Farscape Rewatch: "Premiere" (1.01.)
Apr. 5th, 2020 06:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWiki summary: Present day human John Crichton is unexpectedly sucked through a wormhole and flung to "...some distant part of the universe on a ship, a living ship, full of strange alien life forms", where he becomes trapped with a group of escaped prisoners after he accidentally kills a local law enforcer.
Back in the day, the pilot had actually not been the first Farscape episode I saw, I only watched it years later when I got the s1 dvds. And thus it's perhaps forgivable that until this rewatch, I had plain forgotton it was Crichton's original ship that was called Farscape, and thus is the name giver for the show. What I had remembered was that the insignia on John's astronaut uniform say "IASA" instead of "NASA", presumably for copyright reasons and noone having the money to pay for the use? (I.e. the same reason why "UNIT" in New Who suddenly doesn't stand anymore for "United Nations Intelligence Task Force", i.e. is a UN institution.)
The premiere episode strikes me as a mixture of the conventional and the unconventional/subversive. Conventional: Ben Browder as John Crichton at first glance looks like the archetypical square jawed American hero, and the moment Aeryn puts off her helmet and reveals a beautiful and utterly human looking woman inside, you know that this is who he's going to end up with as his love interest. There's the on-the-nose dialogue about compassion as a value. Being an US-American male main character, John Crichton of course has daddy issues, even if he has them in a mild form (having to deal with a very famous dad in the same profession), and his father actually is in the brief time we see him shown as a good guy in an affectionate relationship with his son. Oh, and I'm sorry, but even al these years later, the Luxans come across as extremely Klingon-seque to me.(For a show that billed itself as the anti-Trek and pnremiered in March 1999, i.e. at a point where after a decade of TNG and DS9, TNG and onwards style Klingons were extremely familiar to a sci fi veiwer.)
The subversive: despite early installment weirdness - i.e. Crichton's penchant for pop culture references and inability to shut up is not yet there - a lot more. Our square-jawed hero doesn't save the day by punching Crais or peforming a daring flight manoeuvre himself. Instead, what he contributes to day-saving is science, because he's a scientist - this is going to be so important in the future - , not a member of the military. The one among the escaping prisoners who gives him the cliché "stick with me and I'll protect you" speech is Rygel, the smallest and at first glance most harmless. The one exactly human-looking species in the universe our hero has ended up in seems to consist of fascists. (None too subtly using the black, red and white colouring in their ship decoration to make sure we get the point.) The escaped prisoners our hero first accidentally and then deliberately is stuck with are all aliens, and they're not noble resistance fighters. They want to get away, not form the anti-Peacekeeper resistance. Aeryn unlike Crichton is a trained fighter and member of the military. At this point, he's officially most helpless member of the new crew, and that includes Rygel. He's also the first person to get naked. (I was going to write "the only one in the piremiere, but then I recalled the shot of Zhaan praying at the end.) Oh, and we get bodily fluids and farts, which sets up a Farscape thing from the get go which is a pointed difference to Star Trek as it was then.
Even in the John and Aeryn scenes: In general, Aeryn and Crichton for the first two seasons at least gender wise are the reverse of a popular romance cliché - she's the brooding Byronic hero with a guilty past and a cynical attitude beneath which there is an inner good core, he's her manic pixie dream boy of cheer and optimism, unearthing her ability for compassion.
Question: Aeryn speaking up for Crichton, thus pissing of Crais who then uses the "irrevocably contaminated" phrase for the first time on this show - did it come across to you as being motivated by pity, or by Aeryn having a sense of justice that's triggered here? (Since she knows Crichton didn't intentionally kill the younger Crais.) Mind you, given that the show later goes at greath lengths to establish that the Peacekeepers usually don't allow family bonds and Crais and his brother are something of an exception due to being drafted rather than being born into the service, and that Aeryn remembering her mother at all is extremely unusual, I think we have a bit of early installment weirdness in Aeryn's final words to Crichton in the episode where she asks him what he would do if his brother were killed, and thus predicts Crais will continue to come after him regardless of jurisdiction.
I like the way Farscape's equivalent of the Universal Translator, the translator microbes everyone is injected with, are introduced - it makes clear that no one Crichton meets actually speaks English first, and once that's done with, the actors get to use whichever accent they have. Well, other than the voice actors. Let's hear it for Lani Tupu, because even after all these years, I have to remind myself he's voicing Pilot in addition to playing Crais. Pilot isn't in the premiere a lot, but enough for me to go "these two sound nothing alike!" all over again.
