My Summer with Farscape
updated October 6, 2002
Episode 1 -- Episode 2 -- Episode 3 -- Episode 4 -- Episode 5
Ep 6-10 -- Ep 11 -- Eps 12-17 -- Eps 18-22
How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Danny Horn. I am, on the whole, not a very good summertime decision-maker. That's why, instead of going outside, I'm going to spend my summer watching sweaty people shout at each other while they run up and down dark corridors. I'm also going to be watching the fourth season of Farscape. (Bada bing! That's the kind of joke you can expect pretty much all summer long.)
To make things more interesting, I haven't watched a single episode of Farscape since half past the first season, although my partner Ed watched most of season 3, so I've absorbed some of the main plot points through relationship osmosis. (Moya's dead, right? Or the other one is dead. Something's dead.) So I'm going to see if it's possible to start watching the show now, and still make heads or tails of it.
And to make it even more challenging, my brain can't tolerate translator microbes. Make sentences! Nouns! Verbs! Surf's up...
Episode 1 -- Episode 2 -- Episode 3 -- Episode 4 -- Episode 5
Ep 6-10 -- Ep 11 -- Eps 12-17 -- Eps 18-22
Home
Alone
Episode 1 -- June 7, 2002
"Crichton Kicks"
Okay, as far as I can make out, the story so far is basically Home Alone, where Mom and Dad go off to Europe and they forget to bring Crichton. They leave him at home, where he drinks, plays music really loud, and knocks together complex devices using stuff he's found lying around the house. Except the house is a dying Leviathan ship, so everything's all dark and moist and dry-icey.
Then a ship crash-lands and a space babe comes out, so maybe this is more like Risky Business. The space babe looks like a red-headed Bjork, and I don't really have any other choice than to call her Bjork this week, because if they actually said her real name during the whole episode, then I must have thought they were talking about something else, cause I didn't hear it. Crichton calls everybody by nicknames, which doesn't help. This is actually an issue for me, responsible journalismwise -- I can't understand what any of the characters say on this show. The only character who speaks American is Crichton, who talks in a kind of rapid-fire pop-culture code, so every time I try to lock phasers on the lingua franca, he starts Babel-fishing, and it's no hablo Ricardo, ya got me?
Anyway, Bjork seems to have the same problem, cause she tells Crichton that she needs to learn his language by listening to him name random objects in the room. I'm serious. She says, "My brain can not tolerate translator microbes," and then she points at a box and asks him what it's called. Turns out he calls it a box, so that'll save some time. He sings the alphabet to her, which is supposed to be helpful, and then she screams, "Make sentences! Nouns! Verbs!" At which point he launches into a tirade about how he's been working like a mofo until she came in and pissed him off, and from then on she can understand English.
Um, qu'est-ce que c'est what now? I don't know what theory of language acquisition they're working from here, but according to this model, I could have blown off four years of memorizing irregular verbs in Spanish class and just watched telenovelas for a couple hours.
But there's no more time for the zero-to-sixty Berlitz course, cause then some Grudex crash-land on the ship. The Grudex are a bunch of hairy guys who look like Yosemite Sam and talk like Boris Badenov, so you know they're the bad guys. (Sticking with the Home Alone analogy, these guys are Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern.) "Ve vill climb two levels higher and beegin zearching anew!" they say, and so there you have it. Bjork does a bunch of exposition about how the Boris Badenov guys are harvesting beechwood-aged Leviathan neural cluster tissue -- ya know, for a girl who just learned English two minutes ago, she's quite the chatterbox -- and then the BB guys release the Blenders Hound. Or maybe it's the Bladders Hound, it's hard to say. Anyway, it's a mean dog thing that zips around and cuts Bjork's hand off, except it doesn't eat the hand. It just kind of slices it off and leaves it on the ground. Apparently the Blenders Hound is kind of a canine weed whacker. Which is a good thing, cause if Bjork can get her hand back, she can "rebond" with it and be good as new, and I don't care where you're from, that is a damn good party trick. She should sell tickets and take that on the road.
