Farscape Rewind: Episode 1.19

[Mr. Infamous]

This week on the Farscape Rewind Nerve, an episode that marks the crucial tone shift in the series that seperates early "fun and games" Farscape from the grimer more mature tone of the later seasons. There'll still be plenety of room for humour, but otherwise it's all leather gimp masks, torture, brain lobsters, neural clones, eyeball plucking and female on male rape from here on out, fun times lie ahead folks.

We start off on Moya with Aeryn getting all sweaty down in Moya's cargobay, wailing away with all her might at a set of punching bags and showing us what a bad ass peacekeeper she really is. In the end though it's the bags that are left happily standing and her that's collapsed on the floor spitting blood. As it turns out this is the result of Larraq stabbing her in the last episode. By now we all know that were she in top form Aeryn would never have got that sweaty while she lost a fight to a bunch of inanimate bags, it would never have lasted long enough. The bags were clearly just taking it easy on her here because they could tell something was wrong.

John of course being deeply in love with Aeryn for some reason, even though Chiana is now available as a much less tedious alternative, decides that they all need to risk their hides on some half assed infiltration of the Peacekeeper base Larraq was suppossed to be headed to in the last episode. The only way to treat Aeryn's condition is to fly down there, find a peacekeeper who can beat up a set of bags, and slice out some of his organs to give to Aeryn it seems.

I have to comment here because all joking aside that's basically what John's plan seems to amount to. Aeryn tells him that some sort of nerve cluster in her body that regulates her body temperature is damaged and won't heal without a graft from a genetically compatible donor and so John says "lets go get one at the PK base". Since I think it's safe to assume that no PK is going to willingly give up his/her nerve tissue without a pretty compelling explanation, so even assuming John could find a compatible one somehow, what was he going to do exactly, bop him over the head and dig around in his insides with a knife and fork from the Pk cafeteria? The episode even has D'argo raise this concern to John only to blow him off a second later by having John launch into this emotional whine fest about how they're just going to let Aeryn die then huh, and if they're all happy with that. Rygel almost gets to tell him that he needs to face reality and that him going down there in a PK uniform like he did before with no clear plan of what he wants to accomplish is just going to ensure he dies before Aeryn does, but he doesn't get to, because the plot must go on. While you could take this as a scene that shows how much closer the characters have gotten to one another, as none of them really want to let Aeryn die they just don't see a realistic way of saving her, it could have benefitted from a little bit more selling on John's part. As it stands now he basically just accuses them of wanting to kill her and they all just sort of murmer along and agree to commit mass suicide with him against the guns of a super secret peacekeeper base.

One of the things I really loved about seasons 2's "Liars guns and money" is how this same exact set up plays out so much better and more convincingly.

So with the plan going ahead Chiana decides to invite herself along with John, reasoning that she can serve as a useful distraction and help him to both keep the eyes of the PKs off himself as well as help him steal the all important nerve tissue. She's also managed to steal Larraq's ident chip which casues me to wonder why they didn't just have Aeryn impersonate the other female commando from last week and run the same scam only with her being "injured on a mission". The PKs will then just fix her up and they can be on their way. Sure it's still an incredibly stupid plan that will almost certainly fail and get both of them shot but John's plan is all of those things as well and this one wouldn't require the added step of somehow finding and extracting nerve tissue from one of the PKs down there without anyone knowing. It would also be nice to have Aeryn's experience with PK regs and operating proceedures right at hand, even if she is injured, since the entire plan depends on John and his accomplice being able to act like convincing PKs.

Oh and since I said I'd do it why not just have Zhaan make herself look like a peacekeeper admiral ala RiB and just call them on the com to demand a nerve sample be delivered to them by marauder to a set of coordinates nearby, or any number of other intresting illusions.

Anyway we get Chiana though, which I suppose is a better choice than D'argo or Rygel at least, and her and John head down to the base, narrowly talking their way out of being shot down before they land.

The Pk's of course want to see John's ID chip the minute they see him and it passes, though nobody seems to comment on Larraq being expected or where the rest of his team or super secret cargo is. Presumably if he was delivering that nasty sentient virus to this base like he said he was he would have called ahead to tell them in advance, but I suppose maybe he never got the chance. Still, another big potential game breaker glossed over in the interest of pushing the plot forward here.

