updated Feb 23, 2003
Ep 12 -- Ep 13 -- Ep 14 -- Ep 15 -- Ep 16 -- Ep 17
Vacation,
All I Ever Wanted
Episode 12 -- Jan 11, 2003
"Kansas"
First, the bad news: It's been four months since the last new episode of Farscape, which is precisely long enough for me to forget every single plot point of the first half of the season.
The good news, obviously, is: Who cares about the plot points?
All we need to know at this stage is that at the end of the last episode, a white guy in a suit taught Crichton that you can use wormholes to travel through time -- but going back in time is very, very dangerous. To prove this point, the white guy sent Crichton back through time, and left him there. Because, well, um. Ahem.
Okay, I'll start over: Crichton is back on Earth, which is great, except he's in a spacesuit and hovering just past the upper atmosphere, which is not so great. Luckily, his friends manage to contact him through the wormhole, and they all fly through and pick him up.
They pick up a radio signal, which is conveniently tuned to that Instant Plot Point Channel from Gilligan's Island. The radio mentions President Reagan, which means they've gone back in time -- and Crichton knows that travelling back in time might screw up his whole timeline. So what do they do? They fly down to Earth and go to Crichton's house. D'oh!
Which brings us to this week's lunatic plot contrivance: If there's a problem with the timeline, it's going to start close to Crichton, who's currently a disaffected teenager living with his family in a suburban development in Florida. Crichton scouts around his family's house, and finds them having a party to celebrate his dad's imminent takeoff as the captain of the Challenger space shuttle.
Now, can I just take a moment to enjoy that? Cause, for me, It's 1986, and my
dad's the captain of the Challenger! is one of your more amusing life
issues. I have to wonder what other 1980's-themed problems the producers
considered. Maybe It's 1981, and my dad's in love with Jodie Foster! or It's
1984, and my dad's fighting over Cabbage Patch dolls! or possibly It's
1985, and my dad's getting money for nothing and his chicks for free!
But, okay, the Challenger. Fine. Let's go with that. (Did they think of It's 1980, and my dad's writing The Official Preppy Handbook? No? Okay, never mind.)
So that's the deal; Big John has to make Little John persuade his dad to rethink the whole get-killed-in-an-explosion career track. The problem is that Crichton's dad is the only marginally intelligent person in the whole family. John's sister is a shrieky-voiced little Valley Girl. His mother does absolutely nothing but sit around on the patio all day aimlessly flipping over Tarot cards, and she apparently needs someone to remind her to go to the doctor when she has cancer. And Young John is the type of kid who sticks three fingers up at his dad and shouts, "Yo, hero! Read the middle finger!" If I had a family like that, I'd be itching to get on the Challenger too. I'd be saving my pennies for a window seat.
Here's another example of why the Crichtons are a bit smartness-impaired -- they
live next door to a trashed, abandoned house, just right for a troupe of
heavily-armed aliens to move into for a few days. The only person who notices is
the neighborhood's standard-issue Gladys Kravitz, who sends over some hapless
cops.
Aeryn immediately sits down in front of the TV to learn English from Sesame Street, which is a cute inside-joke for the Muppet fans, but it brings up the whole "translator microbes" issue for me again. I can't quite figure out what the show's rules are about language. Aeryn apparently can speak and understand English, which I get, because she's been studying it. And D'argo can't speak or understand it, which I also get, cause he's an alien. But then Chiana seems to have no problem talking to the natives, and the Old Woman manages to hypnotize the hapless cops, giving them instructions in English. I feel like I'm getting mixed messages on this. (Note to Farscape fans: I am not asking you to send me e-mails explaining this to me. Your technobabble will only confuse the issue.)
Anyway, all of this is just here to distract us from the main point of the
episode, which is that Teenage Crichton is pretty. Everybody keeps touching him
and kissing him through the whole episode. As soon as Chiana sees him, she
starts coming on to him, and they end up having sex in the abandoned house. Even
John himself gets into a whole weird physical area with his younger self in the
scene pictured here. I'm not complaining, mind you. This is my favorite part of
the whole episode. I mean, if you're going to go to the trouble of going back in
time to fix history, then you'd want to take the opportunity to do this kind of
thing, wouldn't you? I sure would.
By the way, how about It's 1985, and my dad's inventing New Coke? No? All right, forget it.
