This is a book whose quality is all over the map. When it's good, it's solid. When it isn't, reading it is a chore.

One of the things I did appreciate about it was that it didn't just explore the show itself, but took a broader look at the fan community. Battis quotes fan fiction, describes visiting fan sites, and writes about sharing drafts of their essays with other fans. Sometimes the fans' opposing views are included to give a fuller picture. This broad look at Farscape leads to some excellent essays: well-written, approachable, and containing valuable analysis. While I felt others missed the mark in their connection to Farscape itself, some of the content Battis drew on was so intriguing that I enjoyed reading them anyway.

Others come across as nothing but padding to fill out the book. There Battis draws on theories without really explaining them or doing anything to make them approachable to the reader. And the content of those essays can be absolutely bizarre: some of the interpretations they come up with are mind-boggling, and made me wonder if they've ever heard that a cigar can be just a cigar. When you can follow the theories they're referring to, the links they draw seem tenuous at best (and absolutely wild at worst). Where the book also suffers is in the quality of the editing. Quoted lines are attributed to the wrong characters, one actress is given the wrong name entirely, characters' names and terms from the show are misspelled (sometimes several different ways in one chapter), and there are plenty of typos that spellcheck wouldn't catch, but an attentive editor should have. It really gives the impression that no one else looked over this book before sending it to print.

If you're a Farscape fan, you'll probably find parts of it to be of interest. But I wouldn't plan to read it cover to cover. ( )

For a critical work to succeed for me, it must do at least one of three things: make me understand the text and/or the theory used to explore the text in new ways, excite in me a desire to return to the text to explore it more fully, or affirm my own readings of the text. When I'm come over all academical, I'm most interested in the first of these; when I'm fannish, I'm probably most invested in the last. (And, honestly, if a critical work can't do at least the second, why are we even bothering?) Investigating Farscape did all three of these things at some point, and it never failed to get me intrigued to watch the whole series again. (To be completely fair, even having just finished it for the first time about two weeks ago, I was already super-psyched to go through the whole thing again. But still.) Battis clearly loves the show, which is refreshing (nothing worse than a critic who obviously hates the text in question, and I'm incredibly tired of scholars who feel like they can't be rigorous if they also appear to have *gasp* enjoyed something wholeheartedly), but he is not uncritical either, which is necessary for a work like this to be other than just a gush-fest. In addition to making some really interesting and insightful points about a range of topics (including masculinity, bodies, language, and colonialism), he writes really well (not a foregone conclusion for litcrit/cultural studies) and explains complicated theory succinctly and usefully. I think he sometimes overreaches (chapter four, in particular, makes some claims in service to his analysis that I'm not sure are held up by the text), but for the most part this is a fascinating and satisfying read. The discussion of masculinity was, for me, the high point (it hit number three in my requirements above hard and was full of "I see what you see/you see what I see" moments). My only real criticism is unfair: I wish Battis had discussed the show's religious symbolism fully, but as he made it clear that was never his intention, I guess I can't be too upset about it. Recommended to Farscape fans interested in a rigorous exploration of the show. ( )

Fun to read during my Farscape rewatch; basically, a big fan applies aspects of postcolonial and feminist/queer theory to talk about what’s going on in the show. I didn’t learn a lot, but I will always be happy to talk about how John Crichton’s heteronormative masculinity/standing in for “us” gets complicated by the fact that the other characters often think he’s inferior, that he’s regularly penetrated and violated, that he drips blood and pukes and hallucinates, that he never fully recovers from being tortured, and so on. ( )