Farscape Rewind: Episode 1.16

[Mr. Infamous]

This week on farscape rewind, "A human reaction" an episode where John gets back to Earth in the first season. Well not exactly...

The episode opens with John sitting by himself remembering how great Earth used to be so thanks to this forshadowing it shouldn't really come as much of a surprise when a wormhole opens in front of the ship shortly after. To make it even more obvious what's about to happen we can even see Earth through the wormhole.

Credits roll and we're back to see John of course about to fly into the new wormhole in hopes of getting back to Earth. The wormhole's highly unstable and becoming even moreso every second however, and despite this we still see John take the time to seek out Aeryn and try to talk her into going with him like he suggested several episodes ago. Good continuity here of course but it also shows just how close he's already getting to her here, that he'd risk the door to Earth slamming shut in his face just to try and talk her into coming with him.

Aeryn refuses of course and John sets off alone. Before he does though, and in a somewhat curious scene, Zhaan is the only one to really try and stop him from leaving. I say it's curious because though she seems to show a great deal of concern for his well being here she's conspicuously absent later when... well we'll get to that in just a minute.

John says his goodbyes to everyone and blasts off through the wormhole, managing to not vaporise himself in the process. There's another nice little touch here that a lot of people probably miss, Dargo uses the human handshake John taught him in "till the blood runs clear" to say his goodbye.

John comes too on a beach after a scene cut and we see that he's crashed his module in Australia somewhere and, oh no look out John, that's Osiris you're talking to! (I seriously needed to check the IMDB here, I was convinced that was the same actress).

Before Osiris can fry John's brains though some goons show up and give him a proper terran welcome with a bunch of assault rifles, a helicopter gunship, and a tranq dart to the leg.

John tries to run away but collapses from the dart in seconds and winds up in some sort of giant fishtank with doctors jabbing away at him with various instraments. Then it's interrogation time of course, as this episode's badguy Wilson asks John a bunch of stupid questions under the assumption that he's some sort of diabolical alien invader. You know since he arrived unarmed and crashed his ship on a beach all alone in broad daylight. Next he's made to show off the capabilities of translator microbes by listening to a parade of various people speaking various native Earth languages. John doesn't let Wilson in on how his translator microbes enable primitive aliens to somehow understand his speach though. In any case John's had enough crap and tells them he's not cooperating anymore.


Wilson goes off to look at some pictures of Rygel John described to a sketch artist and then John's daddy arrives to save the day. Before dad helps him though he's got to ask him a few questions, the usual "ask the guy questions about his past to verify his identity" thing goes down and eventually John convinces Jack that it's really him. John's dad then drops the bombshell, the wormhole John went through in the first episode has stayed open since he left. No one can figure out how to close it and with no way of knowing what's on the other side of it the entire planet has formed some sort of global alliance to freak out over it.

Wilson is in charge of this alliance which explains why John was abducted and brought to him when he crashed.

We get some father and son time with Jack Crichton then John goes back to the bunker to tell us that yes, apparently now his module does have hetch drive.

The episode kicks into the main plot next, with one of Moya's transport pods being detected leaving the wormhole and coming for Earth. Dargo, Aeryn and Rygel are on board, and after getting the same sort of warm terran welcome John did, they're also placed into the giant fishtank. Aeryn explains that after John left the Earth disappeared in the wormhole and they went in for a closer look to see what was going on and got inadvertantly sucked in. Here's where I had a bit of a problem. Why in the hell was Rygel along for the ride here? If you believe that they really just did intend to take a look and then return to the ship regardless there's no reason for him to be there. If you believe, as I do, that they intended to take a look and see what was wrong and then probably try and mount some sort of a half assed rescue mission then it makes even less sense for him to be there. He had nothing but contempt for the whole idea of the wormhole at the start and just wanted to be on his way to the commerce planet. You'd expect him to be furious that they were going to waste even more time investigating it after Crichton had already gone through, let alone volunteer to go along himself.

I can believe Aeryn and Dargo would go because both of them have some sort of connection of friendship or loyalty to John. Rygel's too much into self preservation to risk his tiny shiney hiney on something like this though, plus he hated the idea fromt he start, so it seems really out of chracter for him to be there. Almost like they needed him to be there for a scene that was going to happen later... hmmm. Speaking of out of character where's Zhaan? We see at the begining of this episode that she's apparently the most concerned about John leaving and trying to talk him out of it, and now she's nowhere to be found. It seems like you'd expect a pod with Aeryn, Dargo and Zhaan given the begining of the episode but then if it went down that way it goes without saying Rygel and Chiana would just abandon them all to their fate the minute they could convince pilot they were probably dead.


