Farscape Rewind: Episode 1.12

[Mr. Infamous]

This week on the Farscape Rewind, Rhapsody in Blue, an episode about a lot of blue people and John's old girlfriend.

Rhapsody in Blue starts off with a somewhat curious scene where we've got John seemingly back on Earth with some blonde chick we've never seen before who quickly dumps him a few minutes into the episode, and just when he was about to propose to, awww. You didn't miss an episode somewhere back there though, it turns out John was just dreaming, dreaming a dream that will rather obviously foreshadow future events if you've seen this episode before.

John's not in dreamland for long before he's getting tossed out of bed by some kind of Moya related turbulance though, and taking only a moment to gather his bearings (but not his pants) he goes rushing off to the bridge in his underwear to find out what's going on, and oddly enough so does everyone else. I'm thinking to myself here "they all sleep at the same time?" as that seems kind of dangerous if anything were to happen, but I guess they've got pilot there; even if his track record isn't exactly perfect, when it comes to detecting, let alone averting, potentially lethal threats.

After a quick little aside where John compares sex dreams with Rygel and Dargo and notices Aeryn's somehow swiped a set of his underwear (he took a set of backup underwear on his Farscape-1 test flight?) we learn that this week's lethal threat will be brought to us by some of Zhaan's species, only with hair. Don't know why they decided to go with the hair here. The only other Delvians in this episode that are Bald like Zhaan are the two men, the various females all have hair. Are they trying to tell us something about Zhaan in a round about sort of way here? I think the addition of the hair really spoils the whole Delvian aesthetic myself but whatever. Virginia Hey apparently shaved her head for real to play Zhaan, I doubt the guest actresses were willing to go that far, and maybe bald caps didn't work for some reason. Yeah that's right folks I'm not even a quarter of the way through this thing yet and I'm already blathering on like an idiot about alien hairdoos or the lack there of, this one's going to a non-stop edge-of-your-seat thrillride.

So our head hairy Delvian is Pau' Tahleen, this week's "Evil alien in disguise". Tahleen seems only vaguely annoying in a snooty superior sort of way at first, but we'll learn as the episode progresses that she's pretty much a stone cold bitch. Right now all she's done is send a bogus distress call to trick Moya into starbursting to their location and give the crew some unsolicited sex dreams but don't worry, she's just getting warmed up.

Tahleen invites them into her landed temple ship and encourages John to pick some weird squid-like fruit things from their pond for food. Apparently the more you pick the more that grows to replace them, rather than try to figure out how that works though I'll just note that Aeryn's got a great line here "It amazes me how people mistake theosophy for superiority". In addition to bringing a smile to my face, as that's another cliche I don't care for taking one in the face, this can likely also be taken to reflect Peacekeeper attitudes toward religion in general, as I don't recall anything even approaching religious being done by a Peacekeeper in the series.

While John's harvesting squid fruit, which's he's now dubbed trigapods, Tahleen and Zhaan are having a conversation about how Tahleen's people are coming down with some sort of a madness evidently brought on by the "too fast" advancment of their religious study somehow. Tahleen has called them all there because she wants Zhaan's secret to serenity to save her congregation before they all start telling her about how cavemen rode on Dinosaurs 6000 years ago or something. She offers Zhaan some sort of "powers" in exchange for this which suggests that Tahleen is actually a higher level Pau then Zhaan is, or at least has access to some powers and abilities that she does not. This relationship can be a bit confusing at times but what I eventually settled on was Tahleen being more powerful overall or higher level but Zhaan just having this one particular trick she doesn't know and desperately needs. I think it's the most logical interpretation. It should also be noted that Tahleen does seem to actively seek to increase her power to a far greater extent than Zhaan ever did, which is what got her and her followers in trouble in the first place. We see a demonstration of her ill attitude here as she forces John to relive a traumatic false memory of drowning from his childhood for no other reason than to demonstrate that she can do so to Zhaan. Zhaan is noticably put off by this kind of casual display of cruelty but not put off enough to instantly leave this hag to fend for herself it seems. Tahleen is overall a villian that's easy to hate, even for someone like me who tends to extend an above average amount of sympathy toward most villians. She has virtually no redeemng qualities I can think of and even abuses and manipulates her own followers, as we'll soon see, and even her own family members.

Back on the ship Rygel and Dargo are still comparing sex Dreams while back down on the planet John's discovered that Tahleen's ship's been parked in the same place so long that weeds are starting to grow inside it. Before John can bust out the round up and garden gloves though an old Delvian man named Tuzak appears behind him to tell him the weed/tree/root will actually kill him somehow if he touches it. Things take a less chummy turn though when Tuzak calls John a Peacekeeper and won't be convinced otherwise. Despite this however he still warns him that Zhaan is in danger and that he needs to look out for her, while also identifiying himself as one of the crazies Tahleen was talking about earlier.

Aeryn meets another Delvian, this one a younger guy who also picks her out as a Peacekeeper and explains that it was the PKs that drove them from their homeworld. He tosses Aeryn out and after she leaves we see him express doubt to another Delvian, Lorana, about what they're doing. Lorana responds by informing him that she's with Tahleen now not him anymore. Wow being dumped by your girlfriend in preferance for Tahleen has got to hurt. What did you do to her moderately scary blue dude, and how many intergalactic treaties did it violate?

Next up is the big exposition scene for Zhaan, more or less the reason why this episode exists. We learn via psychic communication with John that Zhaan was imprisoned for killing her former lover Patel, the "spiritual counselor" of her planet. Patel had been the head of a military coup on their planet when he refused to resign his position following the completion of his term in office, choosing instead to hire the Peacekeepers to help enforce a new dictatorship. All his political enemies were then rounded up, Zhaan's father among them. She killed him then out of some combination of a desire for revenge and a desire to loosen the Peacekeeper's grip on her world. It's never really made clear how much differance, if any, killing Patel made toward the latter, nor is it really clear why Zhaan was handed over to the PKs instead of just being tried by some sort of kangaroo court thrown together by Patel's other supporters. Maybe Delvian law doesn't contain measures for the sort of things the PKs would happily be able to do to her so they felt it would just be easier to outsource the matter than try to change their own laws. Even the PKs didn't execute her or anything like that though, and frankly I can't understand why they didn't, or indeed what the hell they were doing with her period. Wasn't she suppossed to have been on Moya for many years, the whole 17 even? Moya was a prisoner transport right, not an actual private floating prison for 3 people. Given the nature of her crime, murder of a high ranking state official, it seems unlikely that the Pks wouldn't have snuffed her, let alone spent time and presumably money, just to fly her around for 17 years while she meditates in her cell.

