Farscape Rewind: Episode 1.09

[Wa11z]

Originally Posted by Thyme Laird

I think the writers addressed that by explaining that the galaxy was seeded by a race of progenitors DNA sequences that allowed humanoids to spring up from various worlds.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 (The Chase)

What does their behavior have to do with their humanoid appearance? You lost me.

Just that they act and dress the same. Which would work for ambassadors or a specific political group or military force, but after that their personalities should be divergent in some way from each other. Mr. I points this out with D'Argo being different from Jothee personality-wise and Chiana being different from the other Nebari on the show. In fact, the ep where they bring her onboard Moya for the first time, her captors are similar in action, but still different enough in their personalities that gives it that much more realism. At least to me, anyway.

[Thyme Laird]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

The second observation was that they had the same haircut, clothes, and politics. Consider Klingons, their personalities and dialogue were interchangeable. And Vulcans, and Romulans, and Ferengi, etc. There was only one personality for each species. I don't recall any exceptions, but if there are, that's what they were, exceptions to the rule. One set of personality traits was used for entire species.

Understood. The two points weren't directly related.
They were both cited as examples to make a larger point.

Originally Posted by Wa11z

Just that they act and dress the same. Which would work for ambassadors or a specific political group or military force, but after that their personalities should be divergent in some way from each other. Mr. I points this out with D'Argo being different from Jothee personality-wise and Chiana being different from the other Nebari on the show. In fact, the ep where they bring her onboard Moya for the first time, her captors are similar in action, but still different enough in their personalities that gives it that much more realism. At least to me, anyway.

Thanks for the clarification.

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

As for humanoids having a common ancestor, that if fine, but to differentiate them by sticking some plaster on their foreheads or with goofy ears was lazy. ST TNG did this constantly, but maybe Voyager and Deep Space Nine were worse. They certainly were no better.

I think DS9 was better, mainly because they invested more in it.
Voyager seemed to slack, but Enterprise did much better.
None of them reached Farscape's level.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It doesn't really work as an explanation for Trek, since we regularly see these aliens in "home" type settings or only interacting with each other and nothing changes.

I'm willing to grant that some things like the cloths and even some of the haircuts could be military mandated but even that can only stretch so far. Even civillian Vulcans and Romulans sport the haircut and military enlistment has nothing to do with all Ferangi being depicted as greedy cowards.

Spock had grown his hair in the first movie and we saw different hairstyles present.
Saavik was half-Vulcan/half-Romulan and she sported different hairstyles.
In the original series, the Romulan commander and subcommander in The Enterprise Incident also sported other hairstyles, as did T'Pring in Amok Time.
However, by and large, Vulcan and Romulans all seem to go to the same barber.

As far as the Ferengi go, we see Dr. Reyga motivated by the need for scientific recognition.
Rom's motivation seems to change over the years when exposed to the possibilities of other pursuits...he becomes an engineer.
Nog joins Starfleet.
Brunt eventually seeks vengeance over profits.
There was even Ferengi eliminator Leck who lived for the kill and didn't care about latinum.
Still, the Ferengi economy (and major religion) is predatory capitalism.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

For me that really just amounted to little more than an after the fact excuse for their unimaginitive makeup jobs. I'll give TNG more of a pass on this because it was an older show but even then their seeding explanation only serves to poorly explain why every alien looks semi human. It doesn't explain why all Romulans have the same haircut, why all Klingons live for war and honour, or why all Ferangi are greedy.

We've seen Klingon lawyers, cooks, and scientists.
Klingons are aggressive and have developed a code of honor.
However, the overwhelming evidence is they are more concerned about face than honor.
The Klingons of TNG value their alliance with the Federation,
however, they remain more concerned with perception of honor rather than truly acting honorably.
In DS9, the Klingons twist themselves in knots attempting to justify their actions as brave and honorable.
The most honorable Klingon we see (Worf) is largely an outsider to Klingon culture who has a romantic view of it.
All the non-warrior types even describe their job functions in terms of combat to elevate their own sense of achievement.
Finally, for a race that supposedly doesn't fear death, there's a lot of Klingon cowering in Trek.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Virtually every major alien society in star trek is basically what would typically be considered a racial stereotype, only brought to life and then played straight.