Now that they've safely landed they head straight to the bar to plan their next move, which for Chiana is flirting with every Pk in sight. She reasons that it'll keep suspiscious eyes off John but I'm inclined to agree with him on this one, attention is bad. It doesn't matter if they're only looking at her it's better they not be looking at all. Chiana will even get an offer later on from the base commander to be his own personal whore, and his ability to recognise her after that because he's now had such ample time to look her over, will very nearly get her killed when she tries to escape. This is interesting for a couple of reasons though, firstly that it shows that the PKs "racial purity" ideals get more and more malleable as one ascends in the ranks, with alien loveslaves not only being desired by Pk officers but also evidently being permitted by Pk regulations if one has sufficient rank to bend the rules. This episode also somewhat indirectly shows us that Chiana is not disgusted by the Peacekeepers the same way Zhaan, Rygel, Pilot or especially Dargo is. She's perfectly happy to hang around in the bar and chat with them where as any of the others mentioned could hardly be convinced to do so.

Anyway John and Chiana's next major obsticle is a genetic scanner that John's going to have to place his hands into to confirm his identity yet again. Convinced he's about to get found out John tries to blow it off as unnecessary but eventually does have to do it anyway and to his surprise passes. At first he thinks Chiana did something to the chip but it's soon revealed that Gillina, our Pk tech girl from the episode with the same name, is responsible for fudging the security system to let him pass. I've got to say here that even though Gillina basically makes it all her bitch throughout the episode the security on this PK base is certainlly much better thought out than you typically see in a lot of other sci-fi.

We get a little catch up time with Gillina next, where John explains why he's there she tells John that the PKs have recently developed some sort of universal treatment for the nerve injury that Aeryn has, meaning he won't have to bust out the cutlery on some unsuspecting goon afterall. Convenient Plot man to the rescue! She then offers up a smart suggestion, you stay here and I'll go get the treatment since I, you know, actually work here. John tries to talk her out of it of course, since he hasn't flirted with death enough yet, but she finally talks him down and goes and gets the thing while Chiana chums it up with the PKs a bit more in the bar.

Since we're only halfway through the episode at this point though we of course know it's not going to be that easy and true to form, as soon as John's on his way out he gets to meet Scorpius, our new nefarious villian and commander of the super secret base. Now take everything bad about Crais reverse it and wrap it in a creepy pseudo gimpsuit and you've got a pretty good idea of what Scorpius is all about. At first I kind of rolled my eyes at his goofy name and obviously S&M influenced appearance, and you probably will to if you're a first time viewer, but trust me you'll get over it. We'll be seeing a lot more of this guy and he's only going to keep getting better, though his scrumptious redheaded Dom sidekick here will sadly never be seen again following this 2 parter.

As of right now though he gets started in his role of John's eternal tormentor by somehow seeing the fact that he's not really Sebacean and subsequently ordering an entire hallway full of guards to stomp the shit out of him. Chiana is fortunately not present for this little revelation so it's only John that ends up being captured and jammed into Scorpy's dreaded Aurora chair. Now it's never made quite clear as I recall if Scorpy actually built the chair here himself and it's a one off, or if it's a standard piece of PK kit, but in any case John gets to explore it's functions in detail as Scorpy and his aforementioned scrumptions sidekick waste no time using it to fry his brains.

Since this is a super secret Pk base that nobody's suppossed to know about doing super secret pk things that for sure nobody's suppossed to know about, Scorpy naturally thinks John's some kind of alien spy made to look Sebacean and sent there to mess with his operation. The only course of action then, torturous mind probing in the Aurora chair to fnd out what he wants. It's during this mind probing that we get the big reveal that will go on to shape the rest of the series from this point. Remember back in "A Human Reaction" when John talked to the alien impersonating his father at the end. Well it turns out that the aliens felt so bad about him getting sucked through one of their wormholes that they imbued his mind with the subconcious knowledge of how to create wormholes of his own. Then they wiped his memory of the event, leaving the knowledge behind and hidden in his subconscious, the idea being that if he tried to develop wormhole travel he could eventually do so, but that the painstaking process of rediscovering that knowledge would make him appreciate the power it holds.

