Farscape Rewind: Episode 1.20

[Mr. Infamous]

This week we pick up where we left off with Nerve with, "the Hidden Memory" what happens when "to be contiuned", is.

We rejoin our exciting adventure in mid stride with the rest of the Moya crew being foiled in their plan to abandon Crichton only by Moya deciding to give birth right that second. Seriously they really were just going to ditch him. It's abundantly clear. Rygel says as much, and Zhaan starts asking pilot why they can't starburst even though he said they'd be able to one more Time. Chiana and Dargo are nowhere to be found, which you can take as them either hiding from the decision or simply being too apathetic about it's outcome to involve themselves. The only one who isn't ready to ditch him is Aeryn.

This both works and doesn't work for me. On one hand I can easily understand why they're doing this, Dargo is mortified by the idea of being captured again, Rygel is Rygel, Chiana barely knows him and is more concerned with her own survival, and Zhaan will comfort herself by saying a self-serving prayer for him once she's safely away herself. What doesn't work for me though is how little any of the characters seem to struggle with this. Zhaan will cry over having to cause pain to a two headed bird, Dargo is suppossed to be a man of honour, and even Rygel has shown at times that he's not really as big an asshole as he'd like others to think. Despite this though they're all really casual about the whole notion that John's been captured and is being tortured by peacekeepers, something that all of them has probably experienced first hand personally. It runs in pretty harsh opposition to all those "team building" scenes we'd been getting up to this point.

Zhaan and Dargo do eventually decide to go down with Aeryn to help save John, but since Zhaan already tryed to jump the ship with Rygel when nobody was looking, and Dargo didn't seem to be around to give a shit about stopping them until a moment ago, this just comes across as more inconsistant than anything else.

Meanwhile John's back on the gammak base getting his brain fried by Scorpy again, this time with a helping hand from Crais who, as you'll remember, was invited to the party in the last episode. John says he's not blocking anything (he's blocking things about Gilina) but the chair can detect that he is, so the brain frying continues; Scorpy and friends being convinced that he must be blocking something about wormholes. Though he even says explicitely that he's not blocking "anything about wormholes", the chair can't seem to detect that this is actually a true statement. It seems like a rather glaring oversight to me, strapping a suped up Pk polygraph to this baby would go a long way toward helping the interrogators direct their questions better. It's obvious that a part of the chair's persuasive power comes from the fact that using it on someone hurts like hell, so it seems kind of stupid to leave out a simple way for the operators to monitor a subjects biological reactions to see if simply being subjected to this pain is making them actually volunteer some truthful information, since it is possible to resist the actual mind reading part of it as Aeryn says. Like I said it would just make things go a lot faster, asuming the point is to extract information as quickly and efficiently as possible of course.

So the opening credits roll and we rejoin John back in his cell with the loony toon from the last episode. The loony toon, who we learn is named Stark here, has assembled some kind of cellphone sized decoder device out of Pk scraps he's somehow collected being dragged back and forth from the chair and is trying to use it to open the door. He can only try one combination at a time though so despite his over 100 sessions with Scorpy he's yet to actually hit on the right one. We also learn here rather amusingly that Stark thinks his crazy behaviour is just an act to fool Scorpy and company into "not bothering him so much" but later actions on his part will definately go a long way toward discrediting this. He has his moments of lucidity but there's no questioning that those 100+ sessions in Scorpy's chair have definately scrambled Stark's eggs more than he realizes. So what we've got here then is a guy who is legit crazy, but thinks he's actually sane and is only acting crazy.

Stark was never really one of my favorite characters but I've got to admit that's a pretty clever basis for one.

In the empty void above the moonbase the transport pod laden with Aeryn, Zhaan and Dargo is coming in through the same crack in the Pk air defenses Chiana escaped out of. Aeryn's plan is to walk into the base impersonating a PK much like John did, lose a fight to a "caution: wet floor" sign, get captured herself and force Zhaan to just impersonate Commandant Grayza and fuck up Scorpy's wormhole project 3 years early. We'll leave aside for the moment, that in the episode directly following this one, Zhaan also shows us how she can turn invisible.

Yeah I know... how come Dargo and Aeryn don't get and story demolishing superpowers huh. Aeryn gets the power to brood a lot about things she refuses to articulate to people and lose any fight she gets into, and Dargo gets to be tall and angry.

Well the plan goes off better than expected, with Aeryn managing to avoid all the wet surfaces in the Pk base and the deadly yellow plastic guardians that preside over them. There's a tense moment where she does come dangerously close to starting an unintentional fight with Gilina, but other than that it's smooth sailing while Dargo and Zhaan just sort of chill on top of the Pk base and hope that they don't send regular patrols up there to check for blue chicks and dudes with tentacles planting bombs.

Hey it's still sci-fi security, it's never going to be perfect, and the PKs clearly spent all of their security camera budget on that one in John's cell. It's not that they don't think of these things you see, it's those pencil pushing beaurocrats at high command and their relentless budget cuts. There's never enough to go around anymore. They have to order millions of new pulse pistols anually and just bury them in containers in the desert, just so their small arms budget doesn't get brutally slashed come the next fiscal year.

John's not just sitting on his ass waiting to be rescued either, well he is but Gillina's not, and the two of them hatch a plan to screw with the Aurora chair to make Crais' day just a little bit more exciting than he'd expected.

On the ship meanwhile Moya is sill trying to give birth to her "not normal" baby, causing Rygel and Chiana to gradually go from bitching about the situation to almost getting killed while trying to do something about it. Basically Chiana eventually ends up having to crawl around inside Moya's unmentionables trying to get the baby free only to end up having to run for her life when it turns out that the baby's original idea of shooting itself loose was actually the right one. There's a bit of a basic plausability issue here to with the baby shooting himself clear of the ship and into space but the wide open tunnel leading to the place he previously was sealing with his own hull not suddenly turning into a massive atmosphere breech. Maybe pilot closed some sort of door behind Chiana just in the nick of time (and after the explosion had already chased her up the shaft since he's a dick I guess) but I suspect simple "you shouldn't care about noticing when the characters do things that should suck them out into space" is our real culprit here. It just seems especially noticable since the Chiana scenes that proceeded this one actually were about her and Rygel having to seek refuge in a sealed container because all the ship's air needed to be vented into space as part of the initial birthing process. So they're thinking about it enough to make it a major plot point when it doesn't really make sense and then they're... not thinking about it anymore in the very next set of scenes when it does...

Back on the base things have hardly been uneventful either as Gillina's covert modifications to the Aurora chair plant some sort of bogus memory in John's session that makes it look like he gave Crais all his wormhole knowledge upon arriving in the Pilot episode. Scorpy is of course fascinated by this development, so fascinated in fact that he persuades Crais' very own men to strap him into the chair so he can take a quick poke around. You see this is why it's better to lead your men with actual leadership and respect as oppossed to shrill intimidation, murder and temper tantrums Bialar, but since you didn't do that you get to become the first Peacekeeper Captain in history to be Aurora chaired by the Peacekeepers, and oh what a chairing it will be to.

So Dargo and Zhaan plant some more bombs, Aeryn sneaks around a bit more, and Stark shows off the fact that half his face is a lantern, and then we're back to Bialer now strapped into the chair showing Scorpy all his dark secrets. Crais cries like a baby and despite this being both hilarious and satisfying to watch after all the crap he's pulled, it was something of a missed opportunity in that we see absolutely nothing new here in Crais' "memories". It's all just a bunch of old clips from earlier in the season. This would have been a perfect time to give some deeper insight into Crais' background but I guess it just wasn't a priority at this stage. It's a shame though because even though Crais isn't really much of a character yet, he does definately grow into one later. Having a bit more insight into him via these Aurora chair scenes could have been invaluable as something to build on later. Scorpy does find out Crais killed Teeg though, and that he did it to enable him to disobey an order from a Pk Admiral, so now Bialar is right fucked.