I understand the point and don't deny it generally exists.
However, they have tried to break the mold on occasion.
I agree that it really is more laziness than anything else.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Farscape takes it even further. "Peacekeepers" are not a species, they're a political group. Sebaceans are a species, many of which are also Peacekeepers. Not all Sebaceans are PKs though and not all PKs are Sebaceans. We see lots of Sebacean people in the show and Sebacean like people that are not affiliated with the PKs in any way. We also see a few aliens who are, though because of the PKs exclusionist policies, not very many. In other words this is actually played out a lot more like reality.

As you noted to there's also wildly diverging personalities within the PKs themselves. You cant even come close to saying the Crais, Scorpius, Grayza, Aeryn and Braca are anything alike really, but they all are or were Peacekeepers, and aside from Scorpy are all Sebaceans.

It works for Aliens as well. Chiana is nothing like the other Nebari we see, and Dargo is nothing like Jothee.

It seemed for a while because of all the comments made by characters that the Luxans were all alike.

But D'Argo's dream of being a farmer helped mitigate that....
....as did the episode with the Orican.

The Delvians looked pretty homogenous though.

[zahn-c]

DNA Mad Scientist was the very first episode of Farscape I ever saw and
it remains one of my favorite episodes. Less than 5 minutes into the
episode I was irreversibly contaminated.

Meanwhile, Mr. Infamous, you made many good points in your analysis
of the episode. I shall have to re-read the first post in this thread,
maybe even print it out, and watch DNA Mad Scientist again.

Ah, I feel nostalgic thinking of the first full episode of Farscape I ever
watched...

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by zahn-c

DNA Mad Scientist was the very first episode of Farscape I ever saw and
it remains one of my favorite episodes. Less than 5 minutes into the
episode I was irreversibly contaminated.

Meanwhile, Mr. Infamous, you made many good points in your analysis
of the episode. I shall have to re-read the first post in this thread,
maybe even print it out, and watch DNA Mad Scientist again.

Well thanks, that's certainly high praise. I'm pretty sure that this was my first Farscape to as I noted. I'm actually wondering now if I'm not going to recommend people watch this one second, right after the pilot. The pilot sets everything up but after that there's a pretty barren stretch to convince people to quit the series. This one almost seems to belong as the second episode to, with all the extra crew hostility and suspicion and the exceptional fixation on getting home.

I'm going to try to get the next review up tonight in case anyone's wondering to.

[zahn-c]

DNA Mad Scientist definitely shines the light on the plight of Moya's crew.
That they are all far from home and they would do almost anything to get where they think they want to be.

[Thyme Laird]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

This week we're looking at DNA mad scientist, an episode that plugs back into the whole "find our way home" arc for the various characters and shows us what might just be our first really obvious taste of character continuity between episodes.

Yummy.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Not with Namtar here though. There's an actor in there somewhere but you'll be in for quite a search looking for any human part of him that can actually be seen through the costume. He's also voiced by an entirely differant actor, and all this for only a guest villian in a single episode. This is also hardly the last time you'll see something like this on Farscape. I can't really think of any other sci-fi show that did better aliens than this one. People laugh and poke fun at the Jim Henson company but if they, plus any other FX house involved with this show I may have neglected to mention, were turning out stuff like this for single episodes back in the late nineties alongside lackluster "forehead alien" shows like Voyager, then well those sorts of comments are really worse than simply baseless, but you already knew that didn't you.

What's particularly galling is how the hacks on shows like Stargate mocked Farscape.
Farscape rarely took the safe route.
Compare that to all the other shows with their reset buttons.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Ok so our guys are getting fluid sucked out of their eyeballs because apparently this is necessary to enable some sort of super advanced DNA testing that will enable Namtar to find their homeworlds. Everybody but Aeryn gets their eye sucked here in the begining and in exchange Namtar shows off how well his technique works by popping up a galaxy map and then finding Zhaan's homeworld on it. He explains that this system works because it's got 11 million species stored in its database and well, this did sort of raise an eyebrow for me unfortunately. Couldn't they just tell him to input Luxon, Delvian or Hynerian into the system and find their homeworlds that way? Why was genetic material from an eyeball needed? Was it strictly because he wanted it and that was the price to pay for the maps? That couldn't be it though because he demands further payment later, which I'll get to in just a minute.

