Farscape was a co-production between Hallmark, which obviously you know make many TV movies and mini-series, and the Henson Company. It was co-financed by the two companies with a substantial licence fee from the Sci Fi Channel and very useful - but a bit of a dribble - money from the BBC.

Overseas sales for the show were okay but not as good as they could have been, so when you added up all of those things with a show that every year got slightly more complicated, and more wonderful, the budget did increase, not astronomically, but enough for it to be of concern to everybody.

Were Henson quite hands-on over controlling the show?

We were very hands-on. We would read several drafts of every script. We were hands-on financially, controlling the purse strings, and we were hands-on creatively, very much so.

We have a Creature Shop here in Burbank in Los Angeles and another one in London, but when the show started we took some of our best Creature Shop technicians, builders, and designers, and started a shop in Australia, in Sydney, on one of the sound stages.

We had seven big sound stages to do the show in Australia. It was a huge undertaking and so we were very hands on.