{"id":123574,"date":"2022-04-04T15:26:44","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T14:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=123574"},"modified":"2023-03-21T07:38:41","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T07:38:41","slug":"farscape-directing-pk-tech-girl-the-way-we-werent-and-muppet-melodrama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/tv\/farscape-directing-pk-tech-girl-the-way-we-werent-and-muppet-melodrama\/","title":{"rendered":"Farscape: Directing \u2018PK Tech Girl\u2019, \u2018The Way We Weren\u2019t\u2019 and Muppet Melodrama"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An eye fills the lens, the camera pulling back to reveal the haunted face of Dominar Rygel XVI, the diminutive deposed despot whose function over the previous six episodes of\u00a0Farscape<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0had been to either heighten the danger through selfishness or deliver pompous putdowns.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s immediately obvious that things have changed. The comedy space toad is going to do a lot of heavy lifting this episode. Floating ominously before the crew of Moya like a ruined cathedral is the Peacekeeper command carrier Zelbinion, where Rygel was first held prisoner, tortured and humiliated by the sadistic Captain Selto Durka over 100 cycles (or years, probably) before the events of\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0begin.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, funnily enough, it\u2019s the emotional puppet stuff that I really liked,\u201d muses Australian director Tony Tilse over Zoom from one of the islands of Indonesia where his latest show is in pre-production. \u201cWhich I hadn\u2019t thought about. When people first get to this show they\u2019re like \u2018It\u2019s just a puppet.\u2019 So you\u2019ve got to go, \u2018Can I make people suspend their disbelief? Can I make this become a real person?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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First broadcast on April 16th, 1999, \u2018PK Tech Girl\u2019 (S1, Ep7) is often regarded as\u00a0Farscape<\/em>\u2019s<\/strong> turning point. A step away from the sort of encounter-of-the-week stories that wouldn\u2019t have looked out of place in\u00a0Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>and into much darker territory, with a far greater sense of consequence and character development. All shows evolve as their creators and cast get a better feel for what works and who their audience is, but the steepness of the climb was perhaps exacerbated by diffusion of demands from the stakeholders. As a co-production between The Jim Henson Company, its longstanding production partner Hallmark, and Australia\u2019s Nine Network \u2013 plus the influence of the Sci-Fi Channel which largely dictated its success in the US \u2013 Farscape<\/strong><\/em> was born with the risk of wildly different objectives and expectations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that first season, I think\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0was still trying to find its tone,\u201d agrees Tony. \u201cPart of it was because you had The Jim Henson Company, you had the Sci-Fi Channel, you had these factors to try to balance out [and ask] \u2018What is the show? Is it family viewing?\u2019<\/p>\n

Small Screen, Big Dream<\/strong><\/p>\n

We do know. We know because \u2018PK Tech Girl\u2019 is a very obvious slice of magic. The Zelbinion interior was filmed on location at a disused power station, giving it a sense of scale and industrial decay that a studio set might lack, and these corridors are approached with cinematic aspirations. Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) strips to a vest and channels Ellen Ripley (with a pinch of Sarah Connor), an oversized cannon at her hip as she stalks claustrophobic smoke-filled corridors \u2013 all shot from below as if some unseen Giger-esque obscenity is set to drop down onto her back. Both Rygel and the titular tech girl, Gilina Renaez (Alyssa-Jane Cook), get to briefly play the role of Newt as they scrabble from shadow to shadow in panic, the former pursued by memories and the latter fleeing the boarding party of John and Aeryn.<\/p>\n

