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selenakWiki Summary: D'Argo, after threatening the crew with Luxan hyper-rage, is later found docile and happy on a planet and decides to stay. Crichton discovers that the planet's food contains a drug, with the help of a small band of rebels immune to its effects, and must determine a way to convince the others of the truth and the true nature of the drug.
This struck me as some really good early character exploration in the disguise of a one-off. I mean, the central MacGuffin of the story has been known since Odysseus encountered the Lotophages, with the one twist that it turns out the Sykarans a) have some (a few) rebels among them, and b) are exploited by the Peacekeepers to manufacture the basic materials they need to arm their rifles. Incidentally, this twist strikes me as very necessary, given that the show has the Sykarans in distinctly Asian-looking red hats and clothes. Oh, and of course only on Farscape with its gleeful dedication to bodily fluids would it turn out that the key weapon that prevents our heroes getting killed is Rygel's piss. Still, it's not the plot stuff that impressed me about the episode.
Aeryn starts to bond with Pilot here, which given their relationship has some great episodes to come made me practically coo while rewatching. Also, Aeryn learns to think outside not just the Peacekeeper box but her own opinion of herself and her skill set. The way Claudia Black plays Aeryn's reactions to this throughout, both the early frustration and the childlike satisfaction later, made me feel Aeryn to be still very young, emotionally, I mean, not in years. (Which is of course also true of Pilot.) The big reveal here isn't that Aeryn is intelligent - of course she is, we've seen her be intelligent before - but that she considers herself so unsuited/incapable of anything other than flying or fighting to begin with, and that Pilot confiding in her about his own limitations helps her overcome them.
Meanwhile, D'Argo may be drugged into the agrarian life, but as his last scene with Zhaan points out, there really is a part of him who wants to settle down and wants a committed relationship to go with it. Again, it's this that makes this plot more than "danger of the week", because it remains true of D'Argo through the show, and it will impact on his later relationship with Chiana in key matters. (And thus we learn more about who D'Argo is beyond "Space Viking".) Before this rewatch, I had forgotten early Farscape played with some D'Argo/Zhaan subtext that petered out as they ended up with Chiana and Stark, respectively, but it's strongest here, as Zhaan says she would have accepted D'Argo's proposition. Mind you, I suspect it's less about D'Argo himself, though she clearly likes him, and more about a part of Zhaan, too, yearning for the idyll. Of course, Zhaan already did make a life-altering choice of that calibre. Unless it comes up in the episodes we skipped, this is also the first time Zhaan alludes to her pre-priestess days and calls herself "savage" during those. More of this to come.
Crichton in this episode experiences the second of many body invasions the show throws at him (the first being the translator nanites) as he gets a worm to ensure his immunity to theLotos pacification drug. Here, it's played mostly for laughs, as is his uncomfortableness when he realises he'll spend the night on the same bed with Zhaan, and at the involuntarily hand movements (hers in the night, his on the morning). The first time I watched, I remember thinking "good lord, how American". These days, I suppose it plays out a bit differently, in that John leaving it up to Zhaan whether he sleeps on the floor or on the bed and making it clear no exploiting the situation will happen signal he's got a clear set of ethics regarding this. But given the situation - the bed really is large enough for two - his first reaction when he realises they have to spend the night here still strikes me as one of those things clearly signalling his geographical origin.
Not played for a laugh but important: two distinguishing traits of early John Crichton - a) among the still learning how to live with each other crew, he's the one functioning as the "heart", refusing to leave D'Argo after D'Argo's first refusal to return (then again, he's also genre wise due to being a sci fi geek and thus knows something is up) which the others at this point still would have been ready to do, b) revealing the truth behind the exploitation of the Sykarans is important to him (as opposed to, say, just hitting Zhaan and D'Argo on the head and getting them back on Moya) once he's seen that the Peacekeepers are behind it and their leader wants to leave everyone to die, but c) he's not played as the inspiring hero actually leading the revolt. He provdes the information, but leaves it up to the Sykarans what to do with it. (BTW, given that everyone, not just the naturally immune small band of rebels, seems to snap out of hit at the reveal when earlier the insistance was that without the worm, this was impossible, the world building is less than consistent here. Then again, the revolution afterwards does not happen, and if the corrupt leader gets deposed, we don't see it, either.)
