![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWiki summary: While heading to a planet that is hoped to heal Zhaan, Moya collides and becomes fused with a wormhole research vessel, leaving the crew to try to determine a way out before Moya and Pilot die from the damage. Meanwhile the final Interion, Jool, revives and soon discovers that the cousin died to save Crichton's life.
The two scenes I remembered of this episode before rewatching were John talking with Harvey on the car (but without the context) and Stark crowding Aeryn (I was Stark neutral before, but this made me disilike him for a long time, especially since s3 kept adding with his Aeryn directed behavior; The Peacekeeper Wars was when I actually liked him again). As it turns out, I had forgotten almost everything else, including all about Nyaala and the Pathfinder, and that Jool makes her debut here and not in the next episode. So watching contained a lot of surprises, including the scene between Aeryn and D'Argo, which I really liked. Not just because I appreciate the show (still) showing us relationships Aeryn has with the rest of the regulars, but also because D'Argo asking, when Aeryn talks to him about Chiana, "can you trust Crichton again", and her non-reply. This basically feels like canon confirmation of my fanon that the reason for Aeryn gives in 3.1. for backing off a romance and in 3.2. for suggesting sex yes, emotion no are pretense and what's really going on is her dealing with the fact that her beloved killed her, no matter how unwilling on his part this was, because rationalizing emotions is hard.
I also hadn't recalled John bringing back Harvey from the dumpster not just barely two eps after locking him there but specifically in the context of talking about the "Moya vs Pathfinder" decision; it's hard to disagree with Harvey's challenge that John wants to be talked out of his guilt re: abandoning Moya and Pilot. In addition, I think it's about John wanting to to talk to someone about the wormhole data who understands the enormity of it, and let's not forget the "do you think Scorpius is still alive?" question. But stil, consider this: the last time Harvey had access to his mind, Harvey killed Aeryn. And John still brings him back. This, right there, says something about the state of his psyche that's not longing for cars and popcorn at all.
(On a Doylist level, of course, Harvey was an ingenous way of letting the audience look at what's going on inside John's mind that also allowed the writers to be playful and use the chance to let Ben Browder and Wayne Pygram act together without making Scorpius look less menacing, which would have been the case if Scorpius himself had kept showing up in a "damned, foiled again!" manner.)
Jool is the first new regular to be introduced since Chiana, and the initial "haughty Australian space princess who can melt metal with her screams" characterisation is little more than a set of mannerisms. I know later episodes will give her a personality, but here I have the sense the writers might not have thought much about who Jool might be, they just went with "greatest contrast to Zhaan, and also not a repetition of Chiana" .
Meanwhile, Zhaan continues to die like a martyr, complete with having to constantly comfort Stark about her death, and that, right there, is why I don't ship them and wish that if Zhaan had to go, we could have had her interact more with the original crew during her last episodes. Yes, I know Stark had a terrible life and this is the first person he's really attached himself to. But it still grates. Even without him starting to fixate on Aeryn in the same episode, argh.
Nyaala & Co. being a wormhole-investigating species who nonetheless don't have translator microbes (the first such species we've seen in a long while not to have them, humans in John's memories and mind excepted) for the first time made me realize that Farscape uses the "they're all actually talking different languages" concept really rarely. (How do babies learn language if they're injected this early among the Peacekeepers?) The whole episode also is a reminder that John is still interested in wormholes (with or without Scorpius as a prompter), if not necessarily anymore as a means to go home to earth first and foremost.
Lastly: marathon watching instead of season breaks means this feels like the nth time Moya and Pilot are in imminent danger of dying, and I retrospectively wish the writers had not milked this particular set up quite so often, as it has diminishing returns.
The other days
The two scenes I remembered of this episode before rewatching were John talking with Harvey on the car (but without the context) and Stark crowding Aeryn (I was Stark neutral before, but this made me disilike him for a long time, especially since s3 kept adding with his Aeryn directed behavior; The Peacekeeper Wars was when I actually liked him again). As it turns out, I had forgotten almost everything else, including all about Nyaala and the Pathfinder, and that Jool makes her debut here and not in the next episode. So watching contained a lot of surprises, including the scene between Aeryn and D'Argo, which I really liked. Not just because I appreciate the show (still) showing us relationships Aeryn has with the rest of the regulars, but also because D'Argo asking, when Aeryn talks to him about Chiana, "can you trust Crichton again", and her non-reply. This basically feels like canon confirmation of my fanon that the reason for Aeryn gives in 3.1. for backing off a romance and in 3.2. for suggesting sex yes, emotion no are pretense and what's really going on is her dealing with the fact that her beloved killed her, no matter how unwilling on his part this was, because rationalizing emotions is hard.