No, I believe that was the initial payment.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Now I know what Namtar's really after here, it becomes obvious later in the episode, but the characters don't at this point so why are they believing him when he's telling him he's got to suck juice out of their eyeballs just to look up their homeworlds in a pre-existing index of species? This could all easily have been bullshit at this point as far as they knew. If he knew Zhaan's species just by looking at her he could just have plugged that into the index and boom, up comes Delvia, the genetic material playing no actual role.

Perhaps this was simply a matter of reference.
Namtar might have had a database linking DNA to coordinates,
but might not have known them by those names.
They are in the uncharted territories.
John had the same trouble with reference points in the first episode.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

What comes next is where we get to that bit of character continuity I was talking about before, because Zhaan is, somewhat inexplicably, totally down with this shit. Chop his arms off, sure no problem, I'll even help hold him down. I would expect this from Rygel easily, and maybe Dargo if he was desperate enough and knew pilot would regenerate anyway, but Zhaan?! Isn't she suppossed to be all miss peace and love do no harm to others? Well there just so happens to be a scene at the end of last week's trainwreck that might just explain this strange new turn in her behaviour. You see throughout Black Magic she warned that if she started using her powers to hurt others again, even insufferable douchebags like Maldis who've got it coming, it might not be so easy to just put the bunny back in the box after all was said and done.

Hmmm, I thought about that, but she seemed pretty much in control of it until she started squabbling with Rygel & D'Argo.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

So last week Zhaan was using her powers to smack around quasi godlike beings and this week she's chopping arms off pilot for her own selfish reasons. John is hugely hugely bothered by what her, Dargo and Rygel did to poor Pilot but he never uses her "I can't resist the power of the dark side" confession to totally cut her off at the knees on her behaviour. Maybe he's just trying to be a good friend or wants to still have a chance at getting into her pants later

To help her get the bunny in the box as it were.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Big missed opportunity here, hell come to think of it Zhaan's early on buried superpowers were a big missed opportunity in general. I remember when I first watched these episodes years ago she was easily the most interesting character to me and I was just waiting for her to be placed into some sort of impossible situation that forced her to go full on evil party time and start blowing up people's heads for the ultimate greater good or something. It would have been awesome, both seeing the exploding heads (cause when is that ever not awesome) but also the character repercussions it would have had on her and the others once they actually saw what really lurked within her and why she'd been so afraid of it. Instead they kinda just dried her out and let her slowly whither away as a character though, becoming less and less interesting as time went on, shame.

They probably chickened out and didn't want deal with the challenge of trying to balance the rest of the crew against her.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Ok so Namtar gets his pilot arm and our three stooges get their crystal. There's a problem though, the map is so big in terms of overall data that Moya's computer's can't actually hold the whole thing to display it. This plot device (a single small crystal can hold more data than an entire starship computer ) means that two of the maps will have to be erased so the remaining one can be used, chaos predictably ensues.

That was Namtar's trap.
Rygel, D'Argo, and Zhann were too obsessed to stop and think about it.
I thought John should have caught on earlier though...too distracted by Aeryn.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It starts with a conversation with John about how she didn't participate in the eye sucking because she knows where her home is but simply can't ever go back there, and how she'll eventually end up alone when they all leave for their respective homeworlds. John offers to take her to Earth but Aeryn instead does her own thing without telling anyone. It's obvious she doesn't like the idea of having to rely on someone else to make a place for her at this stage yet, she likely views it as dependancy or charity and thus as weakness.

John offers to take her with him, so she basically insults him and goes off on her own.
She clearly holds just as much contempt for non-Peacekeeper Sebaceans,
so it's all really pointless.
She gets all whiny about being alone,
and yet she insults humanity when offered a chance to live on Earth.
This woman is a chore.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

So Aeryn goes down for a eyesuck but what she gets instead is an eyefull of pilot DNA, and yes I realise how totally wrong that sentance can sound.

And yet it feels so right.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The effect this has anyway is to gradually turn her into another pilot. This is when we begin to get a real taste of what Namtar's really all about. You see Namtar's not actually a real scientist, he's a test subject himself, but one that became so powerful do to the experiments performed on him that he took over charge of the entire research facility and instead began to experiment on the staff. His ultimate stated goal is to make himself into the perfect being by taking all the best traits from all the various lifeforms he encounters, which explains his eyesucking side business and why he's done what he's done to Aeryn... Well it almost does. I've got to wonder here why he doesn't just get all the pilot DNA he needs from the arm he got, and how dilluting it into Aeryn could possibly be better, but they do show another horrible mutant pilot thing in the episode so maybe he already tried it that way before and it was a no go. I'm not a DNA mad scientist myself so I can't say for certain.