Or as ancient Jack puts it "if you're not smart enough to discover it on your own, you're not smart enough to handle it wisely".

The aliens don't have enough power to just send John back to Earth as the explained in Human reaction so this is the best they can do.

Scorpy of course is extremely interested by all this talk of wormholes because guess what it is his super secret Pk base is trying to create, yep artificial wormholes.

Scorpy's also interested in how often Crais seems to show up in John's memories, and how batshit he looks when he does, so to get to the bottem of it sends out a message calling Crais to the base. Yep, things just keep getting better for John. If you're one of those dengenerate "whump", people this episode is a friggin' goldmine. To really emphasise this overreaching theme John's then thrown into a dirty cell with a babbeling lunatic who serves as premonition of what repeated exposure to Scorpy's chair does to a mind. This scene is also what spawned the "my side your side" meme and it's pretty much the defining moment for our soon to be friendly lunatic here.

Despite everything that's happening to John and the Pks out looking for her Chiana still manages to escape by painting herself up to look like a Pk and wearing some of Gillina's hand me downs, taking with her the universal nerve sample that John managed to stash while the Pk's were tap dancing all over his boyish good looks. She returns to Moya via a hole Gillina hacks into the PK air defence sensors and Aeryn is saved just in the nick of time.

With John now a Pk prisoner and the base on alert the rest of Moya's crew decides that it would be better for all of them if they just went on with their lives so they won't ever have to worry about getting talked into doing something this stupid and dangerous again.

Final Verdict: Nerve is really just the first half of a 2 hour movie type episode so if you watch it alone it's just like watching half of a movie. Will the crew of Moya abandon all sense and decide to rescue John? Will we find out why Scorpy brings his dominatrix to work? Will Aeryn finally get revenge on those diabolical punching bags? Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

This week on the Farscape Rewind Nerve, an episode that marks the crucial tone shift in the series that seperates early "fun and games" Farscape from the grimer more mature tone of the later seasons. There'll still be plenety of room for humour, but otherwise it's all leather gimp masks, torture, brain lobsters, neural clones, eyeball plucking and female on male rape from here on out, fun times lie ahead folks.

They did let themselves run wild after this ep. I wonder, did they feel inspired, did they hire a new group of writers, was there a meeting and a calculated decision to change Farscape's mood and temper? I assume at some point these questions were answered, but I missed it.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

We start off on Moya with Aeryn getting all sweaty down in Moya's cargobay, wailing away with all her might at a set of punching bags and showing us what a bad ass peacekeeper she really is. In the end though it's the bags that are left happily standing and her that's collapsed on the floor spitting blood. As it turns out this is the result of Larraq stabbing her in the last episode. By now we all know that were she in top form Aeryn would never have got that sweaty while she lost a fight to a bunch of inanimate bags, it would never have lasted long enough. The bags were clearly just taking it easy on her here because they could tell something was wrong.

Lost again! Claudia Black actually does a good job of selling Aeryn as a tough fighter, because fans think of her that way even though she continually gets beat up. It is John, with his two weeks of training, who handles most of the fighting.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I have to comment here because all joking aside that's basically what John's plan seems to amount to. Aeryn tells him that some sort of nerve cluster in her body that regulates her body temperature

They so desperately cling on to this 'body temperature' idea, which was a poor concept to begin with.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Since I think it's safe to assume that no PK is going to willingly give up his/her nerve tissue without a pretty compelling explanation, so even assuming John could find a compatible one somehow, what was he going to do exactly, bop him over the head and dig around in his insides with a knife and fork from the Pk cafeteria?

I liked the concept of a mysterious PK base in the Uncharted Territories. But this plan of John's to just go there and somehow do something was stupid. It became a running gag in the series that John's plans were terrible, but the joke should not become an excuse for sloppy writing.
This plan was so poor, that I was excited to see how the writers were going to write themselves out of it. I pictured John somehow finding the base medical facility, then the writers coming up with some brilliant payoff. But they did not.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

While you could take this as a scene that shows how much closer the characters have gotten to one another, as none of them really want to let Aeryn die they just don't see a realistic way of saving her, it could have benefitted from a little bit more selling on John's part. As it stands now he basically just accuses them of wanting to kill her and they all just sort of murmer along and agree to commit mass suicide with him against the guns of a super secret peacekeeper base.

