Do we like Rockne S. O'Bannon?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Nothing nasty found, but not enough verified good or bad on the record to push the score higher.
Rockne S. O'Bannon is the sci-fi bloke behind Farscape, the cult series that ran on the Sci-Fi Channel for four seasons. He has said the show was a labour of love, and that new fans are still finding it 25 years on.
The Farscape story tells you something about him: he has said the network boss told him to make it as weird as he could, and he credited Australian crews for embracing the show's insanity. He went on to make Defiance for Syfy and Cult for The CW, and he came onto Revolution for its second season.
On the harm check, we searched his name against LGBTQ+ people, women, vaccines, climate, migrants and Trump, and found nothing from him. No harmful posts, no campaigning, no donations to anyone dodgy. A cluster of search results were about Ed O'Bannon, the basketball player, who is a different bloke, so we ignored them.
Searches for lawsuits, accusations and controversy came back empty too. That's a good sign, but it's an absence of evidence, not a glowing reference, and we did not find a full list of his recent collaborators that we could check against the usual suspects.
Nothing new on him lately beyond Farscape's 25th-anniversary chat in 2024, where he said he would love to bring the show back and has talked it over at length with co-creator Brian Henson. His stated hurdle is finding a studio willing to take the risk.
So: a creative sort with a loyal fanbase, a clean search record and no verified charity work or standing up at personal cost that we could cite. Support him, but know the file is thin.