selenak

Wiki summary: D'Argo and Rygel meet with Scorpius and several Peacekeeper officers in an unassuming diner, with a list of demands in exchange for Crichton helping with his wormhole research, only to be interrupted by a pair of robbers who take them all hostage. They work together in order to get out alive, and come to an arrangement that will allow Crichton and Aeryn Sun to board the Command Carrier. Meanwhile, Talyn defends himself against a Peacekeeper attack, only to destroy a medical ship full of innocent lives. When the crew attempt to disarm him, he panics and attacks Moya. Eventually Aeryn convinces him to allow them to shut him down and remove his mechanical components.

Again, I had forgotten about The One Not Evil Scarran surviving into the opening scene of this episode and being among those killed on the medical ship, though I did recall the fate of the medical ship itself. Something else that struck me this time around was that this is the first time we see Chiana act on one of her visions and being able to prevent (part of) the future she‘s seen - specfically Jool‘s death on the ship. I always had mixed feelings about Farscape giving Chiana psychic powers, not least because the show alters the nature of said powers later on as if it can‘t decide what they should be, but if you do provide one of your characters with the gift to see the future, you also have to decide on whether your universe operates on just one timeline or several, and whether or not the timeline can be altered or whether it always bounces back. And since this very season, in just about the last episode with an untwinned Crichton, decided that the timeline can indeed be altered and made this a huge plot point, it‘s neat to see continuity here. Speaking of continuity, Jool originally having no intention of joining an operation pitching our heroes against a Peacekeeper Command Carrier and prefering to get the hell out of there makes complete sense, too, as does Chiana at least thinking she‘ll do the same thing (though at this point the audience can be reasonably sure in the end, she won‘t).

The two plot threads have a completely different emotional tone, so it‘s weird that the episode works as well as it does (in my opinion, as always). The plot with Rygel and D‘Argo negotiating with Scorpius and Bracca, complete ending up accidentally in a hostage situation where they have to team up, is just great fun. (This said, I also think the cook and his wife are excellent one shot characters because they look like they‘re comic relief at first and then their fate has real pathos; also, their reactions throughout and concerns, and even the stupid insurance scheme, are the kind of emotional reality the Unchartered Territories have, sci fi surroundings not withstanding.) I remember my first rewatch years ago when I aquired the dvds for this ep and the next few, which had an audio commentary where Rygel and Scorpius are referred to as possibly the two smartest characters of the show, and that this is why they were such fun to write together. Now you can argue that sometimes Rygel is made to do a lot of foolish things for the sake of the plot, so „smartest“ he‘s not always, but here they‘re certainly the two wiliest, and I loved every bit of it, from Rygel not being phased by the initial goon squad coming in, figuring that this is a test, onwards. It‘s certainly one of his best episodes. And while the Yensch-Bracelets here are mainly used in a slapstick fashion with D‘Argo and Bracca, introducing them thusly and one episode ahead of the big finale multiparter was a clever decision on the part of the writers since this establishes a believable plot device needed for Crichton and Scorpius ahead of time, meaning it won‘t have to be explained in the next episode.

While all this is going on in one plot, though, the other offers relentless tragedy. Not for the first time, it occurred to me that Talyn the ship is Connor (from Angel: The Series) as a Leviathan, and here he even (seemingly) gets the (seeming) ending Connor does in the AtS s4 finale - a death/future rebirth with altered personality (or if you want to put it more unkindly, a lobotomy). Now this won‘t happen with Talyn because of the impending plot, but it‘s what Crais (and the rest of the main cast) think is the only available solution at this point. Because Talyn has the ability to kill hundreds of people in a teenage panic attack, and has acted out more than once before this episode‘s events, the show has laid groundworks, and there is something dramatically right in Crais, who brought Talyn in to being as a gunship, now having to essentially kill him despite having come to love him. And yet I also feel the Doylist mechanics there when I didn‘t the first few times of watching, i.e., I can‘t help but suspect that Talyn needed to die - as opposed to, say, being sent off to get Leviathan therapy for a season from the godlike creators, or some other non-lethal plot removal - because as long as Talyn is still around, with or without Crais, Aeryn has an emotional connection to him and an alternative to living on Moya. (Which, given how things will be between her and Crichton for a good while in s4, she‘d logically take.)

Anyway, there‘s huge tonal whiplash as we cut between the two plots, and yet, as I said, it works for me. I kept going between grinning at the Rygel and Scorpius scenes and sighing over Talyn Without A Cause (also, poor, poor Moya!), and finding both plots really well done.

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