Then Rygel and Chiana show up, just in time to get Bjork's hand back and complain about how dangerous the Boris Badenov guys are. Chiana's acting fidgety, so Crichton shoves her up against the wall and asks her what her deal is. "You know the visions I've been having?" she says. "They've evolved." She got tortured at a casino -- I don't know if this is last season or over the summer or what -- and now instead of seeing the future, "I see the present, only it's just all... it slows down." Don't blame me, that's what she says. She's making sentences, nouns, verbs, the whole deal. I just can't figure out what she's going on about.
Anyway, they get Bjork's hand back and they find her plotting with the bad guys to keel moose and sqvirrel. They tell her that's not a great idea, and then they all work together to concoct a scheme to kill the Blenders Hound. The plan involves rope and an electrostatic membrane, but mostly it's about Crichton shaking his leather-clad booty, shouting, "Come ON, come ON! Ya want some of THIS? Yeah! Yeah!" I'm serious, he really does this. Then he rubs his ass and says, "Grade A prime American beef! Come ON, damn you! You KNOW you want some of THIS! Right here! Right HERE! Right NOW!"
... I'm sorry. What were we talking about?
Oh, right, the Home Alone thing. Well, all the little schemes pretty much come together at this point. They rig up a pulley system using ropes and... well, I don't have to tell you how to rig up a homemade pulley system, do I? Everyone knows how to do that. Chiana uses her "seeing the present but it slows down" trick to figure out which bits of wire to shoot, and Crichton shoots the right bits of wire, and something blows up, and the Boris Badenov guys die, and Bjork's hand falls off again. This is about all I could make of the ending cause I kept getting distracted by that grade A beef stuff. I mean, MAN! Anyway.
At the end, Bjork decides to stay with Crichton and the gang, cause everyone else is dead and she doesn't have anything else to do. Crichton starts painting wormhole equations on the wall, and that's about as close to a happy ending as we get on this show. Come back next week for more running and shouting.
Episode 1 -- Episode 2 -- Episode 3 -- Episode 4 -- Episode 5
Ep 6-10 -- Ep 11 -- Eps 12-17 -- Eps 18-22
Stone
Temple Pile-up
Episode 2 -- June 14, 2002
"What Was Lost: Sacrifice"
So now Crichton and Chiana want to find D'argo and Jool -- or, to be more precise, they want to find D'argo, and Jool happens to be there too. They're at an archeological dig on a nearby beach planet, which isn't super surprising. Everywhere in the Farscape universe is either a beach in Australia, or Hell. There's rarely a third option.
Turns out the planet they're on is The Most Important Planet in the Universe, except people can't usually go there on account of all the magnetics. I don't know what's so scary about magnetics, but as soon as they land, everybody's like, uh oh, magnetics. It's like every week they choose a word that everybody's supposed to be scared of. "The magnetics are spiking!" they say, and everyone panics. Well, that's magnetics for ya. They'll do that. Other scary phrases of the week include: The Third Probe, Intercepted Transmission, and Hypnotic Cleavage Sweat. (More on that later. Lots more.)
Anyway, there's only six people on the whole planet when Crichton arrives, so it's a shame that five of them are so annoying. There's Instructor Vella, who's rude and keeps doing exposition, so you know she's evil. Ditto with Tarnat, who just says, "You're a Peacekeeper!" over and over until somebody hits him. There's Granny, aka Wrinkles, aka The Old Woman, aka (in my house, at least) Monchichi. The fact that she doesn't actually have a name says a lot about how irritating she can be. And then there's this big cranky fish guy, whose name, according to the internet site I looked at, is Oo-Nii.
By the way, what the hell? Can I have a little sidebar about names on this show? I mean, I'm down with the idea that people should have Space Names. Yes, if Crichton went through a wormhole and everybody had soap names like Reva and Thorne, it would probably seem kind of lame. (You know. "I intercepted a transmission from Brooke." That kind of thing.) But can we at least give them Space Names that native speakers of English can recognize as names and then have a fighting chance of being able to pronounce and spell? I mean -- Vella, Tarnat and Oo-Nii? How I long for a Chad.