Anyway, it all works out okay. At the last minute, Crichton remembers that when he was a teenager, he had sex in his neighbor's abandoned house, which then burned to the ground, and his dad rescued him. (This is the way every brilliant rocket scientist spends their teenage years, right? I wish I had a dollar for every time a member of the graduating class of MIT had sex in a burning building.) This made his dad stay home and not get killed on the Challenger, so that's the new plan. Honestly, any excuse to have sex with a teenager and burn down somebody's house for these clowns. No, that's fine, kids. You go ahead. Don't mind me.
So they do the sex thing, they knock Young Crichton out cold, and they light the
house on fire. Crichton's dad comes running into the building, and instantly
bangs his head against a light fixture and knocks himself out cold. They're a
hardy breed, these Crichtons, aren't they? Rocket scientists. What are ya gonna
do. I presume the NASA training program includes a lesson on not knocking
yourself unconscious when you're in a burning building. No wonder the Challenger
blew up.
Anyway, Crichton saves his dad, and his younger self, and everything's supposed to be fine now, except that they still screwed up the timeline and the world is ruled by Tribbles. Or something. I figure they'll fill us in on the details next week.
To sum up, I have to say that everything about this episode pretty much tallies up with my personal memories of 1986. Guys wore pink shirts, trick or treating children were allowed to go into abandoned houses unsupervised, and it was really easy to hypnotize cops.
In fact, if I found myself transported back to 1986, I'd probably do all the same things: I'd watch Sesame Street, knock my dad over the head, and burn my neighbor's house down. So this is what it sounds like when doves cry. What a feeling.
Ep 12 -- Ep 13 -- Ep 14 -- Ep 15 -- Ep 16 -- Ep 17
Claus
Encounters
Episode 13 -- Jan 17, 2003
"Terra Firma"
Back in the first season, Crichton was tricked into thinking that he'd travelled back to Earth, and it wasn't a very friendly visit; his dad and some mean government guys went all Alien Autopsy, and imprisoned and dissected his friends. Turned out that was all a hallucination created by [technobabble] in order to [lunatic plot contrivance], so it didn't really happen.
But now, thanks to some wormhole surfing, Crichton actually has travelled back to Earth, and oddly enough, the real thing is a lot less realistic than the hallucination was. Basically, Crichton's dad turns up on Moya like he's meeting him at the bus station, and says, hey, John, welcome home. Neat ship you've got here. Everybody is acting terrifically cool about the whole thing; this is more of a "business casual" first contact. In fact, they're playing it like Crichton is home from college for Christmas break, and he's brought some of his friends home to meet the folks.
And isn't this always the way? You come home from college, and all of a sudden, everybody in your hometown seems so boring and fake. It turns out -- and no surprise on this one, really -- that humans are just, like, these total phonies. As soon as Crichton walks in the door, a white guy in a suit steps up to him: "Commander Crichton!" -- he's shouting here, like Crichton's forgotten how to speak English -- "I am TR Holt, special advisor to the President! Congratulations! You have accomplished something truly momentous -- Earth's first contact with extraterrestrial life!"
So, damn, is that embarrassing or what? Crichton's been home for all of ten seconds, and already all his groovy alien friends have to find out that Earth is full of blowhard Republicans. Wait till the Scarrans hear about this; they'll never stop laughing.
Anyway, there's no quarantine this time, or even your more basic security
precautions; they just set up the aliens in Michael and Jane's beach house from
Melrose Place, and they let Crichton's random family members and ex-girlfriends
come and go as they please. They suggest that this is a major world event --
mostly with shots of news cameras and lines of dialogue like, "Gosh, this
is a major world event" -- but Farscape doesn't have enough money to show
crowds of more than about eighteen people at a time, plus a twelve year old
cousin with a video camera.
In lieu of the dissection, the government guys still get to act creepy by insisting that only Americans get to play with all the cool guns and spaceships. Crichton has the typical conversation that every kid has when he comes home from college and discovers that his parents are, like, totally part of the white male imperialist power structure: "Space travel was your dream to unite mankind," Crichton says. "When did that change?" Dad's response: "September the 11th. This isn't the same world you left four years ago, son. People don't dream like they used to. It's about survival now."
I'm sorry, people don't what now? There's a big terrorist attack, and all of a sudden people don't dream? Dad needs to get a grip on himself; his worldview is starting to come across as less thoughtful than the Chabuka-clan dreadlock guys from tormented space. Dang, you leave humans alone for a few years, and they completely fall to pieces.