Weird, this part of the episode almost asks as many questions as it answers.

Back to the main plot here, Zhaan explains to John what Tahleen wants, her secret to calming her rage after she murdered Patel, she's going to give a piece of herself to Tahleen while they "share unity", the Delvian term for the funky psychic pseudo sex that Zhaan used to kill Patel. I'll just note here that during this whole conversation there's one little bit that rubbed me the wrong way, it's when after Zhaan describes her crime to John and why she did it, he comes back and calls her "twisted as they come" while observing that if anyone should be insane because of their dark impulses it should be her. Well I guess he's scrapped the backup plan to get into her pants but this even caught me as a bit of a "why the fuck would you kick a friend when they're down like that" moment. Ok even calling Zhaan a friend might be a stretch but she's definately not an enemy or someone he dislikes, she reveals all these painful secrets to him along with what I feel was a pretty good justification for why she did what she did, and he comes back with this. It just seemed like a rather jarring rebuke on his part, like the sort of thing you would expect instead from two people who didn't really like each other very much at all. Basically it has the effect of making him look like an asshole, and in a really awkward and I assume unintentional way. It's like some sort of evil alter ego breaks through for a split second, says that line, then vanishes again. Are we better off believing that he actually carried this chip all the way from the pilot incident in DNA Mad Scientist, or should we just chalk it up to this being John's week to be visited by the spotty characterization monster.

I think I'll go with the latter. I wonder who it's next victim will be.

Next up this episode's B-Plot finaly surfaces as Tahleen instructs the young bald guy from earlier, and his former girlfriend Lorana, to start screwing with the heads of the Moya crew while she goes about her nefarious business. This is basically also the point where the episode spins off into the weeds.

First off, remember John's old girlfriend from the opening scene, well she's back now, courtesy of Lorana impersonating her. She's also altered John's memory and general mental functioning to such an extent that he not only sees the alien woman to be his ex but he also gets installed with this huge mass of false memories about how this ex of his actually rode along with him on the Farscape project and they've been stranded all along together. This is an interesting concept on the surface but it just stretched my suspension of disbelief a little too far and well, it snapped.

Let me list the ways

-In order for this woman to do what she does she has to not only be able to alter John's memory with barely any effort near instantly, but also read his mind in such detail that she can construct a plausible fiction about Earth and the space program and even his girlfriend's behaviour with such accuracy that he'll believe it. She also needs to make sure it doesn't contradict with any of his other memories so she's got to read those to, interpret them all, and change/erase them all in the space of a few seconds. She even adjusts the delusion in real time as he starts to notice flaws in it. Skynet would envy this chick's processing power.

-If these Delvians have powers of this magnitude in a mere apprentice how exactly was a PK backed military coup anything but an absolutle side-splitting joke to them? Shit even Dargo, Aeryn and Rygel can be effected by this back on Moya... in orbit! It's like Maldis all over again in terms of his abilities being so overpowered as to break the entire premise, only this time it's arguably even worse.

-Why would Lorana go though all this trouble rooting around in Crichton's head and constructing this hugely elaborate fantasy about a person being on Moya who never was, when it would have been infinitely easier to just make herself look like Aeryn or Dargo and manipulate him that way. Then all she has to do is come up with an explanation of how she got in/back in, one that the others would easily go along with of course.

Getting back to the plot at hand Zhaan goes to visit Tuzak in his ochard and we learn that Tahleen's planning to use the abilities Zhaan gives her to free their planet from Pk Tyranny, so if Zhaan's killing of Patel did do anything to loosen their grip it certainly didn't break it. This is a bit confusing though because the ability Tahleen wants is the ability to controll the madness that Zhaan has, presumably so she can continue to train her disciples how to mindfuck people without fear that they themselves will also become mindfucked. You have to let the gears run in your head a bit to work this one all out though, because the way some of these scenes play out you could be forgiven for thinking that what Tahleen wants is for Zhaan to teach her how to kill people with her brain.

After a brief detour to witness the psychics messing with everybody up on Moya we finally get to the big unity scene between Zhaan and Tahleen. Delvian sex is probably the most boring sex to watch in the universe so even the hot girl on girl action here will leave you not exactly gasping for more. As expected though Tahleen lives up to the role of the episodes "Evil alien in disguise" and uses the opportunity to steal Zhaan's capacity to control her dark impulses rather than learn how to do it herself. Surprise! Yep you knew it was coming you just didn't know how. Zhaans eyes turn red because she's evil now and John runs off to solve the problem somehow. Seems to me like the solution to the problem is standing right in front of him really, she just needs to be furnished with a few sharp objects and a couple good ideas as to how to employ them.

"Hell Zhaan, you just said you were going to have to start all over again anyway so why not go show our benevolent hosts a little appreciation for their hospitality first."

Rather than spurn Zhaan on to a homicidal rampage however (he even finds an axe later in the episode meaning it was there and waiting the whole time) John decides that he should reason with Tahleen instead, with results a whole lot less satisfying than watching her severed head fly through the air would have been.
She repays John's keeping cool by ordering Lorana to kill him if she has to, while she herself heads off to torment Zhaan some more, apparently she didn't get everything she needed the first time to make herself uncrazy.
Fortunately by this time even her own subordinates are starting to suspect that all the psychic pseudo rape in the uncharted territories couldn't make her uncrazy. She puts the cherry on top of the point herself, when following a bit more John and girlfriend delusion time, she murders Tuzak in the same scene where it's revealed he's actually her father. Her reason, when they go back to Delvia some people might decide to follow the crazy old man instead of her, and that's just too big a risk to not murder your own father over, yep.

We cut back to John finding Zhaan with Tuzek's corpse, learning that now she is infact planning to kill Tahleen, only via unity not in the much more straightforward way I suggested earlier.