Dargo and Zhaan are still planting bombs, we get a bit of backstory on why Dargo carries around that ridiculous swordgun, Aeryn sneaks about some more and eventually makes it to John's holding cell. She's convinced one of the other PKs from earlier that she's from Crais' carrier and has detected some sort of energy reading in Crichton's cell from orbit that they need to investigate. This is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I have to wonder how Aeryn detected the signature for real, and secondly because this apparently means a PK command carrier could target orbital strikes off a cellphone. Their planets undoubtedly do not suffer from the same plague of teenage idiots and PK soccer moms merging into other Prowlers while "tweeting" or calling to tell people in their domiciles that they are infact in the process of returning there now, just as planned that very morning.

Naturally Aeryn clobbers this guy after he finds Stark's cellphone but since the dude is on his knees facing away from her and she only hits him in the head once this in no way counts as her winning a fight. I even whinced noticably as she hit him for fear that the cellphone would fly out of his hand on such a trajectory as to easily take her out by itself. She rescues Stark and John, they're joined by Gillina soon after, and only Stark has the sense to bug out up the stairs while the other 3 would apparently rather stick around and try to catch an upskirt glimpse on Pk Barbie. Come on, I know she's hot and all but if even fucking Stark is passing up the opportunity to perve out here...

Anyway, after snapping a few quick pics with Stark's orbitally visible cellphone, the trio heads off to the surface to email them to all the people in Niem's social circle.

You know since this is the last opportunity to mention it how did "Pk Barbie" get the name "Niem" anyway. I only used it in the two reviews here because I've heard her called that by several other fans of the show, but I'm going to be pretty irked if it turns out I've been bilked by total "fanon" for this long.

So anyway, in a truely irritating bout of indecisive bullshit Gillina next decides to run off on her own because John loves Aeryn more than her whaaaaaaa. For fucks sake she's been turning security systems on their heads for days and risking her ass in the process to try and bust John out and now she's just going to give him up to Aeryn instead of opting for the much more realistic "he my man bitch" approach and simply going on Moya with the intent of stealing him away from "the radiant Aeryn Sun". I mean hell, if it comes right down to it Gillina can just beat the shit out of her right?

Aeryn does actually get a badass moment at the same time though, while searching around for a senior officer to whack for a keychip she finds Crais still strapped into the Aurora chair, verbally tears him to shreds, steals his chip, then maxes out the little brainfry leavers on the chair and just walks out of the room while he squeels like a pig in a room full of stickers. Juxtaposed with Gillina's "he loves me not" whining in the scenes that immediately follow it's almost enough to trick you into thinking that John ended up better off this way.

As the episode comes to a close there's a big gunfight on the roof between the Moya crew and the PKs, Gillina changes her mind again, Scorpy shoots her for being so damn annoying, and Stark devours her soul in the guise of "helping her cross over to the other side" the end.

All in all Hidden Memory is a decidedly above average episode in terms of the excitment and sense of importance it is able to generate. Taken with it's companion piece nerve the two probably form the best individual story in the entire first season of the show. These episodes are also the first to really showcase the darker more gritty side of John that will become the new status quo as the series progresses.

Final verdict: Nerve and Hidden Memory are definately a set of episodes you don't want to miss. Not only are they very entertaining just on their own, they're the starting point for the "wormhole" arc that will regularly appear at the forefront of the series for the next 3 seasons.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

This both works and doesn't work for me. On one hand I can easily understand why they're doing this, ... What doesn't work for me though is how little any of the characters seem to struggle with this. ... It runs in pretty harsh opposition to all those "team building" scenes we'd been getting up to this point.

The sloppy characterization monster was a recurring villain on Farscape.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Meanwhile John's back on the gammak base getting his brain fried by Scorpy again, this time with a helping hand from Crais who, as you'll remember, was invited to the party in the last episode. John says he's not blocking anything (he's blocking things about Gilina) but the chair can detect that he is, so the brain frying continues; Scorpy and friends being convinced that he must be blocking something about wormholes. Though he even says explicitely that he's not blocking "anything about wormholes", the chair can't seem to detect that this is actually a true statement. It seems like a rather glaring oversight to me, strapping a suped up Pk polygraph to this baby would go a long way toward helping the interrogators direct their questions better.

It would. Although, the functions of lie detector and mind reader/scanner are two separate entities. My impression of the chair's abilities was that it did not detect that John was lying, it was simply relaying that parts of John's brain were being blocked by John's resistance.
A machine like that chair relies on an indirect route to lie detection. Since it reads minds, all truth and lies will be known once it reads and downloads for viewing enough of the brain's contents.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It's obvious that a part of the chair's persuasive power comes from the fact that using it on someone hurts like hell,

The pain comes from resisting the machine. In the old days of sf, they used a more fantasy approach to mind-reading: a character would use mysticism to magically 'reach out' of their mind and 'read' someone else's mind. Gradually the idea that the subject could resist mind-reading was introduced. I give Farscape credit for using a more science-based (at least pseudo science) method of mind reading than 'the handy alien with magical psychic powers'. The brain being a mushy lump of matter, and memory and other functions mere jolts of electricity, the Aurora chair is a mechanical device that forcibly sorts through, intercepts, copies, and decodes the firing of the synapses. Sounds painful even if the subject does not resist. But if the subject resists the process, the machine becomes more forceful.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

since it is possible to resist the actual mind reading part of it as Aeryn says. Like I said it would just make things go a lot faster, assuming the point is to extract information as quickly and efficiently as possible of course.

The most simple way of doing that is to let the machine read the contents of a person's mind. Scorpius and others who use it, are positive the machine cannot be resisted, at least not for long.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

So the opening credits roll and we rejoin John back in his cell with the loony toon from the last episode. The loony toon, who we learn is named Stark here, has assembled some kind of cellphone sized decoder device out of Pk scraps he's somehow collected being dragged back and forth from the chair and is trying to use it to open the door. He can only try one combination at a time though so despite his over 100 sessions with Scorpy he's yet to actually hit on the right one.

That was funny. A very good intro to the Stark character. That actor also played one of the Agents in the original Matrix film.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

We also learn here rather amusingly that Stark thinks his crazy behaviour is just an act to fool Scorpy and company into "not bothering him so much" but later actions on his part will definately go a long way toward discrediting this. He has his moments of lucidity but there's no questioning that those 100+ sessions in Scorpy's chair have definately scrambled Stark's eggs more than he realizes. So what we've got here then is a guy who is legit crazy, but thinks he's actually sane and is only acting crazy.

The sf Hamlet!

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Stark was never really one of my favorite characters but I've got to admit that's a pretty clever basis for one.

I'd say 80% of it is an act. But to their credit, they did not pretend someone could go through that and remain wholly sane. In later eps though, Stark too is a victim of the sloppy characterization monster.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

In the empty void above the moonbase the transport pod laden with Aeryn, Zhaan and Dargo is coming in through the same crack in the Pk air defenses Chiana escaped out of.

The PKs never noticed this spot, in how many years? One of those WSOD things I guess, but I would prefer better than a mysterious and too convenient 'crack'.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

We'll leave aside for the moment, that in the episode directly following this one, Zhaan also shows us how she can turn invisible.

An old Jedi mind-trick, she isn't really invisible.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Hey it's still sci-fi security, it's never going to be perfect, and the PKs clearly spent all of their security camera budget on that one in John's cell.

It isn't so much the concept of a gap in the cameras or the space-radar or whatever that bugs me, it is that the writers are so unimaginative about it. The PKs would never circle their own base to test for gaps in the survellance defense? Unlikely.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

John's not just sitting on his ass waiting to be rescued either, well he is but Gillina's not, and the two of them hatch a plan to screw with the Aurora chair to make Crais' day just a little bit more exciting than he'd expected.

This ep is all Gelina for the on-the-base main story-line. She moves the plot, solves the problems, makes most or all the decisions. The writers do a decent job of disguising the fact that the regular characters do nothing except react, while Gelina acts.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

On the ship meanwhile Moya is sill trying to give birth to her "not normal" baby, causing Rygel and Chiana to gradually go from bitching about the situation to almost getting killed while trying to do something about it. Basically Chiana eventually ends up having to crawl around inside Moya's unmentionables ...

space vagina!

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

...trying to get the baby free only to end up having to run for her life when it turns out that the baby's original idea of shooting itself loose was actually the right one. There's a bit of a basic plausability issue here

there is??