Anyway, here comes Vella, who's in charge of the archeological dig. Apparently, back in the day, a bunch of mystic priests on this planet brokered a big peace treaty with the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans, that lasted, like, forever, until three probes fell out of the sky and formed the Darnaz triangle, and that made "magnetic summers" that killed the priests and destroyed the whole shebang. I'm doing all this exposition quickly cause that's how it happens in the episode. So now the dig people are searching for the three probes. Wait, which probes? The probes that fell out of the sky and formed the Darnaz triangle... and so the long day wears on.
The old woman tells Crichton that the dig people are evil, which is not a huge surprise since they've been insulting everybody and waving guns around the whole episode. She says they want to find the probes so they can use them as a weapon. I don't know why archeologists would want a weapon of mass destruction, but maybe they have to compete for funding or something. The old woman blows powder in Crichton's face, which gives him a vision of the way things were in the past. "See, see the ancient world," she says. "See the peace." Now, I've gotta level with you here. The stuff that Crichton sees is ancient and all, but it's not so much peace. The whole vision is priests in bright red robes ritually slaughtering a three-eyed goat. So why was it such a big tragedy when the probes fell? It doesn't seem like a huge loss to me.
"Si, si, the Darnaz probes," the old woman says, lapsing into Spanish. The three probes fall, and Crichton sees where they land. This is great and all, but in about twenty minutes, she's going to be throwing him off a cliff because of it, so whatever.
Oh, did I tell you about Grayza? That's the other thing. Grayza is like the new Scorpius -- she's big and bad, she keeps Scorpius as a pet, and she has hypnotic cleavage sweat that clouds men's minds. I shit you not, she really does. She kind of reaches into her cleavage -- which is not hard to do, since it's always exposed for easy access -- and then she twiddles her fingers under the guy's nose, and then he wants to kiss her and do whatever she wants. It's pretty excellent.
So Grayza intercepts a transmission to Moya about Crichton being on the planet, and she instantly sh'booms down there to twiddle her fingers under Crichton's nose. He macks out with her, and promises to tell her everything he knows.
I have to say that at this point, I am completely on Grayza's side. If I had hypnotic cleavage sweat, that's exactly what I would do. Good on ya, Grayza. Keep going with that, I think you're on to something.
But the old woman gets kind of upset. She's scared that now Crichton is going to tell Grayza where the third probe is, which is kind of obnoxious since she's the one who gave him the vision in the first place. I mean, what was the plan supposed to be, old woman? Have you been helped? Anyway, now she has to stop Crichton from spilling all the secrets to Grayza, so she takes him out to the beach and makes him jump in the ocean. "To have peace there must be sacrifice!" she says, and then she gives him a vision that forces him to jump off the cliff into the ocean.
Now, don't let me throw cold water on the big cliffhanger or anything, but her plan at this point seems to be based on the idea that Crichton is going to go swimming less than an hour after eating. I mean, yeah, he jumps in the water, but now she thinks that automatically means he's dead, which I don't follow.
It's kind of like shouting, "To have peace you must run with scissors! Run with scissors, John!" It's just not that scary. Maybe it's the magnetics.
Next week: More fun things to do with hypnotic cleavage sweat.
Episode 1 -- Episode 2 -- Episode 3 -- Episode 4 -- Episode 5
Ep 6-10 -- Ep 11 -- Eps 12-17 -- Eps 18-22
What
happened? Who cares!
Episode 3 -- June 21, 2002
"What Was Lost: Resurrection"
Last week, I posted this statement on the Tough Pigs discussion board: "I'd like to register the following plot point, so I can say That was really obvious when it happens in the next episode. The cliffhanger of the last episode was Crichton jumping off a cliff into the ocean, supposedly to his death. They've already established that there's a big cranky fish character, who's rescued Crichton from drowning before. Therefore, I call that the fish guy brings Crichton to shore, and any jokes that I make in my Farscape column mocking this plot point are hereby justified."
Then I went on to make some promises about how I wouldn't make fun of it if they didn't make a big deal about it, but that was a transparent lie. The point here is that this goes some way toward proving my long-standing theory that cliffhangers that involve drowning aren't scary if you've already established that you have a fish guy. Ditto "falling out of a window" and bird guy, ditto "menaced by a huge mouse" and cat guy, ditto "lost in the Swiss Alps and desperate for brandy" and St. Bernard guy.