John's hallucination of his girlfriend Alex has now inexplicably changed cloths, evidently just to prove how easy it is for Lorana to casually rearrange his marbles. "Oh I always bring a back-up dress in my pocket when we go down to planets, remember John, you helped me pick it out". Lorana's finally begun to take pity on John's poor little monkey brain gibbering all over her about how much he loves her though because in this scene she comes clean and tells him everything that's been going on and what she's been doing to him, as well as resetting him back to normal. She also tells him that a little hot psychic lovin' from him might be all Zhaan needs to get back on the path to righteousness. No I'm not making that up, though I wish I was, to cure Zhaan of her madness John must have psychic sex with her, the backup plan is a backup plan no longer.

Back on Moya bald blue boyfriend dude is explaining to Dargo over the com about how he scrambled all their brains and how very very sorry he is for doing it. In response Rygel and Dargo actually threaten him with violence, and to his credit as an impromptu diplomat, bald blue boyfriend dude doesn't simply collapse to the floor convulsing with laughter.

Next we've got a scene where Tahleen earns a few more late game bitch points by telling Lorana that she was just her psychic sex whore. In reponse Lorana sends her on a wild goose chase by telling her that Zhaan and Crichton are fleeing back to their ship on the surface; Tahleen takes off after them giving John his opening to find the Barry White tape and go pay Zhaan a visit. Zhaan's kind of reluctant at first but John gets her to come around by telling her she's just too chicken to have psychic sex with him. I'll have to remember to try that angle sometime.

Despite the laughable premise at the core of this whole scene here it does actually give us a rather nice little moment between the two characters where John tells Zhaan to look at herself how he sees her, as warm, giving and kind. This instantly cures Zhaan of her madness. Yep, his sexual prowess is so great that it can do in seconds what it took Zhaan 17 years to achieve on her own, and what Tahleen never even could! Damn he should just move to Delvia and start charging an hourly rate. Like Papa Crichton said, every man gets the chance to be his own kind of hero, and this would certainly make Papa Crichton proud.

So as this episode wraps up we see John using the axe that should have been used on Tahleen earlier to chop down the magic weed. Tahleen tries to fry his brain to stop him but Zhaan shuts her down with some kind of psychic shield she got from the earlier not so sweet lovin' they shared. Or maybe that came from John to and she just doesn't want him to strut around the ship for any longer than he's already going to.

The episode ends with Zhaan inexplicably deciding to give up her priesthood because she no longer thinks she is "worthy". I've struggled to understand this myself since I originally saw the episode years ago and the only conclusion I can really draw is that her faith in the religious institution of her planet was so shaken by the behaviour of Tahleen and the others here, in combination with her rememberance of the behaviour of Patel, that she no longer felt she could be a part of that institution when both sides of it were just as corrupt as each other. The conservative side sold out their world's future to the PKs in order to cling to power, and now she sees that the would be revolutionaries who were expelled are a bunch of mindfucking, psychic raping, father murderers. That could cause anyone to chuck their vestments in the bin I'd say, it's just her explanation that she isn't worthy of [i]them]/i] that I never got, unless it's some sort of really deep ironic kind of joke that only 800 year old plant people can really be expected to get.

With this being one of the longest reviews I've done for Farscape yet, and indeed probably any series, you might be thinking I liked this episode a lot. Well no actually, it's not really one of my favorites, and while it was a lot better than I remembered before I was dreading having to watch it, it still wasn't great overall and the reason is simple.

This is two episodes mashed together, a good one and a bad one.

It's a classic mixed bag. The stuff with Zhaan is good and interesting, or at least it was to me. I've always liked early Zhaan so their may be some bias there. Tahleen is a very effecive villian who's really really good at getting under your skin and making you hate her, and I've even got to single out the set designers, costume designers and makeup people for this episode. They created some awesomely striking visuals here, even if I didn't care for the idea of hairy Delvians.

What didn't work was basically the entire Crichton plot, for one because of the ridiculous sorts of power that needed to be assigned to Lorana requiring you to suspend your disblief over a chasm mine plummeted into, but even more so due to the fact that it was simply B-O-R-I-N-G. That's really the main indictment I've got to level on it. Every time they cut away from the main story with all these striking visuals, great villians, and compelling backstory for Zhaan; to show John and some woman who's not even real moping around in sweats talking about things that won't ever matter, because it's impossible to tell what's real and what's been made up, I was just counting the agonizing seconds. I seems that somebody else felt the same way to because I'm fairly certain this is the last time we'll ever see anything relating to John's ex girlfriend or his lingering feelings for her appear in the series. As such she amounts to nothing more than a distraction that basically only existed to make parts of this episode more boring than they needed to be.

All in all then Rhapsody in blue is half a great episode and half a bad episode mashed together into what I suppose ends up being an average epiode if you believe in just averaging it out. What I believe in though is the power of a hypothetical fan edit that completly removes John's girlfriend and frees this episode up of it's unecessary bulk so it can rise to its true potential.

Next week, John realizes that even after his psychic fling with Zhaan he still wants to get into Aeryn's pants to and so tries to... will Aeryn ever be able to top "ten years of really great sex all at the same time", tune in to find out.

[zahn-c]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

This week on the Farscape Rewind, Rhapsody in Blue, an episode about a lot of blue people and John's old girlfriend.
.............

Mr. Infamous, you are too funny!!

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

What didn't work was basically the entire Crichton plot, for one because of the ridiculous sorts of power that needed to be assigned to Lorana requiring you to suspend your disblief over a chasm mine plummeted into, but even more so due to the fact that it was simply B-O-R-I-N-G. That's really the main indictment I've got to level on it. Every time they cut away from the main story with all these striking visuals, great villians, and compelling backstory for Zhaan; to show John and some woman who's not even real moping around in sweats talking about things that won't ever matter, because it's impossible to tell what's real and what's been made up, I was just counting the agonizing seconds. It seems that somebody else felt the same way to because I'm fairly certain this is the last time we'll ever see anything relating to John's ex girlfriend or his lingering feelings for her appear in the series. As such she amounts to nothing more than a distraction that basically only existed to make parts of this episode more boring than they needed to be.