In any case we get to hear untranslated Hynerian and Sebacean from the fishtank, and while Hynerian's not too much to write home about, Sebacean contains these weird sucking click sounds I don't think human vocal cords could actually make, another minor species differance perhaps. I remember someone saying that Sebacean was just English played backwards, it doesn't really sound like it here but I suppose I could be wrong. Anyway Rygel's complaining about being sick from the tranquilizer so Wilson and his goons decide to treat his illness by discecting him. Now we don't realy see exactly what happened here, the scene cuts away to John and his father, but Wilson does little to try and hide what went down. John freaks out on Wilson of course, then goes to break the news to Aeryn and Dargo. Aeryn comments that even peacekeepers wouldn't murder their prisoners just to study them and Dargo vows to kill anyone that tries to do the same to him.

John, suspecting that it's likely only a matter of time before Aeryn and Dargo follow in Rygel's footsteps, tries to appeal to his father to call in every favour he has to get his alien buddies let out. He goes back to the fishtank to tell them only to find out Aeryn has already overcome one of the guards and escaped. She explains that they already took Dargo somewhere while he was gone so when they came for her she was ready for them. Aww the one fight Aeryn manages to win and it happens off screen, figures.
We do get to see her punch out some random dude in the next scene though, then her and John beat up Cobb, one of the guards from earlier, for his keycard and escape from the building. Before he gets clobbered though cobb tells them that Dargo's been flown to another base already, meaning he's likely already dead or soon to be and there's nothing they can do.

If you weren't already expecting it following Rygel's demise you should have a pretty clear view of the inevitable reset button that'll close out this episode by now.

John and Aeryn escape into the great outdoors, the episode doesn't show us how they got past the base's perimiter but perhaps the outer guards have no idea that Aeryn is actually one of the aliens. Next we get a scene I found pretty hard to beleive in which apparently Aeryn's never experianced rain before.

The two go to a house John's dad apparently owns and plan to hide out there for a while. If you've watched any eighties action movies at all you'll know that this is the part where the guy and the girl simply must do it. Apparently whoever wrote this script was a fan to because the episode doesn't disappoint, though the scene fails to fullfil the same purpose as most of those action movies scenes, that's to say there's no gratuitous nudity to pad things out. Aww shucks.

There is one comment worthy bit about this scene that I really liked though. When John looks out the window he doesn't see the typical idealised "sunny day back home" that he'd probably imagined in his head when he thought of Earth. Rather it's the middle of a thunderstorm and there are police sirens going off in the background. It's a nice little subtle point of observation on how we tend to remember the things we loved for the good times while forgetting the bad.

The next morning John and Aeryn play dress up for a while before dad arrives and I get my first clear view that the military sidearm John took off Cobb was in fact the "Desert Eagle" I thought it was..... ugh.

Jack arrives to tell them Dargo's been shipped back to the states and to tell them they need to get moving if they're going to stay ahead of Cobb's thugs. There's a scene here where I do kind of hope Sebacean is at least partly reversed English because I'd like to know what Aeryn says to John's father before he thanks her. There's good potential to unearth some self discovered comedy here I think.

So John and Aeryn are walking somewhere indeterminate out in public, he spots Osiris again, plus a stand full of 7 month old magazines being sold as new, freaks out over both and busts out the Degale while raving on about how everyone around him is someone he's seen before. Then he runs off into a pool hall, hand cannon still casually waving in the breeze, and notices that again he knows all the people and has been to the location before. Then he hits on an idea, he's never been in the ladies room, so he kicks the door down and breaks the whole phoney reality that'll be serving as the twist to this week's episode. I've got say I knew something was going to come along to undo all the main character death but the first time I saw this episode this did come as a bit of a surprise. Up until John starts freaking out about knowing everyone you don't really get any hints that this isn't the real Earth at all.

As it turns out though this was all a sort of virtual reality test created by a bunch of giant red space crickets to determine whether or not Earth would be a suitable place for them to be welcomed as colonists. The answer is of course a resounding no. The head space cricket was impersonating John's dad the whole time of course and Rygel and Dargo are both fine in a completely differant giant fishtank.

