Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: Steve and Hayley Watch Farscape: Season 1, Episode 21

1x21: “Bone to Be Wild”

HAYLEY: Oh dear. After the previous two-parter was arguably the best story of Season One so far, we get… this. It’s all about botany, which means that I should love it.
STEVE: It’s about how BOTANISTS ARE EVIL!
H: You know, I could get behind a good evil botanist. I mean, mad scientists can’t all be chemists and physicists.
S: “She's a Delvian. I have lived over 200 cycles-- consumed by my life's work as a botanist! Until today, I could only dream of sampling such an incredible species!”
H: Okay. So Zhaan is a plant. I guess that’s okay, in some sci-fi hand-wavey way. But we’ve seen her eating food. Just for fun? She’s blue because of her blue chloroplasts, which I can buy. She also says the gold parts of her skin are stomata, which… doesn’t make any sense.
S: I don’t know what stomata are, but I could sense your disapproval as soon as she said it.
H: Stomata are just pores.
S: Also this makes the fact that all the other Delvians have hair even more confusing.
H: It also makes me really wonder about those sacred trees the Delvians were trying to plant…. So this is supposed to explain why Zhaan went all orgasmic in the light in “Till the Blood Runs Clear,” and I don’t really think that fits, either. Overall, I just don’t think this was very well thought out in advance. But what about the plot? What did you think of the back-and-forth with Crichton, Zhaan, and D’Argo trying to parse out who was the evil one, Br’Nee or M’Lee?

S: I thought it was messy and a little contrived. Like, there’s a bit where everyone’s like, ‘Crichton you stay here we’ll come back for you later.’ And I’m like, why? Except that the characters need to be split up for the story to work. I did like the moral complexity of the Br’Nee-M’Lee dispute-- both were clearly in the wrong-- but the set-up was contrived. If Br’Nee’s people seeded all life on the asteroid, why were there animals there to begin with? If they needed a predator to kill all the animals, why did that predator need to be sapient? How did M’Lee’s people even sustain themselves as long as they did given how much she needs to eat?
H: And if M’Lee’s people eat bones, why were there no insects or invertebrate animals on the asteroid? Don’t Br’Nee’s people know that plants need a functioning ecosystem in order to survive? WHO WAS POLLINATING THEM??? These are the important questions.
S: I much more enjoyed the B- and C-plots in this episode. All the stuff with Aeryn and Moya’s baby was great. It was a nice and appropriate touch that Pilot could only trust her to talk the baby round.

H: Claudia Black did a good job in the scenes when she was in the offspring ship; she’s basically just standing in a room by herself, but she manages to convey a calm excitement and genuine concern and care towards the baby.
S: And her reaction when Pilot tells her Moya wants her to name the baby is genuinely heartwarming. Aeryn had like no emotion or sentiment in her life pre-Moya, so these moments mean a lot to her, and Black communicates that well.
H: In the other subplot, Scorpius continues to degrade Crais, as they search the asteroid field for Moya aboard Crais’s ship.
S: I almost feel bad for Crais at this point. Except that Scorpius is 100% right. Crais has not done a very good job.

H: We also learn that Scorpius has-- I would say a dark side, but all of his sides are dark. When Crais cracks and attacks him, Scorpius reveals his super-strength and his voice changes to be much deeper. And he’s angry at Crais for making him break his composure. Which, I think, makes his normal calm demeanor and voice all the more frightening.
S: Yeah, at first when Crais snapped and started wailing on Scorpius I thought Scorpius was about to receive turnabout for goading Crais so much; I didn’t expect Scorpius to be mentally and physically superior.
H: So, D’Argo convinces M’Lee to hold out for the arrival of the Peacekeepers, so she can board their ship and have her fill. I’m not really sure that D’Argo was doing her a kindness here. Surely the Peacekeepers will soon figure out that she’s eating them and just kill her?
S: Yeah, there are thousands of Peacekeepers on a command carrier, right? She can’t win. But, I’m sure she will get the drop on and eat Scorpius, and our crew will never be bothered by him again.
H: Sure. Oh, we forgot to talk about one thing. Zhaan inexplicably can turn invisible. Because that’s a thing that plants can do. Wouldn’t this have been useful in, oh, just about every episode so far?
S: Also how does she turn her robes invisible? (And is she still wearing her priestess vestments following on from “Through the Looking Glass”? Her non-religious phase was short.)
H: I’m not sure. She’s got her outer robe back on, but not the sash-thing she put on in “Through the Looking Glass.” I guess we still have a lot of unanswered questions about Zhaan, and I hope the show can handle them in a satisfying way after this episode took her race so far off the rails.
S: One other thing while we’re discussing Zhaan, which I keep meaning to mention. I really like the relationship between Zhaan and D’Argo. More than any other pairing on the show, they feel like real friends in the way that they talk to and support each other. There are nice moments between them in this episode (at the end), but also their mission together in “The Hidden Memory” for example. They almost feel like the “mom” and “dad” of Moya’s crew at times, the only two characters who consistently act like adults. (Most of the time.)