(Later season John also would not have led the revolt, but s4 Crichton might have considered poisoning all the tannot oil resources on the planet.)
The other days
This struck me as some really good early character exploration in the disguise of a one-off. I mean, the central MacGuffin of the story has been known since Odysseus encountered the Lotophages, with the one twist that it turns out the Sykarans a) have some (a few) rebels among them, and b) are exploited by the Peacekeepers to manufacture the basic materials they need to arm their rifles. Incidentally, this twist strikes me as very necessary, given that the show has the Sykarans in distinctly Asian-looking red hats and clothes. Oh, and of course only on Farscape with its gleeful dedication to bodily fluids would it turn out that the key weapon that prevents our heroes getting killed is Rygel's piss. Still, it's not the plot stuff that impressed me about the episode.
Aeryn starts to bond with Pilot here, which given their relationship has some great episodes to come made me practically coo while rewatching. Also, Aeryn learns to think outside not just the Peacekeeper box but her own opinion of herself and her skill set. The way Claudia Black plays Aeryn's reactions to this throughout, both the early frustration and the childlike satisfaction later, made me feel Aeryn to be still very young, emotionally, I mean, not in years. (Which is of course also true of Pilot.) The big reveal here isn't that Aeryn is intelligent - of course she is, we've seen her be intelligent before - but that she considers herself so unsuited/incapable of anything other than flying or fighting to begin with, and that Pilot confiding in her about his own limitations helps her overcome them.
Meanwhile, D'Argo may be drugged into the agrarian life, but as his last scene with Zhaan points out, there really is a part of him who wants to settle down and wants a committed relationship to go with it. Again, it's this that makes this plot more than "danger of the week", because it remains true of D'Argo through the show, and it will impact on his later relationship with Chiana in key matters. (And thus we learn more about who D'Argo is beyond "Space Viking".) Before this rewatch, I had forgotten early Farscape played with some D'Argo/Zhaan subtext that petered out as they ended up with Chiana and Stark, respectively, but it's strongest here, as Zhaan says she would have accepted D'Argo's proposition. Mind you, I suspect it's less about D'Argo himself, though she clearly likes him, and more about a part of Zhaan, too, yearning for the idyll. Of course, Zhaan already did make a life-altering choice of that calibre. Unless it comes up in the episodes we skipped, this is also the first time Zhaan alludes to her pre-priestess days and calls herself "savage" during those. More of this to come.
Crichton in this episode experiences the second of many body invasions the show throws at him (the first being the translator nanites) as he gets a worm to ensure his immunity to the
Not played for a laugh but important: two distinguishing traits of early John Crichton - a) among the still learning how to live with each other crew, he's the one functioning as the "heart", refusing to leave D'Argo after D'Argo's first refusal to return (then again, he's also genre wise due to being a sci fi geek and thus knows something is up) which the others at this point still would have been ready to do, b) revealing the truth behind the exploitation of the Sykarans is important to him (as opposed to, say, just hitting Zhaan and D'Argo on the head and getting them back on Moya) once he's seen that the Peacekeepers are behind it and their leader wants to leave everyone to die, but c) he's not played as the inspiring hero actually leading the revolt. He provdes the information, but leaves it up to the Sykarans what to do with it. (BTW, given that everyone, not just the naturally immune small band of rebels, seems to snap out of hit at the reveal when earlier the insistance was that without the worm, this was impossible, the world building is less than consistent here. Then again, the revolution afterwards does not happen, and if the corrupt leader gets deposed, we don't see it, either.)
(Later season John also would not have led the revolt, but s4 Crichton might have considered poisoning all the tannot oil resources on the planet.)
The other days
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 12:02 pm (UTC)It's still slightly odd seeing the early D'Argo costume when my mental image is of his more bulked-out season 3 look, but it does emphasise how young he is.