The only remaining question then is just how many space crickets watched John and Aeryn get busy.

Overall "a human reaction" is an above average episode. The story is nice and tightly written and the genuine sense of fear conveyed by Dargo and Aeryn when they begin to suspect what their fate might be is very convincing. Kent McCord as John's space cricket daddy is one of my favorite guest characters in the show and we'll be seeing more of him later as this episode, and it's space crickets, go on to have very significant implications on he rest of the series.

Final verdict, dfinately not one you want to miss if you expect to know what the hell is going on later.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

This week on farscape rewind, "A human reaction" an episode where John gets back to Earth in the first season. Well not exactly...

Yeah, the producers were being smug about this one. They said it was an unwritten rule of this type of show that you never go back to the place the hero is trying to get to, or find, or etc. They said they pulled it off, and maybe they did. But then they kept going back, and the series did suffer for it. So perhaps they should have obeyed the rule in the first place.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Credits roll and we're back to see John of course about to fly into the new wormhole in hopes of getting back to Earth. The wormhole's highly unstable and becoming even moreso every second however, and despite this we still see John take the time to seek out Aeryn and try to talk her into going with him like he suggested several episodes ago. Good continuity here of course but it also shows just how close he's already getting to her here, that he'd risk the door to Earth slamming shut in his face just to try and talk her into coming with him.

But the delay is so long that it becomes comical. He is in a panic at first, then lackadasically wanders around the ship, unable to get his ass in gear. Didn't the wormhole degenerate to something like 40% before he finally got out there?

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

John comes too on a beach after a scene cut and we see that he's crashed his module in Australia somewhere and, oh no look out John, that's Osiris you're talking to! (I seriously needed to check the IMDB here, I was convinced that was the same actress).

Osiris? A SG1 character? But Osiris was a guy in the mythology.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Before Osiris can fry John's brains though, some goons show up and give him a proper terran welcome with a bunch of assault rifles, a helicopter gunship, and a tranq dart to the leg.

Overkill. Like they had budget money they wanted to get rid of. Really too far over the top.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Then it's interrogation time of course, as this episode's badguy Wilson asks John a bunch of stupid questions under the assumption that he's some sort of diabolical alien invader. You know since he arrived unarmed and crashed his ship on a beach all alone in broad daylight.

Unless his mission is to infiltrate. A couple of sf movies have used that idea.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

the entire planet has formed some sort of global alliance to freak out over it. Wilson is in charge of this alliance which explains why John was abducted and brought to him when he crashed.

Wilson is an unlikely choice for this sort of job. He doesn't seem particularly bright, qualified, or competent. When interrogating John he doesn't seem to have any plan to determine if John is human or alien. He just asks random questions, acts insulting, tries to look crafty, and wastes time going nowhere.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The episode kicks into the main plot next, with one of Moya's transport pods being detected leaving the wormhole and coming for Earth. Dargo, Aeryn and Rygel are on board, and after getting the same sort of warm terran welcome John did, they're also placed into the giant fishtank. Aeryn explains that after John left the Earth disappeared in the wormhole and they went in for a closer look to see what was going on and got inadvertantly sucked in. Here's where I had a bit of a problem. Why in the hell was Rygel along for the ride here? If you believe that they really just did intend to take a look and then return to the ship regardless there's no reason for him to be there. If you believe, as I do, that they intended to take a look and see what was wrong and then probably try and mount some sort of a half assed rescue mission then it makes even less sense for him to be there.

Half assed is right. There is no reason for any of them to be there. Especially Rygel. John went through the wormhole, they would have left the area. So what if you can't see the planet? The wormhole was wiggling around anyway, not zeroed in on Earth. Presumably the aliens tricked them into coming through as part of the test, but credibility was stretching to the rubber band's maximum, and it was only act two!

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I remember someone saying that Sebacean was just English played backwards, it doesn't really sound like it here but I suppose I could be wrong.

Yeah, it is. And sped up.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Aeryn comments that even peacekeepers wouldn't murder their prisoners just to study them

I doubt that.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Aww the one fight Aeryn manages to win and it happens off screen, figures.

She fought an illusion, so it doesn't count.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Next we get a scene I found pretty hard to beleive in which apparently Aeryn's never experianced rain before.