Speaking of Pilot: the Jim Henson designed creatures are such a great part of Farscape's signature look (and form the cliché dialogue with newbies "But muppets!" "The muppets will make you cry!"). Today, they would presumably be GCI, and that would be a shame, because I fancy you can sense those puppets are physically present on set, and the way everyone interacts with them flows more naturally because of that.
Crichton accidentally hitting the pod of Crais' brother, thereby causing Crais to declare a vendetta against him, was a good plot device to create a situation where he has to stay on Moya because he's now made it on the most wanted list as well, but in retrospect it's also a plot device of finite use,givent hat the Peacekeepers are supposedly this thoroughly organized fascist organization, and Crais going after Crichton without orders for his personal reasons wasn't going to be believable forever. I did notice again upon rewatching that we don't see Crais' brother - that would come later - so the sense that John, however unintentionally, is responsible for the death of a person isn't really there for the audience. I suspect this might be intentional (plus showing the pilot of the ship Crichton hits beneath his helmet would reveal the Peacekeepers look like human before Aeryn is introduced).
What else: Crichton watching the sunrise/sunset at the very start of the show (can't tell which one) may have been a Star Wars homage (Luke watching the suns of Tattoine being one of the most iconic images, and the show's writers are geeks). The wormhole being blue will be a happy accident useful to vidders, since it works well with both Crichtons and Scorpius' eyes.
And that's it from me for the premiere. Have at it!
Back in the day, the pilot had actually not been the first Farscape episode I saw, I only watched it years later when I got the s1 dvds. And thus it's perhaps forgivable that until this rewatch, I had plain forgotton it was Crichton's original ship that was called Farscape, and thus is the name giver for the show. What I had remembered was that the insignia on John's astronaut uniform say "IASA" instead of "NASA", presumably for copyright reasons and noone having the money to pay for the use? (I.e. the same reason why "UNIT" in New Who suddenly doesn't stand anymore for "United Nations Intelligence Task Force", i.e. is a UN institution.)
The premiere episode strikes me as a mixture of the conventional and the unconventional/subversive. Conventional: Ben Browder as John Crichton at first glance looks like the archetypical square jawed American hero, and the moment Aeryn puts off her helmet and reveals a beautiful and utterly human looking woman inside, you know that this is who he's going to end up with as his love interest. There's the on-the-nose dialogue about compassion as a value. Being an US-American male main character, John Crichton of course has daddy issues, even if he has them in a mild form (having to deal with a very famous dad in the same profession), and his father actually is in the brief time we see him shown as a good guy in an affectionate relationship with his son. Oh, and I'm sorry, but even al these years later, the Luxans come across as extremely Klingon-seque to me.(For a show that billed itself as the anti-Trek and pnremiered in March 1999, i.e. at a point where after a decade of TNG and DS9, TNG and onwards style Klingons were extremely familiar to a sci fi veiwer.)
The subversive: despite early installment weirdness - i.e. Crichton's penchant for pop culture references and inability to shut up is not yet there - a lot more. Our square-jawed hero doesn't save the day by punching Crais or peforming a daring flight manoeuvre himself. Instead, what he contributes to day-saving is science, because he's a scientist - this is going to be so important in the future - , not a member of the military. The one among the escaping prisoners who gives him the cliché "stick with me and I'll protect you" speech is Rygel, the smallest and at first glance most harmless. The one exactly human-looking species in the universe our hero has ended up in seems to consist of fascists. (None too subtly using the black, red and white colouring in their ship decoration to make sure we get the point.) The escaped prisoners our hero first accidentally and then deliberately is stuck with are all aliens, and they're not noble resistance fighters. They want to get away, not form the anti-Peacekeeper resistance. Aeryn unlike Crichton is a trained fighter and member of the military. At this point, he's officially most helpless member of the new crew, and that includes Rygel. He's also the first person to get naked. (I was going to write "the only one in the piremiere, but then I recalled the shot of Zhaan praying at the end.) Oh, and we get bodily fluids and farts, which sets up a Farscape thing from the get go which is a pointed difference to Star Trek as it was then.