'Luxan hyper-rage' sounds like standard proud-warrior-race claptrap, and at this point it is, but as the series goes on it gets readdressed and problematised (and shown not to be an on/off thing either: D'Argo can lose his temper perfectly well without going into hyper-rage) in interesting ways, so I'm glad they came back to it. And the reveal of stoned, guffawing, huggy D'Argo just before the cut to credits is classic.
Aeryn being snotty about non-Peacekeeper Sebaceans, check...
Volmai (lol, one letter away from a Dame Edna reference) makes her entrance. It's an amazingly and hilariously mannered performance, but it works. Partly because it implies that physical and mental damage has been done to Volmai by the process that's made her leader of her enslaved species and what remains of her planet.
'Tomorrow is a rest day' is a phrase that's worked itself into my day-to-day vocabulary. :)
Rygel, bodily fluids, unexpected chemical involvement, check...
Aeryn has no compunctions about leaving D'Argo if he wants to be left, because it's easier; Crichton and Zhaan don't want to because they've picked up that something's wrong, but she doesn't care. There's a lot of Aeryn that she buries but that doesn't mean her Peacekeeper upbringing and training didn't shape her.
Crichton and Zhaan unpick the puzzle of the city - our regular reminder that he's a smart, observant guy. I love that from the outside the city looks like an agricultural silo.
Farscape being matter-of-fact about the fact that sex happens, check.
This episode uses the Planet of Hats convention effectively to create a really eerie, worrying effect as the city-dwellers fall into line on the way out to the fields, blurring together despite the mismatched shades of their tattered red.
Farscape and gross-out body horror, check!
The show will keep coming back to the idea that there was something in this, despite the tannot root, that is true to D'Argo's self. He'll always come back to the idea of farming. His capacity for introspection is established early on: not a subversion but a basic element of his character, leading up to the reveal about Lo'Laan.
Ben Browder's first version of stoner Crichton, not as OTT hilarious as it will get later, but definitely a creditable start.
Pilot reaching out to Aeryn not just because he needs to get her to do stuff and empathy is a good way to do it, but because he's lonely and feels overwhelmed too - the way he switches from calling her Officer Sun at the start of the scene to Aeryn Sun at the end of it, showing they've made a connection...the very start of something that will be both incredibly important and incredibly painful in a season and a bit.
And we find out why the city is in decay: colonisation and crop monoculture, basically.
So this sets up what looks like a standard revolution-against-the-oppressors plot turn in which Moya's crew should either provide resources for a rebellion (being rebels themselves), or refuse to intervene (because it would be dangerous for them - the tannot root goes to Peacekeepers)...but then in the next scene we get to see Volmai as a person with her own perspective, her own sense of loss and anger over what's been done to her planet and her, and her own response. She's trying to escape: use the resources she has to run away and save herself. A complication borne of isolation and anger and hopelessness. But it also gives them a bargaining chip.
Puzzle-solving is a different kind of thinking than pilot Aeryn usually does, but: she can do it. Scaffolded by Pilot, but she can, and she does, and then she gets to articulate that to herself and defend her choice to do it too.
Fluorescent green exploding urine, check...
And the Moya crew hand over the task of rebelling to the people who need to do it, and actually do have the capacity but have forgotten about it. And Volmai decides, like Aeryn, not to run away.
(The way this happens suggests to me that it's not the tannot root alone that has created this compliant, sedated population: it's the root plus the routine plus the environment, and once you disrupt one or two - and the Moya crew disrupt both the routine and Volmai's control over it, and the environment), the rest will start to crumble too.)
The physicality of puppet Rygel as he stumps away here, separated from his ThroneSled, is so much better than any CGI could ever be.
Aeryn displays the emotional intelligence she's not supposed to have here too...
D'Argo and Zhaan come out of this episode connected, more strongly than Pilot and Aeryn or Aeryn and Crichton. Crew bonding, first stage, accomplished.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 02:50 pm (UTC)Something that hadn't occured to me during watching - is there just the one city on the entire planet? Even assuming the Sykarans devolved due to the sedation and the Peacekeeper influence, that's a bit odd for a planet that's large enough that gravity etc. is Earth like.
The physicality of puppet Rygel as he stumps away here, separated from his ThroneSled, is so much better than any CGI could ever be.