I believe Cornata said Aeryn was being used to filter out the DNA.
Without a much larger test group, it still sounds hit or miss to me.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Namtar meets his match in the end though as John distracts him with a nice bedtime story about Dr. Mengele and his mutant assisstant jabs him with a syringe full of concentrated plot when he starts to get drowsy. The injection reduces him to some sort of cross between Rygel and a hairless rat, his original form, they give the same stuff to Aeryn and well that's pretty much all she wrote.

Looked like Jabba's little cackling friend.

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

Logically, DNA from a blood sample would be sufficient, but there is more visual effect, and that reversal of expectations, with the needle into the eye.

Only if he was working at the double helix level,
but Namtar was cranking it up a notch and going to the quantum level of DNA, baby.

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

One nice thing about this ep is the dialogue used to punctuate each plot turn. For example there is Namtar's line about the arm, then in the Aeryn and Crichton scene, her line: "What makes you think they are going to ask him." or something like that. Then follows is a cut to mid-scene of the attack on Pilot. The entire episode was very well constructed and written in that way. Ok, perhaps the Mengele speech was too long, the references out of date, and basically hitting our heads with the story moral; but that was a minor blip.

I liked that part.

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

But this whole 'lost' business. Only Crighton is lost. Since when are the others lost? Sure, the Uncharted territories are ... uncharted, but the worlds of Zhann, etc, are known worlds. They were prisoners of the Peackeepers, not wanderers lost in space. Perhaps the story idea was that they wanted a chart of the Unknown Territories so they could find a safe course through it, but it was never stated that way. They acted like they had no idea where their home planets were at all, which is nonsense.

Moya had no star charts. Doesn't make much sense to me.
Maybe it was tied into the control collar.

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

It was good that the characters are still a little hostile and mistrustful (for good reason!) this far into the season. That they would only gradually become friends seems to make sense, and made for better stories. It was great irony that Aeryn, the Peacekeeper, was the moral one in this ep, disgusted that the other three would chop off a comrade's arm. The way she stood, pistol shown prominently, gave the impression she was ready to gun them down. This was another reversal of expectations, given what we viewers have learned of Peacekeepers. Now we learn that other species in this Galaxy are no better and perhaps worse.

We're seeing Rygel, Zhann, and D'Argo desperate,
while Aeryn is coming to terms with never returning home.
She made her "choice" and now she's living with the consequences,
whereas the others are still hot to get home.

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

Pilot took the lopping off of his arm a little too lightly, though he did make some sarcastic accusatory comments later in the ep. But I didn't buy his attitude. He's the pilot, cutting off his limbs is not part of serving the crew.

I think a Pilot's regenerative abilities was a concept added much later. In this ep we get lines about "now having three good arms", and at the end DArgo asks: "how is your arm healing" which I took to mean they retrieved the arm from Namtar's lab and had it grafted back on.

I took it to mean he could regenerate the limb,
but that was a leap on my part based partially on Pilot's attitude to getting it lopped off and vague talk of his recuperative ability in this episode.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The Farscape universe is actually a pretty hostile and unforgiving place where things are often not as they appear and good intentions hardly always guarantee good returns.

That's another stand-out aspect of this series.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Yeah I've got to admit I've also been surprised at the portreyal of early Dargo hus far. I didn't remember him being as much of an as as he often comes across here.

I remember it and honestly couldn't wait for it to be over.
He's a very young man in Season 1 and it shows.
He acts like an annoying adolescent.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Thyme Laird

What's particularly galling is how the hacks on shows like Stargate mocked Farscape.

Oh really, do you recall and specific examples? I can never have too many reasons to dislike that gaggle of complacent underachieving boobs.

Farscape rarely took the safe route.
Compare that to all the other shows with their reset buttons.

Voyager had one the size of a Delta quadrant, almost nothing on that show was allowed to stick around for more than an episode, not even scratches in the ship's pristine paintjob.

No, I believe that was the initial payment.