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Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) channels Ripley with a pinch of Sarah Conner in PK Tech Girl.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What she\u2019s really scared of are the Sheyangs, toad-like scavengers with cruel shark eyes and petulant mouths, who had grilled her teammates by belching fire. Their one redeeming feature \u2013 as far as our heroes are concerned \u2013 is that they are incredibly dense (figuratively as well as literally, they waddle around their ship with the elegance of baked potatoes) and prone to fighting amongst themselves. Another con: their ship is basically a rocket battery with a bridge attached and Moya stands no chance. Another pro: it takes seemingly forever to prime a salvo and they\u2019re soon deterred by D\u2019Argo shouting at them. But hey, this is\u00a0 Farscape<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0and it\u2019s more than capable of being goofy and gruesome all at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the series started,\u201d says Tony. \u201cI was offered that one episode. That was my offer for the season. They were still working out the rest of the season. I\u2019m a fan of sci-fi and, yes, I was playing in James Cameron\u2019s territory and Ridley Scott\u2019s territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jumping forward to Tony\u2019s second episode, \u2018Till the Blood Runs Clear\u2019 (S1, Ep11), he plays around with the conventions of the Western to a similarly gleeful degree, with a low shot of D\u2019Argo jumping from the Prowler and into the sand as if he were dismounting from a horse and close-ups of faces as John attempts to stare down the two feral bounty hunters. There\u2019s an element of pastiche, sure, but whilst Australian cinema came of age in the 1970s, Australian TV in the 1990s \u2013 produced for a small domestic market, with zero export potential beyond Ramsay Street and Summer Bay \u2013 gave directors little opportunity to go big. Tony\u2019s resum\u00e9 prior to\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0consists \u2013 like most of his contemporaries \u2013 of police dramas, hospital dramas, and\u00a0Bananas in Pajamas<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0allowed me to do is go, \u2018I can do genre, I can do genre\u2019. And so from that point onwards, I really have chosen \u2013 as much as I can \u2013 genre shows. Hey, it got me to do the Sam Raimi series,\u00a0Ash vs. Evil Dead<\/em><\/strong>, and the fanboy in me goes, \u2018Oh, my God, I\u2019m here with the cabin being rebuilt in the forest with Bruce Campbell\u2019. I\u2019m just kind of going \u2018I think I\u2019m just gonna kind of wet myself\u2019.\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong> allowed me to dream big, you know? So that was sort of the start of my progression, especially in genre because now I\u2019m here in Asia doing horror and the last job here was a \u2018Nasi Goreng Western\u2019 [as in \u2018Spaghetti Western\u2019, meaning a cowboy movie filmed in Italy]. So it was an Indonesian Western for HBO Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Australia, we had done a lot of shows that were much lower in the budget terms and so we\u2019d see these fantastic American shows come in, and we go, \u2018Oh, yeah, but if we had that money, we could do that\u2019. [Farscape<\/em><\/strong>] turns up and then you go, \u2018Hmm, okay, I\u2019ve got some money \u2013 put up or shut up\u2019. So I felt like I had to go, \u2018Okay, well, now I\u2019ve got a bit of a sandbox to play with. I have to make sure I can do the best I can and I can have some fun with it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

They certainly had fun. Between the explosives and the flame-throwing Sheyangs, an inferno of pyro is lit on \u2018PK Tech Girl\u2019, and the production makes enthusiastic use of the physical space. One Sheyang ducks his head through a ceiling hatch to burble at his shipmates, and in the climactic finale Aeryn abseils down at a critical moment to save John and Gilina from certain death. Where was she? How did she get up there? Why did she have to be abseiling? Oh, it doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a kid in the candy store going, \u2018Let\u2019s blow up this\u2019, \u2018Let\u2019s pull up that\u2019, \u2018Let\u2019s do that\u2019,\u201d recalls Tony with a twinkle. \u201c\u2018Let\u2019s do those things that I\u2019ve always wanted to try.\u2019 you know, and, \u2018Let\u2019s have Aeryn abseil down from this from the top of this thing\u2019. And, you know, \u2018have the fire creatures blow up and burn stuff\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wizard of Oz<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the idiosyncrasies of\u00a0Farscape<\/em>\u2019s<\/strong> production was the sometimes awkward hybrid between North American and Australian systems. Typically for a genre show, the executive producer\/s \u2013 the Alex Kurtzmans or Chris Carters \u2013 would call the shots, sitting atop the production pyramid like a Pharoah. In Australia \u2013 much like the UK at the time \u2013 the director took the episode from beginning to end, contributing to the creative \u2018schizophrenia\u2019 (to use Tony\u2019s phrasing). Considering that the show\u2019s creators \u2013 Brian Henson and Rockne S. O\u2019Bannon \u2013 were on the other side of the Pacific Ocean for much of the time, the directors had a greater role in establishing the sheer\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0of\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0than they get credit for.<\/p>\n

