Farscape Rewind: Episode 1.14 Worst Episode Ever

[Mr. Infamous]

This week on the Farscape rewind, Jeremiah Crichton, an episode almost universally loathed by Farscape fans, and even considered by some to be the worst episode of Farscape ever made. What makes Jeremiah Crichton so terrible, well you need only read on to find out because I'm showing absolutely no mercy to this turd. This review is rated M for violence against good scriptwriting and course language, which I will be only too eager to supply. Nope no adult situations or nudity I'm afraid, that might actually give some people a reason to want to watch this, and that was clearly not the intent present in making it.

The episode starts off with John and Dargo cramped together in a dark slimey corridoor getting hit in the face by a jet of foul smelling gas, in other words we get forshadowing via metaphor. Well maybe this episode's not so bad then if it's already this artsy right... ha you just wait.

We won't get any sophisticated gimmicks like PK car alarms or hidden packets of leviathan sperm to kick off the plot this week folks, oh no, that would be asking to much of Jeremiah Crichton. What we'll get instead is an episode that just starts with John acting like a whiney little manbitch to everyone he encounters on the ship for no reason, eventually culminating in him taking a ride in his module to get away from the others, one of which was kind of short with him, another that tried to help him, and a third who just tried to figure out why the hell he was acting like such an overly emotional moron all of a sudden. He also manages to take a particularly low shot at Zhaan again, harkening back to the equally inexplicable one he took in Rhapsody a few eps ago. Oh and despite the fact that in the last episode he was willing to choose a quick trip into Aeryn's pants over life itself now he's apparently sick of her to.

Yeah, strap in tight folks, we haven't even got to the main plot yet.

So John decides to go for a spin while Dargo's yelling at him to come back and finish the repairs they were working on. He flies around in circles for a little while outside, hardly going for any kind of a cruise, then uh oh tragety strikes, Crais shows up, abducts him, and forces him to watch Jeremiah Crichton. Yeah right, like they could show that kind of depraved shit on cable TV. Seems like Dargo wasn't crawling around in those dark slimey corridoors just to improve his complexion though, what he was doing in there was actually important, and now because John's decided not to help him with it Moya's decided she will clear her backed up systems herself, by starbursting in some kind of Leviathan reflex equivalanet to crapping your pants. There's those suble artsy methaphors again.

After the opening credits roll (coincidently the best part of Jeremiah Crichton) we rejoin "time has passed" bearded Castaway John laying atop his crashed module on what must be some sort of habitable moon orbiting a gas giant judgeing by the giant fucking gas giant in the sky. That won't keep them from calling this thing a planet repeatedly in this episode's dialog though, hell why should it right. Why not just call it an asteroid, or how about a nebula, it's all the same shit up there anyway right, who's gonna know. Yeah ordinarily I wouldn't give a shit about something as trivial as this but you know what, fuck it, no mercy. This episode is the equivalent of salt in an open festering wound, every little trivial bit of it hurts.

John's interrupted from his napping when his giant alien lobster trap goes off and not long after that by the arrival of the pseudo love interest of the week here, Lishala. Lishala gives John a map of the sky drawn on some sort of parchment and we get probably the only good scene in this whole episode. She asks John to show her where his homeworld is on the map and he does so by taking a rock and throwing it as far as he can into the lake behind them.

Next we meet our badguy of the week, Rokan, Lishala's wannabe boyfriend, and it's right about now that any hope we had that this episode was going to be half decent thanks to the map scene is slowly crushed away in the python like grip of our realization of what this episode is really going to be about. A fucking love triangle in the jungle with 2 guest stars that'll never be seen ever again. Let's also take this opportunity to talk about the first thing that pisses me off about the "primitive people" in this episode. Yep it's the good old "I am a primitive person from a primitive culture and I can not be permitted to use contractions in my speach ever".

