My Summer with Farscape
updated October 6, 2002
Ep 1-5 -- Ep 6 -- Ep 7 -- Ep 8 -- Ep 9 -- Ep 10 -- Ep 11
Reefer
Dadness
or, Ten Stupid Things Weeds Do To Mess Up Our Lives
Episode 6 -- July 19, 2002
"Natural Election"
Aeryn and John are having relationship problems, which is not a huge surprise since they only have conversations in one-minute increments. In the last episode, Crichton asked Aeryn why she didn't tell him she was pregnant, and she didn't say anything, and then they just kind of stared at each other and ran out the clock. This week, they finally get around to talking to each other, and this is the entire text of their conversation:
Aeryn: Can I speak to you? Quite a few things I'd like to say.
John: There's a lot of things I'd like to hear. I'd offer to buy you a drink, but...
Aeryn: My quarters?
[ He nods. ]
Then the ship is attacked by an intelligent metal-eating space weed, and between one thing and another, they don't get another scene together until the very end of the episode. That's the problem these days -- people don't talk to each other anymore. Oh, and also there's intelligent metal-eating space weeds.
Now, what can one say about the space weed? It latches on to Moya and instantly envelops the ship. The weed grows fast, and when it's attacked, it eats even faster, down into every level of the ship in a matter of minutes. It even seems to be smart enough to know that when the crew is trying to poison it through the air vents, it should eat through the fan and stop them. This is quite the badass multi-tasking space weed; it makes you wonder why nobody ever thought to hunt it down and use it as a weapon, or a paint-stripper, instead of just leaving it lying around space for people to trip over.
Anyway, the space weed is just a distraction to get everybody running and shouting again, so that Aeryn and John don't get to talk about the thing that's really important -- which is that Aeryn isn't sure whether the baby she's carrying is John's or not.
It's a good thing they're out in space, because if they were on Earth, they'd end up on an episode of Jerry Springer called "I Need To Tell You: You're Not the Daddy!" I kept expecting a member of the studio audience to get up and grab the mike: "Excuse me? My comment is for the lady? Yeah, I think you need to start looking at yourself, and stop blaming some space weed for everything. The weed didn't tell you to go at it with some man! You can't go blamin' the weed every time! You need to have respect for yourself. That's what you need. That's all I got to say." Then Aeryn gets up and shouts, "Well, YOU need to get out my BUSINESS!" And then security guards rush out and make everybody sit down.
Meanwhile, back on Farscape, they figure out that the weed is poisoned by an element in Scorpius' cooling rods. I can't figure out exactly what the element's name is; it sounds to me like it's either strontium or cilantro. Something like that. Anyway, they have tons of it. This is basically the Horror of Party Beach trick of figuring out in the last fifteen minutes of the movie that the monsters explode when they're exposed to sodium, and then everybody runs and gets their salt shakers. It's all about the badass space weed until about minute 52, and then it's all, cilantro? Oh, sure, we got cilantro. I was just sitting around the other day wondering what we were going to do with these big piles of cilantro we got lying around. And that about wraps it up for the space weed.
So when that's all over with, there's just enough time for another one-minute conversation for Aeryn and John. Basically, he says, who's the dad? And she says, I'm not sure. And he says, "I would put my life in your hands... but not my heart," and then he walks away.
Now I have to wait until Friday to find out what happens next, and they'll probably have another forty-five seconds together before the chainsaw-wielding pirahna monster busts in and starts eating people. I swear, these people need to get their priorities straight. You can either tear my heart into little pieces, or you can throw cilantro at space fungus. One thing at a time, kids, that's all I'm asking.
Ep 1-5 -- Ep 6 -- Ep 7 -- Ep 8 -- Ep 9 -- Ep 10 -- Ep 11
V.R.
the World
Episode 7 -- July 26, 2002
"John Quixote"
This episode was some kind of dream sequence virtual reality holodeck type deal, and it was written by Ben Browder, the hunky rocket scientist who plays Crichton. So basically I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I was all set to just ramble on about computer games in this week's column, but then it turned out that my partner Ed -- who's been watching Farscape longer than I have -- actually understood the episode. So I asked Ed if he would ghost-write the column for me this week, and basically save me the trouble of figuring out what was going on. He agreed, which proves that a) he loves me and b) he's a total pushover.
So here's Ed's take on "John Quixote"...
