In the mid-90’s, the Planet-of-the-Week format ruled TV science-fiction.

In a production environment dominated by syndication and the need for self-contained episodes without serialized narrative, the idea of dropping a known cadre of characters onto a planet with a problem and letting them solve it over the next forty-two minutes was a successful - if overused - template.

At its best, it allowed shows from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Farscape to delve into moral and ethical thought experiments or explore the friction between wildly-differing cultures attempting to coexist, knowing that the status quo would be restored amongst the recurring characters at the episode’s end.

As to the subsequent fate of each week’s planet, no-one much cared, since a planet rarely made a second appearance.

Chris Farnell’s Fermi’s Progress is a deconstruction - both literary and literal - of the Planet-of-the-Week, each “episode” a two-hour novella following the crew of the Fermi, Earth’s first and last faster-than-light starship, as they explore a new world, get acquainted with the local populace, and both cause and solve problems in equal measure. 

But there’s a catch: the Fermi’s engines are charging, its destination beyond the control of its crew, and once it’s ready to jump, the shockwave it creates will obliterate the planet and everything on it as the crew are flung ever further from the ashes of our solar system.

Taking its cues from Farscape’s frantic, ridiculous space opera, Fermi’s Progress strikes a fine balance between farce and tragedy.

The crew of the Fermi are a straggling, mismatched band of tech entrepreneurs, call-centre staff and genetically enhanced super-soldiers, faced again and again with the total obliteration of all sentient life in their wake, and where TV sci-fi often relied on the lack of permanence of each planet as sleight of hand, Farnell uses the format as a lens to contemplate an alien civilisation - in all its strangeness and wonder and potential - and then to cremate it.

When syndication ruled, the emphasis was on the planets changing, not so much the characters who visited them. More often than not, the aliens were the ones who were changed, their laws broken, their edicts challenged, their understanding of the universe widened. But when the planets are no more, the only ones left to change are the visitors.

There is no return to a status quo for the crew of the Fermi, and as the series progresses, that may end up being the most fascinating part of their journey.