What the fuck is this shit! Why do so many goddamn script writers, actors or whoever's responsible do this shit?! It doesn't make any sense at all. It completely defies rational analysis. It's not offensive, either in a PC sesne or against science, like some of the racial issues surrounding these people I'll get to in a second, but it's just straight up fucking weird. There's really no other way to describe it. It would be like if someone decided that anytime characters encountered people from a post industrial society it was necessary for them to speak abnormally loudly, and then a bunch of people watched it and just ripped it off for some even more difficult to comprehend reason, and probably without even knowing they'd done it. I've tried to think in the past where this whole "primitive people aren't allowed to use contractions" cliche actually got started, but thus far I'm drawing a blank. It could be stargate though, because all of them do it in those shows. Data on TNG wasn't suppossed to use contractions either (thought he did at times) but he was a super advanced android. How do you theoretically watch TNG as a writer and decide "you know I'm going to start ripping off the traits of the super advanced android for the primitive tribespeople I'm writing about in this script". Was this some kind of bet? Bizarre Pisstake? Something somebody did at some point to see if anyone else who came after would actuallly be stupid enough to imitate it? I doubt we'll ever know for sure, but we don't need to know how it started to know it's fucking stupid and irritating as all hell to watch, and once your attention's been called to it, a favour I'm doing you all here by the way, you'll never be able to unnotice it again.

Oh and wait did you spot the other problem all of five minutes into the episode here. I'll give you a hint, what was the problem with the other shitty "John crashes on a planet" episode we watched. That's right, plot induced translator microbes are back folks! No truely shitty episode would be complete without them. Here we've got another primitive group of people, generations removed from anyone who could have had transplator microbes, who are living inside a magical field that stops any kind of technology from working and yet everyone understands John just as well as he understands them. I suppose it's best that they do though right, if they didn't we might not get to hear them speak without using contractions, mutter on about their batshit little religion unceasingly, or complain to their mothers that John's such a meanie for pulling all the hot babes that they wanted waaaaahhhhh.

Anyway, after Rokan gets in a little time to prove that John's not the only petty manbitch residing on this planet, we head back to Moya to see that the others have infact been searching for John, and they've been searching for a quarter of a cycle, or about 3 months. Yeah, 3 months... For fucks sake this is almost certainly more time than has passed in the entire show since it started so far and you're just going to handwave that all away offscreen. 3 whole months that we just never get to see because John has to have a beard in this episode? Absolutely dreadful. There's not really anything about this episode that couldn't have worked with 3 weeks. They pay a bit of initial lip service to the idea that John might want to stay but you don't need 3 months for that either.

Well, while John's down on the planet stealin' chicks and killing lobsters the crew is arguing about whether to give up looking for John considering how long it's been, Zhaan wants to call it quits, Dargo wants to keep looking and Aeryn hasn't quite decided yet. They keep looking because I guess Rygel's vote doesn't count. Oh don't worry we'll be seeing more of Rygel later though...

Back on the planet of the purple pants people John's wondering how a group of a few dozen that lives in a few huts near a waterfall can make cloths the envy of the average Roman but before he can reach any conclusion he's spitting out hakuna matatas and getting invited to sit beside the chief Kato-Re, Lishala's father. They have a little talk about how in this tribe the women choose which man they want and Kato-Re basically encourages John to have at his daughter. Next we meet Rokan's mom, Neera, the high priestess of these 30 or so people who more or less immediately reveals that she'll be this episodes badguy as she ties to stir up her sons animosity toward Crichton. This scene is also pretty unintentionally hilarious as it seems like these lines in which Neera talks about how Rokan "could be ruler of all of this" were written before they settled on "all of this" being a few dozen people in a few straw huts down by the river. I can only dream to enjoy such power and dominion myself one day.

Now that all our main players are out in the open though lets get back to that whole little race thing I brought up before.

First off, if these people are suppossed to be some kind of primitive tribe (we'll learn later that they're actually long lost colonists but whatever) why then are there like 4 distinct racial groups present here? This was the "offense to science" part I was talking about earlier. Basically there's only 20-50 people here, they've been intermixing for at least several centuries, and yet we've still got very distinct racial groups as oppossed to a bunch of people who all look more or less the same by now. That being what you would expect in the case of a real isolated primitive tribe or in the case of the whole "ancestors of stranded space colonists" that they actually turn out to be. The only conclusion I can draw here is that they were worried about racial typecasting, which is what makes point two all the more unfortunately hilarious.

