Sooo....Was O'Bannon plagued by time constraints or...

Did he really just stop giving a damn about the writing?

I remember watching PKW after the long and unbearable Farscape hiatus. I was so ecstatic that I had my fantasy universe back that, at the time, I was simply incapable of seeing the massive flaws in the writing that are now apparent to me after watching it again years later.

Not only did it go from moderately quippy to balls-out Whedon-esque idiocy, but it also completely redirected the tangent of the show from 'conflict in outer space' to 'you can't hug your children with [wormhole] arms.'

Every single character's personality had become three times more exaggerated than what was seen in the series. Crichton, for instance, has always been the most animated, but one could easily tell that the writing was dramatically overplaying his extroversion for the sole purpose of making him seem authentically Crichton.

I had, at first, blamed this on the fact that Browder had been away from the part for so long, and thus came across as overbearing simply because he was trying to approximate the role he was reprising. But then it occurred to me that every other character (with the exception of Scorpius and Sikozu) was suffering severe cases of over-dramatization as well. Even Stark--as amazing as that sounds.

This hurt the presentation immensely. Quite frankly, it's painful to sit through some parts of this movie with the sheer amount of overacting present within it.

And then there's the wormholes, war, peace, Eidelons, blah!

When the wormhole plot device was first introduced in the series as something beyond a means of putting a human in an interstellar venue, it was very simply--and very practically--an efficient means of travel that would give someone the tactical edge in a conflict. It was not just "wormhole weapons"--as the characters keep saying in the film ad nauseum (they should have just replaced the word "wormhole" with "nuclear" and gotten it over with). Even after Crichton used Jack's displacement engine to destroy the Dreadnought, the show still hadn't graduated to wormhole weapons. It was just wormhole technology throughout the series. All of a sudden we have a movie about a war surrounded by controversial issues, and thus "technology" becomes "weaponry."

Now lets talk about war. We're allowed to. However, apparently, the players involved were devoid the ability of debating the value of war versus a compromise. By the end of the series, the only one constantly spewing the word "peace" in everyone's face was Greiza, who seemed to be obsessed with the idea of obtaining it at any cost, save disarming the Peace Keepers. Now, all of a sudden, she's the only one eager to meet the Scarrens in conflict while everyone else incessantly throws around the word as if it had any meaning beyond the realm of idealism. Even Scorpius, the one character whose life is dedicated to destroying Scarrens--or at least crippling them severely--was written as a willing participant in the pursuit of a compromise with them.....What. The. ****?

There was zero discussion on the war and what people stood to lose or gain if one side won over the other. The whole time, it was simply Crichton taking the high ground, repeating the phrase, "War sucks!" over and over again. Fair enough, but that doesn't really address the issue.

In the instances during the series where Scarrens and Peacekeepers are compared and contrasted, Crichton actually gives thought to supporting one over another. Multiple times, he's shown that one is a greater evil over another. He reluctantly admits as a such even if he still remains hesitant to cooperate with any one side--hell, he was ready to get the Peacekeepers to join forces with earth in the last episode. That former discussion on the matter however is strangely, and irritatingly, absent in PKW. In fact, it makes many concessions in the sense that he actually felt a treaty signed by the Scarrens would actually be trustworthy. It would be one thing if it had shown him arriving to that conclusion, but what we ended up with was him acting all chummy with Staleek simply because he was being manipulated into an agreement that avoided (immediate) war and because Crichton himself was being let off the hook by the Scarrens.

Now I'm not gonna argue that Crichton comes across as a peacenik, but he's always displayed certain political priorities in the past; been more discriminative of whom he felt was or was not worth making a deal with. This is opposed to just saying, "Both of you are evil, lets just make a treaty and call it a day." Quite frankly, acting ignorant of the obviously favorable scenario involving Peacekeepr dominance over the scarrens strikes me as a cruel or even vicious form of nihilism. I mean, does he really believe his family would be more secure in a galaxy that favors Scarren rule simply because he got them to sign a peace treaty? His character was so obsessed with sounding 'gray' that he didn't even stop to consider (as he did in the series) whether or the situation could have been categorized as either 'white' or 'black.' If Crichton's portrayal was closer to the series' incarnation, he simply would not have acted so obtuse--neither would his friends for that matter. Aeryn more than likely would have spoken up for the Peacekeepers as she did in the series multiple times.

Even so, despite all the evidence clearly in Crichton's sight alluding to Peacekeepers being a lesser danger than Scarrens, I could still potentially see him saying, "I don't give a ****!" and cooperating with no one out of a pride. But not without build up and discussion to justify his decision.

Moving on....Eidolons. Clearly, their inclusion was not previously intended because they simply did not fit. Or at least they were very poorly implemented. Aside from being rather convoluted, it was more than a little ridiculous for the film to favor the idea of these aliens creating lasting harmony. After all, compromise may bring about peace, but it is most certainly not conducive to comfort or even fairness. After all, what's peace if it comes at the cost of freedom? No one seemed to really want to address that even though they were dealing with a race that has a habit of conquering and subjugating other species simply because they can (i.e. Scarrens). And to be quite honest, what Hierarch Yondalao was doing to Staleek was simple mind control; he wasn't making him see things as they were, but rather how he wanted him to see them. As soon as he got him to sign anything, his perspective would go back to normal and neither he nor the rest of his race would have any incentive not to violate the treaty. It's foolish to believe that a psychic haze with almost narcotic effects qualifies as a solution to the conflict when the main problem has always resided with the inherent hostility and imperialism harbored by Scarrens.

In fact, this is exactly where O'Bannon outright ignores his own writing. Staleek clarified during his conversation with the Eidelon that the primary reason Scarrens were going to war was because they believed Chrichton had given the Peacekeepers a military edge through wormhole tech. In reality, the series had been quite clear in stating that it was Scarren fear that there was indeed such tech that kept them from leading an assault against the Peacekeepers. So that pretty much flew in the face of the point of the whole ordeal. Yet another example of the writing being so obsessed with wormhole "weapons" that it ends up making concessions about its source material.

And on a lesser note: the mention of a 37,000 year history between Humans and Eidelons leaves a pretty big plot hole as well from the series. The Eye of Ra symbol on the Eidelon trinket was Egyptian. Neither Egypt nor the conception of Ra is that old.

Smaller but still verily annoying details include:

Crichton yelling at Einstein for putting the knowledge in his head as though he never wanted it in the first place.

Crichton going to Einstein to unlock yet more phantom "knowledge." According to John himself, he had already unraveled what knowledge there is (even Jack himself said it gave him know-how on actually making wormholes). What's more, both him and Einstein clarified that he had no knowledge of wormhole weapons, and yet now it was there all along, and just locked like all the other "knowledge."