Really, having any kind of animal guy is pretty much a tip-off that you've got something like this in mind. Nobody goes out of their way to make a fish guy willy nilly.
So, yeah, the fish guy saves Crichton, surprise surprise, and he's still kind of bad-tempered, also not a huge surprise on a show that averages 10 bad moods per every 10 characters. The fish guy wants the probes, Grayza wants the probes, the old woman wants the probes. Everybody's probe-crazy, like tomorrow is National Probe Day and everybody showed up at the probe store at the last minute.
Probes probes probes, it's only been two episodes and already I'm sick to death of 'em. And hey, so's everybody else. The probes are reactivating, there's magnetism everywhere, and if they don't find the third probe and reactivate them soon, everybody's going to die. Just another day on Farscape, really.
But D'argo has a plan, and this plan involves Crichton, naked, tied hand and foot on a stone slab and getting licked all over. As naturally it would. They give him back to Grayza -- you know, the chick with the hypnotic cleavage sweat -- and she interrogates him about wormholes while peeling his clothes off and caressing him with tiny razor knives. Okay, not to be too obvious about this, but this is the kind of interrogation I could really get behind. How come this never happens when I get interrogated?
Then, pretty much just for the sake of having something else to do, Grayza makes Crichton dig a big hole, and then she shoots Scorpius in the chest and dumps his body in the hole. She's also got Sikozu -- remember Sikozu? She's the Bjork chick. Never mind, there's no use trying to tell the space vixens apart on this show. Anyway, Grayza throws Sikozu in the grave too, and she's about to bury Sikozu alive, when Scorpius -- who isn't quite dead yet -- whispers to Sikozu, "Say Skernak! It'll save you." So Sikozu goes Skernak! which seems to impress Grayza quite a bit. Turns out Skernak! is special directorate code for Don't shoot me! and it seems to work, cause she doesn't.
Now, I could probably milk a couple cheap laughs out of this by saying Skernak! a couple times, but that's such an easy gag that even I wouldn't Skernak! No, sorry, I couldn't resist.
Sikozu is grateful for the whole Skernak! thing, so she tries to persuade Grayza not to bury Scorpius... but Grayza isn't convinced, and she has her flunkies fill the grave in over him. So, naturally, Scorpius is going to get saved by the mole guy. Wait, didn't we bring a mole guy to this planet? Damn! You should always bring a mole guy. That'll teach us not to pack at the last minute.
Gosh, there's a lot left. There's more naked interrogation action, more spanking and sweating and sticking bug parts up their noses. Sikozu comes and visits the locked-up Chiana and Jool, and they do this really complicated escape maneuver where Jool attacks Sikozu, Sikozu attacks Jool, Chiana attacks Sikozu, and Jool screeches so loud that Chiana and Jool's handcuffs shatter. Luckily, Peacekeeper guards are specially trained not to move or think or do anything no matter what happens, so it's not that hard to escape.
Meanwhile, Crichton escapes from Grayza. He meets up with the space vixens, D'argo is about to blast off, and the Peacekeeper guards keep shooting at them. Everybody sweats and pants and yells at each other. We're not running FAST enough! We're not shouting LOUD enough! That kind of thing.
So here's my favorite part of the whole episode. Rygel crashes the dying Leviathan ship into the temple, and there's a huge explosion. Jool says, "What happened?" and Crichton yells, "Who CARES! Just GO!"
And if that's not the motto of the whole damn show, I don't know what is. What happened? Who cares! Just go.
Next week: Skernak! Oh, I did it again.
Episode 1 -- Episode 2 -- Episode 3 -- Episode 4 -- Episode 5
Ep 6-10 -- Ep 11 -- Eps 12-17 -- Eps 18-22
Fort
(Hard) Knocks
Episode 4 -- June 28, 2002
"Lava's a Many Splendored Thing"
Okay, this is why I like Farscape: All the other science fiction action-type shows on television pretend that you can run and hide and shoot for days on end and never have to eat, sleep or go to the bathroom... but not Farscape. This week's episode is all about farting and vomiting, and I for one find that refreshing. Here's an actual line of dialogue: "Save me before my bowels rupture!" They just don't say that kind of stuff on Star Trek.