I totally agree with you on this part: "simply B-O-R-I-N-G." We did not need to spend (waste) so much time on John's old girlfriend.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The episode ends with Zhaan inexplicably deciding to give up her priesthood because she no longer thinks she is "worthy". I've struggled to understand this myself since I originally saw the episode years ago and the only conclusion I can really draw is that her faith in the religious institution of her planet was so shaken by the behaviour of Tahleen and the others here, in combination with her rememberance of the behaviour of Patel, that she no longer felt she could be a part of that institution when both sides of it were just as corrupt as each other.

very profound, Mr. Infamous. The corruptness of both sides --that is a compelling reason for Zhaan to give up on her priesthood.

[Rustydogz]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Tahleen invites them into her landed temple ship and encourages John to pick some weird squid-like fruit things from their pond for food. Apparently the more you pick the more that grows to replace them, rather than try to figure out how that works though I'll just note that Aeryn's got a great line here "It amazes me how people mistake theosophy for superiority". In addition to bringing a smile to my face, as that's another cliche I don't care for taking one in the face,

Most of this scene's exchange of dialogue is interesting. John's Shirley Temple-like wonder becomes annoying, but then he admits the place is a little creepy; and Aeryn's reaction to this admission made me smile.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

this can likely also be taken to reflect Peacekeeper attitudes toward religion in general, as I don't recall anything even approaching religious being done by a Peacekeeper in the series.

They seemed like the types to worship Zardoz and The Gun.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

While John's harvesting squid fruit, which's he's now dubbed trigapods, Tahleen and Zhaan are having a conversation about how Tahleen's people are coming down with some sort of a madness evidently brought on by the "too fast" advancment of their religious study somehow.

I don't want to be the one to mention the dark side of the force.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Back on the ship Rygel and Dargo are still comparing sex Dreams while back down on the planet John's discovered that Tahleen's ship's been parked in the same place so long that weeds are starting to grow inside it. Before John can bust out the round up and garden gloves though an old Delvian man named Tuzak appears behind him to tell him the weed/tree/root will actually kill him somehow if he touches it.

Thus giving this tree a connection to all those mythical and legendary Holy Trees throughout history. From the World Tree of the Norse to the tree/cross of Christianity, to ancient Bodhi tree worshipped by Buddhists on Sanghamitta Day. I don't know if the writers had this symbolic ancestry in mind, but there it is.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Things take a less chummy turn though when Tuzak calls John a Peacekeeper and won't be convinced otherwise.

An early hint that Humans are Sebaceans.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Wasn't she supposed to have been on Moya for many years, the whole 17 even? Moya was a prisoner transport right, not an actual private floating prison for 3 people. Given the nature of her crime, murder of a high ranking state official, it seems unlikely that the Pks wouldn't have snuffed her, let alone spent time and presumably money, just to fly her around for 17 years while she meditates in her cell.

Was she on the Moya for that long? Perhaps we can blame prison over-crowding. Or though they called Moya prisoner transport, perhaps it also served as an actual prison. I recall Rygel mentioning he had been held on a warship (the Zelbinion) and perhaps other ships, at various times, but he never mentioned being in an actual prison.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Next up this episode's B-Plot finally surfaces as Tahleen instructs the young bald guy from earlier, and his former girlfriend Lorana, to start screwing with the heads of the Moya crew while she goes about her nefarious business. This is basically also the point where the episode spins off into the weeds.

Yes. Or more specifically, the scene after this when the illusions begin. I enjoyed the episode to this point, then lost interest once the mind tricks began.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

First off, remember John's old girlfriend from the opening scene, well she's back now, courtesy of Lorana impersonating her. She's also altered John's memory and general mental functioning to such an extent that he not only sees the alien woman to be his ex but he also gets installed with this huge mass of false memories about how this ex of his actually rode along with him on the Farscape project and they've been stranded all along together. This is an interesting concept on the surface but it just stretched my suspension of disbelief a little too far and well, it snapped.

They did a nice job of integrating the character into the past continuity, but this illusion went on far too long, and took up far too many scenes. One or two scenes of this would have been plenty.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

-If these Delvians have powers of this magnitude in a mere apprentice how exactly was a PK backed military coup anything but an absolute side-splitting joke to them?

Perhaps the priests in favor of the Peacekeepers countered those against, or even won the mind-battle.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Shit even Dargo, Aeryn and Rygel can be effected by this back on Moya... in orbit! It's like Maldis all over again in terms of his abilities being so overpowered as to break the entire premise, only this time it's arguably even worse.

Yes, with abilities that powerful, this would be one of the most dangerous and feared species in the galaxy.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Getting back to the plot at hand Zhaan goes to visit Tuzak in his ochard and we learn that Tahleen's planning to use the abilities Zhaan gives her to free their planet from Pk Tyranny, so if Zhaan's killing of Patel did do anything to loosen their grip it certainly didn't break it. This is a bit confusing though because the ability Tahleen wants is the ability to controll the madness that Zhaan has, presumably so she can continue to train her disciples how to mindfuck people without fear that they themselves will also become mindfucked. You have to let the gears run in your head a bit to work this one all out though, because the way some of these scenes play out you could be forgiven for thinking that what Tahleen wants is for Zhaan to teach her how to kill people with her brain.

I think that is what Tahleen wanted, but she convinced Zhaan that she wanted something else.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

After a brief detour to witness the psychics messing with everybody up on Moya [

Which was amusing until DArgo ran off after his 'son'. Obviously he suspected, even assumed, Delvian mind-games. He even asked Pilot about 'transmissions' form the planet. So how could he forget this a moment later and chase off after his big-headed kid. Nonsensical.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

we finally get to the big unity scene between Zhaan and Tahleen. Delvian sex is probably the most boring sex to watch in the universe so even the hot girl on girl action here will leave you not exactly gasping for more.

Yes. At least the Orgasmitron was funny.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

As expected though Tahleen lives up to the role of the episodes "Evil alien in disguise" and uses the opportunity to steal Zhaan's capacity to control her dark impulses rather than learn how to do it herself.