So on to point two then. This village looks like somebody told a casting director to go and find people that looked "ethnic" and then they just threw them together haphazardly without really thinking. Lishala is asian, Rokan is black, as is his mother Neera, and Kato-Re looks like he might be native Australian or New Zealander. The end result is you've got a group of "primitives" that, excepting a few briefly seen background extras and unnamed goons,... are all non whites. Oh, and Kato-Re's and Lishala's races don't seem to match, but that's not important right. Holy fuck. While I'm normally not going to run over entertainment with a fine toothed comb looking for things like this to get worked up over, this is a no mercy style review of this piece of shit episode and this is something really quite cringe inducing once you do notice it and well, I'm sure it pissed someone off. Attempt to avoid PC outrage failed Jeremiah. This episode just fails at everything doesn't it, well everything except for failing.

Don't worry though, there's still plenty more failure to come.

Speaking of failure Dargo and Rygel have found the planet Crichton's on but their pod's power systems have failed, their communicators have failed, Dargo's qualta blade has failed and even Rygel's throne sled has failed. You might be thinking "holy shit that sure is a lot of failure, so this is what you were talking about then". Well yes that is a lot of failure but it's nothing compared to what's ahead... how's that to blow your mind huh.

While Dargo and Rygel are busy failing down on the planet Zhaan and Aeryn are busy failing up on the ship, failing to get along, failing to do anything particularly useful to help the situation, and even failing not to make thinly veiled threats at one another. I got to thinking at this point that what could potentially have improved this episode was a catfight between Zhaan and Aeryn here. Say instead of shutting her piehole about Zhaan failing at being a priest Aeryn keeps pushing that button and so Zhaan fails to not strangle her and then more and more of their clothing fails to stay attached to their sweaty heaving bodies. Nah who am I kidding, even if it had a sweaty naked catfight on the cargo bay floor between Zhaan and Aeryn I still wouldn't actually be able to force myself to watch Jeremiah Crichton on purpose, not even if you threw in Chiana, Jool and Grayza. It is only my dedication to you my readers, yes all 3 of you, that impairs my good judgement enough to force me to do these kinds of things.

So rather than tear their cloths of and get aquainted with each other's deep shameful secrets Zhaan and Aeryn decide that they're going to just weld up a special shielded probe to fire into the energy dampening field, just to give me one more thing to bitch about it seems. You see because this here not only proves that these kinds of fields are common enough that PK pilots are expected to know how to counter them, but that you can counter them with shit you find laying around a prison transport, and that despite this it's still not common practice to just build these simplistic counters into the systems of things like oh say... transport pods and prowlers. Turns out the capsule shielding only works partway in the end as the comlink with it fails but the point still remains. Aeryn though she could do something extra that would protect this pod with junk she found laying around Moya above and beyond anything built into her own prowler or the transport pods.

UUUUghhh, I need to visualize that catfight a bit more before I can continue. Yeah that's it, pull her hair Zhaan, she's got no come back to that.

Back on the planet John's taking a merry stoll in the woods when he hears bango music and some scary men in purple pants jump out of the bushes at him with sticks in hand. Before the inevitable can take place however Dargo charges into the frame and beats the shit out of everyone including Rokan, who scurries off back into the folliage from which he came. Having just been rescued from a little male bonding in the wilderness John is naturally in a bitchy mood, wasting no time whining to Dargo about how he left him behind without apparently bothering to notice that he has infact come back for some reason, an action rather inconistant with deliberately ditching his ass. Dargo tells him it's his own damn fault for stomping out of the ship like a pissy little girl instead of finishing the repairs like he was suppossed to and they're instantly back to being best buds again. Yay, this just cements how totally useless the opening scenes were.

Meanwhile back at the village Rokan has literally run home to cry to his mommy about how Dargo beat him up, mommy is urging Kato-Re to take it out on Crichton of course, and Lishara is urging mommy to go get laid so she won't be so much of a bitch. The only useful thing we get here is that these people are evidently aware that their ancestors were space Travellers.

Zhaan and Aeryn are zeroing in on their target area back on Moya, both of them still way overdressed, and back on the planet John is taking the time to go fishing in the lake he built his little hut beside. Evidently this planet doesn't have mosquitoes. It does have muscular men with waxed chests in purple pants though, and before long they arrive in full fabulous fashion to shit up the day for John and Dargo some more, this time hauling them off to punsih them for the crime of being alive, or abstaining from stupid hats, some other such dumb bullshit. I wonder where they get the chest wax.

They get hauled all the way back to the village and here's where the real dumb shit starts folks, Rygel is their god. I'm not even going to toy with the idea of actually dragging you scene by scene through the rest of this bullshit that follows but suffice it to say that it plays out pretty much exactly as you would expect this stupid fucking "false messiah of the primitives" plot to play out based on the 70,000 other times you've seen it.