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

...to with the baby shooting himself clear of the ship and into space but the wide open tunnel leading to the place he previously was sealing with his own hull not suddenly turning into a massive atmosphere breech.

There is that. How does it work in real life?

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Maybe pilot closed some sort of door behind Chiana just in the nick of time (and after the explosion had already chased her up the shaft since he's a dick I guess) but I suspect simple "you shouldn't care about noticing when the characters do things that should suck them out into space" is our real culprit here. It just seems especially noticable since the Chiana scenes that proceeded this one actually were about her and Rygel having to seek refuge in a sealed container because all the ship's air needed to be vented into space as part of the initial birthing process. So they're thinking about it enough to make it a major plot point when it doesn't really make sense and then they're... not thinking about it anymore in the very next set of scenes when it does...

Two more examples of the Sloppy Plot Monster.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Scorpy is of course fascinated by this development, so fascinated in fact that he persuades Crais' very own men to strap him into the chair so he can take a quick poke around.

A very good scene. It gave us an excellent plot twist, and it was satisfying to see Crais get a comupance.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

even though Crais isn't really much of a character yet, he does definately grow into one later.

No, I always found him to be useless. He gets a few good moments, but the writers spend most of their time with Crais looking for ways to write him out of episodes.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Having a bit more insight into him via these Aurora chair scenes could have been invaluable as something to build on later. Scorpy does find out Crais killed Teeg though, and that he did it to enable him to disobey an order from a Pk Admiral, so now Bialar is right fucked.

Yes, they should have put more info into these Aurora Chair sessions, written some deep, intensely dramatic stuff for him over two or three episodes, then killed him off. That would have been dramatically satisfying and spared them all the 'what do we do with Crais this ep' nonsense.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

She's convinced one of the other PKs from earlier that she's from Crais' carrier and has detected some sort of energy reading in Crichton's cell from orbit that they need to investigate. This is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I have to wonder how Aeryn detected the signature for real,

I think she's making it up and gets lucky, but in either case it's the SPM again.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

You know since this is the last opportunity to mention it how did "Pk Barbie" get the name "Niem" anyway. I only used it in the two reviews here because I've heard her called that by several other fans of the show, but I'm going to be pretty irked if it turns out I've been bilked by total "fanon" for this long.

On IMDB they say her name is Niem.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

So anyway, in a truely irritating bout of indecisive bullshit Gillina next decides to run off on her own because John loves Aeryn more than her whaaaaaaa. For fucks sake she's been turning security systems on their heads for days and risking her ass in the process to try and bust John out and now she's just going to give him up to Aeryn instead of opting for the much more realistic "he my man bitch" approach and simply going on Moya with the intent of stealing him away from "the radiant Aeryn Sun". I mean hell, if it comes right down to it Gillina can just beat the shit out of her right?

Delaying their escape to emote was unrealistic, though it did add some additional (unneccesary?) drama to the scene. Her actions here, after being the catalyst of the past two eps, seemed very out of character. I think they tried to suggest Gelina's motives included not wanting to live in exile, but risking discovery and execution for her recent actions seemed absurd. And why is it that characters in actions shows cannot run and talk at the same time?

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Aeryn does actually get a badass moment at the same time though, while searching around for a senior officer to whack for a keychip she finds Crais still strapped into the Aurora chair, verbally tears him to shreds, steals his chip, then maxes out the little brainfry leavers on the chair and just walks out of the room while he squeels like a pig in a room full of stickers.

One of Aeryn's better scenes, and one of the scenes that helped elevate this two parter into 'best of' status.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

As the episode comes to a close there's a big gunfight on the roof between the Moya crew and the PKs, Gillina changes her mind again, Scorpy shoots her for being so damn annoying, and Stark devours her soul in the guise of "helping her cross over to the other side" the end.

I would have preferred to see Gelina join the crew, at least temporarily, and/or become a recurring character. If they wanted to shoot her they could have done so in the underground scene. To have her reappear briefly did not seem so much a plot twist as indecisive writing.
And about Stark, we see him confidently blasting away with some big gun here, and mentioning a (apparently famous in this part of the galaxy) battle he took part in. We need to remember this in later eps. The occasional 180 degree changes in Stark's personality can be blamed partially on his mental problems and on Zhann's influence, but also on the Sloppy Characterization Monster and the Sloppy Plot Monster.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

All in all Hidden Memory is a decidedly above average episode in terms of the excitement and sense of importance it is able to generate. Taken with it's companion piece nerve the two probably form the best individual story in the entire first season of the show.

I agree it is the best episode from season one. They put a lot of their sharpest work into this two-part ep: Interesting regular and new characters, well-written and acted scenes, well directed, a good pk base design, and some nice concepts like the Aurora Chair. This ep was one of the better sf shows of that era. It might be a good idea for people new to Farscape to watch this two-parter first, then go through season 1. That way when they watch the bad eps, they know that Farscape is capable of much better.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Final verdict: Nerve and Hidden Memory are definitely a set of episodes you don't want to miss. Not only are they very entertaining just on their own, they're the starting point for the "wormhole" arc that will regularly appear at the forefront of the series for the next 3 seasons.

Which isn't necessarily a good thing, but they get some good stuff from it, and it is a better catalyst for the series than "you sort-of killed my brother".

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

The sloppy characterization monster was a recurring villain on Farscape.

Honestly as I'm rewatching this with a more critical eye it's surprising me in a bad way the kind of stuff that I'm catching from time to time. Going into this I'd expected there to be little in the way of purely sloppy writing to be found beyond the first season and the various "stinker" episodes spread here and there, but in reality I'm finding a lot more than I ever thought I would.

It's not really the impeccably tightly written show I remembered it being. Oh it's still one of my favorites to be sure, but this whole "review Farscape episode by episode" project has really shattered the old rose tinted glasses.

It would. Although, the functions of lie detector and mind reader/scanner are two separate entities. My impression of the chair's abilities was that it did not detect that John was lying, it was simply relaying that parts of John's brain were being blocked by John's resistance.
A machine like that chair relies on an indirect route to lie detection. Since it reads minds, all truth and lies will be known once it reads and downloads for viewing enough of the brain's contents.

The pain comes from resisting the machine. In the old days of sf, they used a more fantasy approach to mind-reading: a character would use mysticism to magically 'reach out' of their mind and 'read' someone else's mind. Gradually the idea that the subject could resist mind-reading was introduced. I give Farscape credit for using a more science-based (at least pseudo science) method of mind reading than 'the handy alien with magical psychic powers'. The brain being a mushy lump of matter, and memory and other functions mere jolts of electricity, the Aurora chair is a mechanical device that forcibly sorts through, intercepts, copies, and decodes the firing of the synapses. Sounds painful even if the subject does not resist. But if the subject resists the process, the machine becomes more forceful.

The most simple way of doing that is to let the machine read the contents of a person's mind. Scorpius and others who use it, are positive the machine cannot be resisted, at least not for long.

I think there might be a bit of confusion about what I'm saying since rereading it even I can barely make sense of it. I'm not saying necessarily that a polygraph type lie detector would be better than the chair. What I'm saying is that the chair having a polygraph type capability integrated into it would go a long way toward helping interrogators zero in on what exactly a non compliant subject was blocking. So in John's case here it would have been able to tell Scorpy that whatever he was blocking it wasn't about wormhole technology which would then have allowed Scorpy to ask different questions to try and find out what it was about, probably landing on the idea of protecting co-conspirators rather quickly, and shortly after that determining that the co-conspirator in question was a PK working from the inside.

Since it's such a beneficial capability to have then, and since it's not hard to implement compared to a machine that can scan a brain in real time, it's somewhat conspicuously absent here.

I'd say 80% of it is an act. But to their credit, they did not pretend someone could go through that and remain wholly sane. In later eps though, Stark too is a victim of the sloppy characterization monster.

He's really probably the best example of such a victim yes, though Chiana crops up as a candidate from time to time to. With Stark though it seemed like half the time they would write him as being 100% legit bonkers crazy, and the other half they'd stick with the whole "pretending or only partially crazy" angle. In situations when he's in any kind of trouble for example they always tended to nutty him up as comic relief, even when his actions that resulted were often hugely detrimental to both his own and everyone else's survival.

