Farscape Rewatch: The Choice (3.17)
Apr. 11th, 2021 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWiki summary: Aeryn seeks refuge on a planet with a supernatural reputation after the loss of the Crichton she'd grown close to. Stark starts to hear Zhaan's voice, but nothing on this planet is what it seems when an old enemy returns.
Before I talk about the episode, I must raise my eyebrow at wikipedia. I mean - "the Crichton she'd grown close to"? As opposed to the one she was complete strangers with before he got twinned, I guess. Anyway, the episode itself is every bit as good as I recalled, though this time around thinking about it it occurred to me there's a plot hole, i.e. how did Xhalax find out Aeryn would come to Valdon and why with enough head warning to go there and recruit some local talent? Maybe in an early draft of the script Crais told her and then someone realised this would have made him look more terrible than intended? Still, honestly, I don't care how Xhalax knew, she just does, and so she's there for Family: Farscape Style. By which I mean: The TNG episode Family , coming directly after the Borg two parter in which Picard got transformed into Locutus and back, was the first Trek episode to present a direct emotional follow up to the horrible thing that had happened in the previous episode instead of the reset button. Nothing much plot wise happens in any of Family's three plot threads; the episode really is about feelings. By the time Farscape was broadcast, this was no longer that unusual, of course, but still not standard, and at any rate, devoting an entire episode to Aeryn's grief and Aeryn's issues was great and part of what made the show so emotionally real.
I also appreciate that it is explicitly about Aeryn's emotions, not about what a great guy the late TalynJohn was (no offense, TalynJohn). The return and ending of Xhalax Sun helps with that, of course. This rewatch reminded me again that we get the full tragedy of Xhalax in bit and pieces, i.e. t hat the final reveal - that she had to choose between killing her lover or killing her child - doesn't come until this episode (before rewatching Relativity, I had misremembered we found out then already); also, the other part of the tragedy, Xhalax' "I wasn't an assassin then" , but a pilot who loved flying, and that they made her kill again and again until she stopped caring really got me this time. Like I said in another entry, Xhalax is in many ways a might-have-been for Aeryn if Aeryn had never left the Peacekeepers and lived on board Moya. And she's also her own person, a look at what a system like the PKs results in for an individual who never gets a break. That her last attempt of coping involves tormenting the daughter whose existence she blames for destroying her life by reenacting her core trauma in front of her fits, as does that she's not really able to kill Aeryn.
(Pause for a moment of Crais sympathy here. Him killing Xhalax at the very moment when Aeryn is finally able to get through to her in an attempt to rescue Aeryn and make good of his earlier decision of not killing Xhalax is just typical for the way the universe screws with him, too. But also of how he himself contributes to it - Xhalax still living until this point was his decision, after all.)
Above all, the episode is yet another showcase of Claudia Black being an awesome actress who makes Aeryn's pain so visceral. This time around, I paid particular attention to how she responds to fake Talyn throughout, and the mixture of not really believing but at the same time really hoping this is real is palpable. (BTW, hats off to the script for letting Aeryn come to the right conclusion when Xhalax shows up; she's wild with grief, not stupid.) And she's so wonderfully vicious and bracing and intense in the scene with Stark and Crais. "You know what makes you so much worse than him? That you think you're so much better" is still one of my favourite Farscape moments.
(Sidenote of clarification: I don't mean in the sense that I agree with this as an overall judgment on Stark vs Crais as people. Stark is a man who spent a good deal of his life in slavery and was tortured for years and still tries to help (most) people he meets. Crais spent many years of his life as an active part of a fascistic dictatorship, however forcibly he was recruited into this as a kid, then he let go of even the dictatorship's rules to pursue a vendetta for a year, and now, while he's currently trying not to kill people and helps the few he cares about, this doesn't erase his past. HOWEVER, in terms of how they act in regards to Aeryn this season, Aeryn is right on the money.)
On the softer side of things, I love that short scene between Rygel and Aeryn to bits. Who'd have thought when this show started we'd see Rygel attempting to comfort Aeryn, without any benefit to himself, and that this would feel entirely ic for him and them at the moment it happens? Rygel is still his gloriously selfish self, but he has learned to care again through the seasons, and he does care for his shipmates. And while Aeryn isn't being comforted, she's not abrasive to him, either - again, from Aeryn's side, too, this is such a far cry to how she would have responded early in the show to the mere idea of the Hynerian offering sympathy.