To be fair to Danny, I should say that I saw the episode twice, once when the episode first aired -- Danny was working late, and I was lonely and bored enough to turn to Farscape for cold comfort -- and again when he and I watched it together a couple days later. Any meaning I managed to extract from it might just be a sort of Heat Delirium brought on by repeated Farscape exposure. (Now where did I put those cooling rods and my black latex catsuit?) I should also say that I think the episode is a right old mess, and that the higher-ups at Farscape should keep little Benjy Browder away from the writing implements for the forseeable future. That said, there is some interesting stuff going on in this episode -- and I don't just mean Claudia Black's accent.
I submit to you, gentle reader, that this whole holodeck episode is about Crichton's anxieties -- about Aeryn, about Scorpius, about his friends, and about the consequences of his actions.
First, for the mechanical mojo. Stark -- who's raving mad, get it? -- has apparently created some kind of Pocket Simon virtual reality neural substrate matrix whosamabob expressly designed to trap Crichton as revenge for Crichton causing Zhaan's death. We know this because Stark himself appears as the avatar of this little world -- (By the way, avatar? No more nineties cyberpunk for you, Mr Browder!) -- and he's kind enough to provide something approximating exposition. Although, honestly, I don't have the foggiest idea how Stark made the damn thing. And how did he make sure it would get to Crichton? It looks like Chiana discovers the game while rifling through a box of stuff she bought on Ebay. Whatever. Face it, even Browder can't bring himself to care about the premise, so why should we? On to the symbolism!
The most obvious bit of symbolism -- it's in the title, for Crichton's sake -- is the image of Don Quixote. Is Crichton fighting actual monsters, or tilting at windmills? I don't think that this is anything like the dreary suggestion on last season's Buffy that the whole thing might be in the protagonist's head -- ugh -- but I do think the question is meaningful. John fights a lot of monsters. Some are physical, others emotional. Some are real, and some are self-generated. Which is which? Can he even tell them apart? He can't always, and that worries him something awful.
Through this episode, everyone keeps asking him, "Are you really John Crichton?" It's an important question, both mechanically and metaphorically. Is he the original Crichton or the carbon copy? And who has he become since leaving Earth? All he can do is say, "I think so."
One of my favorite bits in the episode is the John-Headroom elevator operator, who tells Crichton that he hates his job -- every day it's the same thing, up, down, up, down. Just once he'd like to go sideways. This is exactly Crichton's life, bouncing from one crisis to the next, with barely a moment to recover, let alone be the sort of astronaut he trained to be. if only he could go sideways -- to find some peace, to open a wormhole.
The game makes Crichton's frustrations and anxieties manifest. Rygel just farts in everyone's face and makes a nuisance of himself; nothing to do but off him. Crichton clearly has some nagging concerns about D'argo. D'argo is good at seducing the women of Moya (except Aeryn, of course); there's something distressingly voracious lurking beneath a sometimes sweet exterior. Chiana is twinned because Crichton sees her as a bit two-faced, particularly given her scheming past. Who is the real Chiana, and what's her agenda?
Who, for that matter, is Scorpius? Is he an evil, deformed genius with questionable fashion sense? Or an evil, deformed butler with questionable fashion sense? Should Crichton fear Scorpius or pity him? Perhaps a bit of both?
Crichton's greatest anxieties, of course, are about Aeryn. Aeryn claims that Scorpius saved her from the heat delirium, and she's asked Crichton several times not to hurt him. But why? Crichton isn't as afraid that Aeryn is being controlled by Scorpius... he's more afraid that she's not, that something dark has passed between them, something that's infected Aeryn.
(By the way... if the Old Woman and Sikozu aren't in the game because Stark didn't know about them, why does the game shift to a Moya with Scorpius on board? Stark doesn't know Scorpius is there either. But I digress, and I'm only giving myself a headache.)
Beyond whatever ties bind Aeryn and Scorpius, Crichton worries that he has focused too much on Aeryn, possibly at the expense of getting Important Things done. At the beginning of the episode, when Stark mumbles something about a princess, Crichton immediately assumes that he must mean Aeryn. Who else could it be? She's the one who lives in the penthouse of his heart. But the goal turns out to be Zhaan -- or, rather, Zhaan as a stand-in for some higher cause or purpose. Call it Touched By a Cameo.