Meanwhile, Tina Turner is prowling around and killing people. I've avoided
talking about the monster for this long because I'm not sure how to describe
exactly why I think she looks like Tina Turner. All I know is that as soon as
she appeared on screen, I said, hey, that's Tina Turner! and then I couldn't
shake it. Basically, if Tina Turner was a green, armor-plated alien assassin --
and there's no reliable evidence to suggest that she isn't -- then this is Tina
Turner, plain and simple. Anyway, Tina was sent to Earth by Grayza to find
Crichton and capture him -- which Crichton's ex-girlfriends and twelve year old
cousins manage to do right away, using the carefully-honed strategy of actually
going to his house and knocking on the door -- but Tina can't seem to manage it.
By around halfway through the episode, she's still prowling around multi-story
parking garages and killing Crichton's friends. This episode's message: Just because you're a professional telepathic Grammy-winning alien
assassin, it doesn't mean you're very good at your job.
But geopolitics and dead friends aside, the thing that's really important in
this episode is that Aeryn sees John kissing Caroline, and she gets jealous.
Aeryn is clearly The Girl Friend of the group, so Crichton's family invites her home to spend Christmas with them while the other aliens hang around at
the beach house and eat things. Aeryn and Crichton then proceed to have a series
of thirty-second conversations straight out of every college romance gone
sour.
Aeryn: "Do you want me to go back to Moya?"
Crichton: "We've already gone over this. It's entirely up to you."
Aeryn: "Look -- I'm not trying to pressure you, John. I'm actually trying to take the pressure off. Would you be happier if I wasn't here on Earth? You don't have to justify it, or explain it. Just give me an honest yes or no."
And then -- because it's a Farscape tradition, and because it's Christmas -- just at the moment when it looks like Aeryn and John might actually finish a whole conversation about their relationship, Tina Turner breaks in and starts killing people.
There's lots more in this episode to talk about, but I honestly don't think I can top that. Gosh, I'll miss Farscape.
Ep 12 -- Ep 13 -- Ep 14 -- Ep 15 -- Ep 16 -- Ep 17
Hard
to Swallow
Episode 14 -- Jan 24, 2003
"Twice Shy"
The drawback to my particular writing style is that it makes it hard for new readers to tell whether I'm being serious or not. I know that's true, because half of the e-mails I get start like this: "Dear Danny. I really like your website. When I first read it, I thought you must be dangerously insane, but then I read something else and I realized you were just being funny." Apparently I make an unsettling first impression. Then they usually go on to ask if I can send them a Pepe doll or write their English paper or something.
The reason I'm bringing it up now is this: It has been brought to my attention
that my Farscape reviews are confusing. Now, I could easily argue that the
Farscape episodes themselves are confusing, so how clear could I possibly be.
But that isn't the main issue, according to this recent e-mail: "Dear
Danny. I really like your website. But I have a problem with your Farscape
reviews. Why do you bother writing about a TV show that you obviously don't
enjoy? I don't know if you think you're being funny, or what, but if you hate
Farscape that much, then maybe you should write about a good show, like
Enterprise or Smallville. Anyway, it's just a suggestion. PS. I am working on a
trivia contest and need to find out which character dressed up as the
Thanksgiving centerpiece on Bear in the Big Blue House."
So I feel like I need to clear this matter up, once and for all: I do like the show. It's just the individual episodes that I don't like.
If
that's still confusing, then there's one surefire way to know when I don't like
a particular Farscape episode, and that's when I start a paragraph with the
phrase "So, get this."
So, get this: In this week's episode, the Farscape gang adopts a slave girl who turns out to be half teenager, half yellow mist and half huge scaly spider. I know, that's three halves, which just shows you how many problems she's got.
Apparently, her species gets through the day by pretending to be an innocent slave girl rape victim -- like you do -- and then putting out some kind of pheremone that enhances your most irritating qualities. Then, when you're ripe, she stings you, and then -- again, get this -- and then she harvests your "neural energy", stealing your "strongest trait" and storing it an "energy orb" in her nest.
Jesus H Christ. And they say my writing is confusing. This episode is like a neuroscience class at the Gilligan's Island School of Technology. I kept expecting the monster to hook everyone up to a big machine that uses super-conductive mercury to switch their personalities. I don't get it; last week, there was a whole cool arc thing going on about Earth, and wormholes, and Crichton's dad and everything, and this week, they're fighting a monster that makes them lose their capacity to love. Is it me?
Everyone's running around and shouting at nothing; Scorpius is screeching and
projectile-vomiting. (Turns out, Scorpius is like eighty-five percent water. Who
knew?) Then they spend minutes and minutes chasing after the spider, only to
find that it wasn't where they thought it was after all. The thing that's
supposed to keep me interested in all this is that Aeryn has a horrible,
pustulent infection slowly spreading across her face through the whole
episode.