The PKs never noticed this spot, in how many years? One of those WSOD things I guess, but I would prefer better than a mysterious and too convenient 'crack'.

It isn't so much the concept of a gap in the cameras or the space-radar or whatever that bugs me, it is that the writers are so unimaginative about it. The PKs would never circle their own base to test for gaps in the survellance defense? Unlikely.

It's actually not quite that bad. The unmonitored roof is pretty bad but the crack in the air defense sensors was hacked in by Gillina in Nerve so Chiana could escape and was probably only a few hours old tops by the time the pod uses it to come back down again.

An old Jedi mind-trick, she isn't really invisible.

The effect is pretty much the same either way, plot breaking, it might even be more effective the mind trick way.

This ep is all Gelina for the on-the-base main story-line. She moves the plot, solves the problems, makes most or all the decisions. The writers do a decent job of disguising the fact that the regular characters do nothing except react, while Gelina acts.

This ep does show, like you say later yourself, what a natural addition she would have been to the crew. None of them have the sort of mechanical/computer skill that she clearly does so having her along would have actually given them a lot of new options for future plots. I'd still rather have Furlow in the same spot though, she's just way more fun.

There is that. How does it work in real life?

As soon as Talyn gets free the tunnel Chiana crawled down to get to him becomes a tunnel to open space that everything in the area gets sucked out through, almost certainly including her as well, and definitely including all the air in that section.

Like I said, I wouldn't even have bothered to nitpick this if not for the scenes with her just prior to this one being all centered around her and Rygel desperately scrambling for some kind of cover because airless vacuum is really bad.

So they call to the viewers attention how in space breathable air can't always just be taken for granted, then in the next part of Chiana's plot they open what by all appearances is a giant hole into outer space right beside her and everything is just fine and dandy.

A very good scene. It gave us an excellent plot twist, and it was satisfying to see Crais get a comupance.


No, I always found him to be useless. He gets a few good moments, but the writers spend most of their time with Crais looking for ways to write him out of episodes.

He's useful later of as a metaphor for Aeryn potentially re-embracing Peacekeeper ways/thinking. He's still the least interesting of the four major Pks for me though, between him Scorpy, Braca and Grayza. Well it's really him Braca and Grayza since none of them really got anywhere close to the depth of development Scorpy did.

Yes, they should have put more info into these Aurora Chair sessions, written some deep, intensely dramatic stuff for him over two or three episodes, then killed him off. That would have been dramatically satisfying and spared them all the 'what do we do with Crais this ep' nonsense.

Once he came to peace with his brother being killed he kind of lost his direction yes. I wouldn't call him completely useless though as some of his interactions with the others were enjoyable, plus the Aeryn thing I mentioned. I think it would have been better if they'd given him a more realistic chance with Aeryn though, such as after

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one of the John's died and "The Choice" where it seems she's choosing to go back to being an emotionally cold commando at the end, only to flip flop back to "grumpy girlfriend Aeryn" by the next episode .

I think she's making it up and gets lucky, but in either case it's the SPM again.

Likely, makes you wonder why the Pks never detected it for real to.

On IMDB they say her name is Niem.

Hmm, wonder where they got it since it's not in the episode credits. Was there deleted scenes for these episodes on one of the 4,767 different regional DVD sets they released perhaps.

Delaying their escape to emote was unrealistic, though it did add some additional (unneccesary?) drama to the scene. Her actions here, after being the catalyst of the past two eps, seemed very out of character. I think they tried to suggest Gelina's motives included not wanting to live in exile, but risking discovery and execution for her recent actions seemed absurd. And why is it that characters in actions shows cannot run and talk at the same time?

It bothers me because so much of what she did she did completely on her own with no prompting or anything from anyone. She also obviously has it really bad for Johnny and she had to have worked out that if she wanted to be with him she was going to have to leave. So everything she does is basically in pursuit of this whole dream of running away with John then she gets and inkling that he might like Aeryn already and that's enough to have her drop the whole thing and stick around for the Aurora chair party Scorpy's inevitably going to through after all the dust settles and other techs find all the hacks she's made. She'd basically already made her bad to such an extent that staying behind was almost guaranteed suicide, especially given the typical PK opinion of techs. Even if she didn't want to stick with John she was done as a Pk once she tampered with the chair and Scorpius figured out it'd been tampered with. She was one of maybe only a dozen techs that worked on the chair before the big fake session with John happened. Scorpy could just run through all of them on his lunch break and they'd have their traitor.

One of Aeryn's better scenes, and one of the scenes that helped elevate this two parter into 'best of' status.

Aeryn is pretty much at her best right around this time in general I think. She's not a total robot anymore but she's not completely switched over into being "John's girlfriend" yet either.

I agree it is the best episode from season one. They put a lot of their sharpest work into this two-part ep: Interesting regular and new characters, well-written and acted scenes, well directed, a good pk base design, and some nice concepts like the Aurora Chair. This ep was one of the better sf shows of that era. It might be a good idea for people new to Farscape to watch this two-parter first, then go through season 1. That way when they watch the bad eps, they know that Farscape is capable of much better.

The Pilot, "A Bug's life" that shows you how Aeryn got stabbed, and then straight into these two might be the ideal recipe to get someone hooked on Farscape without telling them they need to "make it through the first season". That way you get the whole introduction with why and how John's there, you get why Crais hates him, you get how Aeryn ended up injured, you get the whole wormhole story, and you get a better sense of what the show's actually going to be like averaged out over the four years, than you ever will if you quit after Jeremiah Crichton. The only thing you'd miss out on is Chiana's intro but that's not too big a deal, and will give you a motivation to watch more episodes.

Which isn't necessarily a good thing, but they get some good stuff from it, and it is a better catalyst for the series than "you sort-of killed my brother".

As multi-season arcs go I rank the whole "wormhole knowledge" one pretty high compared to others I've seen which most often tend to either boil down to some kind of romantic triangles or "war" arcs that last multiple seasons.

Farscape had a romantic arc to of course but one that was really unnecessarily drawn out in a lot of ways in my opinion, particularly with the resetting. I get that it was always meant to be a major part of the show but I would have much preferred to see John and Aeryn maybe play the field a little bit with some of the other characters before eventually ending up back together. There was potentially interesting stories with Aeryn and Crais, as well as John and Chiana or even John and Jool. The way they just kept setting John and Aeryn back to square one so they could romance them back together though got really tedious to watch. She/he's not the only person in the galaxy.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It's not really the impeccably tightly written show I remembered it being. Oh it's still one of my favorites to be sure, but this whole "review Farscape episode by episode" project has really shattered the old rose tinted glasses.

I wondered a few weeks ago if it would be better to let Farscape stay in rose-colored memory. But this is more fun.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Since it's such a beneficial capability to have then, and since it's not hard to implement compared to a machine that can scan a brain in real time, it's somewhat conspicuously absent here.

The one in Star Trek was too much of a plot breaker, so they ignored its existence in later shows.

It seemed that the Aurora chair did have a rudimentary search function. Perhaps that could be improved so Scorpy would know he had arrived at what he sought. But I think he did not care if John was lying or not, he was just having fun asking questions. He wanted everything in John's mind, the wormhole tech was just something he happened upon that was more interested in. Remember the one hundred sessions with Stark. Scorpy did not want any information, he was just experimenting and amusing himself.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

He's really probably the best example of such a victim yes, though Chiana crops up as a candidate from time to time to. With Stark though it seemed like half the time they would write him as being 100% legit bonkers crazy, and the other half they'd stick with the whole "pretending or only partially crazy" angle.

And in some eps he handles a weapon like a gunslinger, then in others he doesn't seem to know which end the bullet comes out of. Some eps he is intelligent, others he is stupid. And so on. Some of this is craziness, some Zhan's pacific influence, but most is sloppy characterization.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It's actually not quite that bad. The unmonitored roof is pretty bad but the crack in the air defense sensors was hacked in by Gillina in Nerve so Chiana could escape and was probably only a few hours old tops by the time the pod uses it to come back down again.

Ok. I must have missed/forgotten that since I watched the episode.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The effect is pretty much the same either way, plot breaking, it might even be more effective the mind trick way.