I think a part of it was to learn how to kill with her mind. And then not go insane doing it I suppose, but the killing was part of the equation.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

She puts the cherry on top of the point herself,

What's with all this talk of mind-sex and bedding Zhann and cherries? I don't remember this episode being kinky.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Lorana's finally begun to take pity on John's poor little monkey brain gibbering all over her

But long after the viewer was tired of it.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

John his opening to find the Barry White tape and go pay Zhaan a visit. Zhaan's kind of reluctant at first but John gets her to come around by telling her she's just too chicken to have psychic sex with him. I'll have to remember to try that angle sometime.

I think you have to look like Ben Browder for lines like that to work. Barry White tape ... hahahaha

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Yep, his sexual prowess is so great that it can do in seconds what it took Zhaan 17 years to achieve on her own, and what Tahleen never even could! Damn he should just move to Delvia and start charging an hourly rate.

He is almost as good as Captain Kirk!

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The episode ends with Zhaan inexplicably deciding to give up her priesthood because she no longer thinks she is "worthy". I've struggled to understand this myself since I originally saw the episode years ago and the only conclusion I can really draw is that her faith in the religious institution of her planet was so shaken by the behaviour of Tahleen and the others here, in combination with her rememberance of the behaviour of Patel, that she no longer felt she could be a part of that institution when both sides of it were just as corrupt as each other.

Well, as a priest she was kind of a screw-up. The whole 'continually tempted into evil' thing. Besides, it came up in the ep nine discussion that her morality was flexible and suspect.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

What I believe in though is the power of a hypothetical fan edit that completely removes John's girlfriend and frees this episode up of it's unnecessary bulk so it can rise to its true potential.

Now that's an interesting idea. Any video-editing youtube-posting fans out there want to do a fan edit?

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Rustydogz

Was she on the Moya for that long? Perhaps we can blame prison over-crowding. Or though they called Moya prisoner transport, perhaps it also served as an actual prison. I recall Rygel mentioning he had been held on a warship (the Zelbinion) and perhaps other ships, at various times, but he never mentioned being in an actual prison.

I'm not positive. I can't remember if it was in one of the episodes we already watched or if it's something she's going to mention later. She mentions 17 years in Pk custody in this episode but it's not clear if it's all on Moya. In either case though I really wonder why the PKs kept her alive. They'll execute someone like Aeryn because being around aliens is a type of treason but they won't execute someone who assassinated a planetary leader who was under their protection. It almost makes you wonder if Aeryn, John and by extension us, got a bit of a bent view of what the PKs were actually about thanks to characters like Crais, Scorpius and Grayza and the extra high stakes with the whole wormhole tech. We do see that lots of other species seem to despise and fear them though, and then you've got things like Thank God it's Friday. It's a bit of an odd contradiction as later on we'll also see PKs that seem more rational and less "raaaargh kill and dominate all!". One common trend I did notice though was that the "better" PKs seem to be the ones that reside in the past, Durka excepted. The troops that defended the shrine in Differant Destinations, the PKs who picked up Scorpius , Xahlax and Aeryn's father, and now this thing with Zhaan getting a pretty easy ride from them considering the magnitude of her crime.

It might suggest that them turning into real pricks is more of a recent development where in the past they were still heavily militarized and structured but not as overtly brutal and unreasonable as they are now.

Yes. Or more specifically, the scene after this when the illusions begin. I enjoyed the episode to this point, then lost interest once the mind tricks began.

They did a nice job of integrating the character into the past continuity, but this illusion went on far too long, and took up far too many scenes. One or two scenes of this would have been plenty.

It was really way too much time to be wasted on developing a character and a past relationship that was really never going to be relevant again. If this had been John's fiancee who he actually planned to marry before his mishap I can see how it would play a major role in his developing romance with Aeryn, but that's not what it was. We're not even really clear on how long ago exactly the flashback was suppossed to take place, but it seems to be quite some time in the past as John was only talking about "having a shot at the space program" so he wasn't even involved in it yet. So what we've got here then is some girl he almost married probably literally years before the first episode where he got lost.

Who gives a shit then? It's completely irrelevant detail. Sure if you want to mention it shortly in passing to give John a more fleshed out past that's fine, but to chop off a huge chunk of an episode for it, that doesn't really work no.

This is pretty much the common thread that I'm starting to notice now in the earlier weaker episodes. They had problems getting the A and B plots to both be reasonably interesting and/or matching them well with one another.

Perhaps the priests in favor of the Peacekeepers countered those against, or even won the mind-battle.

Possible but then it starts to look like a case of one pro Boxer hiring an 8 year old to help him beat up another. If these people are only going to get more powerful than Lorana here, who wasn't even a big shot, then it seems like trying to bring in the PKs to enforce a dictatorship would be a totally useless gesture. They'll be more or less completely ineffective against your enemies when they all think their rifles are broken, they've shrunk to 3 inches tall, or that Delvia is actually made of molten cheese and they can't possibly land troops there.

Yes, with abilities that powerful, this would be one of the most dangerous and feared species in the galaxy.

I could have swallowed it a bit more maybe if they had it be Tahleen who was capable of these types of feats, but explained it away as this being the result of her rushing up the spiritual ladder or whatever. Basically yeah a Delvian can theoretically have powers like that... for a while... but then they'll inevitably succumb to madness and be left as babbling insane wrecks worse off than when they started.

Then you've got a reason why Delvia's not an entire planet full of super psychics who should be more or less immune to any kind of threat from any race that can't resist their extremely elaborate and powerful mental attacks. Anyone that actually tries to attain power on that kind of level invites insanity along with it and Tahleen knows this but also knows that Zhaan beat the insanity somehow so that's why she wants her.

I think that is what Tahleen wanted, but she convinced Zhaan that she wanted something else.

That's what I thought for a while to but Zhaan says Tahleen stripped her of her ability to control her impulses not her ability to kill. She even plans to avenge this act by killing her when she tries for unity again.

Which was amusing until DArgo ran off after his 'son'. Obviously he suspected, even assumed, Delvian mind-games. He even asked Pilot about 'transmissions' form the planet. So how could he forget this a moment later and chase off after his big-headed kid. Nonsensical.