They put Rygel up in the royal hut, assign him a couple of cute little native girls to feed him and give him sponge baths and all couldn't be merrier. Boy it sure is great to be taking advantage of these ignorant primitives who think I'm their god, surely nothing could ever happen to suddenly make this go bad in a way that punishes me for the immoral way in which I'm taking advantage of these people.

Oh but wait it turns out that as the god of the crazy bushpeople I have to perform some sort of sacred miracle or else they're going to eat me/burn me at the stake/force me to watch Jeremiah Crichton on loop until I strangle myself wih my own torn out endtrails.

This is some of the cheapest most cliched overused bullshit you can possibly throw up on a TV screen and yet here it is. Everyone who's ever happened to own a TV for more than a weekend in the last 50 years has seen this exact fucking story somewhere else, and probably done better, and yet here it is again. Right down to the irritating "ha ha look, he cleverly faked and bluffed his way through the primitive prophecy/ritual so it was kind of true all along" ending. John and Dargo find the device that was surpressing the use of tech, Rygel turns it off, his throne sled appears beside him despite him abaondoning it at the begining of the episode and he "rises up into the light". Just like it said in the ancient prophecy get it, isn't that clever! I know I was so blown away by this intricate storytelling I very nearly took my own life upon realising I would never witness such beauty again. This episode really should come with a warning for that very reason I think, or maybe because it's the creative equivalent of a muddy trench full of diseased bovine abortions rotting in the midday sun, yeah that could be the reason to.

Watching this has all the appeal of regurgitating yesterday's seafood and consuming it again at half the speed. Why did they think this was a worthwhile script to actually make into an episode. Is this the worst epiode of Farscape ever, I certainly think so. There are other bad episodes but I can't think of one that just so consistantly fails on so many points as this one does.

Here's another one of those points for you, these people are Hynerian colonists. Yeah, no they don't look 2 feet tall and green to me either. What the fuck is this shit? Why would the Hynerians send Human colonists? No I won't call them Sebaceans because guess what, based on previous episodes Sebaceans would fucking DIE in that jungle according to this show. So the Hynerians either sent heat proof Sebacean colonists, actual humans, or some third species that looks identical to both that is never noticed or distinguished from either by anyone. Pick how you want the established canon to be broken, Jeremiah Crichton is generous in that way.

Nothing about this episode works, nothing. The character interaction is bad and off the mark right from the start, the main plot is retarded and old as Dinosaur shit, the casting is fucked up, nonsensical and bordering on racist, the stupid little tribal dance number only makes it worse, the backstory doesn't add up, the cinematography introduces contradictions with the dialog, the sets are underwhelming, unimaginative and generic, the costumes don't make contextual sense and Zhaan and Aeryn continually resist my attempts to will their clothing from their bodies.

All in all to sum up this episode I'll just quote myself from earlier on in the review.

Jeremiah Crichton is an episode that fails at everything, except for failing.

[zahn-c]

it was like Farscape meets Gilligan's Island.... humanoids worshiping Rygel... ack!!

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

This week on the Farscape rewind, Jeremiah Crichton, an episode almost universally loathed by Farscape fans, and even considered by some to be the worst episode of Farscape ever made. What makes Jeremiah Crichton so terrible, well you need only read on to find out because I'm showing absolutely no mercy to this turd. This review is rated M for violence against good scriptwriting and course language, which I will be only too eager to supply.

And it was our hero Ben browder who wrote it.

I did not know it was so disliked by fans. I assumed that because Browder wrote this episode, they would show unconditional love. I recall some footage of a covention on one of the dvds. Browder and Claudia Black are talking about various episodes, and at one point Ben Browder smiles and says something to the effect of "lets not talk about Jerimiah Crichton." Now I know why.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

What we'll get instead is an episode that just starts with John acting like a whiney little manbitch to everyone he encounters on the ship for no reason, eventually culminating in him taking a ride in his module to get away from the others

An extreme case of homesickness, brought on by using up the last of his original suppy of Earth-fuel for his module. 'Slowly, or quickly, one at a time everything he has left of Earth is disappearing.' That idea, but yes, his reaction was way too crazed.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

uh oh tragety strikes, Crais shows up, abducts him, and forces him to watch Jeremiah Crichton. Yeah right, like they could show that kind of depraved shit on cable TV.