So, you ask, what is this purpose? Damned if I know. But damned if Crichton knows, either. When Crichton scribbles out the wormhole equations in his own blood -- somebody, invent paper and pens for these people! -- he tells Scorpius that the only thing missing is the single unifying symbol, currently hidden under Crichton's shoe -- hidden even from Crichton himself.
What's the unifying symbol? Is there one? Or has it all been One Damn Thing After Another? Zhaan tells him, "A lot of people have died for the love of you" -- a turn of phrase I find actually lovely. Have those lives been lost in vain? If only Crichton had the unifying symbol, perhaps he would know -- know who he can trust, know whether to love Aeryn, know who he is. But the symbol remains elusive. And so he must go up, down, up, down, until one day, his next leap will be the leap home. Or something like that.
Ep 1-5 -- Ep 6 -- Ep 7 -- Ep 8 -- Ep 9 -- Ep 10 -- Ep 11
Size
Queens
Episode 8 -- August 2, 2002
"I Shrink Therefore I Am"
So here's the true, horrible, behind-the-scenes story of my miserable web monkey life. Every week, Ed and I watch Farscape, and at the end of the episode, I always have this awful, sinking Stage Fright moment when I look over my notes and realize that I don't have a single decent joke.
I turn to Ed and say, "So... what can I make jokes about?" and then we do a kind of damage control brainstorm. We always start with the gimmick, which this week is that the cast gets shrunk and carried around in jars. So, sea monkey jokes? That's funny, but maybe too obscure, especially for anyone under 25. Jim Henson's Farscape Babies? Not bad, but I'm not sure where to go with it.
Then it hits me: Penis jokes! I can just make jokes about penis size the whole time! Phew, what a relief. Now I'm in the zone. If I can't do ten paragraphs of penis jokes, then I don't deserve my own website. Bring it on.
What happens is that Crichton takes a shuttle to go grocery shopping, and when he comes home, he finds that robot bounty hunters have boarded the ship and taken everyone hostage. Well, that's the life of the working mom, I guess. You should've seen what happened last time he went out to dinner. Babysitters in the Peacekeeper territories just aren't that reliable.
Anyway, the bounty hunters are using bioengineered armor shells, which basically means that they're walking tanks with Christmas lights. They're impervious to bullets, they have remote-control torture devices, and their leader can read minds. Now, is it just me, or does it seem like every week they have to make the bad guys scarier and scarier so we don't get bored? I can't wait for next week, when the villain is a telekinetic pirahna monster who juggles chainsaws and spits fiery death from his bioengineered nipples!
Also, by the way, since when did "bioengineered" become the Farscape code word for "magic"? As you'll recall, three episodes ago, the bad guy "bioengineered a contagion" that made Aeryn sick. Now we've got "bioengineered body armor" that repels lasers and shrinks people. When you get right down to it, what does "bioengineered" actually mean, anyway? I'm starting to suspect that "bioengineering" is some kind of Emperor's New Clothes next-wave yuppie fad in the Farscape universe -- it's something that everybody talks about but that doesn't really exist, like "Dolby sound" or "anti-lock brakes."
Man, we're six paragraphs in and I haven't gotten to the penis jokes yet. I better step on it.
Next, the bounty hunters walk through the typical Four Stages of Fictional Hostage Taking. Stage one: We have your friends and control of your ship, Mr. Crichton, you might as well give yourself up! Stage two: There's no use hiding from us, Mr. Crichton! We will find you! Stage three: If you don't show yourself now, we'll be forced to harm your companions! Stage four: Drat! He's a more formidable opponent than we thought!
At this point, they pull a bioengineered rabbit out of a hat, and shoot everyone with a magic shrinking ray that reduces them down to three apples high. They put their little pets into jars, and shove the jars right into holes drilled into their own chests. And wouldn't that be cool as the next teenage rebellion? Forget tattoos and piercings; I want a hamster wheel surgically implanted in a little window in my torso!
Anyway, Scorpius figures out the big surprise of the episode, which is that the mind-reading leader of the bounty hunters isn't a Coreeshi after all -- he's a Scarran who's masquerading as a Coreeshi!
Okay, does it count as a plot twist if I have no idea what they're talking about? Finding out about this just tears it for everyone. I mean, getting shrunk down to Smurf level and carried around in a jar is bad enough, but if it's a Scarran doing it, well, then that's just... No, I'm sorry, I still don't get it. But everybody on the show seems to think it's a big deal, so we'll just go with it for now.