The premise is basically this. Our heroes are drifting around aimlessly in space, and they're starving, so the crazy old woman gives them something nasty to eat. Pretty soon, they have to land on the nearest planet so they can shit and projectile-vomit. Seriously. This all happens in the first four minutes.
Okay, so remember how I said that every planet in the Farscape universe is either an Australian beach or it's Hell? Last time, it was the beach, so this time it's Hell -- or, apparently, a high-security parking garage in Hell. After the shitting and farting and vomiting, Rygel falls into a big multi-level cave system, which turns out to be packed with boxes full of gold and jewels. The place is just a huge cave with your typical drippy stone walls and dark tunnels, but as soon as Crichton and D'argo enter, they trip this high-tech laser-beam security system. It's like Ali Baba and the 4-D Thieves.
Anyway, Rygel ends up getting blasted by the laser beams, up through the air and into a little cubbyhole that shoots a coating of amber all over him. This place was set up by the Tarkin, who apparently decided that the best way to protect their valuables was to store them in hexagonal boxes, seal them in amber, and throw them into pools of boiling lava. This storage system, in my opinion, has some serious design flaws, which may not be obvious at first glance. I'll point these out as we go along.
But here come the comedy thugs, who moan and complain as they run up and down the dank corridors and shoot at the main characters, so basically it's just another day of running and shouting on Farscape. The leader of the comedy thugs is a big mean-looking bug guy with a male pattern leprosy problem. After a whole bunch of action sequences, he finally meets Crichton and D'argo, and he hisses, "My name is... Raa'Keel." Well, actually, what he says is, "My name is... rhhkkxchhhiihh," and then I have to go and look the name up on a Farscape fansite. I know, I make fun of the Space Names every week, but it really isn't playing fair for them to say "My name is," and then just spit out random diphthongs and expect me to accept that as somebody's name. I promise, I will stop making jokes about the Space Names as soon as they start having more reasonable names. (The same offer has been made to M. Night Shyamalan.)
Meanwhile, the boys are trapped, so Chiana and Sikozu have to figure out how to get the laser pulse cannon on D'argo's ship to fire at the electrostatic barrier keeping them in. Trust me on that one. Now, they can't use the controls on D'argo's ship because it's biolinked to his DNA, but they can get around that by going outside and smearing his vomit all over their hands. The controls pick up the traces of D'argo's DNA on their hands, and then they can push buttons and everything's fine. Okay, so stop me if I'm being too literal about all this, but has anybody here ever heard of keys? I mean, what's the point of a DNA-based security system, if it's just going to encourage carjackers to, let's say, shoot you in the head and dip their hands in your splattered brain cavity before they drive away? I personally would have second thoughts about installing any locking device that requires my body fluids to operate, especially if I don't actually have to be in the room at the time. I just think it's asking for trouble is all.
The theme of today's episode, really, is that Technology Of The Future Is Not Any Better Than The Technology We Have Today. After the whole hands-in-vomit thing, then Chiana and Sikozu spend minutes and minutes trying to figure out what complex sequence of buttons operates the cannon. They're smart people, and clearly very experienced shooting weapons at things, but it takes them forever to figure out how to do it. Isn't there a Big Red Button somewhere marked LASER CANNON? I mean, my laser cannon has one of those, and I got it on sale at Best Buy. You'd think the Big Red Button would be pretty much standard on any laser cannon in the universe, but not on D'argo's ship. Even a spaceship constructed by Microsoft would at least have a little animated paper clip come out and say, "It looks like you're trying to fire a laser cannon at an electrostatic barrier. Would you like help?"
Here's some more examples of Bad Technology Of The Future. The comedy thugs are wearing electric body armor that protects against being shot, but not against being hit with rocks or doused in lava... which is why they chose that style of armor to go spelunking for treasure in a cave filled with rocks and lava. And how about that security system that puts up an electrostatic barrier to lock the crater entrance after the intruders have come in?