It just shows you again just how powerful their illusions would be required to be. Dargo's already suspcious and rationally he knows that they can probably pull mind games on him and that his son could not possibly be on the ship. When he sees him though he still falls for it instantly, suggesting they didn't just do something simple like make him see things, but actually hacked right into his brain to fundamentally undermine his very sense of reasoning and the way he experienced reality.

There's little doubt that they could theoretically inflict some absolutely horrifying nightmares on a potential victim this way. Locking them into some sort of inescapable living hell by altering the entire way they see and experience reality. "Gotta cut those bugs out from under my skin" type stuff and likely worse from there.

Yes. At least the Orgasmitron was funny.

Yeah, there's definately not a booming porn industry on Delvia is there.

What's with all this talk of mind-sex and bedding Zhann and cherries?

Me trying to balance out the fact that half of this episode is "this is who dumped John this one time 5 years ago". It's not hard to see that something involving Zhaan and cherries would have immensely improved on what was there.

But long after the viewer was tired of it.

Definately. Nothing interesting was even done with it either. If they'd done like I suggested earlier and made her impersonate Aeryn and have some sort of semi romantic thing go on then you could at least get people interested in how much of it was real attraction toward Aeryn and how much was just part of the forced illusion. That would even work really well with the next episode.

Well, as a priest she was kind of a screw-up. The whole 'continually tempted into evil' thing. Besides, it came up in the ep nine discussion that her morality was flexible and suspect.

Originally Posted by zahn-c

:
very profound, Mr. Infamous. The corruptness of both sides --that is a compelling reason for Zhaan to give up on her priesthood.

Well it's what I came up with anyway. Still not clear on the whole worthiness apect though. I find it hard to believe that she couldn't consider herself worthy of the people in this episode. She likes to beat up on herself fairly often but this really takes it to a whole other level. Tahleen was absolute slime and Zhaan's politically motivated assassination of a tyrant in the making is hardly comparable to her murdering her own father because she feared he would possibly undermine her own plans to become the same sort of tyrant.

[Thyme Laird]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Rhapsody in Blue starts off with a somewhat curious scene where we've got John seemingly back on Earth with some blonde chick we've never seen before who quickly dumps him a few minutes into the episode, and just when he was about to propose to, awww.

The ring was over the top in my opinion.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

John's not in dreamland for long before he's getting tossed out of bed by some kind of Moya related turbulance though, and taking only a moment to gather his bearings (but not his pants) he goes rushing off to the bridge in his underwear to find out what's going on, and oddly enough so does everyone else. I'm thinking to myself here "they all sleep at the same time?" as that seems kind of dangerous if anything were to happen, but I guess they've got pilot there; even if his track record isn't exactly perfect, when it comes to detecting, let alone averting, potentially lethal threats.

Well, obviously it was nighttime...in space.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

(he took a set of backup underwear on his Farscape-1 test flight?)

Why not? The castaways on Gilligan's island took a whole wardrobe on a three-hour tour.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

After a quick little aside where John compares sex dreams with Rygel and Dargo and notices Aeryn's somehow swiped a set of his underwear...we learn that this week's lethal threat will be brought to us by some of Zhaan's species, only with hair. Don't know why they decided to go with the hair here. The only other Delvians in this episode that are Bald like Zhaan are the two men, the various females all have hair. Are they trying to tell us something about Zhaan in a round about sort of way here? I think the addition of the hair really spoils the whole Delvian aesthetic myself but whatever. Virginia Hey apparently shaved her head for real to play Zhaan, I doubt the guest actresses were willing to go that far, and maybe bald caps didn't work for some reason. Yeah that's right folks I'm not even a quarter of the way through this thing yet and I'm already blathering on like an idiot about alien hairdoos or the lack there of, this one's going to a non-stop edge-of-your-seat thrillride.

I liked the hair-dos. I think it worked.
It's easy to explain away as perhaps they belong to a different sect than Zhan.
The first time I saw (and heard) Tahleen, I immediately thought of Olivia Newton-John.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

So our head hairy Delvian is Pau' Tahleen, this week's "Evil alien in disguise". Tahleen seems only vaguely annoying in a snooty superior sort of way at first, but we'll learn as the episode progresses that she's pretty much a stone cold bitch. Right now all she's done is send a bogus distress call to trick Moya into starbursting to their location and give the crew some unsolicited sex dreams but don't worry, she's just getting warmed up.

See? Exactly like Olivia Newton-John.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Tahleen invites them into her landed temple ship and encourages John to pick some weird squid-like fruit things from their pond for food. Apparently the more you pick the more that grows to replace them, rather than try to figure out how that works though I'll just note that Aeryn's got a great line here "It amazes me how people mistake theosophy for superiority". In addition to bringing a smile to my face, as that's another cliche I don't care for taking one in the face, this can likely also be taken to reflect Peacekeeper attitudes toward religion in general, as I don't recall anything even approaching religious being done by a Peacekeeper in the series.

As I recall, they don't believe in anything.
You die, then you're gone, and everyone else moves on...pretty much sums it up.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

While John's harvesting squid fruit, which's he's now dubbed trigapods, Tahleen and Zhaan are having a conversation about how Tahleen's people are coming down with some sort of a madness evidently brought on by the "too fast" advancment of their religious study somehow. Tahleen has called them all there because she wants Zhaan's secret to serenity to save her congregation before they all start telling her about how cavemen rode on Dinosaurs 6000 years ago or something.

Hey, I saw it in a museum, so it must be true. Yabba-dabba-do!

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

She offers Zhaan some sort of "powers" in exchange for this which suggests that Tahleen is actually a higher level Pau then Zhaan is, or at least has access to some powers and abilities that she does not. This relationship can be a bit confusing at times but what I eventually settled on was Tahleen being more powerful overall or higher level but Zhaan just having this one particular trick she doesn't know and desperately needs. I think it's the most logical interpretation. It should also be noted that Tahleen does seem to actively seek to increase her power to a far greater extent than Zhaan ever did, which is what got her and her followers in trouble in the first place.

Logically, she had to be tenth level or greater,
because Zhan got "leveled-up" as a result of sharing Tahleen's experiences.