Stupid and impossible, perhaps in the other order.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The two go to a house John's dad apparently owns and plan to hide out there for a while. If you've watched any eighties action movies at all you'll know that this is the part where the guy and the girl simply must do it.

This entire plot is recycled bits and pieces from 70's and 80's sf and adventure movies.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

There is one comment worthy bit about this scene that I really liked though. When John looks out the window he doesn't see the typical idealised "sunny day back home" that he'd probably imagined in his head when he thought of Earth. Rather it's the middle of a thunderstorm and there are police sirens going off in the background. It's a nice little subtle point of observation on how we tend to remember the things we loved for the good times while forgetting the bad.

It's only raining to keep them indoors to set up the sex scene. The rest of the time it's sunny, and the ground isn't wet either.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The next morning John and Aeryn play dress up for a while before dad arrives and I get my first clear view that the military sidearm John took off Cobb was in fact the "Desert Eagle" I thought it was..... ugh.

What? Why 'ugh'?

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Then he hits on an idea, he's never been in the ladies room, so he kicks the door down and breaks the whole phoney reality that'll be serving as the twist to this week's episode. I've got say I knew something was going to come along to undo all the main character death but the first time I saw this episode this did come as a bit of a surprise. Up until John starts freaking out about knowing everyone you don't really get any hints that this isn't the real Earth at all.

You get a few more or less subtle clues. If the viewer happened to see one or two of the movies that use this theme, they would guess in act one or two. I.e. The second time John sees someone he knew previously, the first or second time he sees old newspapers and magazines (in the base), and no new editions, set off mental alarms.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

As it turns out though this was all a sort of virtual reality test created by a bunch of giant red space crickets to determine whether or not Earth would be a suitable place for them to be welcomed as colonists. The answer is of course a resounding no. The head space cricket was impersonating John's dad the whole time of course and Rygel and Dargo are both fine in a completely differant giant fishtank.

And so it was the real Aeryn. I thought he might realize this and go back to find her or something, but they just forget about her. It isn't much of a test, because all the people act according to John's memories and perceptions. He could be dead wrong about many of these people. But the story idea is to say we nasty humans in the real world watching the show would likely act like Cobb and co. Yadda yadda

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The only remaining question then is just how many space crickets watched John and Aeryn get busy.

It was supposed to be a way for the producers to let the two leads get together without really getting together, according to the producers.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Overall "a human reaction" is an above average episode. The story is nice and tightly written and the genuine sense of fear conveyed by Dargo and Aeryn when they begin to suspect what their fate might be is very convincing. Kent McCord as John's space cricket daddy is one of my favorite guest characters in the show and we'll be seeing more of him later as this episode, and it's space crickets, go on to have very significant implications on he rest of the series.

I would say average at best. It is a lot of recycled ideas strung together. I did not find it tightly written, too many things were implausible or impossible. Kent McCord did a great job. The space cricket aliens were a terrible design. Why were they hanging from the ceiling? Were they supposed to be bunched together up there? It looked odd.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Final verdict, definately not one you want to miss if you expect to know what the hell is going on later.

I guess for continuity's sake it should be seen, though in other eps they do give most of this detail over and over, in summarized form. So technically, this ep could be skipped.

.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

Yeah, the producers were being smug about this one. They said it was an unwritten rule of this type of show that you never go back to the place the hero is trying to get to, or find, or etc. They said they pulled it off, and maybe they did. But then they kept going back, and the series did suffer for it. So perhaps they should have obeyed the rule in the first place.

Yeah I'll admit that even though I didn't hate this episode I never really saw the appeal of the whole "Earth episode" so many of these sci-fi shows seem to feel they need to do. I'm not really watching this because I want to to see more stuff that takes place on Earth.

[quote]But the delay is so long that it becomes comical. He is in a panic at first, then lackadasically wanders around the ship, unable to get his ass in gear. Didn't the wormhole degenerate to something like 40% before he finally got out there? [quote]

It's not really clear what the numbers are suppossed to even mean. If it's some sort of abstraction refferring to stability in the context of the chance of successful navigation then you'd have to be pretty nutty to still try it once it got down into the 40's and below.

Osiris? A SG1 character? But Osiris was a guy in the mythology.

In SG-1 she's a hottie that looks almost exactly like that woman on the beach

Overkill. Like they had budget money they wanted to get rid of. Really too far over the top.

I guess a bunch of jeeps would have been too boring.

Unless his mission is to infiltrate. A couple of sf movies have used that idea.

