Farscape Rewind: Episode 1.18

Mr. Infamous · #1

This week on the Farscape rewind an episode that actually is worth watching, "A Bug's Life". Now this episode is worth watching not only for the kinky Zhaan and Dargo bondage scenes, a recurring theme in this show, but also because it's not last week's episode and therefore you won't have to pop uppers like tic tacs just to get through it.

The episode opens with the previously promised bondage scene with Dargo and Zhaan exploring some "alternatives" together. Dargo seems a little less into getting chained up by a baldheaded blue woman than most guys would be in his position though, and just keeps bitching about Peacekeepers and how he can't believe this is happening to him again. Before it's clear if Dargo is actually an unwilling victim of Zhaan's powerful psychic abilities or if it's just part of their roleplay (as Zhaan's comments seem to suggest), some actual Peacekeepers do show up and spoil things like they always do. These aren't even sexy Peacekeepers like the fabulous five of a few weeks ago either, so it's a real jarring shift in tone and a real downer for the episode in general, even though Dargo does have a line that seems to suggest he might want to invite them to his and Zhaan's party.

Of course Peacekeepers being classical douchebags decide that they'd rather brandish weapons and try to take over the ship instead, which wouldn't be surprising were it not for the fact that Aeryn has dressed up John in a PK uniform and they're both playing at being the PK crew of Moya. It's not because these new guys are able to expose their ruse in any way that they act like this either, they just act like this because apparently they're just dicks and shoving guns into the faces of fellow officers and trying to hijack their ships without explanation is par for the course in Peacekeeper land. John's not having any of that shit though and orders all the watching DrD's to bust out those little energy blasters they shouldn't have again. After a bit of a light show the new guys learn to know their role and decide to stop being dicks for a while and thus the story continues.

Now I had a couple issues with John's whole Pk act here. First off he's apparently wearing a Pk captain's uniform only it doesn't look anything like the uniform Crais wears and the other commando guy also has a completely differant uniform and is also another captain. Whether this is meant to indicate that the Pks actually have differant branches in their military or just that the costume designers cared more about cooking up cool looking one offs instead of being consistant isn't really clear but I'd bet on the latter. The Pk uniforms in the series in general are about the most non-uniform uniforms you'll ever see. Braca for example probably changes uniforms about 5 times but only changes rank once, then you've got characters like Durka, another captain with his own uniform version (perhaps explained by the time differance), and even the basic inability for the armour on the various goons to remain consistant, both episode to episode and even in the same scenes. Then you've got characters like Grayza and Neim and Scorpy's other nurses where it's not even clear if their uniforms are actually uniforms at all or just "take your Dom to work" day affairs.

The second issue I have though is with John's bogus British accent, namely why he bothers to do it when whatever he says is presumably just going to be heard as the same series of clicks and whistles that make up the Sebacean language as heard from Aeryn in "a human reaction". Do British/Australian accented clicks and whistles sound somehow more Pk authentic than American accented ones? Sure many of the Pk actors do have Aussie accents but that's because the show is shot in Australia not because the alien characters they play are literally meant to be speaking English with an Aussie accent. Leave that shit in stargate where it belongs.

Anyway so the new Pks take a tour of the ship to make sure it's safe for them to bring their super secret cargo on board from their damaged marauder. Chiana's playing the role of servant girl with Zhaan, Rygel and Dargo locked away in cells, Dargo in chains and Zhaan presumably free to psychically dominate any Pk she doesn't like. This revelas some of the problems I mentioned in a previous review that were created by the episode "Rhapsody in Blue". Before that episode it made sense that the PKs could keep Zhaan under control by locking her up in a cell, after, it comes across as a ridiculous joke and makes Larraq here look like a retard for knowing enough about Delvians to pick out an "attractive one" but not enough to know that a high level Delvian could easily have them all sucking their thumbs and shitting their pants if said Delvian grew tired of being in captivity.

You'd think the Pks would have had to come up with some sort of control collar or forcefield that dampens Delvian psychic powers if they expected to be able to hold one prisoner, because without something like that it's basically impossible if RIB is to be believed at all. Don't you love it when an episode retroactively breaks others both before and after it in the order. They couldn't slap something on Zhaan here though because then it would have looked funny why she never had it in the opener, so they did nothing and either hoped no one would notice, or just didn't even notice anytihng off themselves. Don't worry this won't be the last time RIB pops back up to grind against the credability of a given episode though.

Meanwhile in this episode however Chiana is getting all sexy with one of the big scary PK commandos so she can make a copy of his key to access the super secret cargo. You see despite having virtually no reason to think so Chiana's already decided that the super secret cargo is monetarily valuable enough to risk pissing off an entire squad of armed peacekeeper commandos by trying to steal it. This is probably the weakest point in the episode for me because not only does it seem just a little bit too stupid for her to be doing this but it's not long before Rygel joins in and I'd definately expect Rygel to know a bit more about risk benefit ratios than to follow along with this nonsense. I mean what did they even think they were going to do after they took whatever it was, convince the PK squad that it just disappeared, or sort of sit by and watch while they attempt to beat the truth out of John and Aeryn and eventually expose the whole ruse leading to everyone's death? Or hey maybe she opens it and it's another "fragment of a black hole" and the whole ship is just crushed into oblivion in seconds, oops.

I suppose that since these Pks do leave their super secret cargo sitting unattended in the cargo bay with no one waching it maybe they actually wanted it to be stolen though.

It's because of this second stroke of genius that the main plot of the episode gets rolling. You see the super secret cargo is actually another type of alien prisoner, a sort of sentient virus that can spread from one person to another sort of like "The Thing" only without all of the elements that actually made "The Thing" scary. Definately the sort of thing you want to leave just sitting unguarded in the middle of the floor in other words.

As you'd expect Chiana of course lets it out with her key and then the rest of the episode plays out pretty much like a PG-13 rated version of "The Thing", even going so far as to mirror the tense "testing" scene from the film in a manner that again makes it less scary, swapping out the tension of potentially being chained to quivering fleshy abomination from another world, with the somewhat hum drum by comparison, tension of a mexican standoff with pulse rifles. At one point they think they've isolated the virus inside Rygel, only it's a fake out of course leading to a bit more chasing after it before the aformentioned stand off scene where it's finally revealed to have settled in Captain Larraq. Aeryn then loses yet another fight to the virus infested Larraq, first being taken as a hostage by him, and later being stabbed in the gut as he makes break for it. Virus Larraq doesn't get far though, as he attempts to escape in the damaged marauder from the begining of the episode and Moya ignites the vapor it's trailing with her starburst engine, blowing him up.

The PK plan here was apparently to capture this virus to use as a weapon, the typical "why did you bring this horrible alien monster here and not just kill it" cliche, and Larraq took on the mission because he's the best of the best and relished the challenge, which is another one.

All in all "A Bug's Life" is a pretty cliched episode filled with some real moments of forced stupidity from several players to get the story moving but unlike last week's offering at least it's not boring and at least it serves a useful purpose to the series at large. In this episode we're introduced to two key elements that will factor heavily into the last batch of episodes this season and especially the next two, firstly the idea that there's at least one PK base operating somewhere in the uncharted territories, and secondly that Aeryn was stabbed pretty brutally and will actually not simply be making a miraculous recovery on her own as is often the case in many other shows.

Final Verdit: Middle of the road episode on it's own but useful for setting up the two great episodes that will follow. Definately not a throw away and exciting enough for what it is, which is a watered down version of "The Thing" without the horror, atmosphere, and tentacles.

Rustydogz · #2