Farscape Creators Reunite, Look Back on Pushing Henson Creatures to the Max on SYFY Series

Is it possible that Farscape, the beloved SYFY series, is almost a quarter of a century old this year? In celebration, Shout Factory TV is hosting the Farscape Fandemonium Marathon. Moderated by Adam Savage, he'll interview series creators Brian Henson and Rockne O’Bannon for between episodes conversations throughout the marathon.

SYFY WIRE has an exclusive sneak peek clip with the trio talking about pushing Henson's Creature Shop to the max for character creation in the series, including why the character of Rygel is as small as he is in the series:

The Farscape Fandemonium Marathon will air throughout the day on May 5, featuring the airing of full Farscape episodes with brand-new Q&A interview pieces with Savage, Henson and O’Bannon.

Farscape remains one of SYFY's most beloved original series, which followed the adventures of the bio-mechanical ship Moya and its most recent addition, human astronaut John Crichton (Ben Browder). Crichton's space flight experiment goes wrong and he's sucked into a wormhole, coming out on the other side eventually rescued by the rag-tag crew of Moya and a Peacekeeper named Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black). Henson and the Creature Shop created a whole ensemble of characters including Pilot and Rygel, and hybrid characters including D'Argo and Chiana.

SYFY caught up with actress Claudia Black last year, as she shared her fond memories about her time on Farscape, and her admiration for how the series grew into its own over its four seasons: 

"...There are some aspects of world-building that are fantastic, to begin with, that I think are enthralling because of the Henson input and what [Creature Shop supervisor on Farscape] Dave Elsey brought. There were very strong creative, artistic, and aesthetic voices from the get-go, so there was enough world-building in that respect to be good nourishment for fans coming on board.

Then as we came out of infancy and the characters were allowed to sort of find a darker tone — and Sci-Fi Channel was really important in that space of encouraging it to be darker and edgier — we got to sort of…our range grew and deepened as actors, because we were no longer on a puppet show or a Muppet show. We were on something much edgier and darker. So [Farscape] got to be "adult" TV, which is what Brian had always wanted."

The Farscape Fandemonium Marathon will air on Shout! Factory TV and Farscape TV on May 5th at 9pm EST / 6pm PST, with an encore presentation on Farscape TV on May 6th at 6PM 9pm EST / 6pm PST. The entire series run of Farscape can also be streamed anytime on Peacock.