1x22: “Family Ties”

STEVE: Season One finale! It’s been not quite three months, and we’re already a quarter of the way through Farscape.
HAYLEY: I don’t like thinking about the fact that there are only four seasons! This episode starts off with an abrupt betrayal by Rygel, and although this move fits in with his character, I was definitely disappointed and somewhat shocked by his decision. This ain’t Star Trek.
S: It seems to all be there to set up a character transformation though, because when he comes back to Moya, Crichton and him have a heart-to-heart about how what matters is doing the right thing first, not when all other options fail. It was still shocking, though, but like all things Rygel, it was also mined for comedy, as Rygel delays providing useful information to Scorpius and Crais until he has a bath and fills all three stomachs.
H: I was also surprised to learn that Rygel can fly a Leviathan transport pod. When did he pick that skill up?

S: Maybe they’re very user-friendly. So the main premise of this episode is about Moya hiding in the asteroid field, trying to protect Moya’s baby (now named Talyn) from the Peacekeepers. Crichton and company spin various plans about how to defeat the Peacekeeper command carrier, now under Scorpius’s control, mostly involving explosives, while Crais himself defects. But the real core of this episode is a series of one-on-one conversations: D’Argo and Chiana, John and Zhaan, Pilot and Aeryn, John and Aeryn, Aeryn and D’Argo, John and Crais, John and Chiana, Rygel and John, John and his dad (kind of), and finally, John and D’Argo trapped in space.
H: Huh. I guess I didn’t even pick up that essentially every conversation was between only two people.
S: Well, I’m cutting out all the group conversations where they plot strategy or whatever.
H: But this was a tense episode, with a lot of emotion packaged into the characters weighing the options involved in carrying out their plan(s), and I’m sure all those one-on-one moments helped make the atmosphere of the episode feel both very close and very serious.
S: I really enjoyed it. The conversations really highlight how far all these characters have come: just to pick out some moments almost at random, I really liked Pilot and Aeryn talking about their unique trust, and the discussion of Aeryn’s parents, and John and D’Argo’s bro banter. Compare all this to the way they were not even in the premiere, but “DNA Mad Scientist” or “Till the Blood Runs Clear” or even “Through the Looking Glass.” They’ve come a long way as friends and almost family. And yeah, that makes all the suspenseful will-they-escape? stuff carry some weight. Because they care about each other, and we know as viewers how much work that took, we don’t want to see them torn apart. It’s an effective example of how to do real character-based storytelling.

H: I especially liked one of the scenes you picked out-- the discussion of Aeryn’s parents, between her and John. I like to imagine that after John offered it to her, she did say something into his tape recorder, either for his dad or for her own parents. And I like that Farscape takes the opportunity to use the season finale to slow down and consider all of these relationships, and have the characters consider the ramifications of their actions before diving into their plan. It’s an unusual move, since most shows would use a finale to focus just on the action that takes place in the final five minutes or so of the episode.
S: (Although, not to oversell, recall that Deep Space Nine had a season finale that was two-thirds about Sisko being annoyed Quark was crashing his camping trip.)