Even supposedly strong-willed D'Argo meekly follows John's tantrums and stupid plans. The series became a contest to see who could yell the loudest, and that was always Crichton. Very bad writing. Who was in charge of the writer room? The producer? They came up with some great stuff, but also too much stupidly bad writing.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

So with the plan going ahead Chiana decides to invite herself along with John, reasoning that she can serve as a useful distraction and help him to both keep the eyes of the PKs off himself as well as help him steal the all important nerve tissue.

One of the first Farscape scenes I ever saw was this one, with John and Chiana walking around the PK base, discussing the situation and plotting their moves. It seemed a weird and cool and intense show.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

She's also managed to steal Larraq's ident chip which casues me to wonder why they didn't just have Aeryn impersonate the other female commando from last week and run the same scam only with her being "injured on a mission". The PKs will then just fix her up and they can be on their way.

I was assuming this was their plan when I watched the story play out. I remember seeing John and Chiana walking along, and then thinking: "They left Aeryn in the shuttle (I didn't know about the prowler first time I saw this ep)? That's odd."

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Sure it's still an incredibly stupid plan that will almost certainly fail and get both of them shot but John's plan is all of those things as well and this one wouldn't require the added step of somehow finding and extracting nerve tissue from one of the PKs down there without anyone knowing. It would also be nice to have Aeryn's experience with PK regs and operating proceedures right at hand, even if she is injured, since the entire plan depends on John and his accomplice being able to act like convincing PKs.

It seems only natural to have brought the patient with them, especially when she is the only real Peacekeeper, and knows the regs, etc. Foolish writing error to leave her behind. I guess the idea was to have John and Chiana scenes, no other characters, but that is not worth the sloppy plotting.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Oh and since I said I'd do it why not just have Zhaan make herself look like a peacekeeper admiral ala RiB and just call them on the com to demand a nerve sample be delivered to them by marauder to a set of coordinates nearby, or any number of other intresting illusions.

Yes, the Delphian super powers again felt by their absence. In a way, they are right to just ignore a bad idea when it is too late to correct it; they should have done that more often, but the frequency of these illogical plot devices suggests a real problem in the writer room.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The Pk's of course want to see John's ID chip the minute they see him and it passes, though nobody seems to comment on Larraq being expected or where the rest of his team or super secret cargo is. Presumably if he was delivering that nasty sentient virus to this base like he said he was he would have called ahead to tell them in advance, but I suppose maybe he never got the chance. Still, another big potential game breaker glossed over in the interest of pushing the plot forward here.

I can see them not knowing his mission, but they would ask about his team. It is another good reason to have Aeryn there. With a wounded PK they could plausibly say the rest of the team did not survive a battle, and they have one wounded who needs immediate medical attention. Instead we get Larrac and yeoman/concubine. And of course he would have to report to the base commander.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

This is interesting for a couple of reasons though, firstly that it shows that the PKs "racial purity" ideals get more and more malleable as one ascends in the ranks, with alien loveslaves not only being desired by Pk officers but also evidently being permitted by Pk regulations if one has sufficient rank to bend the rules.

Also, the original idea of 'contamination by association' with other species was too limiting story-wise. The PKs needed to interact with other races to be part of the growing milieu of Farscape.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

This episode also somewhat indirectly shows us that Chiana is not disgusted by the Peacekeepers the same way Zhaan, Rygel, Pilot or especially Dargo is. She's perfectly happy to hang around in the bar and chat with them where as any of the others mentioned could hardly be convinced to do so.

I didn't think of that. Good point. Writing the characters so there is a variety of reactions and approaches to various peoples and situations provides a verisimilitude that certain shows, like Trek, or SG, lack.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I've got to say here that even though Gillina basically makes it all her bitch throughout the episode the security on this PK base is certainlly much better thought out than you typically see in a lot of other sci-fi.