It is fine to leave some creative leeway to add background, powers, etc, to your characters, but this show went too far. The producers and writers needed to sit in a room and have three hour meetings for each character, and nail down who they were, what abilities, knowledge, etc each had. And then they could apply this consistently to the episodes.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I'd still rather have Furlow in the same spot though, she's just way more fun.

Furlow was quirky enough she deserved a shot at regular crew status.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

She'd basically already made her bad to such an extent that staying behind was almost guaranteed suicide, especially given the typical PK opinion of techs. Even if she didn't want to stick with John she was done as a Pk once she tampered with the chair and Scorpius figured out it'd been tampered with.

Sloppy logic in their writing. If they did not want her as a continuing character it was easier and better writing to have her leave with them, give her a few things to do over an episode or two, and then have her leave the crew to start a new life on whatever planet they happened to visit at that time.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The Pilot, "A Bug's life" that shows you how Aeryn got stabbed, and then straight into these two might be the ideal recipe to get someone hooked on Farscape without telling them they need to "make it through the first season".

I would add the first Gelina episode also, because it was so well done.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

As multi-season arcs go I rank the whole "wormhole knowledge" one pretty high compared to others I've seen which most often tend to either boil down to some kind of romantic triangles or "war" arcs that last multiple seasons.

It was good as a concept. But I think it dominated too many episodes.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I would have much preferred to see John and Aeryn maybe play the field a little bit with some of the other characters before eventually ending up back together. There was potentially interesting stories with Aeryn and Crais, as well as John and Chiana or even John and Jool. The way they just kept setting John and Aeryn back to square one so they could romance them back together though got really tedious to watch.

John and Aeryn could have hooked up more gradually in the first place, then drifted apart and only come back together near the end of season four - or the season five/miniseries.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

I wondered a few weeks ago if it would be better to let Farscape stay in rose-colored memory. But this is more fun.

Anything that combats fanboyism is good I'd say. It's still one of my favorite series to be certain, but it's also nice to get a more realistic and balanced perspective looking back on what it was actually like as well. I can also still find many more and worse flaws in a typical stargate or late era Trek episode than I'm finding in any of these.

The one in Star Trek was too much of a plot breaker, so they ignored its existence in later shows.

It seemed that the Aurora chair did have a rudimentary search function. Perhaps that could be improved so Scorpy would know he had arrived at what he sought. But I think he did not care if John was lying or not, he was just having fun asking questions. He wanted everything in John's mind, the wormhole tech was just something he happened upon that was more interested in. Remember the one hundred sessions with Stark. Scorpy did not want any information, he was just experimenting and amusing himself.

He was definitely really enjoying having Crais in the chair.

And in some eps he handles a weapon like a gunslinger, then in others he doesn't seem to know which end the bullet comes out of. Some eps he is intelligent, others he is stupid. And so on. Some of this is craziness, some Zhan's pacific influence, but most is sloppy characterization.

He was generally a sort of fifth wheel in stories so I'd imagine that inevitably contributed to them not keeping the best track of what he could and couldn't do. The whole "part time super commando" thing was a bit of a recurring theme in the show to. The most obvious example if John of course but I can also remember them doing it with Jool in Pk wars and of course with Zhaan, who goes from psychically frying super beings like Maldis to being afraid of Scorpy's neural clone.

Ok. I must have missed/forgotten that since I watched the episode.

It's an easy enough thing to miss. I doubt I'm catching every little detail either.

It is fine to leave some creative leeway to add background, powers, etc, to your characters, but this show went too far. The producers and writers needed to sit in a room and have three hour meetings for each character, and nail down who they were, what abilities, knowledge, etc each had. And then they could apply this consistently to the episodes.

That's the ideal way to do it yes, but apparently they did do something like that. There's an interview up on you tube with Rebecca Riggs where she talks about getting some big detailed character breakdown for Grayza that (obviously) never even made it entirely onto the screen. I'm not sure if the earlier characters got similar treatment but it might be more down to them just rewriting things as they go as opposed to not planning ahead full stop. That old temptation of "oh but wouldn't it be even cooler if". That's the sense I get from RiB anyway. Somebody thought it would be really cool to do an episode where the crew was manipulated to hallucinations by some powerful psychics, only they also decided to make the psychics in question Delvians and either didn't consider, or didn't care, that one of the regular characters was likewise a high level Delvian.

So they basically, either intentionally or not, sacrificed some long term continuity credibility for the benefit of the story they wanted to write at that particular time. It comes down to personal taste a bit if you think that's a worthwhile tradeoff but I wouldn't in this case. There wasn't really any reason why the psychics needed to be Delvians just because it was going to be the Zhaan background episode. The whole psychic theft of self control could just as easily have been perpetrated by some other scamming alien, even under different circumstances, and still led into the whole flashback story the same way.

Furlow was quirky enough she deserved a shot at regular crew status.

In my ideal cast I'd replace.

-Sikozu
-Noranti
-Stark

with

Furlow
Natira
The "Holy Warrior" Beckesh

In addition to not having a tech specialist the crew also never really had a ex prisoner or member that was a real deal "bad guy" who was a legitimate potential danger to the others or willing to resort to things that even Dargo or Rygel wouldn't do to people, hence Natira.

Sloppy logic in their writing. If they did not want her as a continuing character it was easier and better writing to have her leave with them, give her a few things to do over an episode or two, and then have her leave the crew to start a new life on whatever planet they happened to visit at that time.

It was kind of funny the way Scorpy just sort of thinks for a second, then realizes he's got a human shield and full body armour and just plugs her.

It was good as a concept. But I think it dominated too many episodes.

It did inspire a bit of an eyeroll from me when after Scorpy's wormhole project was wrecked in more or less the climax of the series, Grayza shows up in 4.02 and all of a sudden wants John's magical wormholes again, even though she was personally out to wreck the whole project herself the last time we saw her.

John and Aeryn could have hooked up more gradually in the first place, then drifted apart and only come back together near the end of season four - or the season five/miniseries.

I always felt that putting John with the one woman that was basically indistinguishable from human was a pretty big let down for a series where everything else was so much more genuinely bizarre and alien than average.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

He was generally a sort of fifth wheel in stories so I'd imagine that inevitably contributed to them not keeping the best track of what he could and couldn't do.

You feel about Stark the way I do about Crais. I think they added these and other characters to fill out the two ship's crews. But when they were all together on Moya it was a bit over-crowded. Stark had good moments, and I found him a more interesting character than some of the regular cast.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

... but it might be more down to them just rewriting things as they go as opposed to not planning ahead full stop. That old temptation of "oh but wouldn't it be even cooler if". ...

So they basically, either intentionally or not, sacrificed some long term continuity credibility for the benefit of the story they wanted to write at that particular time. It comes down to personal taste a bit if you think that's a worthwhile trade off but I wouldn't in this case.

Me either. It feeds into the whole concept of "it's only science fiction", that exists in the public perception and amoung professionals. There is that prevailing idea that science fiction writing (including books, tv, film, etc) is inferior writing by its very nature, and that hack work is in fact encouraged. This perception extends beyond the writing to the directing and acting. Even many who do the work dismiss it as "only science fiction".

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

In my ideal cast I'd replace.

-Sikozu
-Noranti
-Stark

with

Furlow
Natira
The "Holy Warrior" Beckesh

In addition to not having a tech specialist the crew also never really had a ex prisoner or member that was a real deal "bad guy" who was a legitimate potential danger to the others or willing to resort to things that even Dargo or Rygel wouldn't do to people, hence Natira.

Verrry interesting. Where does Jool fit in? Beckesh would have been interesting for a while at least. Natira, that is a good one. I expected her to go with them but she ran down a hallway and vanished. They did try the 'real deal bad guy' with Scorpius, but the actor said there was a gradual tendancy to make Scorpy increasingly human the longer he was on the Moya - again a lack of discipline or direction in the writers room.

I like Sikozu and Jool, but one was there to replace the other, and both were there to replace Zhann, as was Noranti in her turn. All had rough starts, which alienated fans, then all improved, more or less.

In my ideal cast:

I would have kept Gelina for season two and maybe three, then replaced her with Furlow in season three or four.

Rygel fit better with the season 1 tone of the show. I would have dropped him in season two or three.