I get them watching him yeah, but the way Wilson seems so utterly convinced that he simply must be some sort of diabolical alien infiltrator comes across as a bit much, like he's only acting this way because he's wearing the badguy hat and that's what badguys are suppossed to do, make things harder for John.

Wilson is an unlikely choice for this sort of job.

As is Australia as a venue, a country with, as far as I know, no real space program to speak of.

He doesn't seem particularly bright, qualified, or competent. When interrogating John he doesn't seem to have any plan to determine if John is human or alien. He just asks random questions, acts insulting, tries to look crafty, and wastes time going nowhere.

Honestly Wilson is probably the worst part of the episode, he just gets practically poured into the tired old mold of "cruel government goon" with no variation at all from the stereotype.

Half assed is right. There is no reason for any of them to be there. Especially Rygel. John went through the wormhole, they would have left the area. So what if you can't see the planet? The wormhole was wiggling around anyway, not zeroed in on Earth. Presumably the aliens tricked them into coming through as part of the test, but credibility was stretching to the rubber band's maximum, and it was only act two!

As you could probably tell this was my most fundamental problem with the episode. While the final product does land on the good side of the line for me stuff like this certainly didn't help it get there. There is no adequately explained motive for them to try and "rescue" him from his trip back to his homeworld, which I'm convinced is why they never let those scenes play out infront of the camera, they knew the justification would look flimsy.

The best you could have done here to salvage this would probably have been to just make them all illusions. There was really no reason why they needed to be the "real" Dargo, Aeryn and Rygel as captured on some stupid rescue attempt in order for the story to work. The story was just about John and the Ancients, the other 3 were pretty much just window dressing for this one.

Yeah, it is. And sped up.

Where did you here this, and do you know of any way to reverse it back, some kind of program?

I doubt that.

More of her Rose tinted glasses, just like with Durka.

She fought an illusion, so it doesn't count.

Ahh yes, quite right. I knew something must have been off here.

Stupid and impossible, perhaps in the other order.

I winced at that one. Rain's not that special or rare guys, you know with liquid water being one of those pesky essentials to the humanoid life you've got spread all over the galaxy. Looks even worse when we learn in season 3 that even Pk command carriers have artificial terrestrial habitats on board for training and likely recreational purposes.

What? Why 'ugh'?

It's an interesting engineering exercise for its day but its oversaturation in bad action movies and videogames, and the adulation it gets as "the ultimate handgun" from clueless 16 year old fanboys as a result, has really made me sick of seeing it pop up so often.

You get a few more or less subtle clues. If the viewer happened to see one or two of the movies that use this theme, they would guess in act one or two. I.e. The second time John sees someone he knew previously, the first or second time he sees old newspapers and magazines (in the base), and no new editions, set off mental alarms.

I guess it worked a bit better for me because I've never really seen this story told quite this way before. The 7 months thing is entirely plausible as them just trying to keep him in the dark, up until he gets outside of course.

And so it was the real Aeryn. I thought he might realize this and go back to find her or something, but they just forget about her. It isn't much of a test, because all the people act according to John's memories and perceptions. He could be dead wrong about many of these people. But the story idea is to say we nasty humans in the real world watching the show would likely act like Cobb and co. Yadda yadda

The whole ending to this was very abrupt in general, like they realised they suddenly needed to wrap it up in one more minute so John just walks though a blue door and we're to assume he gets.... teleported? back to moya somehow along with the others and his crashed and partly disassembled ship.

It was supposed to be a way for the producers to let the two leads get together without really getting together, according to the producers.

If that was their aim though then mission failed. If it's the real Aeryn then how is this suppossed to be anything other than them having sex for real? There wasn't even any VR helmets or anything like that in play.

They don't ever follow up on this either as I recall, John and Aeryn just go on acting after this like nothing happened.

I would say average at best. It is a lot of recycled ideas strung together. I did not find it tightly written, too many things were implausible or impossible. Kent McCord did a great job. The space cricket aliens were a terrible design. Why were they hanging from the ceiling? Were they supposed to be bunched together up there? It looked odd.

I don't know, despite it's flaws there's something about this one that makes me want to like it. Maybe it's just because it's so much better than "I ET" despite the similar set up.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

In SG-1 she's a hottie that looks almost exactly like that woman on the beach

hubba hubba.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I guess a bunch of jeeps would have been too boring.