Even in the John and Aeryn scenes: In general, Aeryn and Crichton for the first two seasons at least gender wise are the reverse of a popular romance cliché - she's the brooding Byronic hero with a guilty past and a cynical attitude beneath which there is an inner good core, he's her manic pixie dream boy of cheer and optimism, unearthing her ability for compassion.
Question: Aeryn speaking up for Crichton, thus pissing of Crais who then uses the "irrevocably contaminated" phrase for the first time on this show - did it come across to you as being motivated by pity, or by Aeryn having a sense of justice that's triggered here? (Since she knows Crichton didn't intentionally kill the younger Crais.) Mind you, given that the show later goes at greath lengths to establish that the Peacekeepers usually don't allow family bonds and Crais and his brother are something of an exception due to being drafted rather than being born into the service, and that Aeryn remembering her mother at all is extremely unusual, I think we have a bit of early installment weirdness in Aeryn's final words to Crichton in the episode where she asks him what he would do if his brother were killed, and thus predicts Crais will continue to come after him regardless of jurisdiction.
I like the way Farscape's equivalent of the Universal Translator, the translator microbes everyone is injected with, are introduced - it makes clear that no one Crichton meets actually speaks English first, and once that's done with, the actors get to use whichever accent they have. Well, other than the voice actors. Let's hear it for Lani Tupu, because even after all these years, I have to remind myself he's voicing Pilot in addition to playing Crais. Pilot isn't in the premiere a lot, but enough for me to go "these two sound nothing alike!" all over again.
Speaking of Pilot: the Jim Henson designed creatures are such a great part of Farscape's signature look (and form the cliché dialogue with newbies "But muppets!" "The muppets will make you cry!"). Today, they would presumably be GCI, and that would be a shame, because I fancy you can sense those puppets are physically present on set, and the way everyone interacts with them flows more naturally because of that.
Crichton accidentally hitting the pod of Crais' brother, thereby causing Crais to declare a vendetta against him, was a good plot device to create a situation where he has to stay on Moya because he's now made it on the most wanted list as well, but in retrospect it's also a plot device of finite use,givent hat the Peacekeepers are supposedly this thoroughly organized fascist organization, and Crais going after Crichton without orders for his personal reasons wasn't going to be believable forever. I did notice again upon rewatching that we don't see Crais' brother - that would come later - so the sense that John, however unintentionally, is responsible for the death of a person isn't really there for the audience. I suspect this might be intentional (plus showing the pilot of the ship Crichton hits beneath his helmet would reveal the Peacekeepers look like human before Aeryn is introduced).
What else: Crichton watching the sunrise/sunset at the very start of the show (can't tell which one) may have been a Star Wars homage (Luke watching the suns of Tattoine being one of the most iconic images, and the show's writers are geeks). The wormhole being blue will be a happy accident useful to vidders, since it works well with both Crichtons and Scorpius' eyes.
And that's it from me for the premiere. Have at it!
no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 10:21 am (UTC)I also loved the way the barely cohering crew were *not* one big happy family by the end of the episode, though they'd pulled off an escape by cooperating with each other. D'Argo threatens Crichton, Aeryn gives him a veiled warning, and Rygel tries to steal from him.
TV Tropes describes this as "proud warrior race", and there seems to be one in nearly every space SF universe (the Moclans fit this trope in "The Orville".) The trick is to make these characters more than just members of a "proud warrior race".
And yet... and yet... he's the person who manages to steal a gun from the Peacekeeper guards, and calculates a way of outrunning Crais's frag cannons. He may be woefully ignorant of the world he's landed in, but he's not entirely helpless, and he definitely shows potential!
no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 01:16 pm (UTC)Oh, me too! The giddiness with which he says this, the wonder, that's really a character establishing moment for young John Crichton.
I also loved the way the barely cohering crew were *not* one big happy family by the end of the episode,
Yes. I mean, by now dysfunctional teams are par the course, but back then many a sci fi fan was still complaining that Voyager hadn't used the premise of the Maquis and Starfleet crews by making them work together very quickly. And in terms of Farscape, it helps to sell one on these all being disparate people from very different backgrounds. They will end up as friends, but it will take a way, and thus feel earned.
He may be woefully ignorant of the world he's landed in, but he's not entirely helpless, and he definitely shows potential!
That is very true. Him stealing the fork just like Aeryn did, only without getting caught (because Zhaan expected it from Aeryn whereas they regard Crichton as dumb but harmless at this point) is also a neat detail, because it shows he's observant and can improvise (and learn) quickly.