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Farscape\u2019s production was a hybrid between North American and Australian systems…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIn Australia, directors have a little bit more say, both in the production and in the editing, whilst in the American system, the directors have less input into the edit. They have a go at the scripts. And so I think with\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>, the directors did have the opportunity to [have] a lot of input into the process. Now, whether they took what we said, is up to them. But look, the television medium is a producer\u2019s medium, so the directors don\u2019t necessarily get credit [and] that\u2019s okay, we\u2019re used to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As well as Tony Tilse, Peter Andrikidis (starting with \u2018The Flax\u2019 \u2013 S1, Ep12), Ian Watson (starting with \u2018They\u2019ve Got a Secret\u2019 \u2013 S1, Ep10), Rowan Woods (starting with \u2018Back and Back and Back to the Future\u2019 \u2013 S1, Ep5), and chief amongst them, the late Andrew Prowse (who directed the premiere, and later took on producer duties), became regular contributors. It\u2019s reductive to credit\u00a0Farscape<\/em>\u2019s<\/strong> coming of age to one person, but starting with \u2018PK Tech Girl\u2019 there was a shift towards more mature content and more cinematic treatment that opened the way to a higher caliber of storytelling, such as \u2018DNA Mad Scientist\u2019 (S1, Ep9) and \u2018Rhapsody in Blue\u2019 (S1, Ep12) which added psychological crisis, moral ambiguity and body horror to the freewheeling space opera. These elements would go on to become core components in the composition of\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy to get the credit that I was part of that \u2013 that tonal shift for the season. I think that\u2019s where\u00a0Farscape<\/em>\u00a0found its rhythm and found its feet in that particular episode. So I feel very blessed and privileged to have the chance to have done that. I mean, the fans have been very kind to me about that episode. And, I know that the Sci-Fi Channel was very, very impressed with that episode. So that\u2019s where it all sort of started and that\u2019s when I became a regular director on the show from that point onwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Way We Learnt<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the second half of the first season and especially into the first half of Season 2,\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0settled into a groove with a regular crop of directors and the guidance of writer\/producers like David Kemper, who like Rockne S. O\u2019Bannon was a survivor from the sinking of\u00a0SeaQuest DSV<\/em><\/strong>, and Ricky Manning. Fortunately, this didn\u2019t curtail the room to manoeuvre that had allowed for such an artistic levelling up from Tony and his peers.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou did have a lot of freedom,\u201d he recalls, \u201cOnce you earn their trust, then you are invited into the writers\u2019 room and become a little bit more of a showrunner model in the sense that there\u2019s a team, there\u2019s a team of writers and a team of directors who did it regularly. We could have the meeting, come in and say, \u2018Look, I\u2019ve always wanted to do\u2026.\u2019 and \u2018How can we\u2026?\u201d, and so you get the script, and you could work that around, and then modify that with your crazy ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d go, \u2018Yeah, you try that\u2019, \u2018try that\u2019 or \u2018do that\u2019. There\u2019s a lot of give and take in that regard. In Season 2, Season 3, I was more heavily involved. It was a fantastic collaboration between us, the directors, and the writers, because I think we really understood what the series was and sometimes, we\u2019d go a bit crazy, and they\u2019d pull us up, but there was a lot of opportunity for us, as directors to [contribute] a very strong visual input, a very strong performance input into the show.<\/p>\n

