Farscape Rewatch: "Relativity" (3.10)
Feb. 28th, 2021 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWiki summary: Setting down on a swamp planet to help Talyn recover from his recent injuries, the Peacekeeper Retrieval Squad catches up with his crew and Aeryn squares off with her relentless mother, Xhalax.
I can’t remember whether or not I believed Xhalax was dead when I first watched this, but I think I was familiar with the laws of tv already, to wit, no dead body on camera, no death. Otoh, I do remember getting a nasty shock when Xhalax knifed Rygel, despite Rygel being a regular; I was afraid for a few minutes they would kill him off. Btw, Stark stitching some of Rygel’s robes on his body in his impromptu surgeon job is so very Farscape. (And a successful black humor gag, unlike Stark’s voyeurism at the start of the episode when he wants to listen to John and Aeryn having sex, which is just, well, creepy.)
All in all, the episode still works very well for me upon this rewatch: Xhalax is a tragic opponent as well as a might have been, as I mentioned in an earlier review: Aeryn if she’d remained with the Peacekeepers, as well as Aeryn if fate had never given her a break. Even the reveal of Xhalax having to kill Talyn to “redeem” herself has a parallel to Aeryn’s backstory from “The Way We Weren’t”. All this being said, I think what comes across is that both is true: Xhalax is responsible for her own choices now, and the life Xhalax has had so far makes it almost impossible now for her to be other than who she is. Again, congrats to the casting and the actress’ resemblance to Claudia Black, not just in looks but in mannerism.
What hadn’t thrown me originally but now makes me raise an eyebrow is John treating the realisation that not just Talyn but Crais is wanted by the PK Retrieval Squad as a big reveal of Crais’ dishonesty. I mean, duh? He’s a high ranking deserter, of course they want him back to punish him. Even low ranking pilot Aeryn Syn was on the Wanted list back in s1, this despite having been declared contaminated to begin with. Maybe it’s having the 18th century and its laws on the brain currently, but seriously, this would have been true for, like, every army ever. Let alone a military dictatorship like the PKs.
Also: I had misremembered that TalynJohn’s Harvey does not show up again until the Daedalus/Icarus episodes, so him doing so here surprised me a bit. I note John addresses him as “Scorpy” whereas MoyaJohn at this point generally uses “Harvey”; this goes with MoyaJohn consulting with the Neuralclone far more and his Harvey developing far more individual traits whereas TalynJohn’s neuralclone is still very Scorpius-only modelled.
Question: Talyn offers far less living space than Moya. If they had been on Moya, who does have cells,after all, do we think Aeryn would have attempted to keep her mother as prisoner in the hope of thus changing her mind? I mean, she had to know from her own backstory that you can’t do a life time of conditioning just by one encounter and a heartfelt speech - it took Aeryn far longer than this to become who she is now, and she was younger and both less scarred (both mentally and physically).
John saying not that Xhalax shouldn’t die, but that Aeryn shouldn’t be the one to kill her mother: on the one hand, yes, on the other, no? What I mean is that I can’t decide how I feel about him making this decision for her. (Leaving aside that letting Crais do it, or so he thinks, is also a questionable choice given his stated distrust of Crais.)
The other episodes
I can’t remember whether or not I believed Xhalax was dead when I first watched this, but I think I was familiar with the laws of tv already, to wit, no dead body on camera, no death. Otoh, I do remember getting a nasty shock when Xhalax knifed Rygel, despite Rygel being a regular; I was afraid for a few minutes they would kill him off. Btw, Stark stitching some of Rygel’s robes on his body in his impromptu surgeon job is so very Farscape. (And a successful black humor gag, unlike Stark’s voyeurism at the start of the episode when he wants to listen to John and Aeryn having sex, which is just, well, creepy.)
All in all, the episode still works very well for me upon this rewatch: Xhalax is a tragic opponent as well as a might have been, as I mentioned in an earlier review: Aeryn if she’d remained with the Peacekeepers, as well as Aeryn if fate had never given her a break. Even the reveal of Xhalax having to kill Talyn to “redeem” herself has a parallel to Aeryn’s backstory from “The Way We Weren’t”. All this being said, I think what comes across is that both is true: Xhalax is responsible for her own choices now, and the life Xhalax has had so far makes it almost impossible now for her to be other than who she is. Again, congrats to the casting and the actress’ resemblance to Claudia Black, not just in looks but in mannerism.
What hadn’t thrown me originally but now makes me raise an eyebrow is John treating the realisation that not just Talyn but Crais is wanted by the PK Retrieval Squad as a big reveal of Crais’ dishonesty. I mean, duh? He’s a high ranking deserter, of course they want him back to punish him. Even low ranking pilot Aeryn Syn was on the Wanted list back in s1, this despite having been declared contaminated to begin with. Maybe it’s having the 18th century and its laws on the brain currently, but seriously, this would have been true for, like, every army ever. Let alone a military dictatorship like the PKs.
Also: I had misremembered that TalynJohn’s Harvey does not show up again until the Daedalus/Icarus episodes, so him doing so here surprised me a bit. I note John addresses him as “Scorpy” whereas MoyaJohn at this point generally uses “Harvey”; this goes with MoyaJohn consulting with the Neuralclone far more and his Harvey developing far more individual traits whereas TalynJohn’s neuralclone is still very Scorpius-only modelled.
Question: Talyn offers far less living space than Moya. If they had been on Moya, who does have cells,after all, do we think Aeryn would have attempted to keep her mother as prisoner in the hope of thus changing her mind? I mean, she had to know from her own backstory that you can’t do a life time of conditioning just by one encounter and a heartfelt speech - it took Aeryn far longer than this to become who she is now, and she was younger and both less scarred (both mentally and physically).
John saying not that Xhalax shouldn’t die, but that Aeryn shouldn’t be the one to kill her mother: on the one hand, yes, on the other, no? What I mean is that I can’t decide how I feel about him making this decision for her. (Leaving aside that letting Crais do it, or so he thinks, is also a questionable choice given his stated distrust of Crais.)
The other episodes