Chiana was great early, as the tough, savvy, survivalist 'street kid'. But then they diluted her role to a one-note 'slutty girl'. I would have dropped her after season two or three.

I'd replace Noranti, though she did have a couple of good moments. With so many other good characters available, I am surprised they added Noranti in the first place. No I'm not, she was a hasty replacement for Jool & Sikozu.

So to sum up, I'd replace

- Crais
- Noranti
- Latter Chiana
- 2nd or 3rd season Rygel

with

- Gelina then Furlow
- Natira
- Beckesh
- The Vocarian Blood Tracker(s) (as portrayed in 'Till the Blood Runs Clear')
- Jenavian Charto, Disruptor and Peacekeeper Special Directorate. They could have set up an intrigue sub plot where she would work for the crew and for the Peace Keeper Special Directorate as a double-agent of sorts. She could be a very useful member of the crew, and at the same time (unknown to the others) work on parallel missions for the Directorate.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It did inspire a bit of an eyeroll from me when after Scorpy's wormhole project was wrecked in more or less the climax of the series, Grayza shows up in 4.02 and all of a sudden wants John's magical wormholes again, even though she was personally out to wreck the whole project herself the last time we saw her.

I got bored of the whole concept. By season four every other episode is about destroying this or that wormhole project, or this or that person after John for his knowledge, or the aliens yet again telling John that wormhole tech is dangerous, and wormhole this and wormhole that. In season one the viewers know that obviously a wormhole is an impractical weapon. We wait for someone on the series to state how they expect to use this 'wormhole weapon' they all want so desperately, but no one does. In fact, in PK Wars the writers portray the actual wormhole weapon, when it finally appears, as impractical and dangerous, uncontrollable. Well duh!

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I always felt that putting John with the one woman that was basically indistinguishable from human was a pretty big let down for a series where everything else was so much more genuinely bizarre and alien than average.

It was the 'safe' and easy route, and thereby the most appealing to the largest potential audience.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

You feel about Stark the way I do about Crais. I think they added these and other characters to fill out the two ship's crews. But when they were all together on Moya it was a bit over-crowded. Stark had good moments, and I found him a more interesting character than some of the regular cast.

The whole filling out the crews thing is definitely the sense I got from some of the later characters like Sikozu and Noranti to. Stark I think just somehow fell by the wayside since he was actually around almost as long as Chiana just for some reason he never really got to do much.

Me either. It feeds into the whole concept of "it's only science fiction", that exists in the public perception and amoung professionals. There is that prevailing idea that science fiction writing (including books, tv, film, etc) is inferior writing by its very nature, and that hack work is in fact encouraged. This perception extends beyond the writing to the directing and acting. Even many who do the work dismiss it as "only science fiction".

The worst I think is when fans do it. You'll point out something like this that's not inconsistent with any strange technology made up by the show's fiction per say, but just straight up inconsistent with previous plot reality as told by the same show, and they'll blow it off with something akin to "it's only a (sci-fi) TV show".

There's this fairly pervasive attitude that just because a show falls under the loose umbrella of Sci-fi that the plots written for it should automatically be judged by a lower standard, as if it's somehow fundamentally "unfair" to expect them to be able to complete with stories written in the more general "dramatic" genre in terms of plot integrity.

Verrry interesting. Where does Jool fit in?

I would actually keep her, if anything I'd expand her role a bit as despite the unwarranted hate she got from certain quarters she did serve a valuable function. She was a newbie character in season 3 that could be used to reintroduce established show concepts to new viewers who were just tuning in then. I also found her to be just straight up enjoyable to watch, all the arrogance and pomp of Rygel only without any of the actual cunning and competence to back it up. She even matured later on into a much less childish individual, though her inexplicable ninjafication in PK wars was pretty stupid, but then again PK wars in general was pretty stupid.

Beckesh would have been interesting for a while at least.

He's probably my second favorite guest character in the entire show. He wasn't really anything special in throne for a loss but in LGM he transforms into this hilarious character that's just a total joy to watch.

Natira, that is a good one. I expected her to go with them but she ran down a hallway and vanished.

And she would be my favorite one. I still remember when LGM first aired I got so pumped when it looked like she was actually going to join the crew, then so disappointed when John's ill timed freak out ruined the whole thing. i'd always hoped she'd appear again later but apparently the actress who played her absolutely HATED the makeup.

They did try the 'real deal bad guy' with Scorpius, but the actor said there was a gradual tendancy to make Scorpy increasingly human the longer he was on the Moya - again a lack of discipline or direction in the writers room.

Yeah sticking Scorpy on Moya never worked for me on either a story telling or logical level. Of all the places to go after he was "killed" by the Pks why go abourd Moya to be locked in a cell? Sure he says it's to look after John but I think he'd be far more likely to go get back in touch with another Natira type he knew in the past, gather up a nasty little group, and try to "look after John" that way, without any undue PK interference from on high this time.

I like Sikozu and Jool, but one was there to replace the other, and both were there to replace Zhann, as was Noranti in her turn. All had rough starts, which alienated fans, then all improved, more or less.

While Jool did replace Zhaan chronologically the characters were pretty different. Not at all like in the Jool > Sikozu transition though, where they mind as well just have recast the role, changed the makeup and come up with some sort of "this is what happens when her species hits their 30s" excuse.

I would have kept Gelina for season two and maybe three, then replaced her with Furlow in season three or four.

Gillina would have worked to introduce some actually believable conflict into the whole John/Aeryn thing, but then you run the risk of turning the entire show's focus to "which one will he choose" pandering and counter pandering to two camps of shippers. If that were the case then I'd have to push for him just ending up with Dargo in the end, or if I really wanted to collect some letter bombs, Grayza, by choice.

Rygel fit better with the season 1 tone of the show. I would have dropped him in season two or three.

I actually liked Rygel for the duration, he might even be my favorite Moya crew member. It would be easy to send him on his way though, you'd just need to do one of those 2 or 3 parters where he returns to Hyneria and reclaims his throne. Then you could maybe have him show up later to lend some Hynerian Imperial muscle when the crew needed it. It'd love to see a whole horde of little frog people taking on a bunch of Scarrans.

Chiana was great early, as the tough, savvy, survivalist 'street kid'. But then they diluted her role to a one-note 'slutty girl'. I would have dropped her after season two or three.

I would have wanted to keep her around to use for a season 4 arc about the Nebari entering the political theater more. So the wormhole story basically ends with Scorpy's ship blowing up as it should, but rather than continue wormholes into season 4 the main adversary instead becomes the Nebari. They decide they want Chiana back because they think her precognitive abilities, once further studied and developed, will give them an essential advantage in the coming war.

I'd replace Noranti, though she did have a couple of good moments. With so many other good characters available, I am surprised they added Noranti in the first place. No I'm not, she was a hasty replacement for Jool & Sikozu.

Her only purpose seemed to be to drug John and occasionally others for reasons of varying necessity, she could have been gone after "What Was Lost Part 2" and likely didn't even need to exist there if you were going to trouble yourself to come up with a better final escape method than "Grayza's stupid enough to let her interrogation subject tie her up while she's "interrogating" him".

The Vocarian Blood Tracker(s) (as portrayed in 'Till the Blood Runs Clear')

Regrettably their scene in the cave when Dargo finds them in LGM is etched in my memory as probably the worst bit of acting in the entire series. Go watch it again yourself if you have it on hand, it's really shockingly awful.

Jenavian Charto, Disruptor and Peacekeeper Special Directorate. They could have set up an intrigue sub plot where she would work for the crew and for the Peace Keeper Special Directorate as a double-agent of sorts. She could be a very useful member of the crew, and at the same time (unknown to the others) work on parallel missions for the Directorate.

I certainly wouldn't dispute this though. The idea of having her around as a sort of "dark side" Aeryn is filled with potential to. So rather than be all "my entire life was a lie whaaa" she'd be someone who still believes in the core Pk ideology and defends it while still being an ally of circumstance. Just about all the characters in the show constantly dumped on the Pks, it would have been interesting to get a bit of the other side of the story that wasn't represented by homicidal lunatics, Aurora chairs or date rape.