So at the moment, my personal "strongest trait" is that I'm bored out of my mind. I can only wish that a big alien arachnid would come along and take that away from me. Hel-LO? Strongest trait over here! It's plump and juicy and really very strong, come and get it! No? Damn, there's never a neural-energy sucking arachnid around when you need one.
Anyway, big surprise, they find the nest and get the energy orbs, and then they kill the monster through the astonishingly original strategy of sneaking up behind it and then shooting it in the mouth with a big gun.
Then -- again not with the big surprise -- we find out that science-fiction
illnesses are just like soap-opera illnesses, in that it doesn't matter how
scabby and pustulent and horrible you get. As soon as you find the magic cure,
you're back to being a hot-looking babe with perfect skin and PVC pants.
"Storing your strongest trait in an energy orb." Come on, Farscape; you've only got 8 more episodes to wrap this whole show up. Don't make me come over there.
Ep 12 -- Ep 13 -- Ep 14 -- Ep 15 -- Ep 16 -- Ep 17
Dull
Mimes
and Other Hazards of Poor Vacation Planning
Episode 15 -- Jan 31, 2003
"Mental as Anything"
So, apparently -- and I'm willing to be wrong about this -- Farscape is entirely written and produced by guys, right?
Wait, let me check out this episode... written by Mark, directed by Geoff, executive producers Rockne and Brian... yep, pretty much guys, all the way down the line. But you'd know that anyway, because, a) it's science fiction, so, duh, and b) the crucial romantic-relationship plot points get approximately half a scene every episode. The ratio is basically thirty seconds of emotional content for every eight people shot with ray guns.
Plus, last week's episode ended with one of the greatest examples of Guy Logic
in television history. Crichton told Aeryn that he didn't love her, and he was
breaking up with her -- but then he managed to get a few seconds to whisper to
her that he was just pretending to break up with her, so that Scorpius
wouldn't hurt her to get to him. Then they started kissing quietly, so Scorpius
couldn't hear.
So, in other words: We're broken up and we can't talk about our relationship, but we can still have sex sometimes, right? This might be the one time in the History of Guys when that line actually worked. Dude! (Note to the men of Earth: Do not try this at home. Apparently this line will only work in zero-gravity conditions.)
Anyway, more evidence that Farscape is boy fantasy: After one minute of cuddling -- during which Aeryn actually gives him a big-screen TV for Christmas -- Crichton goes off with all the guys to Master Katoya's Mental Arts Training Camp.
The rest of the episode, unfortunately, takes place at the Mental Arts Training Camp. I'll say that one more time, because it's crucial that you understand how much Deep Boyness is involved here: Mental. Arts. Training. Camp.
"You have all come to my dwelling to learn," says Master Katoya, a
big-nosed alien guy with split ends and a powder-blue robe. Apparently, no
matter where you go in the universe, guys who run karate schools are always
totally into themselves. "Your objective is Mental Discipline. To focus
your whole mind on a single task is a skill few ever achieve." This, once
again, is a skill that only boys would appreciate. I mean, they're going to all
this trouble to learn how to focus their attention on one single thing, as if
guys ever do anything else. Meanwhile, the girls are all simultaneously
shopping, having their hair done, solving each other's personal problems and
writing the next Harry Potter book. What's the matter with boys, anyway?
It gets worse. "The Task Chairs provide access to a Mindscape, where you will compete with an opponent, to the point of great pain." Yup, we can check a few more things off the Boy Fantasy checklist. Do big-breasted waitresses come along and serve them beer at any point? "Embrace the pain, and you shall succeed. Retreat, and suffer the consequences. If you have any self-doubt" -- in other words, if you're a big femmy lady, I think is the implication here -- "then you have eighteen microts to exit, after which your jaxtawi crystal will be activated. Any attempt to leave, and the crystal will bore through your brain."
Well, okay, that sounds fair, if I attempt to leave, then the crystal will bore through my -- wait, WHAT did you say? It'll bore through my BRAIN? Who the hell signed us up at Dr Kevorkian's Judo School?
Anyway, all this Mental Discipline jive is just another way to say: We hook you
up to a big video game version of Fight Club, where you try to push a sparkly
cube at each other with the power of your enormous... um, courage. And to add
insult to injury, while this whole irritating contest is going on, the alien Pat
Morita guy keeps mincing around, hissing useless advice like "Embrace the
Pain!" and "Release your Mind!" It's basically electroshock
therapy, administered by a fortune cookie.
