Now Really Is The Time To Buy Farscape: The Complete Series

If you don't know Farscape, you probably don't know why so many got excited about Ben Browder being cast in the new run of Doctor Who. He's the star of the show, a NASA test pilot who ends up passing through a wormhole to another part of the universe.

Another part of the universe in which several alien races would seem to be at war.

It's sci-fi adventure with a socio-political bent, loosely in the vein of Star Trek, Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica. It's probably far more in love with alien-ness than any of those, though, and there's a lot of Henson-created creatures throughout the run. A lot.

Amazon have made the Blu-ray collection of all four series one of their deals of the week, priced at $68.49, down from an RRP of $199.95. I can verify first hand that these discs play on both Region A and Region B players ' so the US, Europe and Australia are all sorted.

The DVD version is also available at a greatly reduced price too ' $46.99, down from $149.95.

Note: there was a 'sequel miniseries' called The Peacekeeper Wars, and the rights for that lie with a different publisher. As such, it's not going to appear in either of those sets, but can be purchased on DVD separately, and for less than $8 too. Some, UK-published DVD sets of the whole thing are still available at £59.97, but it's technically out of print.

Two of the show's most interesting regular characters are creations of the Jim Henson Creature Workshop. There's Rygel, a former despot who has fallen on the grace of others and who doesn't taken to this position well, and Pilot, the biologically bonded pilot (don't you know) of the huge Leviathan spacecraft, Moya, where much of the series takes place.

The Henson crew also provide a real variety of aliens throughout the run. Brian Henson says, in one of the sets many, many supplements, that the inspiration was the Star Wars cantina, and I think you'll see what he means from the grand array of alien life forms we get to meet.

Farscape has a rather devout fan following who I expect to leap on this deal, both feet first. As you might imagine, the show had me at 'Jim Henson Creature Workshop.'