Sunday Page Four

Charity Auction (My Personal Favorite)

The proceeds from this year’s charity auction went to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Several props from the show were auctioned off including a pulse pistol and the “little bolts of light” gun from Premier. There were two or three Mambo shirts that were signed by the cast members and two paintings of cast members that were painted and donated by a fan. A signed script was also auctioned off.

 Then there was a super doodle by Justin Monjo that was signed on the back by Mr. Monjo, David Kemper, Ben Browder and Ricky Manning. Justin made the doodle while plotting episode 407 to be written by Ben Browder. I was lucky enough to win the doodle due to a combination of devotion to the charity and auction fever. I went up to pay and was about to go back to my seat when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there was Ben Browder! He said, “Thank you,” and gave me a very sweet kiss! How cool is that!?

The Making of Revenging Angel with David Kemper, Andrew Prowse, Gigi Edgely, Wayne Pygram and Tammy MacIntosh

Andrew Prowse said that Revenging Angel was probably the biggest challenge he’s taken on with Farscape. He didn’t know until the very last moment whether or not they would get away with it. If you don’t agree that they got away with it, he said he doesn’t want to hear it because he loves this episode. And that’s really all he’s going to say about it! Except that next year, he joked, we’ll have Farscape, the Musical. At least I think he was joking. 

None of them had any idea of what the animation would look like while they were shooting the episode. They actually played the scenes for the animators to give them a sense of what they were doing. They also gave an audio track to the animators. When the animation came in they did the voices again.   

Aeryn and D'Argo were cartoons because they were on Crichton’s mind, Scorpius was there because he was in Crichton’s mind. David Kemper said that the real story of the episode was the one between Chiana, Jool and D'Argo. If that didn’t work, then the episode wouldn’t work. The ladies and Anthony carry the story, and even if you strip out the cartoons, you’ll have a beautiful story between these three people. He said that it’s about them working out a terrible problem between them and it sees Chiana and D'Argo coming to some resolution that has them hugging each other.   

Wayne said that he’s a member of an elite club as one who works as an alien in prosthetics. Now he’s a member of another club with the cartoons. He said it’s fantastic. As an actor, these are things you would never contemplate.   

Andrew Prowse told us that when David Kemper came up with the idea, everyone said, “What do you want to do a cartoon episode for? The show works, why do you want to do cartoons.” Well, David wanted to do a cartoon ep, so they did a cartoon ep. 

One of the fans asked who actually did the cartoon designs of the individual people and if they got to approve them. Who did all 

the animation? Andrew Prowse said that it’s a very strange process once you get involved in it. They used Yorem Gross to do the cartoons. When they started telling them what they wanted to do, they looked at them incredulously. “You really want to do that? Are you sure?” So Yorem Gross started pitching designs and Farscape would say that’s not it, it should be something like this. We think we want this. We’re not sure. More designs, back and forth. Andrew said that there’s a huge amount of work involved and a huge amount of trust. They shot a lot more material for the episode than they actually used so they had an insurance policy just in case it didn’t work.   

Someone asked David Kemper what he was thinking when he conceived the idea for Revenging Angel. He said that he knew it would look like it did but he didn’t have a single detail or particular moment in mind right away. It ended up that the animation was packaging for the real story. Chiana suddenly seems to be growing up. She’s got to take care of stuff because no one else does. She’s supposed to be the kid but all at once she’s the mommy. And with Jool, a different side of her is beginning to show.   

Tammy said that to her the episode was incredibly poignant. She feels that it was important for Jool to make a connection with someone on the ship. It would have been easy for her to have Jool get all emotional and cry and carry on, but Andrew made her think about what Jool wants and then to express it to D'Argo with simple honesty.   

It didn’t look it from the final result, but the screaming matches between Chiana and Jool were extremely difficult to do. They both had different lines to say (scream), they had to start at the same time and end at the same time. Not only that but they had to end at the right place, where the lights were and where the camera was. David said that he came upstairs to his office and Ricky Manning, Lily Taylor, and Justin Monjo were outside the office. He heard absolute screaming and they said, “You can’t go in there”. He peeked the window and there were Gigi, Tammy and Andrew sitting at a table trying to make it comprehensible, learn the words and stop on the same beat. 

David said that his and Andrew’s favorite scene (mine too) is the one with D'Argo as D'Argo walking down the ramp toward Crichton and getting caught by a series of traps from a rake in the face to a banana peel. It worked so well because of Anthony’s extraordinary skill at comedy. They played the scene for us on the screen behind the stage and that was the end of Sunday’s presentation.

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