Maybe that's what happens in the Aurora chair. That could be why Crichton hates Scorpius so much yet forgives Crais.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

What the fuck is this shit! Why do so many goddamn script writers, actors or whoever's responsible do this shit?! It doesn't make any sense at all. It completely defies rational analysis. I've tried to think in the past where this whole "primitive people aren't allowed to use contractions" cliche actually got started, but thus far I'm drawing a blank.

A very cheap and lazy way to suggest 'alien' speech patterns.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

we head back to Moya to see that the others have infact been searching for John, and they've been searching for a quarter of a cycle, or about 3 months. Yeah, 3 months... o stay but you don't need 3 months for that either.

There is a minimum time required to be considered a castaway. Actually, doesn't this episode intend to refer to Robinson Crusoe? The title 'Jerimiah Crichton' makes me think of Jerimiah Johnson, that old Redford movie about the mountain man/trapper/grizzly bear hunter.

Aboout the search, I don't believe that Moya couldn't simply jump back to her last co-ordinates. Especially as a sentient ship; it would be like us stepping backwards.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Well, while John's down on the planet stealin' chicks and killing lobsters the crew is arguing about whether to give up looking for John considering how long it's been, Zhaan wants to call it quits, Dargo wants to keep looking and Aeryn hasn't quite decided yet.

Zhann's quite a nasty person for a few eps. Maybe she is mad at John because he keeps insulting her. And DArgo's attitude has swung 180 degrees.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Here's another one of those points for you, these people are Hynerian colonists. Yeah, no they don't look 2 feet tall and green to me either.

I thought it might work as a story referencing the lost Hynerian Empire. A time centuries earlier when the Hynerians also controlled some humanoid worlds. Then after those wars we hear about in other eps, the Empire shrunk and some of their fomer planets, 'colonies' only in a loose sense of the word, were suddenly abandoned, forgotten, left on their own. Picture if the British had suddenly abandoned Hong Kong, and the Chinese had never taken it over. What would the Brits have found there 300 years later? Or picture Cuba. After the Russian revolution, exports, subsidies, and economic aid to Cuba ended almost overnight. What if Cuba was isolated for a few centuries, then the Russians came back? Anyway, there is the germ of an idea there.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Nothing about this episode works, nothing. The character interaction is bad and off the mark right from the start, the main plot is retarded and old as Dinosaur shit, the casting is fucked up, nonsensical and bordering on racist, the stupid little tribal dance number only makes it worse, the backstory doesn't add up, the cinematography introduces contradictions with the dialog, the sets are underwhelming, unimaginative and generic, the costumes don't make contextual sense and Zhaan and Aeryn continually resist my attempts to will their clothing from their bodies.

And the mind-bending sight of Crichton happily shaking the hand of the guy who had tried to murder him, twice, in two days. He would have to be Jesus Christ himself to be so forgiving.

Originally Posted by zahn-c

it was like Farscape meets Gilligan's Island.... humanoids worshiping Rygel... ack!!

That would have actually worked as an episode of Gilligan's Island. Maybe this ep would have been better if they had Maryann in those hotpants making electricity, and the Professor building taxi cabs out of bamboo.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

And it was our hero Ben browder who wrote it.

Hmm, that's not what IMDB says. Did he just sort of contribute ideas or something.

I did not know it was so disliked by fans. I assumed that because Browder wrote this episode, they would show unconditional love. I recall some footage of a covention on one of the dvds. Browder and Claudia Black are talking about various episodes, and at one point Ben Browder smiles and says something to the effect of "lets not talk about Jerimiah Crichton." Now I know why.

Honestly even I like Browder, I do, I use his work on Farscape all the time as an example for how Stargate underutilizes good actors. That being said though this episode is still dreadful, I'd hope that even the most starry eyed fangurl would be able to see that, because there's really no getting around it. No matter how much you like Browder as an actor or what his involvment in this was, there's no denying the end result.

An extreme case of homesickness, brought on by using up the last of his original suppy of Earth-fuel for his module. 'Slowly, or quickly, one at a time everything he has left of Earth is disappearing.' That idea, but yes, his reaction was way too crazed.