I mean, maybe I'm not boy enough, but as far as I'm concerned, this guy couldn't teach water how to be wet.
So then, as if being a karate-school teacher isn't irritating enough, Katoya starts acting like a manipulative psychiatrist with a non-compliant patient.
D'argo: "I'm leaving."
Katoya: "That won't provide you with the answers you seek."
D'argo: "What answers?"
Katoya: "What questions?"
Well, I don't know, bitch, YOU brought it up! I mean, this right here is why I think the whole Karate-Kid thing is totally aggravating -- this kind of pretentious, smug self-absorption, taking the most petulant shallowness and trying to pass it off as uber-wise insight.
And by the way, while I'm on the subject, here's a message to the boys of the
world: TAI CHI IS ENTIRELY MADE UP. Tai chi is as much of an ancient tradition
as Ye Olde Colonial Candle Shoppe at the strip mall.
And I don't care what Keanu Reeves tells you, practicing tai chi does NOT make you look badass and sexy. It makes you look like the world's dullest mime.
So now I have to sit around for the next hour and watch this self-absorbed zen merchant do his little Matrix impression, like he thinks he's somebody just because he has a black belt in pulling an imaginary rope. Personally, I blame the boys for this. Boys, go to your rooms.
All I can say is that this is the worst bed and breakfast we have ever been to, and as soon as I get this jaxtawi crystal thing out of my skull, I am going to have a series of long discussions with this guy's supervisor.
Yeah, I'll teach you how to embrace pain, Master Katoya. Talk about a Tao of Poo.
Ep 12 -- Ep 13 -- Ep 14 -- Ep 15 -- Ep 16 -- Ep 17
Girls'
Night Ouch
Episode 16 -- Feb 7, 2003
"Bringing Home the Beacon"
Now, you have to hand it to the Scarrans, don't you? They don't just wait around for something to happen -- they make it happen. It doesn't matter how complicated their plan is, or how many unlikely contingencies they have to plan for. They have all the time in the world, these Scarran go-getters, and they know how to follow through.
Let's say, for example, that you're Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, and you want to find Crichton and get the information on wormholes out of his head. Now, you or I would probably go about this all halfassed. I know I would, at least. I think Plan A for me would be to leave a series of plaintive messages on his voice-mail. If that didn't work, Plan B would be to ask around if anyone's seen him. And then, when that got boring, Plan C would probably involve giving up, and pointedly changing the subject when anybody mentioned it.
But not the Scarrans. No no. This is what they do.
Step 1: Wait until the women from Moya go shopping for a black-market sensor distorter at a commerce settlement, a depressing open-air flea market held inside a giant floating animal carcass.
Step 2: Get yourself invited to a secret conference on the commerce settlement by Grayza, the Peacekeeper commander with hypnotic breast sweat. Grayza will offer you a complicated peace treaty. Argue about the terms of the treaty, even if you have no real intention of following through on it.
Step 3: Sign the treaty. When everyone is standing around afterwards, start
shooting. Take the Peacekeepers prisoner and bring them back to your ship.
Step 4: Hook your prisoners up to big complicated machines, and then wait around until the Moya crew infiltrates your ship. Lose your prisoners, but capture Aeryn in their place.
Step 5: Hook Aeryn up to a machine that instantly creates a cyborg replica of her, with a homing beacon in its head. The cyborg should be a perfect copy of Aeryn in every way -- walking and talking just like Aeryn does, with perfect knowledge of all her friends' names and relevant plot points, except for the fairly basic biological fact that she's currently pregnant.
Then all you have to do is send the cyborg back to Aeryn's friends, and follow them when they take off. It's just that simple.
This is, in fact, such a perfect, logical plan -- flawless in its every detail
-- that it wasn't until after the episode was over that I thought to myself,
hey, didn't they make that Aeryn clone awful fast? The Scarrans must have had
her for all of about twenty minutes when they sent the full-grown replica out.
It's a good thing they were in a mall, I guess, so they could send her right out
to Friendscrafters, which promises a full-size, walking, talking copy of your
friends... in about an hour.
Like I said, you just have to admire their resourcefulness. I wonder what they do when they want to get out of a speeding ticket.
Ep 12 -- Ep 13 -- Ep 14 -- Ep 15 -- Ep 16 -- Ep 17
Phone
Home
Episode 17 -- Feb 14, 2003
"A Constellation of Doubt"
Now, there are some issues with this episode, so let's get those out of the way, so we can move on.