Tahleen could have avoided all this by rolling a natural twenty on her Unity skill.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

We see a demonstration of her ill attitude here as she forces John to relive a traumatic false memory of drowning from his childhood for no other reason than to demonstrate that she can do so to Zhaan. Zhaan is noticably put off by this kind of casual display of cruelty but not put off enough to instantly leave this hag to fend for herself it seems. Tahleen is overall a villian that's easy to hate, even for someone like me who tends to extend an above average amount of sympathy toward most villians. She has virtually no redeemng qualities I can think of and even abuses and manipulates her own followers, as we'll soon see, and even her own family members.

Apparently, they're hopelessly devoted to her.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Wasn't she suppossed to have been on Moya for many years, the whole 17 even? Moya was a prisoner transport right, not an actual private floating prison for 3 people. Given the nature of her crime, murder of a high ranking state official, it seems unlikely that the Pks wouldn't have snuffed her, let alone spent time and presumably money, just to fly her around for 17 years while she meditates in her cell.

Weird, this part of the episode almost asks as many questions as it answers.

We know that both Zhan & D'Argo worked at a mine years ago.
Zhan was on Moya years ago went Aeryn was temporarily stationed there.
Rygel was on the Zelbinion for a time.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Back to the main plot here, Zhaan explains to John what Tahleen wants, her secret to calming her rage after she murdered Patel, she's going to give a piece of herself to Tahleen while they "share unity", the Delvian term for the funky psychic pseudo sex that Zhaan used to kill Patel. I'll just note here that during this whole conversation there's one little bit that rubbed me the wrong way, it's when after Zhaan describes her crime to John and why she did it, he comes back and calls her "twisted as they come" while observing that if anyone should be insane because of their dark impulses it should be her. Well I guess he's scrapped the backup plan to get into her pants but this even caught me as a bit of a "why the fuck would you kick a friend when they're down like that" moment. Ok even calling Zhaan a friend might be a stretch but she's definately not an enemy or someone he dislikes, she reveals all these painful secrets to him along with what I feel was a pretty good justification for why she did what she did, and he comes back with this. It just seemed like a rather jarring rebuke on his part, like the sort of thing you would expect instead from two people who didn't really like each other very much at all. Basically it has the effect of making him look like an asshole, and in a really awkward and I assume unintentional way.

I think he was trying to be brutally honest in order to get through to her.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Let me list the ways

-In order for this woman to do what she does she has to not only be able to alter John's memory with barely any effort near instantly, but also read his mind in such detail that she can construct a plausible fiction about Earth and the space program and even his girlfriend's behaviour with such accuracy that he'll believe it. She also needs to make sure it doesn't contradict with any of his other memories so she's got to read those to, interpret them all, and change/erase them all in the space of a few seconds. She even adjusts the delusion in real time as he starts to notice flaws in it. Skynet would envy this chick's processing power.

She didn't. John kept finding flaws in the false memories and she kept patching the holes.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

-If these Delvians have powers of this magnitude in a mere apprentice how exactly was a PK backed military coup anything but an absolutle side-splitting joke to them? Shit even Dargo, Aeryn and Rygel can be effected by this back on Moya... in orbit! It's like Maldis all over again in terms of his abilities being so overpowered as to break the entire premise, only this time it's arguably even worse.

First of all, we don't know what level these Delvians are at.
They are pushing themselves further in preparation to overthrow the regime.
Obviously, someone on Delvia had to have these powers prior.
Yet no explanation is offered as to how they were overcome (in part) by Peacekeepers.
On the face of it, this is massively non-sensical,
so we need a really good explanation for this.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

-Why would Lorana go though all this trouble rooting around in Crichton's head and constructing this hugely elaborate fantasy about a person being on Moya who never was, when it would have been infinitely easier to just make herself look like Aeryn or Dargo and manipulate him that way. Then all she has to do is come up with an explanation of how she got in/back in, one that the others would easily go along with of course.

Practically, it makes no sense.
However, it sells the whole mind-fuck concept in terms of drama.
Plus, there's the wankiness of the whole power fantasy angle.

I'll bet there's a glut of fan-fic involving [INSERT DESIRED CHARACTER HERE]
and the Delvian mind-fuck.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

John's hallucination of his girlfriend Alex has now inexplicably changed cloths, evidently just to prove how easy it is for Lorana to casually rearrange his marbles. "Oh I always bring a back-up dress in my pocket when we go down to planets, remember John, you helped me pick it out".

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Lorana's finally begun to take pity on John's poor little monkey brain gibbering all over her about how much he loves her though because in this scene she comes clean and tells him everything that's been going on and what she's been doing to him, as well as resetting him back to normal. She also tells him that a little hot psychic lovin' from him might be all Zhaan needs to get back on the path to righteousness. No I'm not making that up, though I wish I was, to cure Zhaan of her madness John must have psychic sex with her, the backup plan is a backup plan no longer.

Yeah, this episode opens with mind-sex, precedes to mind-fuck for forty minutes,
and is finally resolved with more mind-sex.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Back on Moya bald blue boyfriend dude is explaining to Dargo over the com about how he scrambled all their brains and how very very sorry he is for doing it. In response Rygel and Dargo actually threaten him with violence, and to his credit as an impromptu diplomat, bald blue boyfriend dude doesn't simply collapse to the floor convulsing with laughter.

I like the WTF-look the blue guy gives him.

D'Argo, the tactical genius, strikes again.
Shit, how many times in Season 1 does D'Argo say or do something that
could potentially get him and everyone else on board killed?

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Next we've got a scene where Tahleen earns a few more late game bitch points by telling Lorana that she was just her psychic sex whore. In reponse Lorana sends her on a wild goose chase by telling her that Zhaan and Crichton are fleeing back to their ship on the surface; Tahleen takes off after them giving John his opening to find the Barry White tape and go pay Zhaan a visit. Zhaan's kind of reluctant at first but John gets her to come around by telling her she's just too chicken to have psychic sex with him. I'll have to remember to try that angle sometime.