I've also got to laugh at the idea that Zhaan could have just whipped out her camera phone here, snapped a pic of that galaxy map with her world marked out, and told him thanks but no thanks. Preferably after she'd already demanded he prove he could actually find the other 2 and taken those photos more covertly. Sure it's not as good as a "super map that will let you avoid all Pk patrols" but hey, it's free.

Perhaps this was simply a matter of reference.
Namtar might have had a database linking DNA to coordinates,
but might not have known them by those names.
They are in the uncharted territories.
John had the same trouble with reference points in the first episode.

I think the most likely explanation is that he didn't know how to actually operate that particular machine as well as he tried to pass off. It's also likely that he's severely lacking in knowledge in general, which is a differant thing from intelligence. In other words he wouldn't know what a Delvian, Hynerian or Luxon actually was because he's only really been sentient for a month or so and has never left that asteroid. I still maintain though that a little more inquisitive probing by the main characters would have revealed all of these types of odd inconsistancies. I'd like to get to know the guy sticking the needle in my eyeball myself.

Hmmm, I thought about that, but she seemed pretty much in control of it until she started squabbling with Rygel & D'Argo.

It's the best explanation I can think of. Either this is leftover evil or she's horribly off-character in this episode. In "black magic" she was nearly reduced to tears by having to cause pain to that two headed bird thing.

To help her get the bunny in the box as it were.

Aww, now you've gone and perverted my innocent Con Air reference.

They probably chickened out and didn't want deal with the challenge of trying to balance the rest of the crew against her.

I think the writers kind of lost interest in her once Chiana came along. All the "alien sexiness" then got given to her and what was left of Zhaan was pretty dull so not much came her way in terms of stories as a result. She got delegated to cooking up potions and bitching about what awful people the others were for coming up with whatever plan it was they'd come up with.

That was Namtar's trap.
Rygel, D'Argo, and Zhann were too obsessed to stop and think about it.
I thought John should have caught on earlier though...too distracted by Aeryn.

The maps did fit on the crystal though, and they were too big for Moya's computer to handle. This was the reason given when they tried to download one of them. "we can't use them because there's too much data on this portable device for our entire ship's computer to handle". The fact that Namtar's little console down on the asteroid also handled even more data just fine only made it worse. It was one of those scenes that just makes you grab the bridge of your nose and close your eyes until it's over.

I personally have especially little patience for plot devices that rely on such obvious disconnects of logic like that to advance a certain scenario though so your milage may vary. For me the ability to find reasonable and most of all believable ways to set up the various scenarios you want to create in a story (only one of the 3 maps can actually be used) is one of the things that seperates good writing from hack writing. Anybody can just pull something out of their ass if there's no requirement that it actually make sense when examined.

John offers to take her with him, so she basically insults him and goes off on her own.
She clearly holds just as much contempt for non-Peacekeeper Sebaceans,
so it's all really pointless.
She gets all whiny about being alone,
and yet she insults humanity when offered a chance to live on Earth.
This woman is a chore.

Is she ever. I never got what he saw in her. Sure she looked pretty appealing time to time but so does a 20 year old Lamborghini, and she's just as tempermental and high maintenance. I figure it's just because he was too much of a fraidy cat to "boldy go where no man has gone before" with the various alien babes, so he picked the one that was 99% indistinguishable from human. Talk about wasting the opportunity of a lifetime...

And yet it feels so right.

I'm sure pilot would agree.

That's another stand-out aspect of this series.

It's funny, I just finished binging my way through all 4 seasons of Blakes 7 (will probably make a thread) and it's totally proto-Farscape. To the point where some of the characters not only act but even sort of look the same. This is one of the major recurring themes in that show as well.

I remember it and honestly couldn't wait for it to be over.
He's a very young man in Season 1 and it shows.
He acts like an annoying adolescent.

He's just so goddamn annoying in these early ones to the point where I've been wondering why nobody just ditched him somewhere? What does he really contribute to the "team" here that makes him so valuable, muscle? Aeryn, and even Zhaan, can do that and they're both way more stable than he is. He's basically a walking 7 foot pain in the ass at this stage. Not only do they not need him but his pressence potentially places them in greater danger, especially Chrichton, who he's casually tried to kill more than once for basically no reason.

[Thyme Laird]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Oh really, do you recall and specific examples? I can never have too many reasons to dislike that gaggle of complacent underachieving boobs.