Oh yes. I'm really glad that Henson's team did all the non-humanoid aliens and Farscape was created when it was.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 12:11 pm (UTC)Awww, you've just hit on my big takeaway from this episode! As she wrestled with something way outside of her experience I could see Aeryn becoming "more" even as I watched. And yes, that was definitely a bonding moment with Pilot.
(A thought: if Aeryn is becoming "more" by using her brains instead of her pulse rifle, does that mean that as the series progresses John becomes "less" by resorting to his pulse pistol more and more?)
I agree with you that the "McGuffin" of the story was a bit flimsy--as was the whole setup of Sykaran society. The ending was slightly too pat--and the prospect of a rebellion seems doubtful. The Sykarans will still be eating the tannit (sp?) root that drugs them, they still seem to have the same leader in charge, and what are the odds they wake up the next morning and forget all about their plans of the previous day?
(Interesting that the rebels would pick on John to help them--except that everyone in the universe seems to regard John Crichton's body as a sort of safe deposit which they can stick things in: worms, wormhole equations, neural chips...)
I'm thinking of going back and looking at some of those episodes we're not doing on this rewatch. I have a feeling I might notice one or two things of interest if I do.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 02:30 pm (UTC)None, and I had remembered that bit, too, for that reason. :) (Mind you, Better Call Saul recently had a plot in which the fact one character had to drink their own urine played a part, but that's still not the same thing.)
A thought: if Aeryn is becoming "more" by using her brains instead of her pulse rifle, does that mean that as the series progresses John becomes "less" by resorting to his pulse pistol more and more?
Well, it's not like Aeryn stops using her pulse rifle, or John his brain. I think their first scene in The Peacekeeper Wars, after they've been put together and revived in a strange to them environment full of strangers, they both grab their weapons at the same time, but neither uses them, as I recall. They wait for information. Aeryn pre series would have shot first and asked questions later. Early John wouldn't have carried a weapon to begin with, but that was John before, as you say, the galaxy treated him as a safe deposit-cum-chewtoy.
This said, I think he loses something, in that context - what Zhaan in her goodbye message refered to as his innocence - but that's about more than his increasing readiness to use violence, imo.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 12:21 pm (UTC)Something that struck me about these early episodes that I didn't notice the first time: Pilot is already more comfortable with Aeryn than he is with the rest of the crew. Which seems weird until you reflect that he's probably far more used to interacting with Peacekeepers than the prison population, let alone weird aliens who fell through wormholes and don't make any sense at all.
Meanwhile, D'Argo may be drugged into the agrarian life, but as his last scene with Zhaan points out, there really is a part of him who wants to settle down and wants a committed relationship to go with it.
Something I hadn't expected about this rewatch is that every scene where Zhaan and D'Argo have a meaningful conversation becomes poignant when you know what's going to happen to them both. That ending where she tells him that there's plenty of time is painful now, because there really isn't, for either of them.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 02:36 pm (UTC)Yes; she's familiar without being a threat, considering there's only one of her and she's on hte run, too. Also, Aeryn in particular is, well, a pilot. Who loves flying and is good at it, as Pilot found out at the end of the season opener when she was able to steer Moya manually through a maneouvre completely new to her. I wouldn't be surprised if that had given him professional respect for her.
Zhaan and D'Argo: very true.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 12:56 pm (UTC)The Sykaran rebels picking John for a depository/target for asking aid is the predictable choice (white, heterosexual male=main character/hero/etc.), but the arc doesn't follow that standard pattern. John doesn't want to get involved, he wants to get the hell away, and the attempted rebellion fails--John and the others are saved by pee and a little green guy no one likes. And the Moyans aren't even rebels themselves--like Blake's 7, they're a band of criminals on the run--the only rebel among them is Zhaan, and we haven't learned that yet.
I really enjoyed John and Aeyrn's clenched-smile conversation by the train, and the scene between Aeryn and Rygel aboard Moya, too, when she's reacting to the explosions, and oh, so carefully uses her weapon to pick up a drop of Rygel's sweat--having that physical puppet with its solidity and presence makes the interaction as real as possible--I never think of a puppet, but only of Rygel, and of Pilot, as real and alive as other crew members.