It would have dovetailed nicely into the PK origin story given in Pk wars to, with them originally being a sort of galactic police force who became increasingly more militant and desperate as their environment deteriorated around them and their original "magic peacemaker" negotiators were no longer around to help fix it.

It was the 'safe' and easy route, and thereby the most appealing to the largest potential audience.

And likewise the most vanilla and boring unfortunately. It's not even like Aeryn was the only attractive female and all the others were mutant bugwomen with eyestalks either. Farscape's makeup department was so talented that their "aliens" were often able to go up in the attractiveness department from the people playing them.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Stark I think just somehow fell by the wayside since he was actually around almost as long as Chiana just for some reason he never really got to do much.

He was merely a recurring character for most of seasons 2-4. It was only in the year of the two crews that he was a regular.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I would actually keep her, if anything I'd expand her role a bit as despite the unwarranted hate she got from certain quarters she did serve a valuable function.

I wonder how much of that was because they made her so hostile initially. By the time of her introduction, the fans 'loved' the regular characters, so any new character acting in an insulting or hostile manner toward the 'loved' characters will be seen as an enemy, not an addition to the 'team'.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

She was a newbie character in season 3 that could be used to reintroduce established show concepts to new viewers who were just tuning in then. I also found her to be just straight up enjoyable to watch, all the arrogance and pomp of Rygel only without any of the actual cunning and competence to back it up. She even matured later on into a much less childish individual,

She had education but no experience. I liked her, I saw her potential. Sikozu likewise could be re-written slightly to improve her role. The 'cylon' angle was just dumb, it is good they never brought it up; the freedom fighter angle may have worked, but they introduced her as a freelance deep-space leviathan huntress, which is a useless cover for an anti-Scarran spy; they needed to drop the neo-nazi rantings and her over-inflated opinion of herself, which only made her sound like she had narcissistic personality disorder. But I did see potential in her sense of worry that her reputation in hunter circles would suffer, in her ability to learn basic English in about 15 minutes (she made it seem plausible, at least for her), in her self-confidence (if kept at reasonable levels), and in a few other good scenes and traits.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

though her inexplicable ninjafication in PK wars was pretty stupid, but then again PK wars in general was pretty stupid.

I saw PK Wars before watching most of the series, so that was my intro to Jool. Yes, she seemed an Amazonian warrior woman guarding an entrance to her people's home. And she seemed to have a sort-of love relationship to John. They made it sound like there had been a Jool-John-Aeryn triangle. But of course once you see her in the series, none of that is true. Weird.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

He's probably my second favorite guest character in the entire show. He wasn't really anything special in throne for a loss but in LGM he transforms into this hilarious character that's just a total joy to watch.

For the most part I liked him in LGM. But the way he deserted the guy he was supposed to guard, then shrug off the guy's death, just grated.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

And she would be my favorite one. I still remember when LGM first aired I got so pumped when it looked like she was actually going to join the crew, then so disappointed when John's ill timed freak out ruined the whole thing.

I became very tired of John's various freak outs long, long before they stopped doing them.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Yeah sticking Scorpy on Moya never worked for me on either a story telling or logical level. ... I think he'd be far more likely to go get back in touch with another Natira type he knew in the past, gather up a nasty little group, and try to "look after John" that way, without any undue PK interference from on high this time.

Definitely. Sloppy Plot Monster strikes again!

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

While Jool did replace Zhaan chronologically the characters were pretty different.

I didn't mean the same personality, just in terms of their role on the show and filling the available slot. Each was said to have knowledge, if not formal education; each had some healing ability, or at least was cast into that role [though I'm not sure about Sikozu); each had some pretense to wisdom or intelligence above that of the other crew; each was more a thinker than a fighter, each felt free to make moral judgments and critique the actions of the others.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Not at all like in the Jool > Sikozu transition though, where they mind as well just have recast the role, changed the makeup ...

True, they were extremely similar characters. And yet the producers duplicated the mistake they made with Jool and made Sikozu rude and hostile.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

... and come up with some sort of "this is what happens when her species hits their 30s" excuse.

Ouch. Oh snap! The actress who played Sikozu (Raelee Hill) is 2 years younger than the actress who played Jool (Tammy MacIntosh).

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Gillina would have worked to introduce some actually believable conflict into the whole John/Aeryn thing, but then you run the risk of turning the entire show's focus to "which one will he choose" pandering and counter pandering to two camps of shippers.

That may actually have improved the ratings. My preference would be for some degree of conflict there with Gelina or Chiana. Then after half a season they could drop relationship-based eps entirely for a while.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It would be easy to send him on his way though, you'd just need to do one of those 2 or 3 parters where he returns to Hyneria and reclaims his throne. Then you could maybe have him show up later to lend some Hynerian Imperial muscle when the crew needed it. It'd love to see a whole horde of little frog people taking on a bunch of Scarrans.

They could do that with CGI, but they have said that even two animatronic Hynerians at once was "a nightmare".

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I would have wanted to keep her around to use for a season 4 arc about the Nebari entering the political theater more. So the wormhole story basically ends with Scorpy's ship blowing up as it should, but rather than continue wormholes into season 4 the main adversary instead becomes the Nebari. They decide they want Chiana back because they think her precognitive abilities, once further studied and developed, will give them an essential advantage in the coming war.

The original concept of Chiana was one of their better characters. Consistently applied, she would have had far more to do, and more interesting things to say and do, than they wound up writing for her. But given the change, they may as well have dumped her (into a recurring character role?) and perhaps brought her back to introduce a Nebari story arc.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Her only purpose seemed to be to drug John and occasionally others for reasons of varying necessity, she could have been gone after "What Was Lost Part 2" and likely didn't even need to exist there if you were going to trouble yourself to come up with a better final escape method than "Grayza's stupid enough to let her interrogation subject tie her up while she's "interrogating" him".

Yes, she was a terrible character concept. Too think of all those excellent characters they abandoned, then they threw this one into the show. Noranti did have one or two good scenes much later into her run, but as they say, too little and too late.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Regrettably their scene in the cave when Dargo finds them in LGM is etched in my memory as probably the worst bit of acting in the entire series. Go watch it again yourself if you have it on hand, it's really shockingly awful.

No it isn't on hand, I have to rent these from the library, but I'll take your word for it. The Tracker character model was bastardized from their initial appearance. Beckesh was better written this ep, while the Blood Trackers were ruined.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I certainly wouldn't dispute this though. The idea of having her around as a sort of "dark side" Aeryn is filled with potential to. So rather than be all "my entire life was a lie whaaa" she'd be someone who still believes in the core Pk ideology and defends it while still being an ally of circumstance.

And yet they thought Noranti would make a better continuing character. ???

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

He was merely a recurring character for most of seasons 2-4. It was only in the year of the two crews that he was a regular.

Yeah he did drop in and out, especially during the "two ships" plot arc. He was introduced just a few eps after Chiana but then once he was there it seemed like they kinda went "ok so what now" with him. We never even really got a clear picture of what a "Bannick" was, just that they were slaves.

I wonder how much of that was because they made her so hostile initially.

Probably a lot of it.

She had education but no experience. I liked her, I saw her potential. Sikozu likewise could be re-written slightly to improve her role. The 'cylon' angle was just dumb, it is good they never brought it up; the freedom fighter angle may have worked, but they introduced her as a freelance deep-space leviathan huntress, which is a useless cover for an anti-Scarran spy; they needed to drop the neo-nazi rantings and her over-inflated opinion of herself, which only made her sound like she had narcissistic personality disorder. But I did see potential in her sense of worry that her reputation in hunter circles would suffer, in her ability to learn basic English in about 15 minutes (she made it seem plausible, at least for her), in her self-confidence (if kept at reasonable levels), and in a few other good scenes and traits.

The big difference I felt between the two of them was that somehow Sikozu's various "neo Nazi rantings" always seemed more genuine to me. When Jool did it it seemed more like she was just regurgitating someone else's opinions, say of parents or teachers, because she was basically too immature and ignorant of the larger galaxy to really have formed any of her own. Sikozu on the other hand had actually been around quite a bit and lived on her own for some time and yet she busted out with this stuff constantly. Maybe it was because she wasn't really an organic life form at all?