Yes as a concept it was fairly cool.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

We get a little catch up time with Gillina next, where John explains why he's there she tells John that the PKs have recently developed some sort of universal treatment for the nerve injury that Aeryn has, meaning he won't have to bust out the cutlery on some unsuspecting goon afterall. Convenient Plot man to the rescue! She then offers up a smart suggestion, you stay here and I'll go get the treatment since I, you know, actually work here.

What I referred to above. They write such a stupid plan I am expecting a great payoff when we see how they work it out ... but no, they throw in a deus ex machina, by name of Gillina and a universal cure, to ignore the problem they set up. Terrible plotting. Terrible.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

as soon as John's on his way out he gets to meet Scorpius, our new nefarious villian and commander of the super secret base. Now take everything bad about Crais reverse it and wrap it in a creepy pseudo gimpsuit and you've got a pretty good idea of what Scorpius is all about. At first I kind of rolled my eyes at his goofy name and obviously S&M influenced appearance, and you probably will to if you're a first time viewer, but trust me you'll get over it. We'll be seeing a lot more of this guy and he's only going to keep getting better, though his scrumptious redheaded Dom sidekick here will sadly never be seen again following this 2 parter.

Scorpius is one of the great sf characters. Light years better than Crais as the main antagonist. The writers take a bashing for their bad plotting, but they were great at thinking up terrific concepts and characters, like Scorpius. Too bad the girl did not get a recurring role, but he did have one or two more knock-outs as assistants.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

John that ends up being captured and jammed into Scorpy's dreaded Aurora chair. Now it's never made quite clear as I recall if Scorpy actually built the chair here himself and it's a one off, or if it's a standard piece of PK kit,

I recall some mention of it being developed by a 'mad scientist friend of Scorpius' kind of character. But there are so many mad scientists building things in the universe that I cannot be sure.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

If you're one of those dengenerate "whump", people this episode is a friggin' goldmine.

A who?

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

To really emphasise this overreaching theme John's then thrown into a dirty cell with a babbeling lunatic who serves as premonition of what repeated exposure to Scorpy's chair does to a mind. This scene is also what spawned the "my side your side" meme and it's pretty much the defining moment for our soon to be friendly lunatic here.

Another excellent character introduced in this ep. With Scorpius, Stark, Gelina, and the redhead, this is a great ep for interesting characters.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Despite everything that's happening to John and the Pks out looking for her Chiana still manages to escape by painting herself up to look like a Pk and wearing some of Gillina's hand me downs, taking with her the universal nerve sample that John managed to stash while the Pk's were tap dancing all over his boyish good looks. She returns to Moya via a hole Gillina hacks into the PK air defence sensors and Aeryn is saved just in the nick of time.

A good sequence. Gelina is too much the convenient problem-solver, and maybe the 'nick of time' routine is too, well, routine, but it was all fun.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Final Verdict: Nerve is really just the first half of a 2 hour movie type episode so if you watch it alone it's just like watching half of a movie.

Yes, it is the first half of a movie, so perhaps difficult to judge on its own. ... No it isn't. Both parts are needed to judge the entire story, but as an hour of Farcape, I would rate this one above average. We see some great characters introduced, we see Gelina again, a cool secret (?) PK base doing something mysterious deep outside of PK territory, the Aurora Chair, and unfortunately we see some sloppy, poor plotting.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

They did let themselves run wild after this ep. I wonder, did they feel inspired, did they hire a new group of writers, was there a meeting and a calculated decision to change Farscape's mood and temper? I assume at some point these questions were answered, but I missed it.

There was some kind of a conscious decision to change the tone of the show yes, but I don't recall who exactly was the driving force behind it.

Lost again! Claudia Black actually does a good job of selling Aeryn as a tough fighter, because fans think of her that way even though she continually gets beat up. It is John, with his two weeks of training, who handles most of the fighting.

This is very true. Until it was pointed out to me when I started doing these reviews here it had never really even dawned on me just how often it is that she's getting beat up or manhandled by something. I find myself struggling to remember a 1 on 1 type confrontation that she actually won.