Heh, I also years ago wrote a ficlet inspired by the episode.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 02:15 pm (UTC)--I never think of a puppet, but only of Rygel, and of Pilot, as real and alive as other crew members.
Same here. And that even goes for Moya and Talyn, neither of whom can speak in our sense. Those ships have personalities, and I always think of them as "she" and "he", never as "it". (And ships aren't female by tradition in German, the way they are in English.)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 03:06 pm (UTC)Ficlet--https://farscapefriday.livejournal.com/102562.html Gosh, that was over sixteen years ago.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 01:54 pm (UTC)One of the things that dates Farscape to its period is the typical dress of "sexy" female aliens - it always seems to be have a distinctly turn-of-the-century Britney/Xtina-influenced focus on low waistlines, taut abs, and belly buttons.
This episode is the first real sign of how coarse Farscape is willing to be (would anybody have expected the climax of a TV space-opera episode to revolve around hypergolic urine) and also, after the false start with the "vamp" plot of "Back and Back and Back to the Future", its lack of anxiety or slut-shaming about characters having sex - while D'Argo is in a bad situation, his sexual relationships aren't demonised as part of it.
The allegory for colonialism and cash-crop agriculture is unsubtle, but it's notable that the set design and costumes for Sakar have such an East Asian vibe, given that this is an Australian show. The mind-control and constant tannoy slogans similarly remind one of western stereotypes about East Asian communist states like Mao-era China or North Korea.
There are also some charming bits of dialogue - I particularly like the "gives me a woody" exchange and Rygel's threat at the end to come up with a *really* coarse insult for Aeryn once he's warmed up and recovered.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 02:43 pm (UTC)Yes, that's what immediately came to my mind upon this rewatch. Younger me hadn't noticed!
Farscape has of course quite a lot of authoritarian regimes in space; it's far harder to think of a species which doesn't live in a monarchy, fascist dictatorship or creepy collectivism-cum-mind control. But I don't remember it ever feeling a "aren't we enlightened by contrast?" type of smug about it, not least because withint his very season, we've got A Human Reaction coming up, which I haven't rewatched for as many years as the other episodes but still renember vividly.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-20 07:06 am (UTC)Very well put! That type of "smug" drove me crazy watching Babylon 5 (humans are a "special" race, bleh).
It occurs to me that the designers of this episode might have gone for an East Asian vibe because being Australian it was something they might have familiar with. Lots of Australians visit East and Southeast Asia, there's a large Asian population in Australia, and Australians fought in Vietnam. Twenty years ago there must have been at least some veterans working in the arts in Sydney.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-26 04:25 am (UTC)Regarding "Thank God It's Friday, Again," I thought it was a very interesting episode! Like Contrary_Cal, I've started using the phrase "Tomorrow is a rest day" -- just today, in fact, looking at the pollen forecast. Seasonal allergies are killing me, and there's been a low-pollen day predicted two days in the future for the last WEEK!
One thing that struck me about Volmai was that she appears to be probably albino, and maybe this is why she was chosen as the "leader" -- she'd be unable to spend all day in the sun, therefore useless in the fields, so they might as well use her for something else. Not a hugely important point but I thought it was a neat touch in the worldbuilding.
I really enjoyed the development of D'Argo in this episode, and if I didn't remember from further seasons that his romantic endgame is Chiana (I think?) I'd be shipping the crap out of him and Zhaan. It's pretty sad to know that doesn't happen after all.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-26 06:04 am (UTC)One thing that struck me about Volmai was that she appears to be probably albino, and maybe this is why she was chosen as the "leader" -- she'd be unable to spend all day in the sun, therefore useless in the fields, so they might as well use her for something else. Not a hugely important point but I thought it was a neat touch in the worldbuilding.
Could very well be! Though given she and Zhaan exchange formalized greetings, I had the impression she is part of Zhaan's order, or at least a related one,which means she may have been off world when younger, and that, too, could be a reason why she became leader. I also had the impression the Sykaran situation as it is hasn't lasted longer than the current generation, since some of the resistance group can remember how it was before everyone had to work in the fields .