So Crichton tells the Coreeshi that their leader's a Scarran and not a Coreeshi. The Coreeshi demand that the Scarran take off his armor and prove to them that he's a Coreeshi and not a Scarran. The Scarran shoots the Coreeshi, and then it just pretty much goes on from there. As naturally it would. I mean, if you're a Scarran, and you're going around telling everybody that you're a Coreeshi, then you could imagine how...
Nope, sorry. Nothing. It's still not working for me. Maybe we could just cuddle for a while.
Ep 1-5 -- Ep 6 -- Ep 7 -- Ep 8 -- Ep 9 -- Ep 10 -- Ep 11
Wig
Mistakes
Episode 9 -- August 9, 2002
"A Prefect Murder"
At the end of the last episode, the crew got tired of being caught between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans, so they escaped into Tormented Space. And everybody sort of gasped, and said, oh no, Tormented Space! And Crichton said, well, is Tormented Space any worse than anywhere else we go? And everybody said, oh, yeah, it's so totally worse. You have no idea how much worse it is. Phew! Worse.
So in this episode, they go to Tormented Space, and guess what? It's exactly the same. It's just like when Doctor Who went to E-Space, or Star Trek went to the Gamma Quadrant, or Ellen fired all her friends and bought a bookstore. It's the same show, on a slightly different set.
They spend this episode on a planet that's populated entirely by men with really odd wigs. They're barbarians in the kind of 50's B-movie Teenage Caveman way, in the sense that they're really clean and they don't scratch themselves, but they keep shouting stuff like "That IS the law!" and "This is Chabuka Clan's finest ecmec!" and "Give me a reason not to KILL you!" In other words, they're just like normal people except they're really incredibly tiresome.
By the way, have I mentioned the wigs? I'm having a hard time getting beyond the
wigs. Everybody has them and they're incredibly distracting. There's all this
complicated political stuff going on, and I can't pay any attention to it.
There's two hundred clans on this planet -- and I don't care how tormented your
space is, that's a lot of clans just for one planet. All the clans have
recently united under a new system where they choose a different leader every
half-cycle, and heavy is the head that wears the crown, and what have you, but
the whole time, I'm just thinking, do you have to all wear your hair in
big floppy dreadlocks like that? According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, we
need food, shelter and a decent protein-rinse conditioner first, and then
we can worry about political structures.
Around this point, Aeryn loses her patience and just starts shooting people, and I for one couldn't be happier. She runs off, and now everybody's even more cranky than they were before. Here comes the Teenage Caveman dialogue again: "FIND her! KILL her! And if she acted on anyone's behalf, we'll catch her -- and TORTURE her! -- until she TELLS us!" Then there's a big discussion about whether Crichton -- an OUTSIDER! -- can help search for Aeryn. "My father is DEAD! His BLOOD is still WET on the GROUND!" and so on. Everybody speaks in capital letters pretty much nonstop. It's a planet of method actors, and their method is three shots of espresso.
So Crichton and the dead guy's son go searching for Aeryn. I'm putting a picture
of the son here, cause if I have to look at that hair the whole time, then so do
you. The two of them are apparently planning on searching this enormous forest
on foot -- looks like nobody in the two hundred clans ever got around to
inventing cars or horses or hot-air balloons, so they just walk for miles and
miles. They have big fuck-off ray guns and enormous stone towers on this planet,
but no wheels. I'm going to jot down a little Shopping List for Tormented Space:
#1. Haircuts. #2. Transportation.
They find Aeryn, and then they all sit down for a little exposition. Turns out Aeryn was bitten by an alien bug that infected her with evil mind-control venom. How they figure this out is that Aeryn mentions that she was bitten by a bug, and the priest says, "There are no bugs on this planet."
Okay, excuse me? There are no bugs on this planet? Is it even possible to have this whole Earth-like ecosystem without any bugs? What pollinates all that foliage, squirrels with jetpacks? Back me up on this, folks. We gotta get some bugs for this planet. #1. Haircuts. #2. Transportation. #3. Bugs.
So what else do they need? Well, some long-sleeved shirts probably wouldn't do them any harm. Now Crichton and Aeryn have to track down the source of the evil mind-control bugs, but they don't bother to cover up the acres of exposed flesh that's apparently de rigeur for fashionistas of the future, so they get bit like crazy, and they end up pulling guns on each other.