Or the amber-sealing storage device that still operates even when somebody's head gets stuck in it? Ditto for the transport tube, which also still operates even when somebody's head gets stuck in it. Apparently, there are a lot of ways that people can accidentally cut off their own heads in this cave, and our heroes figure out every single one.
Basically, the Tarkin, if there are any left, are seriously in need of a user-interface consultant. They seem to specialize in making every dangerous thing concave and head-shaped. I'd hate to see their Cuisinarts.
Episode 1 -- Episode 2 -- Episode 3 -- Episode 4 -- Episode 5
Ep 6-10 -- Ep 11 -- Eps 12-17 -- Eps 18-22
Tah-DAH!
Episode 5 -- July 12, 2002
"Promises"
Pop quiz: Let's say you're an alien. Three assassins come to your planet and kill your Prime Hokothian. The appropriate response is:
(a) Get yourself a spaceship with a big gun, chase after the assassins, and arrest them when they stop to go to the bathroom
(b) Say to yourself, "Well, that'll happen sometimes," and start auditioning for a new Prime Hokothian
(c) Bioengineer a contagion that only you have the antidote for, manage to infect one of the assassins as she's running away, wait until she's split up from the other assassins and gotten back to her friends, build a hologram spaceship that looks really big but is actually really small, and then show up at the last minute to offer her the antidote if she tells you the names of the other assassins.
The correct answer, according to this week's episode, is (c), and my question for the aliens of Farscape is this: Who has TIME for all that nonsense? I mean, for Pete's sake. I feel like calling all the aliens into my office, and telling them that from now on, they're expected to account for their time in fifteen-minute increments.
If that's the typical way these guys go about things, it's a wonder that Aeryn had to bother assassinating the Prime Hokothian in the first place. All she had to do was steal all his snacks. By the time they got around to bioengineering a convenience store, they'd all be dead from starvation.
Oh yeah, by the way, Aeryn's back. At the beginning of the episode, the crew returns to Moya, and Aeryn's there, but she looks terrible. She's in this skin-tight black-leather catsuit that they call a "Cooling Suit," even though it doesn't look all that cool to me. Slimming, maybe, but not so much cooling. Anyway, the real way to tell that Aeryn is sick is that her hair's all flat and stringy, so she looks like a dominatrix Marcia Brady.
She's in the "Cooling Suit" because she has "Heat Delirium," and if she's not treated, she could end up suffering from "The Living Death," which apparently would make her "Really Ugly." So we can't have that.
Everybody sort of flaps their hands around and doesn't know what to do with themselves, until Ullom the alien arrives to explain everything. Ullom is the Chief Protector of the Prime Hokothian, and it turns out that he's not very good at his job, because Aeryn killed the Prime H. right under Ullom's nose, not that he has one [see illustration, above], and all Ullom could think of doing was to bioengineer a contagion and infect the assassins with it on their way out the door.
By the way, quick comedy tip if you ever come over to my house: The line "I bioengineered a contagion" is a guaranteed easy laugh, especially if you imitate Ullom's bitchy nasal whine when you say it. I'll give you an example. Me: "Hey, what did you make for dinner tonight?" You: "I bioengineered a contagion." That's all there is to it, comedy-wise.
The other big surprise this week is that Scorpius is alive, even though two weeks ago he got shot in the chest at point-blank range and buried. When they get around to asking him how he survived, his answer is "planning and foresight," which in my opinion is just another way of saying, "I am the Astonishing Scorpioso, MASTER of Illusion! Tah-DAH!"
I'm looking forward to more big surprises in upcoming weeks, along these lines:
Crichton: The last time I saw Scorpius, he was handcuffed to a pirahna monster, and his head was covered with man-eating fire ants! There's no WAY he survived that!
Scorpius: [arriving by parachute] But I did! Tah-DAH!
I mean, it's a great act. But what do you do for an encore?
Episode 1 -- Episode 2 -- Episode 3 -- Episode 4 -- Episode 5
Ep 6-10 -- Ep 11 -- Eps 12-17 -- Eps 18-22