Despite the laughable premise at the core of this whole scene here it does actually give us a rather nice little moment between the two characters where John tells Zhaan to look at herself how he sees her, as warm, giving and kind. This instantly cures Zhaan of her madness. Yep, his sexual prowess is so great that it can do in seconds what it took Zhaan 17 years to achieve on her own, and what Tahleen never even could! Damn he should just move to Delvia and start charging an hourly rate. Like Papa Crichton said, every man gets the chance to be his own kind of hero, and this would certainly make Papa Crichton proud.

The only thing missing was an explanation of how Delvian women were going crazy
all these years because they were secretly yearning for some human male mind-lovin'.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

So as this episode wraps up we see John using the axe that should have been used on Tahleen earlier to chop down the magic weed. Tahleen tries to fry his brain to stop him but Zhaan shuts her down with some kind of psychic shield she got from the earlier not so sweet lovin' they shared. Or maybe that came from John to and she just doesn't want him to strut around the ship for any longer than he's already going to.

Then there's the deleted scene where he claims he gave Zhan telekinesis.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

The episode ends with Zhaan inexplicably deciding to give up her priesthood because she no longer thinks she is "worthy". I've struggled to understand this myself since I originally saw the episode years ago and the only conclusion I can really draw is that her faith in the religious institution of her planet was so shaken by the behaviour of Tahleen and the others here, in combination with her rememberance of the behaviour of Patel, that she no longer felt she could be a part of that institution when both sides of it were just as corrupt as each other. The conservative side sold out their world's future to the PKs in order to cling to power, and now she sees that the would be revolutionaries who were expelled are a bunch of mindfucking, psychic raping, father murderers. That could cause anyone to chuck their vestments in the bin I'd say, it's just her explanation that she isn't worthy of [i]them]/i] that I never got, unless it's some sort of really deep ironic kind of joke that only 800 year old plant people can really be expected to get.

That was this episode's closing mind-fuck.

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Next week, John realizes that even after his psychic fling with Zhaan he still wants to get into Aeryn's pants to and so tries to... will Aeryn ever be able to top "ten years of really great sex all at the same time", tune in to find out.

Spoilers...if you thought Loranna could mind-fuck....
....just wait until you see what Aeryn Sun does to Crichton in this series.

[Thyme Laird]

Originally Posted by Mr. Infamous

Well it's what I came up with anyway. Still not clear on the whole worthiness apect though. I find it hard to believe that she couldn't consider herself worthy of the people in this episode. She likes to beat up on herself fairly often but this really takes it to a whole other level. Tahleen was absolute slime and Zhaan's politically motivated assassination of a tyrant in the making is hardly comparable to her murdering her own father because she feared he would possibly undermine her own plans to become the same sort of tyrant.

Recall her acknowledgment of the continued existence of her dark side in
"That Old Black Magic" and the resulting anxiety it caused her.

She had been living in denial.

Then, in this episode, she is once again forced to confront her crime,
but now she's no longer able to kid herself into thinking
that she's evolved into a kinder gentler Delvian.

Before, she would have simply rejected it as "old Zhan" and claimed to be "new Zhan".

Now she has been forced to confront the experience of murdering her lover during sex,
with the knowledge that she is still capable of such brutality.

Then Tahleen drains her of her illusion of self-control.

For a bunch of enlightened holy people, they really like to live in denial.

Bombing a target from an aircraft is less personal than
looking into a victim's eyes as you choke the life out of them.

I think attacking someone with your mind gives you a
first-person front-row seat to the very crime you are committing.

You are both the criminal and the victim.
Apart from the guilt of hurting someone, you are traumatizing yourself as well.

I think the real message here is that the Delvians are so full of crap,
that they don't understand the depth of the trauma they've inflicted upon themselves
by seeking and using these powers before they cultivated the wisdom to wield them.

[Mr. Infamous]

Originally Posted by Thyme Laird

Recall her acknowledgment of the continued existence of her dark side in
"That Old Black Magic" and the resulting anxiety it caused her.

She had been living in denial.

Then, in this episode, she is once again forced to confront her crime,
but now she's no longer able to kid herself into thinking
that she's evolved into a kinder gentler Delvian.

Before, she would have simply rejected it as "old Zhan" and claimed to be "new Zhan".

Now she has been forced to confront the experience of murdering her lover during sex,
with the knowledge that she is still capable of such brutality.

Then Tahleen drains her of her illusion of self-control.

For a bunch of enlightened holy people, they really like to live in denial.

Bombing a target from an aircraft is less personal than
looking into a victim's eyes as you choke the life out of them.

I think attacking someone with your mind gives you a
first-person front-row seat to the very crime you are committing.

You are both the criminal and the victim.
Apart from the guilt of hurting someone, you are traumatizing yourself as well.

I think the real message here is that the Delvians are so full of crap,
that they don't understand the depth of the trauma they've inflicted upon themselves
by seeking and using these powers before they cultivated the wisdom to wield them.

I think the healthiest thing for her would just be to adopt a more, dare I say, ends justify the means type of outlook on this matter she struggles with. Someone needs to just remind her that virtually every time she has acted on her "dark impulses" it has only been in the service of some greater good for others than herself, that it is in fact this very awareness that such a greater good does infact exist that proves she is at her core still a good person with good not evil intentions. Even when she does take life or inflict suffering she mostly only ever seems to do it to protect others weaker than herself that can not, for whatever reason, protect themselves or that she fears will come to harm somehow if she doesn't act.

She saw an opportunity to try and save her planet from PK oppression and tyranical government and took it, she acted against Maldis, a truely vile and powerful being, to save John's life.

The worst thing she's done was chop pilots arm off but that does more to show that she's simply not perfect and it's arguable even how much her "dark powers" came into play here as the only powers she used were to relieve pilots pain. She's not perfect certainly, but she's not nearly the monster she thinks of herself as. She lies to herself a lot and this is really the biggest one, and since it's a lie to her own detriment that makes it all the more tragic I suppose.

She needs to get over this idea that force is always bad all the time. She'll never be this perfect ideal peaceful being she wants to pretend at being because that perfect ideal peaceful being can not survive in the real world. Sometimes force, even lethal force, is the only means available to defend against ambitions born of true evil. By denying that you essentially surrender yourself to the idea that anything evil wants it need only take, as no good person should dare to try and stop, let alone destroy it.