I saw PK Wars before watching most of the series, so that was my intro to Jool. Yes, she seemed an Amazonian warrior woman guarding an entrance to her people's home. And she seemed to have a sort-of love relationship to John. They made it sound like there had been a Jool-John-Aeryn triangle. But of course once you see her in the series, none of that is true. Weird.

It goes without saying that if she had really interjected herself in Farscape golden couple the hate for her would have been grander than ever.

For the most part I liked him in LGM. But the way he deserted the guy he was supposed to guard, then shrug off the guy's death, just grated.

I don't remember that part myself. I just remember laughing at his great closing line. "Goodbye, and thank you for teaching me to kill again" as he walks off with a huge chest of loot.

I became very tired of John's various freak outs long, long before they stopped doing them.

That one definitely ranks at the top of my list though.

Definitely. Sloppy Plot Monster strikes again!

I figure it went something like this. "We still want to have Scorpius on the show because he's awesome, but he can't be a PK anymore because of Grayza so what can we do with him now..." then they just picked the easiest option. They never even adequately explained how he survived being shot and buried. I think the current fanon speculation is that Braca was colluding with him somehow as his "spy" but it's made abundantly clear in I think it's "Promises", that some completely other dude is the actual spy. Braca also shoots him with Grayza's gun so the only colluding that would make sense would be between Scorpy and her to trick John into trusting him, which I have to admit actually could have been pretty interesting.

I didn't mean the same personality, just in terms of their role on the show and filling the available slot. Each was said to have knowledge, if not formal education; each had some healing ability, or at least was cast into that role [though I'm not sure about Sikozu); each had some pretense to wisdom or intelligence above that of the other crew; each was more a thinker than a fighter, each felt free to make moral judgments and critique the actions of the others.

Yeah I think it's that perception that played into some of the dislike of her to. Zhaan exits and leaves her behind and there's some skill overlap so people reject her as being Zhaan's replacement.

Ouch. Oh snap! The actress who played Sikozu (Raelee Hill) is 2 years younger than the actress who played Jool (Tammy MacIntosh).

I didn't really mean to imply that. What I was saying is that if they'd wanted to swap actresses and keep the same basic character intact they could have just come up with some sort of late second puberty for her species, altered the makeup a bit and had the change of actress be a part of the whole process.

Regardless of actress age to though I do think Jool was definitely played younger. Tammy Macintosh was in her early 30s when she was on Farscape I think, but I never got the sense that Jool the character was much past 20, or possibly even in her late teens in terms of a comparable human age. They never gave us hard ages on most of the characters I don't think.

That may actually have improved the ratings. My preference would be for some degree of conflict there with Gelina or Chiana. Then after half a season they could drop relationship-based eps entirely for a while.

I think as the show began to build to this huge galactic scale conflict between the PKs and Scarrans would have been the time to push the romance stuff into the background a bit. Either put them together so it's a given and not worthy of comment anymore, or break them up for the time being and hold off on the angst. As it was we got to learn virtually nothing at all about all the players in that galactic war on either the Scarran or PK side with the exception of Scorpius and that was pretty lame. We didn't even get to see the PK government until PK wars when the whole "council" and "high command" seemingly evaporated and it was revealed to be one guy that looked a lot like one of the Zenetan pirates after a course of tatoo removal.

The original concept of Chiana was one of their better characters. Consistently applied, she would have had far more to do, and more interesting things to say and do, than they wound up writing for her. But given the change, they may as well have dumped her (into a recurring character role?) and perhaps brought her back to introduce a Nebari story arc.

Of all of them she had the most potential in her background to make episodes about. The Nebari were at least and interesting as badguys as the PKs and Scarrans, who were just PKs on steroids, so it's not like giving her a more central role would have been particularly strenuous to make interesting.

Yes, she was a terrible character concept. Too think of all those excellent characters they abandoned, then they threw this one into the show. Noranti did have one or two good scenes much later into her run, but as they say, too little and too late.

She was the most tacked on of any of them and her reasons for remaining on the ship were completely unexplainable to the point that they tried to laugh it off in the writing again.

No it isn't on hand, I have to rent these from the library, but I'll take your word for it. The Tracker character model was bastardized from their initial appearance. Beckesh was better written this ep, while the Blood Trackers were ruined.

When we get to LGM I might just youtube it or something because just describing it in the review won't do it justice.

And yet they thought Noranti would make a better continuing character. ???

I would also easily have traded Stark, for her. Or given that the Nebari never really came up, possibly even Chiana. Since they both came along shortly before it might have been more doable to just send them on their way then. Having her show up again at the end of season 3 might be more tricky.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

He was introduced just a few eps after Chiana but then once he was there it seemed like they kinda went "ok so what now" with him. We never even really got a clear picture of what a "Bannick" was, just that they were slaves.

The "Bannick Slave Race", apparently one of worse suffering victims of the PKs. I thought Stark had more to do, or at least more interesting things to do, than several of the other regular cast. One problem was that at the same time they added new characters they gave more scenes to John and Aeryn, so for the remaining cast, there was less time to divide between more characters.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Sikozu on the other hand had actually been around quite a bit and lived on her own for some time and yet she busted out with this stuff constantly. Maybe it was because she wasn't really an organic life form at all?

Happily they never brought that up.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It goes without saying that if she had really interjected herself in Farscape golden couple the hate for her would have been grander than ever.

She didn't seem to like Crichton very much, and they did not have many scenes together, so her dialogue when they met up in PK Wars was odd.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I figure it went something like this. "We still want to have Scorpius on the show because he's awesome, but he can't be a PK anymore because of Grayza so what can we do with him now..." then they just picked the easiest option. They never even adequately explained how he survived being shot and buried.

That whole sequence of two or three episodes was a disaster.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I didn't really mean to imply that. What I was saying is that if they'd wanted to swap actresses and keep the same basic character intact they could have just come up with some sort of late second puberty for her species, altered the makeup a bit and had the change of actress be a part of the whole process.

Sort of like Doctor Who.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Regardless of actress age to though I do think Jool was definitely played younger. Tammy Macintosh was in her early 30s when she was on Farscape I think, but I never got the sense that Jool the character was much past 20, or possibly even in her late teens in terms of a comparable human age.

I think she was a recent University grad, so early twenties.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I think as the show began to build to this huge galactic scale conflict between the PKs and Scarrans would have been the time to push the romance stuff into the background a bit. Either put them together so it's a given and not worthy of comment anymore, or break them up for the time being and hold off on the angst. As it was we got to learn virtually nothing at all about all the players in that galactic war on either the Scarran or PK side with the exception of Scorpius and that was pretty lame. We didn't even get to see the PK government until PK wars when the whole "council" and "high command" seemingly evaporated and it was revealed to be one guy that looked a lot like one of the Zenetan pirates after a course of tatoo removal.

Since they wanted to set up an epic galactic conflict between empires, they needed to spend more time developing it dramatically. The major players, the politics, the intrigues had to be deepened and expanded upon. Better writers are able to start with the small (like personal relationships between characters) and through that show the larger scale. But this show stubbornly gave most air time to the small-scale relationship issues, and 'Harvey/wormhole knowledge', leaving the larger scale issues under-developed, and making most of the cast stand around doing nothing.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Of all of them she had the most potential in her background to make episodes about. The Nebari were at least and interesting as badguys as the PKs and Scarrans, who were just PKs on steroids, so it's not like giving her a more central role would have been particularly strenuous to make interesting.

The natural life of the 'wormhole' story arc ended in season three. They tried to force it back to life in season four, and would have carried on with it in season five given the chance. This was a huge failure of imagination on their part. The horribly clunky beginning episodes (three or four of the first five) of season four demonstrate their crisis of imagination. They needed some fresh ideas, they needed to start a new story-arc, perhaps involving the Nebari, perhaps involving Rygel and the Hynerians, or Sikozu's people (which technically were not her people if she was an android) struggling against the Scarrans.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I would also easily have traded Stark, for her. Or given that the Nebari never really came up, possibly even Chiana. Since they both came along shortly before it might have been more doable to just send them on their way then. Having her show up again at the end of season 3 might be more tricky.

But think how perfect she would be for a Nebari story arc.