It grinds especially hard against the fact that the last 3 episodes were basically dedicated to him getting closer with Dargo, Zhaan and Aeryn in that order. Oddly enough the same order he proceeds to insult them all in this one. Dargo was being sort of an ass to but he's running around yelling about how he's sick of Zhaan and Aeryn to? What exactly is he sick of, having sex with them?

This part of the episode might have worked earlier on in the season when they were all still more adversarial but by now they've started to bond as a crew, especially John. One need only watch the last three episodes. The only one he hasn't realy bonded with yet on a personal level is Rygel.

Maybe that's what happens in the Aurora chair. That could be why Crichton hates Scorpius so much yet forgives Crais.

It airs the version of Jeremiah Crichton that has Maldis in it.

A very cheap and lazy way to suggest 'alien' speech patterns.

Well yeah, but who do we have to thank for first bringing this horrible convention into the world. I can only point to Data myself but it actually made sense for Data, since part of the goal in his creation was to make him seem less human than Lore, who spoke entirely normally, had emotions, and consequently made the other colonists uncomfortable with just how human he was.

There is a minimum time required to be considered a castaway. Actually, doesn't this episode intend to refer to Robinson Crusoe? The title 'Jerimiah Crichton' makes me think of Jerimiah Johnson, that old Redford movie about the mountain man/trapper/grizzly bear hunter.

I just watched "A human reaction tonight" and apparently John's been gone for 7 months by the time that episode rolls around. It's two eps from this one so figure on the leap in Jerimiah Crichton literally being, as I said, just about as long as the entire rest of the show up until that point.

It worked on BSG with the 1 year later, but it worked there because of how much had changed. Here they double the time on the characters and literally nothing changes for them or about them until they find John again.

With a show like Farscape that has a very continuous storyline an idea like this should just never have made it past the brainstorming stage. Once they realized they were going to have to handwave away 3 months of time for this episode to work it should have just been scrapped at that point. Massive time jumps like that between episodes just don't work in this type of heavy continuity show.

Aboout the search, I don't believe that Moya couldn't simply jump back to her last co-ordinates. Especially as a sentient ship; it would be like us stepping backwards.

I think there's suppossed to be something about starburst somehow scrambling/erasing all navigational data, which makes it pretty useless as a method of transport as oppossed to a method of getting lost on purpose, but I think that's actually an excuse that was given by pilot in the premiere.

Zhann's quite a nasty person for a few eps. Maybe she is mad at John because he keeps insulting her. And DArgo's attitude has swung 180 degrees.

If John's making as many inexplicable snipes to her offscreen as he is on I'd pretty much expect it. If I can't even understand his actions as an outside observer and fellow human, what chance does an alien plant woman have.

It's funny because even Aeryn gives her shit for quitting the priesthood. If PKs are as without religion as they seem to be she should't really care, maybe even give Zhaan some encouragment toward the idea that a person can still live just fine without religion. Of course it's also possible she just sees it as a sort of willful desertion, which seems to be the angle the scene is going for.

I thought it might work as a story referencing the lost Hynerian Empire. A time centuries earlier when the Hynerians also controlled some humanoid worlds. Then after those wars we hear about in other eps, the Empire shrunk and some of their fomer planets, 'colonies' only in a loose sense of the word, were suddenly abandoned, forgotten, left on their own. Picture if the British had suddenly abandoned Hong Kong, and the Chinese had never taken it over. What would the Brits have found there 300 years later? Or picture Cuba. After the Russian revolution, exports, subsidies, and economic aid to Cuba ended almost overnight. What if Cuba was isolated for a few centuries, then the Russians came back? Anyway, there is the germ of an idea there.

You're making that all up on your own though, it's not in the episode or any other episode after this one, the first sign of lousy writing. When you, the viewer, have to fill in fundamental story details on your own just so the story can seem plausible the writer's not doing his job properly. He's not convincing you, not selling you on the story.

You see this kind of thing all the time in later run stargate, the whole "if you stop to think rationally for one second it all falls apart" method of story development. Then it's up to you to try and put humpty dumpty back together again on your own. I don't need everything spoon fed to me, and indeed that would probably actually irritate me more, but this would have been an easy hole to close just with a few more lines from Rygel to explain why Hynerian colonists were humans. Instead the issue is never addressed and everyone just moves along pretending there's nothing comment worthy about he whole thing, it's just lazy writing. Minor issues like this stacking up on top of one another can really bring down the overall quality of an episode if there's enough of them. They just make the whole thing come off looking sloppy. Jeremiah Crichton of course had much more serious problems than a few lazy oversights here and there though.