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Farscape<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0soon settled into a groove with a regular crop of directors who were given a lot of freedom.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe writers would come and say, \u2018We\u2019ve got this concept, we want to do\u00a0this<\/em>,\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0this\u2019<\/em>. And then we could offer our say, how you could do it, how you could do it visually, or you can say, \u2018Look, I can\u2019t get\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0location, but I can get\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0location. What do you think about how we do this?\u2019 So there was a great level of, as I said, collaboration, and a lot of fun with that. Especially when, you know, you have a rapport with your actors as well. Then because Ben [Browder] wrote some episodes himself, and, I was privileged enough to shoot some of Ben\u2019s stuff. So Ben for me as a director and with the lead actor and the writer himself, we had a lot of playtime which is, which is great.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Tony directed both of Ben\u2019s scripts for Farscape \u2013 \u2018Green Eyed Monster\u2019 (S3, Ep8) and \u2018John Quixote\u2019 (S4, Ep7), a dramatically tense bottle episode and a gloriously silly budget-free knockabout respectively \u2013 which has its benefits, namely that the collaboration between writer and director can unfold on the spot, but having the talent involved at that level potential pitfalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be a very dangerous process because you can start to go down a path that\u2026.\u201d he pauses for thought before proceeding with what can only be described as the Australian affection for a bullshit-free environment.<\/p>\n

Uncharted Tilse Stories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Somewhere in those same hazy borderlands between inventiveness and indulgence is\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0cast\u2019s legendary propensity for ad-libbing, a process that has produced some of the most memorable moments and quotable lines in the show\u2019s run. But from a production standpoint it might be tempting to see this purely as time and money dribbling away, so what\u2019s a conscientious young director in a high-pressure environment to do?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the rapport between Ben and Claudia was working, it was very important to not interrupt that rapport and let that become natural. So that was really great for us to be able to let them have a play, but, you know, David Kemper and Rockne and those guys are always in charge and so you knew when you went too far. Which I love them for, because they gave us a bit of rope and we\u2019ll go away, and they the go \u2018Guys, stop, come back, come back, you\u2019ve gone too far.'”<\/p>\n

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It was important not to interrupt the rapport between Farscape<\/strong><\/em> stars Claudia Black and Ben Browder…\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe scripts are very, very tight scripts,” he says. “Some of them [had] tightness at certain points and there are other points where they wanted to give space for the actors to let the chemistry work. So the way they structured that series was very, very clever. And Ben was fantastic. He\u2019s [got an] instinctive ability of ad-libbing.\u00a0 Once you get to those seasons where those actors are so in tune with their character, there\u2019s some fantastic stuff that can come out from that.<\/p>\n

As for how far is \u2018too far\u2019 for\u00a0Farscape<\/em><\/strong>, Tony refuses to be drawn on specifics. (I tried but despite promising a \u2018Release the Snyder Cut\u2019-style fan campaign, he wouldn\u2019t budge.)<\/p>\n

\u201cOn one particular episode, we went quite, quite over the top. I\u2019m not gonna name the episode. I did some shots that I deliberately put in the edit. They looked at the edit and they went, \u2018Ah, you can\u2019t have that shot. None of it.\u2019 Ben and I still joke about that shot.”<\/p>\n

He does however cheerily acknowledge that at least one episode perhaps winked too overtly at the show\u2019s narrative conventions \u2013 \u2018Scratch \u2018n Sniff\u2019 (S3, Ep13). \u201cIt was a very funny episode,\u201d he reflects, \u201cbut we went a bit mad on that one. But that\u2019s okay, that happens. It happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concerning Puppets<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s kinda interesting that despite his reputation as the \u2018action director\u2019 \u2013 David Kemper used to dub him \u2018Tony Woo\u2019 \u2013 what really stands out from Tony\u2019s time on Farscape<\/strong><\/em> are episodes which place so much drama in the rubbery mitts of the Jim Henson Creature Shop. Of course, there\u2019s the aforementioned \u2018PK Tech Girl\u2019, but Tony drops us back down to Rygel\u2019s POV for its follow up \u2018Durka Returns\u2019 (S1, Ep15), and in \u2018A Bug\u2019s Life\u2019 (S1, Ep18) the miniature Machiavelli finds himself cornered in a vent by a crack Peacekeeper black ops team. If Tony Tilse is Farscape<\/em>\u2019s<\/strong> John Woo, then surely Dominar Rygel XVI is his Chow Yun-(very)Fat.<\/p>\n