I recall one of TPTB from Stargate mocking Farscape's puppets and animatronics in an attempt to deflect a comparison raised between the two....
....somewhere around Season 7, I think.

I recall one of the TPTB dissing Farscape as "obscure" in an interview,
while discussing Stargate's 200th episode...and I thought to myself,
"Ben Browder standing right beyond him and he's basically dissing Browder's fans, many of who migrated to Stargate."

Then there was the offhanded remark one of TPTB made that inferred that Stargate was the better show because it lasted longer and took it cues from the fans, while Farscape had been long-forgotten.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Voyager had one the size of a Delta quadrant, almost nothing on that show was allowed to stick around for more than an episode, not even scratches in the ship's pristine paintjob.

Apart from the Kes & Seven cast change.

I stopped watching after the show turned into the "Seven of Nine T&A-cam".

Just prior to that, it had been "Space Watch",
with constant scenes of women on holodeck beaches.

I kind of felt sorry for Jeri Ryan, trying to play a serious part, only to have TPTB sex it up.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I think the most likely explanation is that he didn't know how to actually operate that particular machine as well as he tried to pass off. It's also likely that he's severely lacking in knowledge in general, which is a differant thing from intelligence. In other words he wouldn't know what a Delvian, Hynerian or Luxon actually was because he's only really been sentient for a month or so and has never left that asteroid. I still maintain though that a little more inquisitive probing by the main characters would have revealed all of these types of odd inconsistancies. I'd like to get to know the guy sticking the needle in my eyeball myself.

And that's because your parents took the time out to have the dreaded eyeball/needle talk.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It's the best explanation I can think of. Either this is leftover evil or she's horribly off-character in this episode. In "black magic" she was nearly reduced to tears by having to cause pain to that two headed bird thing.

It just didn't seem consistent to me.
They needed some explanation to help make it believable
for her to participate in lopping off Pilot's arm.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I think the writers kind of lost interest in her once Chiana came along. All the "alien sexiness" then got given to her and what was left of Zhaan was pretty dull so not much came her way in terms of stories as a result. She got delegated to cooking up potions and bitching about what awful people the others were for coming up with whatever plan it was they'd come up with.

Yeah, that seems more likely...flavor of the month.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The maps did fit on the crystal though, and they were too big for Moya's computer to handle. This was the reason given when they tried to download one of them. "we can't use them because there's too much data on this portable device for our entire ship's computer to handle". The fact that Namtar's little console down on the asteroid also handled even more data just fine only made it worse. It was one of those scenes that just makes you grab the bridge of your nose and close your eyes until it's over.

I personally have especially little patience for plot devices that rely on such obvious disconnects of logic like that to advance a certain scenario though so your milage may vary. For me the ability to find reasonable and most of all believable ways to set up the various scenarios you want to create in a story (only one of the 3 maps can actually be used) is one of the things that seperates good writing from hack writing. Anybody can just pull something out of their ass if there's no requirement that it actually make sense when examined.

Well, perhaps Namtar used the Uncharted Territories Edition of Stuffit Deluxe.
Perhaps the file was compressed like crazy and could only run when uncompressed.
Perhaps the uncompressed files acted like a worm, overwhelming the target computer.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Is she ever. I never got what he saw in her. Sure she looked pretty appealing time to time but so does a 20 year old Lamborghini, and she's just as tempermental and high maintenance.

Now I'm thinking of all those Sandra Bullock movies where she plays an incredibly annoying character and, in defiance of all logic, the guy falls in love with her because of it.

Aeryn Sun is a variation on that theme.

In John's place, I would try to reach out to Aeryn out of compassion,
but no way in hell would I ever think to get involved with her.

My brain would simply never dream of issuing a command like that.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

He's just so goddamn annoying in these early ones to the point where I've been wondering why nobody just ditched him somewhere? What does he really contribute to the "team" here that makes him so valuable, muscle? Aeryn, and even Zhaan, can do that and they're both way more stable than he is. He's basically a walking 7 foot pain in the ass at this stage. Not only do they not need him but his pressence potentially places them in greater danger, especially Chrichton, who he's casually tried to kill more than once for basically no reason.

Aeryn and D'Argo seem almost perfect for each other at this point in the series.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It's funny, I just finished binging my way through all 4 seasons of Blakes 7 (will probably make a thread) and it's totally proto-Farscape. To the point where some of the characters not only act but even sort of look the same. This is one of the major recurring themes in that show as well.