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Date: 2020-04-05 01:37 pm (UTC)And you're right about Farscape. By the time the crew bonds it feels well and truly earned.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 11:15 am (UTC)OMG Ben Browder looks so young in these opening scenes (and they look oddly overlit compared to the Moya lighting scheme). But I like how quickly they establish John as a scientist in contrast to his dad.
Shuttle launch stock footage, saves money for the CGI coming right up. :) Which doesn't look too ropey considering its age!
"Uh. Canaverel?" Early evidence of Browder's excellent laconic-comedy chops.
This tracking shot does a great job of establishing Moya's sheer size in a way the external shot doesn't.
DRDs!
D'Argo gets the control collar off by just tearing stuff up until he accidentally tears the right stuff up. I'd forgotten that.
All these Australian accents among the Peacekeepers. I do like that.
'We're - someplace else. I'll get back to you on the specifics." LOL, Pilot characterisation being established earlier than I remembered. Also D'Argo's weaponised tongue.
This is something I like about Farscape: the alien characters regularly have conversations about things that aren't/don't involve our human hero. Even if at this point it's infodumping their (apparent) backstories, it's something that will continue throughout the series, and it makes it clear that they have lives and histories of their own and are equal participants in the story, not window-dressing arranged tastefully (or, in Rygel's case, with no taste at all) around Crichton.
It took me a while to clock this because we use different ranks in Australia, but the Peacekeeper ranking system - Officer, Lieutenant, Captain, etc - isn't military. It's based on the US police force. Which makes sense given the fact that, as we'll find out in several seasons' time, the Peacekeepers actually started out as an interstellar police force!
It's only his second scene and Crais is already looking decidedly unbalanced compared to his previous appearance. That was fast!
D'Argo is having so much fun trolling Crichton here. :)
Traditional Farscape plot development: good thing happens, bad/complicating consequences ensue.
I have no idea how the sudden helium voices played to a completely unprepared audience in the middle of a quite serious scene, but I loved it!
Claudia Black's amazing face: the thing that lets you know Aeryn is actually quite aware of the concept of 'compassion' but very much wants to teach presumed-non-Peacekeeper-Sebacean Crichton a lesson about pragmatism and who she is right now.
And of course she then demonstrates she knows exactly what compassion is and is capable of acting on it when she tries to intervene on Crichton's behalf with Crais. And she gets punished for it, which is exactly the lesson she was trying to teach Crichton before. Aeryn. :( That's why she spends so much time telling herself she's not what she is.
Crichton even calls the Peacekeepers 'rent-a-cops'. Spot on.
It's not 'you can be more'. She already is more. She just can't afford to show it, so she's spent a lifetime training herself to be less.
Crichton proves his use to the crew and saves the day not with little yellow bolts of light but with his brain.
And Aeryn the pilot comes through.
This is why it matters that Aeryn is a pilot and not the infantry D'Argo called her: military pilots, when it gets right down to brass tacks, work independently. They have to be a certain amount of independent-minded and flexible to be able to do their jobs in the moment. She survives because she's a pilot, because she can adapt and change, because she can think, because she can't shut off thinking, feeling, learning, growing, even if she doesn't want to admit it.
(The Peacekeepers who can think and grow and not shut off who they are are the ones who survive: witness the ultimate desk soldier, Lt Braca, and where he ends up...).
And we end on the thing that makes Crichton Crichton, his most defining character trait: his kindness. It'll get beaten up and bruised and go into hiding from time to time, but he'll never lose that, and I like it - it makes him different from so many male SF leads of this era.
Pilot episodes are often rocky, but while this one isn't ultra-brilliant it gets a lot more right than it doesn't. Key character notes are there right from the start, the humour is there, the look is well-established early on and the tension among the Moya crew isn't easily resolved, giving places for the plot to go and a reason for Crichton to desperately want to get home but for nobody else to be terribly willing to help him with that. The plot is a journeyman job, but really, for a pilot, that's okay. The worldbuilding around the plot is already looking good and will just get better.
It's so long since I've watched this one that there was a lot I'd forgotten, so thanks for giving me the impetus to look at it again!
ETA: once that's done with, the actors get to use whichever accent they have.