And the mind-bending sight of Crichton happily shaking the hand of the guy who had tried to murder him, twice, in two days. He would have to be Jesus Christ himself to be so forgiving.

Oh there's no doubt Rokan was an asshole, that's why I described him as a badguy to, even though the episode tries to sell you on the idea that it's just his mother pulling his strings that makes him bad. I don't buy it though, the guy's a dick. John tells him repeatedly that he doesn't want anything to do with ruling the little clutch of huts down by the river or the woman he's decided on his own is his future girlfriend but he still tries to murder him straight off, acting on just some vague suspicion that Lishala might be attracted to him. You know because killing the guy they're attracted to is always a clearfire way into a girls heart right. He even tries to take another run at Crichton right at the end basically just to seal the deal on what an irrational violent prick he is. Then you get the final insult at the end where Lishala apparently endorses all his psychotic homicidal super stalker behaviour by going with him, boy it's a good thing he marked her as his so far in advance or she might not have know who to go with.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Hmm, that's not what IMDB says. Did he just sort of contribute ideas or something.

Oops. He provided the concept. It was the other ep with a title based on another title, John Quixote, that he wrote himself. JQ wasn't much better than Jerimiah Crichton, but some people love it. He did a better job with his Bondog episode.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

That being said though this episode is still dreadful, I'd hope that even the most starry eyed fangurl would be able to see that, because there's really no getting around it.

Ardent fans tend to give unconditional love. I remember when Leonard Nimoy first directed a Star Trek movie. There were some professional criticisms regarding his tendancy to shoot scenes as though he were shooting a tv show and not a multi-million dollar film. But Trek fans who did not even know exactly what a director did declared Nimoy a brilliant director, and insisted he deserved the Academy award.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Well yeah, but who do we have to thank for first bringing this horrible convention into the world.

I recall that device being used in old 50's sf. I can't be sure though, I don't have a copy of one handy.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

With a show like Farscape that has a very continuous storyline an idea like this should just never have made it past the brainstorming stage. Once they realized they were going to have to handwave away 3 months of time for this episode to work it should have just been scrapped at that point.

I noticed that the Farscape producers tended to ignore, or be incapable of, that sort of practical logic. The deadliness of wormhole travel being emphasized then ignored when they wanted to do something else, using a 'previously on Farscape' intro to show clips from scenes that never aired, the 'PK Car Alarm', the apparent use of translator microbes on planets that could not have them, are all examples.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I think there's suppossed to be something about starburst somehow scrambling/erasing all navigational data, which makes it pretty useless as a method of transport as oppossed to a method of getting lost on purpose, but I think that's actually an excuse that was given by pilot in the premiere.

That's more sloppy conceptualizing right there.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

You're making that all up on your own though, it's not in the episode or any other episode after this one, the first sign of lousy writing. When you, the viewer, have to fill in fundamental story details on your own just so the story can seem plausible the writer's not doing his job properly. He's not convincing you, not selling you on the story.

True. Rygel's line when he realized this was a lost 'colony' gave me the idea of what they might have done with this ep.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

You see this kind of thing all the time in later run stargate, the whole "if you stop to think rationally for one second it all falls apart" method of story development. ... it's just lazy writing. Minor issues like this stacking up on top of one another can really bring down the overall quality of an episode if there's enough of them. They just make the whole thing come off looking sloppy.

To an extent, I judge a show by its own standards. So with something like Stargate and even moreso Andromeda, they present themselves as loosely written action-comedy. But a show like BSG presented itself as a serious, dramatic, tightly written and thought out, no-cliches-please style of show. So I would slam BSG for things that I easily give a pass to in SG1 or Andromeda, or Farscape. But being forgiving has its limits.

I'm not sure where I would put Farscape (as a consideration of producer intent, not on what they actually did or didn't do) on a scale of serious sf-to-comic book sf. BSG on one end and Andromeda on the other. Was Farscape intended more seriously than SG1? I'm not sure, but I think so.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

Oops. He provided the concept. It was the other ep with a title based on another title, John Quixote, that he wrote himself. JQ wasn't much better than Jerimiah Crichton, but some people love it. He did a better job with his Bondog episode.