I love that series. I've been patiently awaiting the release of Region 1 DVDs.
What do you have? VHS? Region 2 DVD?

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Thyme Laird

I recall one of TPTB from Stargate mocking Farscape's puppets and animatronics in an attempt to deflect a comparison raised between the two....
....somewhere around Season 7, I think.

Just shows you the sort of maturity level doesn't it. The quality of a series can be measured by the quality of the special FX. I guess when you've already accepted that it's clearly not going to be dictated by the quality of the writing you need to find something to hang your hat on without making the actors feel too important.

FX don't mean shit. To mention Blakes 7 again, now that I've finished the whole series I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the ship effects and models were literally so bad at times that I think I could honestly do better working in my own capacity as a model hobbyist. Despite that though it was still a better series overall than either stargate.

I recall one of the TPTB dissing Farscape as "obscure" in an interview,
while discussing Stargate's 200th episode...and I thought to myself,
"Ben Browder standing right beyond him and he's basically dissing Browder's fans, many of who migrated to Stargate."

Then there was the offhanded remark one of TPTB made that inferred that Stargate was the better show because it lasted longer and took it cues from the fans, while Farscape had been long-forgotten.

This sort of "it's been on a long time so therefore it's superior" nonsense is parroted by a lot of their fans to. I like to bring up that Power Rangers has been on longer than Stargate when they do.

Apart from the Kes & Seven cast change.

I stopped watching after the show turned into the "Seven of Nine T&A-cam".

Just prior to that, it had been "Space Watch",
with constant scenes of women on holodeck beaches.

I kind of felt sorry for Jeri Ryan, trying to play a serious part, only to have TPTB sex it up.

Once she appeared the entire show more or less became about her. It's not really surprising though since even if you leave aside the skintight catsuit and special startrek wonderbras she was still their most, or even only, interesting character.

It just didn't seem consistent to me.
They needed some explanation to help make it believable
for her to participate in lopping off Pilot's arm.

I think the better choice would have been to have left her out of that part out of protest but then have her try to weasel her way back into the situation later via some sort of "since you've already done this let some good come of it" type rationale. I could actually see her doing something like that more easily. Self interest wrapped in some sort of self deluding lie of moral superiority.

Yeah, that seems more likely...flavor of the month.

It's possible also that Hey was already begining to have some sort of difficulties with the makeup even as early as late season 1 so they weren't sure how long she was going to be around and thus were reluctant to devote time to her character. If you notice even in season 2 her outfits cover a lot more skin than here in season one, where it looks like they were at minimum paiting the entire upper third of her body plus her hands. In season 2 they give her this high collared number where it's obvious to anyone "in the know" as they say, that the primary aim was to reduce the amount to makeup they were putting on her skin.

Well, perhaps Namtar used the Uncharted Territories Edition of Stuffit Deluxe.
Perhaps the file was compressed like crazy and could only run when uncompressed.
Perhaps the uncompressed files acted like a worm, overwhelming the target computer.

I could buy some sort of compression but then that still leaves the issue of namtar's console and why they couldn't just be copied over one at a time, decompressed, read and the erased when it was time to use the next one.

All in all it's just a pretty bad plot device. I suppose the average person's knowledge of computers was likely a lot less back in 99 than it is now though, so a lot less people would be likely to raise any eyebrows over this.

Now I'm thinking of all those Sandra Bullock movies where she plays an incredibly annoying character and, in defiance of all logic, the guy falls in love with her because of it.

Aeryn Sun is a variation on that theme.

In John's place, I would try to reach out to Aeryn out of compassion,
but no way in hell would I ever think to get involved with her.

My brain would simply never dream of issuing a command like that.

It's basically the same story for me. I could see myself maybe eventually becoming friends with Aeryn and offering to take her back to Earth with me even, but that's it.

None of the Farscape girls are really what you'd call stable.

Chiana: is too impulsive, frivilous and terrified of any kind of semi permanent commitment

Zhaan: is something like 800 years old, occasionally terrifying, and actually a plant

Sikozu: is a robot and generally deceptive and superior

Grayza: is just going to make you into her bitch and be off to collect another.

Noranti: is your gandma

Jool: is even more high maintenence than Aeryn at first but seems to actually mature a lot toward the end of her run. I'd say she's actually the best choice myself, if you can suffer though the initial bullshit that is.

