Unwieldy depends on who is wielding the cast and the story you are trying to tell.
The tale of a single lost ship works better with a smaller cast. You want a bigger cast, then tell bigger story involving all the locals in some Galactic Crisis storyline.
Over time, they did add more depth to the world, including Scorpious, the Scarrans, the Ancients and various other species.
Cause they had time, and no one cared Moya always stayed in the Uncharted Territories the way VOY kept getting complaints over staying in one place too long.
The characters evolved too, with Crichton going from the outsider to defacto leader and heart of the crew. Crais even goes from an enemy to an begrudging ally, and eventually a friend. Even Scorpious was worked in in a creative way through the neural chip/neural clone.
Smaller cast = Easier to focus on the few and give them development without too much complaint.
Beyond that, nothing about Farscape was informed from another show that they had to distinguish themselves from.
Exactly, being the first show in its' verse was an advantage.
Right, Farscape had a advantage. VOY had several others, including an experienced production staff, and a prebuilt fan base. And, before you say it, I don't believe that the fanbase, however it will be defined, set out to hate it, any more than when TNG came out all the TOS fans set out to hate that. It may have been outside their sensibility or preference for the type of show they desired. Despite the assertions, and request for verification, no verifiable evidence has been given that the audience "hated" (or ignored, panned, changed the channel, etc.) because they "stayed in one spot." If there is one common thread to disappointment, it was the characters and the "reset button" be used far more often than the show's premised promised to be.
With VOY, there was not distinguishing itself from TNG other than the DQ. Well, the DQ might as well have been the AQ given the fact that events from episode to episode mattered very little, except in minor, insignificant ways.
If the plot line was not working, production staff should have changed it, pure and simple-not just in a two part episode, where the writing staff often changes so that one writer writes one half and another writes another half, sometimes resulting in disconnect.
I mean, DS9 started out with a space station, and the action coming to it, and then the Dominion War was inserted. Guess what? You can have a crisis plot and not stay in the same place. Totally doable.
Instead, TPTB fell in to lock step with the TNG formula, and did not deviate from it, safe for in the very few instances. That's disappointing and a waste of potential, not hatred.