Well, not quite. Anthony Simcoe and Gigi Edgley have quite clear Australian accents in real life in contrast to D'Argo's and Chiana's US ones (and Simcoe also dropped his voice several pitches to produce D'Argo's signature tones), Lani John Tupu and David Franklin are nowhere near as British as they sound with the Peacekeeper uniforms on and Tammy MacIntosh actually has a slightly less broad Australian accent than Jool.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 01:33 pm (UTC)You know, I had mostly recalled the 1812 one from s4, and also that one injects Crichton with the translator microbes, but I had forgotten the use the show makes of one at the very end, highlighting, as you say, Crichton's kindness when he repairs/binds one of the antennas. It's such a small thing, and it yet it really does say a lot about who he is.
This is something I like about Farscape: the alien characters regularly have conversations about things that aren't/don't involve our human hero.
Yes. And even here in the pilot, where, the few Crais scenes aside, we are firmly in the perspective of John Crichton and don't leave it, you get a sense of D'Argo, Zhaan, Rygel and Pilot as people with their own stories, into which he's crashlanded, rather than exotic set decorations.
It took me a while to clock this because we use different ranks in Australia, but the Peacekeeper ranking system - Officer, Lieutenant, Captain, etc - isn't military. It's based on the US police force. Which makes sense given the fact that, as we'll find out in several seasons' time, the Peacekeepers actually started out as an interstellar police force!
I did not know this! Very cool detail.
Aeryn: Given that she doesn't get a lot of dialogue in terms of words in the premiere, it's really a great thing they've cast Claudia Black, because she sells Aeryn making that decision to speak up for Crichton with her eyes and facial expression while Aeryn is watching Crais and him.
The Peacekeepers who can think and grow and not shut off who they are are the ones who survive: witness the ultimate desk soldier, Lt Braca, and where he ends up...
Very true. And Braca doesn't have Crais' drafted background, or Scorpius' Scarran childhood, or Aeryn's memory of her mother, proving it's possible to think and grow evne if you are entirely a product of the system.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-06 12:46 pm (UTC)And Braca doesn't have Crais' drafted background, or Scorpius' Scarran childhood, or Aeryn's memory of her mother, proving it's possible to think and grow evne if you are entirely a product of the system.
The thing that interests me about Braca - jumping way ahead of the rewatch - is that he is a desk soldier (yes he can fly, shoot and fight in general, but those aren't his job), but he's not a logistics man. He's the liaison between the command and the crew, and that means his job is actually people. He has to manage up the chain of command (and not one out of Crais, Scorpius and Grayza is amenable to being managed, but Braca lucks out in that Scorpy is both relatively reasonable and willing to see Braca and work with him, unlike the other two) and down it (eg the scientists and test pilots in season 3) and he's good at it. To the point where Scorpius uses him as a threat at one point, not the other way around, and he can call on the crew's loyalty to him to save the Command Carrier from Grayza's attempt at face-saving suicide. Sure it's an understanding that's limited to within his Peacekeeper context, but it's real and an interesting character trait that explains a lot about why he is one of the survivors. And it makes me wish more than ever that we'd got a proper season 5, because apparently there was supposed to be a Braca plot but it got jettisoned from Peacekeeper Wars because there just wasn't enough space.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 11:41 am (UTC)I think we have a bit of early installment weirdness in Aeryn's final words to Crichton in the episode where she asks him what he would do if his brother were killed, and thus predicts Crais will continue to come after him regardless of jurisdiction.
On the one hand, Crais must be absolutely notorious for the favouritism he shows his brother - it's not like he's bothering to hide it. On the other, it's still weird that Aeryn assumes Crichton will instantly understand what killing someone's brother means without knowing anything about how human families work. Given that Peace Keepers aren't meant to have them at all, it's odd she assumes he'll see it in the same context Crais does.
Other observations: so much irony on display in my boy Crais's first appearance. Little does he know that he's going to be in the same boat as his escaping, irreversibly contaminated fugitives before the season is even over. Which in hindsight was a genius move of the part of the show - he makes a much more interesting morally questionable ally and Scorpius will be a more satisfying villain, with a motivation that works better as a long-term driver of plot. (Until Scorpius also ends up a morally questionable ally, of course, because that's the kind of show this is.)
Also: goodness, Farscape had a hell of a body count. Of the ten named characters with speaking parts introduced here, fully half are dead by the end. (Not counting poor Tauvo Crais, who doesn't even get his face on camera before he runs into that asteroid and kicks off the entire story as we know it.)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 01:54 pm (UTC)Yes, that's what I meant. Based on what the show later establishes about Peacekeepers in regards to whow they see - and don't see - families, Aeryn shouldn't assume Crichton would know what she was talking about.