I also hadn't recalled John bringing back Harvey from the dumpster not just barely two eps after locking him there but specifically in the context of talking about the "Moya vs Pathfinder" decision; it's hard to disagree with Harvey's challenge that John wants to be talked out of his guilt re: abandoning Moya and Pilot. In addition, I think it's about John wanting to to talk to someone about the wormhole data who understands the enormity of it, and let's not forget the "do you think Scorpius is still alive?" question. But stil, consider this: the last time Harvey had access to his mind, Harvey killed Aeryn. And John still brings him back. This, right there, says something about the state of his psyche that's not longing for cars and popcorn at all.
(On a Doylist level, of course, Harvey was an ingenous way of letting the audience look at what's going on inside John's mind that also allowed the writers to be playful and use the chance to let Ben Browder and Wayne Pygram act together without making Scorpius look less menacing, which would have been the case if Scorpius himself had kept showing up in a "damned, foiled again!" manner.)
Jool is the first new regular to be introduced since Chiana, and the initial "haughty Australian space princess who can melt metal with her screams" characterisation is little more than a set of mannerisms. I know later episodes will give her a personality, but here I have the sense the writers might not have thought much about who Jool might be, they just went with "greatest contrast to Zhaan, and also not a repetition of Chiana" .
Meanwhile, Zhaan continues to die like a martyr, complete with having to constantly comfort Stark about her death, and that, right there, is why I don't ship them and wish that if Zhaan had to go, we could have had her interact more with the original crew during her last episodes. Yes, I know Stark had a terrible life and this is the first person he's really attached himself to. But it still grates. Even without him starting to fixate on Aeryn in the same episode, argh.
Nyaala & Co. being a wormhole-investigating species who nonetheless don't have translator microbes (the first such species we've seen in a long while not to have them, humans in John's memories and mind excepted) for the first time made me realize that Farscape uses the "they're all actually talking different languages" concept really rarely. (How do babies learn language if they're injected this early among the Peacekeepers?) The whole episode also is a reminder that John is still interested in wormholes (with or without Scorpius as a prompter), if not necessarily anymore as a means to go home to earth first and foremost.
Lastly: marathon watching instead of season breaks means this feels like the nth time Moya and Pilot are in imminent danger of dying, and I retrospectively wish the writers had not milked this particular set up quite so often, as it has diminishing returns.
The other days
no subject
Date: 2021-01-10 08:15 pm (UTC)Yeah, I hated that part. It made Zhaan all about dying, AND made her completely about Stark, AND wtf was up with him and Aeryn?
I really didn't like Jool when she first showed up, because she was so entitled and they were leaning so hard on how she was Not-Zhaan. I liked her a lot later on, but it's one of the show's rare fumbles (IIRC) in introducing a character that poorly. (Grayza is something else altogether, but she's not a character, she's a cliche.)
All that aside, turning the "neural chip clone" idea into Harvey was one of the best character decisions the writers made, and it was perfectly in keeping with the "hillarible" aspects of the show (I actually found it made Scorpy more menacing, not less, because omg John could never get away from him ever).
no subject
Date: 2021-01-11 08:40 am (UTC)Harvey: absolutely, this was a stroke of genius on the part of the creative team.
AND wtf was up with him and Aeryn?
I mean, I guessed back in the day he started to fixate on her because Zhaan died for her, plus who knows, in wacky sci fi terms perhaps Aeryn ended up with some of Zhaan's life energy/aura or whatnot. Or maybe it's because Aeryn died and came back to life, and Stark, who is after all an energy being and one who professionally helps dying people on the way is fascinated by that.... but whatever the intention, on screen it just came across as creepy and stalkery, and did him no favours in terms of characterisation. Why anyone thought this was a good idea to waste screen time on, I don't know.