They so desperately cling on to this 'body temperature' idea, which was a poor concept to begin with.

Yeah I don't know why they had to go back to the well on that one for this. It's especially odd considering that later in the episode Zhaan and Dargo hook her up to Moya to try and filter toxins out of her, so which is it, because those are pretty differant problems.

I liked the concept of a mysterious PK base in the Uncharted Territories. But this plan of John's to just go there and somehow do something was stupid. It became a running gag in the series that John's plans were terrible, but the joke should not become an excuse for sloppy writing.
This plan was so poor, that I was excited to see how the writers were going to write themselves out of it. I pictured John somehow finding the base medical facility, then the writers coming up with some brilliant payoff. But they did not.

That's the sense that I got from this episode in regards to this set up here. They knew what they were doing was sloppy and forced but they hoped to just slip it past wrapped in a few jokes and weak protests from the other characters.

Even supposedly strong-willed D'Argo meekly follows John's tantrums and stupid plans. The series became a contest to see who could yell the loudest, and that was always Crichton. Very bad writing. Who was in charge of the writer room? The producer? They came up with some great stuff, but also too much stupidly bad writing.

The whole thing gave me unpleasant recollections of the sort of "plans" you would see hatched on Stargate Atlantis. IE run in without any sort of a real plan and let the writing bend the universe to save you. It's a very poor way of going about driving a story and anyone who's not just watching for the 'splosions and cute actors is going to notice you're doing it fairly quickly.

One of the first Farscape scenes I ever saw was this one, with John and Chiana walking around the PK base, discussing the situation and plotting their moves. It seemed a weird and cool and intense show.

I was assuming this was their plan when I watched the story play out. I remember seeing John and Chiana walking along, and then thinking: "They left Aeryn in the shuttle (I didn't know about the prowler first time I saw this ep)? That's odd."

It seems only natural to have brought the patient with them, especially when she is the only real Peacekeeper, and knows the regs, etc. Foolish writing error to leave her behind. I guess the idea was to have John and Chiana scenes, no other characters, but that is not worth the sloppy plotting.

I didn't even really notice this hole until I started rewatching them all in order for this but now it really bothers me how nobody ever suggested to bring Aeryn along. If you wanted to be brutally pragmatic you could even say send only Aeryn. Have her fly down there in her prowler with that female Pk's ID chip, her story being that Larraq and all the others were killed by the sentient virus while she barely escaped. They fix her up and she takes the first opportunity to leave to "report to her superiors the outcome of the mission", ideally without even any undue suspicion.

-She's the most qualified to impersonate a peacekeeper

-She's the only one that's going to die anyway if she doesn't try something so even if she's caught her lot won't really get any worse than it already is

Sure John would probably insist on going along regardless but she definately should have been part of the whole thing.

Yes, the Delphian super powers again felt by their absence. In a way, they are right to just ignore a bad idea when it is too late to correct it; they should have done that more often, but the frequency of these illogical plot devices suggests a real problem in the writer room.

That's the problem with giving characters/ships/technology really overpowered abilities in an ongoing storyline like a TV show, it doesn't just break 1 episode, it potentially breaks all those that come after it until the source of the problem is removed. You're forced to either ignore it, which is what they did here and probably the best option, or try to account for it in future scripts, which is what they did in Stargate and ruined the entire antagonist balance of the back half of Atlantis because of it.

Then of course theres the option of making stupid excuse after stupid excuse why you can't use it in a given situation but that really just serves as an excellent way of drawing the viewers attention to the fact there's a problem.

I can see them not knowing his mission, but they would ask about his team. It is another good reason to have Aeryn there. With a wounded PK they could plausibly say the rest of the team did not survive a battle, and they have one wounded who needs immediate medical attention. Instead we get Larrac and yeoman/concubine. And of course he would have to report to the base commander.

The ideal situation would be to be able to somehow convince them that Aeryn outranked John, that way he could just keep his mouth shut while she did all the talking to the other PKs. If they're anything like real world militaries they've got all sorts of buzzwords and abreviations that they use in their conversations that outsiders won't know and that will mark them out as such quite rapidly. Nevermind if they actually start talking about Sebacean cultural things or referencing famous people/historical events, even in passing.

