Although official word has yet to arrive, it's almost certain that "Farscape" -- the series that was cancelled by the Sci-Fi Channel more than a year ago -- will in fact return as a four-part miniseries, and possibly even a movie.

While it's not exactly what Scapers were looking for, it's still a huge success, and everyone who is a fan should be looking at the fact that the miniseries is an open door, and they should take advantage of it.

Although Airlock Alpha covered "Farscape," especially after the show continued to sweep the Airlock Alpha Genre Awards, and even after I met Virginia Hey, who played Zhaan in the series, I never really had a chance to watch the show. I know what you're thinking ... "You run an entertainment news site, but you don't watch many of the shows you cover?"

Yeah, I know. I simply don't have a lot of time in my life, between work, this site, and my personal life. Although, I did make it clear a couple months ago in the Airlock Alpha Message Boards that I was going to sit down and watch the series. So, I wanted to know where to begin.

I posted a message on the boards, a bit fearful of the backlash I would receive from fans of the show who would suddenly realized I had never watched "Farscape." When I first started to see responses, I cringed at what I would find ... but there was no reason to cringe.

Almost every single "Farscape" fan that I have ever met, whether it be personally or online, has been nothing but the friendliest people in the world. I had a lot of people giving advice on the best episodes to watch, even some people arguing over which episodes I should watch first. I mean, these people really love their show, and even more, they love sharing it with others -- even those, like me, who should've been watching it all along.

The people at the Save Farscape Campaign, located at www.savefarscape.com have been even more friendly to me, and I'm sure to other people as well. And yeah, one would think that anyone who is running a campaign like that would be nice to everyone ... but in my more than five years experience, that simply isn't true.

I won't name other campaigns by name, but anyone here who has been in touch with different campaigns that are trying to achieve certain goals in the entertainment industry, aren't always the friendliest group -- especially if you disagree with them, even slightly.

But I feel that even with the Scaper campaign, even if I didn't feel that the series deserved to come back, I would still feel welcomed to share those opinions. In fact, I have spent some time in the past sharing my feelings on how Sci-Fi Channel isn't evil for cancelling the show, just doing business. I'm not saying that "Farscape" deserved to be cancelled, but sometimes, huge fans might accuse me of that for simply taking that approach. But I never was accused that by Scapers. They listened, some agreed, some disagreed. But no matter what happened, I still felt welcomed, and still felt a part of the community.

To me, Scapers deserve this, and they deserve more. I have never been so happy for a group of people as I am right now for Scapers. They are getting a return of a show that would NOT have happened if they weren't so organized, so polite, so professional, so passionate. All of them worked hard, whether they were part of the organization or not. Just your average every day fan helped by continuing to talk about "Farscape," despite the fact it's been off the air for for nearly nine months. And now they have reason to cheer.

And while I have your attention, let me point out how successful this campaign was, and how they shared that success not just with getting the show to return, but in many ways.

* More than $160,000 has been raised in 13 months
* Advertisements in newspapers, on the radio, and even on television, to alert people to the ongoing campaign
* Farscape rallies in 27 cities and seven countries
* Fundraisers for Make A Wish and Two Towers Foundation
* The sending of Farscape episode packages to troops in harm's way overseas

This is amazing work for an organization. This is the way to reach out, this is the way to show true humanity -- which is exactly what science-fiction shows like "Farscape" try to teach us. It's great to know that "Farscape" was successful, and now so are its fans.

Michael Hinman is the founder and news editor of Airlock Alpha. He is based in Tampa, Fla. (but currently is writing from northcentral Pennsylvania, hehehehehe). To contact him, write to michael@airlockalpha.com.

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