You know I agree about the genius move for Crais from villain to morally questionable ally. Like I said, I didn't start with the pilot - but if I had, I'd probably have expected one of two possibilities - either Crichton & Co would at some point decisively defeat Crais, and he'd probably die, or Crais would accept that Crichton hadn't meant to kill his brother and would quit. I certainly wouldn't have expected what did happen.
Incidentally: in retrospect, between not having been born a Peacekeeper, favouring his brother and pursuing a private vendetta, how come Crais rose as high in the ranks as he did before meeting Scorpius? Why wasn't he regarded as a loose canon before?
Also: goodness, Farscape had a hell of a body count. Of the ten named characters with speaking parts introduced here, fully half are dead by the end.
Given that Aeryn was once mostly dead (tm Miracle Max) and she and Crichton both spent time as glass pieces in the ocean, you could add them as well... but yeah.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-06 03:09 am (UTC)And of course they've got the perfect way of keeping him restrained - if they let Crais have his brother around because he gets results, they could also threaten to transfer Tauvo somewhere else.
I also don't think they realised the extent to which Bialar didn't give a flying frell about the Peacekeepers, his personal rank or even his life outside of protecting his brother. They probably didn't anticipate that he would steal an entire command carrier and its crew and run off with it the instant they didn't have a Tauvo-shaped leash on him.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 04:46 pm (UTC)The other characters, however, spend the whole episode essentially establishing themselves as the initial cliches that they're set up as (the aggressive warrior-race one, the enlightened wizard-race one, the evil ice queen who the hero will seduce and turn to good, the comic relief) and that the rest of the series will spend revealing how much more they are.
My understanding is that the IASA/NASA issue wasn't over money, but because NASA would have demanded more script approval than the creators were comfortable with if their name were used. (And UNIT in Doctor Who becoming the Unified Intelligence Taskforce probably wasn't because of money, but because the real UN were worried that a high-profile show depicting the UN with an alien-fighting military would encourage nationalistic conspiracy theories of the "secret evil world government" kind.) While we're talking about Doctor Who, I did notice how much the wormhole effects remind me of the 21st-century series's depiction of the Vortex.
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Date: 2020-04-05 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-05 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-06 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-07 05:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-07 03:20 am (UTC)Aeryn might be more intimately aware of her own familial connections than most PKs, but I wonder if she and most PKs regard situations like Crais' not so much odd for occurring, but dangerous--look how irrational he is--and that PKs who are known to be related should probably serve in separate commands to avoid such emotional involvement.
(Sorry for the re-post, I didn't realize I'd responded in Neuralclone's thread.)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-07 05:52 am (UTC)Aeryn might be more intimately aware of her own familial connections than most PKs, but I wonder if she and most PKs regard situations like Crais' not so much odd for occurring, but dangerous--look how irrational he is--and that PKs who are known to be related should probably serve in separate commands to avoid such emotional involvement.
Undoubtedly. Still, Aeryn at this point has zero idea about Crichton's own cultural background. She only knows he's not as she first assumed another PK, and not a civilian Sebacean, either. So for her to assume he'd get the implication of losing a brother at once still strikes me as unusual for someone who grew up in a society where family bonding is actively discouraged.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-07 12:19 pm (UTC)Aeryn says in S4 ACOD during that interview with R. Wilson Monroe that people are the same everywhere-they marry, have children, etc. So it seems likely that PKs are trained about how most other people form these bonds, and how to avoid too-personal bonds among themselves (recreating rather than love, friendship limited to fellow crew [and when such measures fail--Gilina, Velorek, Talyn & Xhalax--brutal punishment]), and to be wary of it in allies. It felt like Aeryn spoke with great confidence in her judgment of how brothers behave, precisely because it's something she knew as common and expected from such relationships.
How many fictions do they have which involve aliens' 'crazy' family bonds/honor, in order to emphasize the superior PK way versus foreign customs? PK leaders don't need their troops ignorant of and caught by surprise with regard to emotional motivations, they want them to regard such things as inferior and dangerous.
Crais is a prime example of why such things are discouraged, and Xhalax a prime example of the harsh punishment.
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Date: 2020-04-14 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-15 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-18 01:42 pm (UTC)