, or Will Riker, for that matter? Absolutely, you can! There is… a lot… of black leather in this show. It is the primary uniform of the Peacekeepers and the later villain Scorpius, who looks like he just stepped out of a leather bar. There’s also a lot of alien biology and quirks thereof. Sometimes this is played for laughs when the frog-like deposed monarch Rygel farts helium. But the hot, bald, blue-skinned priestess Zhaan (Virginia Hey) stands buck naked in the sunlight, having light-induced “photogasms” because she’s actually a plant! The muscle of the crew, Ka D’Argo, is a Luxan, and he’s got tentacles. Yep. There are tentacles. The crew picks up gray-skinned brat and nymphette Chiana (Gigi Edgley), who has lots of interest in sex, and she becomes part of the main cast, even managing to hook up with one character as well as that character's adult son! Of course, there is the de rigueur body switching episode and lots of romance storylines and intrigues along the way. If you don’t have much time, check out this list of the best episodes, but you will get caught up in the imaginative and twisty plots of Farscape, I guarantee, and it’s an excellent way to stay cool!

Farscape is available for free streaming (at press time) on Tubi, Pluto, The Roku Channel, Plex, SlingTV, and other free streamers as well as for paid subscribers of Peacock. There are 88 episodes plus the Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars wrap-up miniseries, which can be found (at press time) on most of those streamers and Amazon Prime, so get your snacks and cold drinks ready and escape reality for a while!