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Farscape vs Lexx

Recoil

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I'm sure this might have been posted here some time ago, but I never read about it because I wasnt watching either series. I buddy just loaned me his Farscape Season 1 set and I am starting to watch the show for the first time. Overall I do like it, not as much as B5 or even DS9, but I think its a solid show and has me interested. I dont see myself being a crazed fan of it, but its better than most stuff out there.

I have a question regarding this show. I noticed there was another show "Lexx" which seemed VERY similar. I remember a Trek episode talking about some guys theory of "Parallel Planet Development" well Farscape and Lexx seem to be one of those cases of "Parallel Show Development." I'm sure the die-hard Farscape fans will tell me they are NOTHING alike...but spare me, here is what I have read up on the "General premise" of those two shows and what they have in common:

1) Both involve fugatives
2) Both are on a Living Ship
3) Both of a human-ish Captain leader type (Crichton and that Stanley dude)

I realize that they can differ greatly from those points, but it is too much of a cooincidence how close they are. At first I thought Lexx was some cheap rip-off of Farscape...but Lexx was on the air like a year or two BEFORE Farscape (Which I didnt know).

Anyone know what the deal with these 2 shows are and why they seem like the same basic idea?
 
Lexx's first and 2nd season are very close to soft-core porn at times. The entire 2 first seasons is spent in quest of getting laid and partying. In the 3rd season Lexx started to become a little more serious, but still nothing like Farscape. What you quoted are the only similarities. The plots are really nothing alike.
 
Yea but they are pretty huge similarities. :)
Not really. Yes both shows have fugitives on a living ship. The Lexx however is the premier warship of the universe. Moya is an unarmed prison transport. The reasons and circumstances that make them fugitives are also very different. True, both Stanley and Crichton start off being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But whereas Stanley is pretty much an anti hero (at least in S1-2), Crichton fills the classic hero mold.

I haven't seen all of Lexx, but in terms of plots and stories Farscape leaves it eating it's dust.
 
Lexx & Farscape have some parallels, but I think that's pretty much where the similarities end :) B5 and DS9 similarities can extend into the characters' personalities themselves. I can see similarities to B5 in a lot of DS9 episodes (or vice versa, if that suits yer fancy), but not so much in Lexx vs. Farscape...
 
3) Both of a human-ish Captain leader type (Crichton and that Stanley dude)

It is not fair to count a human central character as a matter of "parallel development". The target audiance is entirely human. Therefore virtually *anyone* making a (live action) show is going to make the central POV character human. You might as well say that Farscape is based on Gilligan's Island because the main character in both is human.

Secondly:
You think that Crichton counts as a "Captain leader type" during S1 of Farscape? :eek: :confused: :eek: :confused:

*Nobody* on that ship would come close counting as a Captain, especially in S1. Every character has a different agenda. None of them would ever take an "order" from any of the others if it was something they really didn't want to do and it wasn't part of a quid pro quo deal. The anarchy that was the group dynamics on Moya was one of the first things that drew me to the show.

Crighton is the character most likely to act as a mediator, and (to an extent) he is the one most likely to be trusted by all of them (just because, as a complete outsider, he doesn't have an axe to grind with any of them or their races). That is a *long* way from being "Captain", though. Of course, on Lexx the ship is the only one that considers Stanley to be the "Captain".


The "living ship" concept wasn't exactly a brand new one in either show. They have been seen before; conceptually going back to Jonah and the whale, but more recently in such places as Tin Man on ST:TNG. It doesn't require anybody to have heard of the other show, nor to have both made identical huge leaps conceptually, to have come up with that idea.


So they both have central groups of characters who fugitives. That is too general of concept to say that it is too much to be a coincidence. You might as well say that they both ripped off The Fugitive (the David Jansen TV show).

And regardless of which one was n the air first, I really don't know which was proposed / under development first. I know that Farscape bounced around as an idea for quite while before it was produced. I honestly don't know about Lexx. (Or have you forgotten that DS9 was on the air before B5?)

I really don't see nearly the level of similarity between Farscape and Lexx that existed between Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9.
 
Also, if Lexx was only on a year prior to Farscape, I go back to the fact that Lexx was satire or a parody during it's first two seasons. So, it's not until after Farscape had a year under it's belt that Lexx decided to try to become a little more serious.
 
This is being picky I know, ;)

Maybe they both ripped off 'Blake's 7'?

1. Blake was a fugitive on the run
2. Zen on the Liberator could be considered 'living'
3. Blake was human
 
OK perhaps you guys missed my real point/question. Yes I know the shows are different and I think I as much said that. But the GENERAL PREMISE of the show is almost the same thing: a bunch of fugitives on a living ship.

What I was getting at was were there any rumors (like with B5/DS9 and Paramount/JMS) as to WHY these 2 shows came to market with such a similar 1000 ft concept?
 
The original blank and white Dr Who had a human looking fugitive (The Doctor).

The Vorlon ship in Babylon 5 was a living ship. The creators of Lexx say they took their CGI ideas from Babylon 5 - see the producers comments on the Lexx films. So that could be a straight fall through.
 
But the GENERAL PREMISE of the show is almost the same thing: a bunch of fugitives on a living ship.

What I was getting at was were there any rumors (like with B5/DS9 and Paramount/JMS) as to WHY these 2 shows came to market with such a similar 1000 ft concept?

I've never heard *any* such rumors, and I have been on Farscape bboards to some degree since somewhere in the latter part of their first season.

Honestly, the point at which the two shows appear to be the same concept is at roughly the same level as "police detectives solving crimes in a major city". I just don't buy it as even being convincing circumstatial evidence that they even knew of each others' existance during the initial conceptual development.
 
Additionally Lexx was a Canadian/German collaboration, and Farscape an Australian/American collaboration, so, most probably coincidence.
 
A friend of mine called Lexx 'smut in space'. :p
If you go way back to first one or two TV movies, it was kinda interesting, and not the "smut in space" kind of thing that it morphed into once they made it a series.

Still definitely not something that would be everyone's taste, but also not something that would turn off as many people because of the high reading on the bimbo-meter.
 
I like bimbos. :(

Well in either case, maybe it was a situation where the Farscape creators were looking for a way to showcase their Henson puppet technology and said "guys, we could do WAY better than this Lexx show. Good initial idea, but we can bury it in the story and characters" :p
 
Oh, bimbos have their attractions. ;)
That doesn't mean that such shows don't immediately turn off a certain portion of the public.

As for Henson saying "I know we can do this premise better than Lexx", I know tht they were shopping the premise around trying to get it produced for too long to have seen how Lexx actually turned out. I don't know how long Lexx spent in that kind of development "searching for producers / 'distribution outlets' / money", so I don't know if it is theoretically *possible* for Henson to have heard about Lexx being pitched somewhere. I also don't know how likely it is that such word would have reached them since, as has been pointed out, the two multinational co-productions came from groups in different countries.
 

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