Also, the original idea of 'contamination by association' with other species was too limiting story-wise. The PKs needed to interact with other races to be part of the growing milieu of Farscape.

I think the reality of their whole purity laws is that it's something that applies to the grunts, or something that's used against people you don't like for other reasons, and that's pretty much it. It's an ideal that they try to sell in propoganda but the reality of it doesn't match at all, with many higher ups completely flaunting the whole thing and getting away with it so long as they don't make too many enemies with more power than they have.

I didn't think of that. Good point. Writing the characters so there is a variety of reactions and approaches to various peoples and situations provides a verisimilitude that certain shows, like Trek, or SG, lack.

It's a really nice touch yes. I give them a lot of credit for this as it's the tendancy of so many shows to just break things up into "teams", where everyone on one team feels the same way about everyone on another. Chiana has no reason to specifically dislike Peacekeepers though. She was never a prisoner of theirs and likely hasn't even had many if any run ins with them given her history. If she doesn't like them it'll be on a more general secondhand "they're kind of dicks to people, remind me of the Nebari establishment" level, not a deeply personal one like it would be for Dargo Rygel or Zhaan.

Yes as a concept it was fairly cool.

They even had a security camera and microphone/intercom in their prison cell to make sure their prisoners weren't just sitting around cracking wise about how they were going to escape. I was shocked and awed.

What I referred to above. They write such a stupid plan I am expecting a great payoff when we see how they work it out ... but no, they throw in a deus ex machina, by name of Gillina and a universal cure, to ignore the problem they set up. Terrible plotting. Terrible.

Yeah, like I said above, it's how SGA would have done it. Lots of heroic "leave no man behind" talk about not letting Aeryn die, other characters getting talked into doing it with emotional arguments triumphing over reality, then the writing coming to the rescue to ensure that the universe bends to their starry eyed will and everything works out ok in the end.

Scorpius is one of the great sf characters. Light years better than Crais as the main antagonist. The writers take a bashing for their bad plotting, but they were great at thinking up terrific concepts and characters, like Scorpius. Too bad the girl did not get a recurring role, but he did have one or two more knock-outs as assistants.

There's a weird cut or two in the Aurora chair scenes that makes me think some of her lines were hacked out rather abruptly. I heard somewhere a while ago that the reason she mysteriously disappeared was that somebody thought she couldn't act. I don't know how much weight there is to that though since the actress in question isn't exactly a noob in Austrailian terms. It's obvious that she was intended to continue on for longer than she did though, as evidenced by the numerous similar replacements.

Shame they got rid of her as I always wondered about the story behind her rather unusual appearance compared to other Sebaceans and it would have been fun watching Scorpy's original number two hassle Braca.

I recall some mention of it being developed by a 'mad scientist friend of Scorpius' kind of character. But there are so many mad scientists building things in the universe that I cannot be sure.

Well there's the fact that

( Click to show/hide )

Grayza plugs Scorpy into one in season 4 after his ship blew up presumably with his chair on it

but other than that I can't think of anything really concrete one way or the other.

A who?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Whump

People who for some reason enjoy watching the characters they actually like get brutalized on screen. Of all the various fandom niches this is one I don't think I'll ever get.

Another excellent character introduced in this ep. With Scorpius, Stark, Gelina, and the redhead, this is a great ep for interesting characters.

Nerve/Hidden Memory are easily my favorite two eps of Season 1.

Yes, it is the first half of a movie, so perhaps difficult to judge on its own. ... No it isn't. Both parts are needed to judge the entire story, but as an hour of Farcape, I would rate this one above average. We see some great characters introduced, we see Gelina again, a cool secret (?) PK base doing something mysterious deep outside of PK territory, the Aurora Chair, and unfortunately we see some sloppy, poor plotting.

It stands alright on it's own but works especially well with it's companion peice. If you really think about it pretty much all of the following episodes until the end of the season form a sort of extended movie arc with this one, especially if you skip Bone to be Wild.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

This is very true. Until it was pointed out to me when I started doing these reviews here it had never really even dawned on me just how often it is that she's getting beat up or manhandled by something. I find myself struggling to remember a 1 on 1 type confrontation that she actually won.