They should have had him crash in the ocean like the early Apollo ships. Then they could have picked him up in an aircraft carrier plus a couple of helicopters.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Honestly Wilson is probably the worst part of the episode, he just gets practically poured into the tired old mold of "cruel government goon" with no variation at all from the stereotype.

Yes. Vincent D'Onofrio did a much better job with this character type in 'Imposter', a movie based on the Philip K Dick short story of the same name. Of course, his character benefited from having a precedent to believe Gary Sinise's character was an alien imposter. There is a nice trick ending to this one.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The best you could have done here to salvage this would probably have been to just make them all illusions. There was really no reason why they needed to be the "real" Dargo, Aeryn and Rygel as captured on some stupid rescue attempt in order for the story to work. The story was just about John and the Ancients, the other 3 were pretty much just window dressing for this one.

Yes they were just plot devices in this ep, not characters.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Where did you here this, and do you know of any way to reverse it back, some kind of program?

They mention it on one of the dvds. Claudia Black says it was her idea. It seemed funny at first, but now it seems more a lazy shortcut. If you can record it digitally then you might be able to use a program to reverse the recording and slow it down.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It's an interesting engineering exercise for its day but its oversaturation in bad action movies and videogames, and the adulation it gets as "the ultimate handgun" from clueless 16 year old fanboys as a result, has really made me sick of seeing it pop up so often.

I suppose it has been surpassed over the years. But I believe the Israeli army still uses it, and a few others.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

If that was their aim though then mission failed. If it's the real Aeryn then how is this suppossed to be anything other than them having sex for real? There wasn't even any VR helmets or anything like that in play.

They don't ever follow up on this either as I recall, John and Aeryn just go on acting after this like nothing happened.

The producers act self-congratulatory about this one also. But their logic is flawed, as you point out. They say something about the sex 'not counting' because J & A were not really on Earth, that it was an illusion. Maybe Aeryn was meant to be an illusion. Yet they shot it as though Aeryn, DArgo and Rygel were real. She wasn't in the cage with Dargo and Rygel. But if this was so it was never made clear in the story. [/quote]

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

hubba hubba.

I've certainly thought so in the past.

They should have had him crash in the ocean like the early Apollo ships. Then they could have picked him up in an aircraft carrier plus a couple of helicopters.

A nuclear aircraft carrier.

Yes. Vincent D'Onofrio did a much better job with this character type in 'Imposter', a movie based on the Philip K Dick short story of the same name. Of course, his character benefited from having a precedent to believe Gary Sinise's character was an alien imposter. There is a nice trick ending to this one.

I haven't seen that one myself but it doesn't surprise me that D'Onofrio would be able to pull it off.

They mention it on one of the dvds. Claudia Black says it was her idea. It seemed funny at first, but now it seems more a lazy shortcut. If you can record it digitally then you might be able to use a program to reverse the recording and slow it down.

Great now I'm going to have to take up sound editing as a hobby in order to find out that it's probably just her reading from the phonebook instead of the strings of explicit profanity and backstage insults I was hoping for.

I suppose it has been surpassed over the years. But I believe the Israeli army still uses it, and a few others.

It's made by a company called "IMI" which stands for Israeli Military Industries" but it isn't actually used by the Israeli military or any other military. Its total unsuitability as a military sidearm was pretty much the other half of my "ugh" since John takes it out of Cobb's holster.

http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg16-e.htm

You can read all about it, and just about every other gun on Earth, from my Russian friend here. He even briefly goes into slamming it himself as a prop for "hollywood warriors".

The producers act self-congratulatory about this one also. But their logic is flawed, as you point out. They say something about the sex 'not counting' because J & A were not really on Earth, that it was an illusion. Maybe Aeryn was meant to be an illusion. Yet they shot it as though Aeryn, DArgo and Rygel were real. She wasn't in the cage with Dargo and Rygel. But if this was so it was never made clear in the story.

Yeah that's a pretty stupid thing to be gloating about since they're basically saying that if you change the venue to weird enough one two people having sex is no longer two people having sex. That's all that's apparently going on here. Sure the world is artificially created but if they're both the real people than anything they do with each other certainly isn't going to be artificial. So they could gloat about John not really getting to Earth here, since he didn't, but he certainly did have sex with Aeryn. I don't see any possible way they think they can wiggle out of that one using whats actually presented in the episode.