H: When the characters do finally initiate their plan, it’s not completely obvious what the entire plan is right away. (Or at least it wasn’t to me, but maybe I just wasn’t following when they explained it earlier.) D’Argo and Crichton set off in a transport pod, heavily armed with explosives. It’s a suicide mission-- or at least it would be, if Aeryn wasn’t following in her prowler. (She blends in with all of the prowlers from the command carrier.) Rather than fly the explosives at the command carrier itself, John and D’Argo instead take it all the way to the moon that the Gammak Base is located on. And then, they eject themselves from the pod, and allow it to complete its flight right into the moon-- completely destroying the entire base. I don’t know about you, but my jaw dropped when I realized what they had done.
S: They don’t kill anyone in the process, though.
H: They don’t?!
S: When Scorpius figures out what they’re up to, he says, “If he ignites the oil surface of that moon, we will have to abandon our research and evacuate the base.” So it seems like the base is destroyed, but its personnel have time to evacuate.
H: Oh. Hmm. Well, I’m glad of that, because I thought it was a pretty un-Crichton-like move. This seems much more in line with one of his plans, then. The move ultimately works-- Moya is able to starbust away-- but Aeryn was not able to rescue John and D’Argo before she did, leaving them separated from the ship and the rest of the crew.

S: Plus, Crais steals Talyn! That was literally the only thing I remembered from seeing this episode before.
H: So we’re left a pretty dramatic cliffhanger to end the season. The crew is split up, Moya has lost her baby, Crais has a powerful weapons ship-- and D’Argo and John are drifting in space together, unsure if Aeryn will even be able to rescue them before one or both suffocates.
S: Yeah. Crichton and D’Argo drifting above a burning moon is a hell of an ending.
H: And as if that weren’t enough, the ring that John’s dad gave him as a good luck charm drifts from his fingers into the void of space.
S: If this was 2000, you’d have to wait three months to find out how this turns out. Thankfully, we only had to wait three days.

2x01: “Mind the Baby”

HAYLEY: Season Two starts about as strong as Season One ended, I’d say. There’s tension, and plot twists, and character moments here. Plus jokes.
STEVE: My favorite: “Right, and how many times have you and I been close?” “Just the once.” “Uh, nonono, not that kind of close.” “Oh. Um. FRIEND CLOSE. Um, er, more than once.”
H: Ha. I love when Aeryn glances awkwardly at D’Argo during that exchange! It’s maybe a slight cop-out that, after the crew was scattered, Moya just decides to turn around after she realizes that Talyn didn’t come with her. But I can easily forgive that, because it does seem like something she would do, and there could have been much more contrived ways for the crew to all get back together again.
S: On the one hand, I like that the situation from the previous episode isn’t very easy to get out of, but on the other hand, I was a little disappointed that they end up almost exactly where they were: Moya trying to hide from the command carrier in the asteroid field, while Crais steals Talyn. It made the cliffhanger not quite as consequential as it ought to be. Though, to be fair, much of the “easiness” of it all comes from Aeryn making a deal with the devil between seasons.
H: Yeah, they almost end up worse off than before they enacted the plan to escape the asteroid field in the first place. Although at the end Moya does starburst away, they’ve not only lost the transport pod that they sent into the moon, but they’ve lost Talyn, and the command carrier is still in pursuit. I liked that Crais was playing both sides-- and that both sides knew full well that ultimately, Crais was only out for Crais.

S: Crais was one of the real high points of this episode. I really liked that conversation between him and D’Argo, where he tells D’Argo his miscegenation disgusts him, but he also has to question that disgust, because it was taught to him by the Peacekeepers.
H: Crais has regained much of the confidence he lost throughout Season One-- as evidenced by his formerly disheveled hair being nice and smoothly braided again.
S: Oh, nice catch. Lani Tupu is really good, I think, and I like Crais (as a character, not a person) more every episode. So weird to think he also voices Pilot! I’m not sure what I think of Crais’s “conversion” yet. There’s a really nice conversation at the end, between Aeryn and John, where she asks “you do believe people can change, don't you?” but Aeryn changed because Crais’s actions revealed that the Peacekeepers just saw her as a disposable cog in the machine. However, Crais caused his own downfall by disobeying the machine, and he knew it, he just thought he could get away with it. The Peacekeepers didn’t actually betray him until he betrayed them.
H: That was my favorite scene. I loved the way John and Aeryn were cuddling together in Pilot’s chamber.
S: I hope Pilot is okay with PDA.

H: It was G-rated!
S: I guess given he seems to listen in most of the time, he’s seen much worse. What did you think of Talyn electing to go off with Crais, after how much work they put into protecting Talyn the last three episodes?
H: I think it totally makes sense, though I didn’t see it coming. Talyn is no longer a baby; he’s an adolescent straining against his mother’s overprotectiveness, and he probably ended up spending more time with Crais “in command” of him than Aeryn. It’s a reckless adolescent decision, and I’m curious to see where Talyn and Crais both end up going as characters.
S: Is Crais the Zuko of Farscape? He’s the guy chasing Our Heroes who goes rogue from his people.
H: I can see the parallel. Let’s see if he ends up completely redeemed, and starts training Crichton in the ways of firebending. But first, he’s got to have some angsty moments. Actually, I could go for some angsty Crais.