John had limited options for sure, he probably should have just stayed a bachelor or gone gay for Dargo or something. I'm sure there's plenty of horrifying fanfic out there supporting the later.

I love that series. I've been patiently awaiting the release of Region 1 DVDs.
What do you have? VHS? Region 2 DVD?

I got them through ugh, digital, means. Can't you play region whatever DVDs on a computer though? Does a computer care what region a disk is from? Even if it does I'm virtually positive there'd be some kind of a work around for it. I've got an old 21" CRT monitor that I scored on the cheap specifically because I realised I actually watch most of my favorite shows via the PC rather than the TV.

[Thyme Laird]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Just shows you the sort of maturity level doesn't it. The quality of a series can be measured by the quality of the special FX. I guess when you've already accepted that it's clearly not going to be dictated by the quality of the writing you need to find something to hang your hat on without making the actors feel too important.

FX don't mean shit. To mention Blakes 7 again, now that I've finished the whole series I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the ship effects and models were literally so bad at times that I think I could honestly do better working in my own capacity as a model hobbyist. Despite that though it was still a better series overall than either stargate.

Yeah, I could always get into an old Blake's 7 or Doctor Who episode more than Stargate.

You always got the sense that despite the lack of production values,
they were really taking the show seriously.

As opposed to Stargate, where they had the production values,
but didn't approach it with the appropriate level of seriousness or believability.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Once she appeared the entire show more or less became about her. It's not really surprising though since even if you leave aside the skintight catsuit and special startrek wonderbras she was still their most, or even only, interesting character.

Well, Voyager had a major crisis on their hands when Jennifer Lien left.
Watch the first couple seasons and you'll notice that she was the lynchpin of series.
Nearly all the main characters were involved in her life.
Neelix was her love interest.
She worked as the Doctor's assistant.
Tuvok instructed her in controlling her mental abilities.
She was mentored by Janeway.
Tom trained her as a pilot.
They should have called it Star Trek: Kes.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I think the better choice would have been to have left her out of that part out of protest but then have her try to weasel her way back into the situation later via some sort of "since you've already done this let some good come of it" type rationale. I could actually see her doing something like that more easily. Self interest wrapped in some sort of self deluding lie of moral superiority.

You got her pinned down.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It's basically the same story for me. I could see myself maybe eventually becoming friends with Aeryn and offering to take her back to Earth with me even, but that's it.

None of the Farscape girls are really what you'd call stable.

Well, I hate the stable ones anyhow.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Chiana: is too impulsive, frivilous and terrified of any kind of semi permanent commitment

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Zhaan: is something like 800 years old, occasionally terrifying, and actually a plant

Which helps fulfill my recommended daily allowance.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Sikozu: is a robot and generally deceptive and superior

But she's well built.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Grayza: is just going to make you into her bitch and be off to collect another.

All that plus sweaty boobs.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Noranti: is your gandma

I'm reasonably certain my grandmother didn't look like a cross between Ross Perot and Shiva.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Jool: is even more high maintenence than Aeryn at first but seems to actually mature a lot toward the end of her run. I'd say she's actually the best choice myself, if you can suffer though the initial bullshit that is.

There's also a lot of clean up involved...melted metal and strands of hair.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

John had limited options for sure, he probably should have just stayed a bachelor or gone gay for Dargo or something. I'm sure there's plenty of horrifying fanfic out there supporting the later.

Dude, it's obvious where he went wrong.
Gilina saves his ass and he gives her a weak-assed greeting.
Of course, it didn't help that Chiana stepped in to lie for him.
So, Gilina dithers and ends up dead
because John rather cater to Aeryn's rollercoaster of self-discovery and self-denial.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I got them through ugh, digital, means. Can't you play region whatever DVDs on a computer though? Does a computer care what region a disk is from?

If the player is Region 0, you can play any region.
Most are coded to a specific region...and many can be hacked.
Many give you the option to choose and give you several chances to switch before it permanently changes.
I do own a Region 0 player.
I was just waiting for an actual Region 1 version to be released.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Even if it does I'm virtually positive there'd be some kind of a work around for it. I've got an old 21" CRT monitor that I scored on the cheap specifically because I realised I actually watch most of my favorite shows via the PC rather than the TV.

Monitors have better resolutions than most televisions.