Green eyed monster? I remember that one being pretty good yeah. John Quixote was better than JC but it was also a pretty annoying waste of an episode in my view. It just took the ridiculousness too far, as oppossed to episodes like Scratch N' Sniff which nailed a perfect balance.

Ardent fans tend to give unconditional love. I remember when Leonard Nimoy first directed a Star Trek movie. There were some professional criticisms regarding his tendancy to shoot scenes as though he were shooting a tv show and not a multi-million dollar film. But Trek fans who did not even know exactly what a director did declared Nimoy a brilliant director, and insisted he deserved the Academy award.

Ohh yeah I know that in reality people are sadly often hardly rational. I think that's really the defining line between what seperates being a fan from being a fanboy/fangurl.

I recall that device being used in old 50's sf. I can't be sure though, I don't have a copy of one handy.

Well that's before my time certainly. I'm trying to remember if they did it in the original Trek or on Blakes 7 that I watched last month, but I'm not getting a clear picture.

I noticed that the Farscape producers tended to ignore, or be incapable of, that sort of practical logic. The deadliness of wormhole travel being emphasized then ignored when they wanted to do something else, using a 'previously on Farscape' intro to show clips from scenes that never aired, the 'PK Car Alarm', the apparent use of translator microbes on planets that could not have them, are all examples.

Nothing breaks the sense of immersion in a story faster than when the audience begins to suspect that the author can and will just change the "rules" of his setting whenever he feels like it. It's basically one of the key criteria I use to seperate good from bad writing as it relates to plot. That's why I come down on these things so hard when I do notice them.

That's more sloppy conceptualizing right there.

Indeed, the whole "we can't find our well known space faring worlds" angle is all pretty much bad conceptualization. A galaxy like farscape's with so many spacefaring species that's been up their for thousands of years should pretty much have maps of the known galaxy at every space gas station by now.

True. Rygel's line when he realized this was a lost 'colony' gave me the idea of what they might have done with this ep.

You could maybe have saved this as a starting concept but you would have had to rewrite basically the whole thing from scratch to do it. Like I said, it literally fails at everything it tries. I can't think of one thing it did well.

To an extent, I judge a show by its own standards. So with something like Stargate and even moreso Andromeda, they present themselves as loosely written action-comedy. But a show like BSG presented itself as a serious, dramatic, tightly written and thought out, no-cliches-please style of show. So I would slam BSG for things that I easily give a pass to in SG1 or Andromeda, or Farscape. But being forgiving has its limits.

I do this as well, within reason. A "good" episode of Stargate to me for example doesn't need to live up to the same standards as a "good" episode of BSG. Differant shows take differant approaches with the material and set differant tones and thus should be held to differant expectations. A good episode of Stargate for exmple wouldn't need the sort of deep emotional drama a good episode of BSG would, it would just need to be entertaining, fairly original, and not directly insult my ethics or intelligence too badly. Towards the end I was evenw illing to give them a pass so long as it at least looked like someone actually gave a shit while making it, so just no really obvious oversights, canon contradictions or yawning plot holes. I never really asked a lot from that show.

At the same time though, while I acknowledge that you can't measure all shows with the same stick, I do have a lower threshhold of overall quality where I won't tollerate it anymore, and shows like Andromeda eventualy fell below that. Andromeda was the only sci-fi show that I've ever quit watching in disgust. I made it through two seasons, knew things were bad toward the end of season 2, but 3.01 just finished me. I did go back and watch "the unconquerable man" years later though, and it was indeed probably one of the best episodes of the series, if not the best one.

I'm not sure where I would put Farscape (as a consideration of producer intent, not on what they actually did or didn't do) on a scale of serious sf-to-comic book sf. BSG on one end and Andromeda on the other. Was Farscape intended more seriously than SG1? I'm not sure, but I think so.

Farscape to me has always been a semi-serious sci-fi comedy action drama, a lot like the old Stargate SG-1 used to be. Both shows were most noteworthy for their ability to easily switch from a comedic to a serious tone depending on what the situation called for. Farscape has the added element though in that it's a great deal more arc driven than the early SG-1 was, which increases the importance of character, setting and plot continuity to whether or not it's episodes measure up. It also makes it the better series in my opinion. I'll take a heavily arc driven series over a comparable one that isn't any day.