Lastly: retrospectively, I wish the scriptwriters had thought of introducing Noranti here in a silent cameo, because that planet sure feels like her kind of place...
The other episodes
Before I talk about the episode, I must raise my eyebrow at wikipedia. I mean - "the Crichton she'd grown close to"? As opposed to the one she was complete strangers with before he got twinned, I guess. Anyway, the episode itself is every bit as good as I recalled, though this time around thinking about it it occurred to me there's a plot hole, i.e. how did Xhalax find out Aeryn would come to Valdon and why with enough head warning to go there and recruit some local talent? Maybe in an early draft of the script Crais told her and then someone realised this would have made him look more terrible than intended? Still, honestly, I don't care how Xhalax knew, she just does, and so she's there for Family: Farscape Style. By which I mean: The TNG episode Family , coming directly after the Borg two parter in which Picard got transformed into Locutus and back, was the first Trek episode to present a direct emotional follow up to the horrible thing that had happened in the previous episode instead of the reset button. Nothing much plot wise happens in any of Family's three plot threads; the episode really is about feelings. By the time Farscape was broadcast, this was no longer that unusual, of course, but still not standard, and at any rate, devoting an entire episode to Aeryn's grief and Aeryn's issues was great and part of what made the show so emotionally real.
I also appreciate that it is explicitly about Aeryn's emotions, not about what a great guy the late TalynJohn was (no offense, TalynJohn). The return and ending of Xhalax Sun helps with that, of course. This rewatch reminded me again that we get the full tragedy of Xhalax in bit and pieces, i.e. t hat the final reveal - that she had to choose between killing her lover or killing her child - doesn't come until this episode (before rewatching Relativity, I had misremembered we found out then already); also, the other part of the tragedy, Xhalax' "I wasn't an assassin then" , but a pilot who loved flying, and that they made her kill again and again until she stopped caring really got me this time. Like I said in another entry, Xhalax is in many ways a might-have-been for Aeryn if Aeryn had never left the Peacekeepers and lived on board Moya. And she's also her own person, a look at what a system like the PKs results in for an individual who never gets a break. That her last attempt of coping involves tormenting the daughter whose existence she blames for destroying her life by reenacting her core trauma in front of her fits, as does that she's not really able to kill Aeryn.
(Pause for a moment of Crais sympathy here. Him killing Xhalax at the very moment when Aeryn is finally able to get through to her in an attempt to rescue Aeryn and make good of his earlier decision of not killing Xhalax is just typical for the way the universe screws with him, too. But also of how he himself contributes to it - Xhalax still living until this point was his decision, after all.)
Above all, the episode is yet another showcase of Claudia Black being an awesome actress who makes Aeryn's pain so visceral. This time around, I paid particular attention to how she responds to fake Talyn throughout, and the mixture of not really believing but at the same time really hoping this is real is palpable. (BTW, hats off to the script for letting Aeryn come to the right conclusion when Xhalax shows up; she's wild with grief, not stupid.) And she's so wonderfully vicious and bracing and intense in the scene with Stark and Crais. "You know what makes you so much worse than him? That you think you're so much better" is still one of my favourite Farscape moments.
(Sidenote of clarification: I don't mean in the sense that I agree with this as an overall judgment on Stark vs Crais as people. Stark is a man who spent a good deal of his life in slavery and was tortured for years and still tries to help (most) people he meets. Crais spent many years of his life as an active part of a fascistic dictatorship, however forcibly he was recruited into this as a kid, then he let go of even the dictatorship's rules to pursue a vendetta for a year, and now, while he's currently trying not to kill people and helps the few he cares about, this doesn't erase his past. HOWEVER, in terms of how they act in regards to Aeryn this season, Aeryn is right on the money.)
On the softer side of things, I love that short scene between Rygel and Aeryn to bits. Who'd have thought when this show started we'd see Rygel attempting to comfort Aeryn, without any benefit to himself, and that this would feel entirely ic for him and them at the moment it happens? Rygel is still his gloriously selfish self, but he has learned to care again through the seasons, and he does care for his shipmates. And while Aeryn isn't being comforted, she's not abrasive to him, either - again, from Aeryn's side, too, this is such a far cry to how she would have responded early in the show to the mere idea of the Hynerian offering sympathy.
Lastly: retrospectively, I wish the scriptwriters had thought of introducing Noranti here in a silent cameo, because that planet sure feels like her kind of place...
The other episodes
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Date: 2021-04-11 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-12 02:50 pm (UTC)