Meanwhile, there's the requisite Evil Leader -- played here by an albino Shelley
Duvall as Marilyn Manson. He's the one that's been spreading the evil alien
bugs, so that he could incite ANARCHY! and WAR! and other bad things that he's
planning to blame on the OUTSIDERS! He mooches around in his throne room and
reveals his whole entire plan in front of Chiana for pretty much no reason at
all, and then everybody shows up and says, hey, you're doing all these bad
things, so he throws himself out a window. And that about wraps it up.
Basically, the entire thing could have been avoided if they'd just had live video feeds from the throne room on C-SPAN, but I guess they're all too busy braiding their hair to invent anything useful. Gosh, maybe things are worse in tormented space.
Ep 1-5 -- Ep 6 -- Ep 7 -- Ep 8 -- Ep 9 -- Ep 10 -- Ep 11
Really
Weird Science
Episode 10 -- August 16, 2002
"Coup by Clam"
So this, believe it or not, is this week's premise.
Moya needs a new zyntian filtration system in order to muffle the electrostatic impulses of tormented space. They land on a planet where some mechanics can install the new filtration system, but the crew needs to get examined for Space Madness by a psychotic doctor, who poisons them with Qatal Mollusks in order to sell them an antidote. With me so far?
Now, the Qatal Mollusks, naturally, are infected with dually-linked bacteria, so if the two halves of a mollusk are eaten separately, the bacteria telepathically link the two people who ate them, to force them to "merge" and reunite the bacteria colony. Also whoever ate the mollusks gets really sick and dies. Unless they have the antidote, and that's kind of a problem.
The problem is that the doctor can only make the antidote by using the same kind of mollusks, and the only source of the mollusks on the whole entire planet is a secret cabal of feminist prostitute freedom fighters who are plotting the violent overthrow of the government from the back room of a military sex club.
In other words: Look how much work it takes just to get Ben Browder to wear a dress for one episode.
I mean, call me old-fashioned, but in my day, if you wanted your main character
to wear a dress for an episode, all you had to do was live upstairs from Mr.
Roper. These days, you apparently have to reverse-engineer an extremely unlikely
biosphere and create a whole feminist freedom-fighter cabal. It's a lot
of work just for one dress.
Still, the lovely thing about this episode is that there's no pretense at all that this is anything but a Wacky Adventure in Outer Space. Next week is the Summer Finale, and it's probably going to be really plot-heavy and Important, so I might as well take a moment during this supremely goofy episode and report in on what I've learned so far watching Farscape all summer.
So here goes: Farscape is an incredibly goofy show. They twist themselves into pretzels once a week in order to present the latest nutty predicament, which usually involves a death sentence, gastrointestinal distress or spanking Crichton's ass. This week is a Farscape hat trick, cause they've got all three. The game each week is seeing how much nonsense they'll try to throw at you in order to get there -- Magnetic summers! Zyntian filtration systems! Bioengineered telepathic ass-smacking devices!
So, lunatic technobabble plot contrivances are a given, which is fine, cause
it's Wacky Adventures in Outer Space, and you expect that sort of thing. They do
the same thing on hospital shows. (Does anyone really think that there's such a
thing as "10 cc's" of something? They just make that shit up to
impress us.)
The secret, I think, to enjoying Farscape is that you're not supposed to pay any attention to the technology, the biology, the politics or pretty much anything that anyone ever says. Everyone talks nonstop on Farscape, and it doesn't mean anything; it's a lot more fun if you just think of all the exposition as verbal set decoration, like the blinking lights on a bank of computers in 50's B-movies. It's just there to distract you while you're waiting for a monster to tear the lady's clothes off.
So the difference between a good Farscape episode and a bad Farscape episode is that the good episodes are Fast and the bad episodes are Slow. This week is a good episode because everybody wears nice clothes, they jump up on tables and knock things over a lot, and all the unpleasant people get kicked in the face at the end. Last week was a bad episode because everybody was hairy and slimy, they all stood around and made boring speeches, and I was expected to care about which group of dull people finally won whatever it was they were all squabbling over.
I say, don't bother explaining it all to me, just take off your clothes and shoot something! And usually they do. What a fun summer I've had so far.
Ep 1-5 -- Ep 6 -- Ep 7 -- Ep 8 -- Ep 9 -- Ep 10 -- Ep 11
Bad wig photos courtesy of