This episode is almost entirely about Crichton watching a TV show made about his visit to Earth, showing how ambivalent and fearful the people of Earth are about the concept of alien visitation. Which is a fairly clever concept, except that it's a whole hour of watching the main characters watch television, so whatever. That's number one. Then there's the issue of getting tapes of Earth television programs through the wormhole so Crichton can watch them, which seems amazingly casual to me. Wasn't it, like, three minutes ago that Crichton was a million miles away from Earth and was never going to get back, and now he's getting care packages from home? That's number two, but I admit that's nitpicky, so I'm over it already.
Issue number three -- and this one is a little more substantial, for me -- is
that Crichton spends the whole episode shaking his head and clucking his tongue
about the fact that everybody on Earth is a little put off by the idea of
fantastically powerful aliens coming over and slaughtering / enslaving everyone.
He keeps saying things like "You're not ready," and making like humans
are being such babies about everything, but every time a human asks if there's
any reason to be scared, all the aliens say, oh, yeah, we're a zillion times
more advanced than you, and we could probably kill every person on the planet if
we felt like it. Then everybody gets quite reasonably concerned about that, and
the aliens say, oh, don't worry, though. We don't feel like it.
So what, precisely, is the response Crichton was hoping for? Did he want the entire population of Earth to just paint a big bullseye on the White House and wait for our new Scarran conquerors to arrive? (Note to myself: That's actually not a bad idea. Bring that up at the next Earth staff meeting.)
I mean, even the other aliens don't like the aliens on this show. I can't think of a single planet we've seen so far that wasn't full of people trying to kill the main characters. All the humans did was make a pretentious TV show about them, which seems like the most civilized response possible. Hey, who says those aliens are more advanced than us, anyway? Jeez.
But that's not the thing I really want to talk about. The thing I want to talk
about -- all that other stuff aside -- is that this was actually one of my
favorite episodes that I've seen all season, and the other one was the other
present-day Earth episode. In those two episodes, they managed to do something
that they haven't been able to do in any other episode this season -- which is
to make me care about a planet and the people who live there.
For all that everybody talks about the Scarrans on this show, we've only seen about two of them this whole season, and they were both tiresome and bitchy. I couldn't care less about the big-haired barbarian people, or the guy who runs the mental arts training camp, or the space weed, or the neural-energy eating spider, or any of that. There hasn't been a single alien character in any of the episodes this season that I would even walk across the street to visit. They're all just selfish and violent and unpleasant, all the way down the line. Besides the regulars, I can't think of a single alien character this whole season who's been nice, or funny, or endearing in any way.
But I care about Crichton, who in my opinion is one of the Great TV Show Characters Of Our Time. He's funny and sexy, he's unpredictable, and he's always watchable in every scene he's in. I care about Aeryn, and I care about D'argo, and Chiana, and Rygel, and Noranti. And that's about it. Those are the characters I like watching, and those are the people I'll miss when the season's over.
And -- in the these two present-day episodes -- I care about the Earth.
I like watching John's sister and father, trying to do the right thing, and finding themselves caught between John and the rest of the world. I like nephew Bobby, who might be trying to defend the aliens, and might be a little weasel selling their secrets for cash. I like the idea of an investigation into the various alien murders on Earth, and I like watching Earth society picking over the little scraps of information they have and trying to figure out what to do about it all.
Now, maybe that would get old, but I wish they'd just stayed on Earth, and done
the whole second half of the season there. Bring the Scarrans and the
Peacekeepers to Earth for a while, and see what happens. Show me the religious
iconography that springs up around Noranti, and show me Chiana on the cover of
Tiger Beat. For me, at least, that beats tedious aliens with illogical political
structures any day of the week.
I think it's pretty clear that eventually all of this is heading towards a big battle over Earth -- either the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans using Earth as a battleground, or joining together to conquer Earth and use it as leverage to get Crichton's wormhole knowledge. Or something like that. Unfortunately, that was probably the plan for next season, so we'll never see it.
That's really frustrating for me, because it feels like all the messing around they've done on other planets has just been killing time, running out the clock until the season finale, so they can do The Big Thing next year.
Which would be fine, except there's not going to be a next year. John Crichton, come home! We need you down here.
Ep 12 -- Ep 13 -- Ep 14 -- Ep 15 -- Ep 16 -- Ep 17
Photos courtesy of the fabulous
My Week with Christmas Vacation