2x02: “Vitas Mortis”

STEVE: In this episode, the Enterprise arrives at a remote planet where a Klingon mystic lays dying. Worf must enter into a dangerous ritual that will help her pass into the next life… or endanger the whole crew. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that this one felt like a warmed over Star Trek plot, and not in a good way.
HAYLEY: How so?
S: I feel like it’s just some generic weird-alien-ritual episode, that doesn’t tell us anything interesting about D’Argo or Luxans.
H: True. This is the very first Luxan other than D’Argo that we’ve seen, and all we really know now that we didn’t before is (1) some Luxans are priestesses with magical powers, and (2) there’s clearly some sexual dimorphism among Luxans, as Nilaam lacks a chin-flap-thingy.
S: Leave it to you to find some biology of interest here.
H: I actually really liked that Nilaam’s appearance was so different from D’Argo’s, showing that there is some diversity among the species. (That’s something Star Trek often lacks.) But I was less impressed when she de-aged, and it turned out her original pale hair was only due to age, and the younger version had the same color hair as D’Argo. But as a character, she didn’t do much for me.

S: I mean, once you realize there’s a connection between Nilaam and what’s happening to Moya, the whole thing plays out pretty predictably. You know Moya won’t die, so you know Nilaam has to go from selfish to selfless. And she’s not interesting enough to be tragic, because she’s basically selfish the whole time. (Or sexy.)
H: The most interesting scene, I thought, was when D’Argo admitted to Crichton that he knew what needed to be done. Anthony Simcoe did a good job in conveying the desperate emotion he felt there, even if the plot itself didn’t do much to convince the viewer that Nilaam needing to die was tragic.
S: Yeah, he is good. But writing-wise, this felt like a reversion to the pre-“DNA Mad Scientist” D’Argo overall, back when he was always coming under mental influences.
H: The B-plot wasn’t that interesting, either; it was obvious right away what the root of the problem was with Moya, so seeing the crew trying to puzzle it out and free Chiana from where she was stuck wasn’t that interesting. Rygel gets played for laughs again, as he manages to seal a hull breach with his body.
S: With his butt!
H: Well, with the entire lower part of his body. Which means that his butt and his legs were exposed to the vacuum of space, with apparently no negative effects.
S: Judging by D’Argo, Rygel should have got a tan.

H: Ha! Speaking of which, D’Argo’s not the only one who has some changes to his appearance.
S: Yeah, I feel like we spent most of this episode analyzing everyone’s new duds.
H: Zhaan has a new outfit, with some sparkly jewels and a high collar, but it’s otherwise her basic flowy blue robe/dress.
S: I really like the jewels, actually, but I’m not too keen on the collar. Aeryn and John are both wearing all leather all the time.

H: Which I like for Aeryn, but I’m not sold on for John. Especially the long coat that looks like something Neo from The Matrix might wear.
S: Oh man, it totally is. I guess it was 1999!
H: And his hair is sometimes spiky, which is also very 1999.
S: The hair is spiky in a way that just makes it look like he forgot to comb it. It does not work for me.
H: I suppose both the coat and the hair are trying to give him an edge that he lacked in Season One. I’m not sure either really succeed.
S: No more khaki pants or IASA flight suits, I guess. He’s a cool space man now! Even D’Argo has a new… I think it’s a poncho? Only Rygel and Chiana don’t rate new clothes (though we do see Rygel’s pyjamas). And I’ve only just realized that Pilot is naked.
H: Who needs clothes when you’re wearing an entire spaceship?
S: One last complaint: the title is nonsense Latin! Mortis means “death,” sure, but vitas is the accusative plural of vita, which means “life.” You can’t just jam random letters on the end of Latin words! -as means it’s a plural direct object, which makes no sense in context.
H: If you say so.
[A five-minute discussion of direct objects and the accusative case in Latin as compared to Spanish has been omitted.]
H: To steal something you often say: “I may be none the wiser, but I daresay I’m better informed.”