She gets to shoot a few people in the various gun fights, and she manhandles Stark once or twice, but he isn't trying to fight back. Otherwise, I think she is 0-for-whatever hand-to-hand in the entire series.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

I think the reality of their whole purity laws is that it's something that applies to the grunts, or something that's used against people you don't like for other reasons, and that's pretty much it. It's an ideal that they try to sell in propoganda but the reality of it doesn't match at all, with many higher ups completely flaunting the whole thing and getting away with it so long as they don't make too many enemies with more power than they have.

My impression was that they saw a problem here, and were able to correct it without too much trouble, in the way you suggest. It reminds me of a fantasy series I read long ago. The author wanted his world to be so dangerous, so unrelentingly hostile, that all humans were isolated into city -states. The 'us vrs everyone' mentality was so strong that the readers were told the word for stranger was the same as the word for enemy.
This worked for two or three books, then of course it was too limiting. So the series continued with trade routes, ambassadors, even inter - city sporting events, travelling entertainers, and festivals that attracted tourists. The established mileiu of the first books was ignored.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Yeah, like I said above, it's how SGA would have done it. Lots of heroic "leave no man behind" talk about not letting Aeryn die, other characters getting talked into doing it with emotional arguments triumphing over reality, then the writing coming to the rescue to ensure that the universe bends to their starry eyed will and everything works out ok in the end.

This sort of thing encourages the idea that genre writing is sloppy and second rate. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

There's a weird cut or two in the Aurora chair scenes that makes me think some of her lines were hacked out rather abruptly. I heard somewhere a while ago that the reason she mysteriously disappeared was that somebody thought she couldn't act. I don't know how much weight there is to that though since the actress in question isn't exactly a noob in Austrailian terms. It's obvious that she was intended to continue on for longer than she did though, as evidenced by the numerous similar replacements.

Maybe she annoyed the wrong person. They didn't keep her replacements around either.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

People who for some reason enjoy watching the characters they actually like get brutalized on screen. Of all the various fandom niches this is one I don't think I'll ever get.

A weird offshoot of masochism.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

It stands alright on it's own but works especially well with it's companion peice. If you really think about it pretty much all of the following episodes until the end of the season form a sort of extended movie arc with this one, especially if you skip Bone to be Wild.

Can we? ... I suppose we should cover it for the sake of completeness.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

She gets to shoot a few people in the various gun fights, and she manhandles Stark once or twice, but he isn't trying to fight back. Otherwise, I think she is 0-for-whatever hand-to-hand in the entire series.

We'll have to keep a tally. I'm sure she probably clobbers some unnamed goon eventually but I'm curious as to how long it will take. We're almost done with the entire first season and she's been in every episode so far.

My impression was that they saw a problem here, and were able to correct it without too much trouble, in the way you suggest. It reminds me of a fantasy series I read long ago. The author wanted his world to be so dangerous, so unrelentingly hostile, that all humans were isolated into city -states. The 'us vrs everyone' mentality was so strong that the readers were told the word for stranger was the same as the word for enemy.
This worked for two or three books, then of course it was too limiting. So the series continued with trade routes, ambassadors, even inter - city sporting events, travelling entertainers, and festivals that attracted tourists. The established mileiu of the first books was ignored.

Yeah if they'd played it totally rigid we never would even have got a character like Scorpius.

This sort of thing encourages the idea that genre writing is sloppy and second rate. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's an especially bad trend in second rate sci-fi writing I've noticed as well. It's very easy to fall into the trap of just pulling additional things out of your ass to drive a story when so much of your setting is already made up.

Maybe she annoyed the wrong person. They didn't keep her replacements around either.

Who knows, apparently the report that it was because somebody(ies) thought she couldn't act came from Pygram at some convention, no clue on who "somebody" was though.

A weird offshoot of masochism.

...and the stories they write could easily be considered a form of sadism... Hmm an interesting condition.

Can we? ... I suppose we should cover it for the sake of completeness.

Oh we're going to get all the lopsided mutant treemen and shrill irritating crab people we can handle up in here.