Like you just said if they'd intended it to be an illusion of Aeryn they should have stuck her in the fishtank at the end to. Then the viewer could have assumed that the Aeryn that John encountered who'd "escaped somehow" was actually the illusion while they'd just moved the real one at the same time they moved Dargo.

That's not what they did though, they left her conspicuosly apart from Rygel, who was the only "captured" character directly said to have been substituted with an illusion.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I've certainly thought so in the past.

Osiris eh? Those 60th Century BCE Egyptian goddesses were babes.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

A nuclear aircraft carrier.

And accompanied by a SEAWOLF - class nuclear submarine with a compliment of Navy SeALS, with their own mini-sub piggybacked onto the SeaWolf. Cool. We should have produced this show.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It's made by a company called "IMI" which stands for Israeli Military Industries" but it isn't actually used by the Israeli military or any other military. Its total unsuitability as a military sidearm was pretty much the other half of my "ugh" since John takes it out of Cobb's holster.

http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg16-e.htm

You can read all about it, and just about every other gun on Earth, from my Russian friend here. He even briefly goes into slamming it himself as a prop for "hollywood warriors".

Thanks for the link. I read about the Desert Eagle in Janes magazine a few years back. Their article was more complimentary. They described it, I recall, as a tough, reliable handgun that could be chambered to take several different types of rounds.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Yeah that's a pretty stupid thing to be gloating about since they're basically saying that if you change the venue to weird enough one two people having sex is no longer two people having sex. That's all that's apparently going on here. Sure the world is artificially created but if they're both the real people than anything they do with each other certainly isn't going to be artificial. So they could gloat about John not really getting to Earth here, since he didn't, but he certainly did have sex with Aeryn. I don't see any possible way they think they can wiggle out of that one using whats actually presented in the episode.

They seemed confused about what they were doing. They talked as though Aeryn at the same time was and wasn't an illusion. Then the characters behave as though it 'doesn't count', which again makes no sense.

[Thyme Laird]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Aeryn comments that even peacekeepers wouldn't murder their prisoners just to study them

With the exception of Crais' plan to dissect Crichton in the pilot, of course.

So, apart from the very guy they're running from,
who explicitly made that threat within earshot of all characters present in that scene,
we can definitely check the "No Dissection Murder" column for the Peacekeepers.

[Thyme Laird]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

John comes too on a beach after a scene cut and we see that he's crashed his module in Australia somewhere and, oh no look out John, that's Osiris you're talking to! (I seriously needed to check the IMDB here, I was convinced that was the same actress).

No, Anna-Louis Plowman played Osiris in SG-1.

The woman on the beach (Selina Muller) was the same actress
who played D'Argo's girlfriend in "Thank God it's Girlfriend, Again".

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

Osiris eh? Those 60th Century BCE Egyptian goddesses were babes.

If they really looked like that then the evidence speaks for itself I'd say.

And accompanied by a SEAWOLF - class nuclear submarine with a compliment of Navy SeALS, with their own mini-sub piggybacked onto the SeaWolf. Cool. We should have produced this show.

Oh yes, and all the SEALS in the minisub simply must have Desert Eagles chambered in .50AE.

They seemed confused about what they were doing. They talked as though Aeryn at the same time was and wasn't an illusion. Then the characters behave as though it 'doesn't count', which again makes no sense.

To many script rewrites perhaps, should have spent that time rewriting Jeremiah Crichton instead, and by rewriting I mean burning and then salting the ashes, and then burning the salted ashes.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Thyme Laird

With the exception of Crais' plan to dissect Crichton in the pilot, of course.

So, apart from the very guy they're running from,
who explicitly made that threat within earshot of all characters present in that scene,
we can definitely check the "No Dissection Murder" column for the Peacekeepers.

But that was part of his righteous justified revenge! for John accidently killing his shitty pilot of a brother. Surely you can see how in that type of situation ordinary rules about carving up prisoners no longer apply.

Originally Posted by Thyme Laird

No, Anna-Louis Plowman played Osiris in SG-1.

The woman on the beach (Selina Muller) was the same actress
who played D'Argo's girlfriend in "Thank God it's Girlfriend, Again".

Yeah I figured that out after checking IMDB like I said but I actually had to check the IMDB to know it wasn't her. Not only does the actress in this ep look so much like Plowman, but the fact I knew Plowman was from New Zealand beforehand certainly didn't help.