Farscape Rewatch: Eat Me (3.06)
Jan. 31st, 2021 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWiki summary: The crew of Moya come across a diseased Leviathan used by the Peacekeepers as a prison for the criminally insane. It has been taken over by an individual who "twins" the humanoid inhabitants of the ship and uses them as a food source. Talyn is found badly injured with Crais near death.
Seriously, while it's hardly the first time the show used horror movie tropes, - or even cannibal tropes - this is possibly its darkest use of them. The premise of a leviathan like Moya and their pilot getting slowly eaten by their insane crew didn't get less horrible or spine-chilling upon repetition for this rewatcher. (Incidentally, by now as opposed to the first time I watched I'm also familiar with episodes clearly influenced by this one, like Torchwood's Meat and the space whale episode of Doctor Who's fifth season, both of which were good but still less claustrophobic as this one. (The poor, poor pilot alone has to be one of the most gut wrenching FS one shot characters.)
Eat Me also uses its premise to traumatize the hell of the regulars on board the cannibalized Leviathan, especially Chiana, who has to watch first D'Argo die, then herself. Her finding a way of burning D'Argo's body so the insane crew doesn't get to him says so much about her feelings for him that their failed affair seems trivial at this moment. And the guilt of having left her other self to be consumed while saving herself is still there, along with the impossible to answer question this episode introduces: from this point onwards, we'll never know whether the Chiana and the D'Argo who survived were the "twins", the copies, or the originals. Especially since the entire half a season storyline with the two Crichtons that's the most permanent result of this episode revolves on the premise that there is no such thing as one original, one copy, that they're both equal. So whether or not the D'Argo and the Chiana who died on the cannibalized Leviathan were the ones whom we've been following all this time or whether they were the ones that came into being just moments earlier: the show refuses to give the audience the emotional get out of knowing. I think that's the largest difference of any other genre tv take on the clone/double/twin trope that I was familiar back when orignally watching, and it's still, decades later, the largest difference. I mentioned DW; there are not one but two other versions of Amy presented by the show in its sixth season, but while these other Amys are treated with sympathy, the show still makes it clear who "original" Amy is (and "original" Amy survives). Granted, Star Trek: TNG lets Riker's transporter double who subseqently decides to call himself Thomas survive, and the two episodes he's in do use him as a road not taken for Will Riker, but the audience still is under no doubt that Will is the original. What Farscape does is in this episode refusing to differentiate between double and original, never telling the audience which is which, and it will follow through for the entirety of the Two Crichtons arc that unfolds. I really can't think of any other show that risked unsettling its audience in this particular way.
While Jool isn't in the episode much and still is in an annoy/be scared/scream mode, I think I spy the first marks of characterisation beyond that, as she talkes herself into bravery when left alone. And on Moya, we get a reminder that Stark is still the most Crais hostile crew member (which given everyone else's backstory with and feelings about Crais is saying something) in his scene with Rygel re: what to do about Crais once Aeryn's back is turned. Incidentally, I always find this a bit odd, since Stark has had little personal experience of Crais-the-PK-Captain (as opposed to everyone else); it was Scorpius who tortured Stark, with Crais only coming in at the tail end of Stark's imprisonment. Then again, projection is a thing, Scorpius is not at hand, and Crais is of course anything but innocent.
Lastly: something I definitely didn't catch upon first watching but only upon rewatching - and this is the first time I rewatched this particular episode, as it's too gruesome to rewatch on a casual impulse - is the foreshadowing/information establishing to the audience by showing what happens if a Leviathan starbursts while under a control collar and thus unable to, well, actually move through space. And in the same episode that brings back Crais and Talyn, too. SOB.
The other episodes
Seriously, while it's hardly the first time the show used horror movie tropes, - or even cannibal tropes - this is possibly its darkest use of them. The premise of a leviathan like Moya and their pilot getting slowly eaten by their insane crew didn't get less horrible or spine-chilling upon repetition for this rewatcher. (Incidentally, by now as opposed to the first time I watched I'm also familiar with episodes clearly influenced by this one, like Torchwood's Meat and the space whale episode of Doctor Who's fifth season, both of which were good but still less claustrophobic as this one. (The poor, poor pilot alone has to be one of the most gut wrenching FS one shot characters.)
Eat Me also uses its premise to traumatize the hell of the regulars on board the cannibalized Leviathan, especially Chiana, who has to watch first D'Argo die, then herself. Her finding a way of burning D'Argo's body so the insane crew doesn't get to him says so much about her feelings for him that their failed affair seems trivial at this moment. And the guilt of having left her other self to be consumed while saving herself is still there, along with the impossible to answer question this episode introduces: from this point onwards, we'll never know whether the Chiana and the D'Argo who survived were the "twins", the copies, or the originals. Especially since the entire half a season storyline with the two Crichtons that's the most permanent result of this episode revolves on the premise that there is no such thing as one original, one copy, that they're both equal. So whether or not the D'Argo and the Chiana who died on the cannibalized Leviathan were the ones whom we've been following all this time or whether they were the ones that came into being just moments earlier: the show refuses to give the audience the emotional get out of knowing. I think that's the largest difference of any other genre tv take on the clone/double/twin trope that I was familiar back when orignally watching, and it's still, decades later, the largest difference. I mentioned DW; there are not one but two other versions of Amy presented by the show in its sixth season, but while these other Amys are treated with sympathy, the show still makes it clear who "original" Amy is (and "original" Amy survives). Granted, Star Trek: TNG lets Riker's transporter double who subseqently decides to call himself Thomas survive, and the two episodes he's in do use him as a road not taken for Will Riker, but the audience still is under no doubt that Will is the original. What Farscape does is in this episode refusing to differentiate between double and original, never telling the audience which is which, and it will follow through for the entirety of the Two Crichtons arc that unfolds. I really can't think of any other show that risked unsettling its audience in this particular way.
While Jool isn't in the episode much and still is in an annoy/be scared/scream mode, I think I spy the first marks of characterisation beyond that, as she talkes herself into bravery when left alone. And on Moya, we get a reminder that Stark is still the most Crais hostile crew member (which given everyone else's backstory with and feelings about Crais is saying something) in his scene with Rygel re: what to do about Crais once Aeryn's back is turned. Incidentally, I always find this a bit odd, since Stark has had little personal experience of Crais-the-PK-Captain (as opposed to everyone else); it was Scorpius who tortured Stark, with Crais only coming in at the tail end of Stark's imprisonment. Then again, projection is a thing, Scorpius is not at hand, and Crais is of course anything but innocent.
Lastly: something I definitely didn't catch upon first watching but only upon rewatching - and this is the first time I rewatched this particular episode, as it's too gruesome to rewatch on a casual impulse - is the foreshadowing/information establishing to the audience by showing what happens if a Leviathan starbursts while under a control collar and thus unable to, well, actually move through space. And in the same episode that brings back Crais and Talyn, too. SOB.
The other episodes
no subject
Date: 2021-01-31 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-01 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-31 10:27 pm (UTC)But I'd forgotten how gruesome this ep is.
(Hi, I'm new! But FARSCAPE REWATCH.)
no subject
Date: 2021-02-01 10:36 am (UTC)Hello and welcome! And yes, I remember expecting for one of the Johns to be revealed as unstable or what not, that the audience would eventually find out which one was the "real" one, but no, the show stuck to its guns even after TalynJohn had died, treating both as real till the end. It was awesome. But yes, this particular episode is pure horror.