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selenakFarscape newbies: this icon isn't showing Aeryn Sun, but Chiana. I don't have an Aeryn icon; she's one of those characters who always make me feel slightly guilty because they ought to be my favourite, and they're not. But I do like her a lot, and am happy to ramble on about her.
TV character wise, Aeryn Sun is in many ways a direct descendant of Susan Ivanova on Babylon 5 and Kira Nerys on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Not just for the general warrior woman archetype; Ivanova, Kira and Aeryn are all basically female Byronic heroes. They're the ones haunted by their part (and past guilt, in the case of two of them) while in the present presenting an every day cynicism, complete with sneer disguising inner vulnerability, being sexually attractive to many, when (except in Kira's case) in swoops a male wide eyed idealist who is openly emotional and cheerful in the way they are not. Of course, this is where the reversed gender Gothic novel pattern breaks down in all cases. Marcus Cole on B5, well, those are spoilers for another entry, and John Crichton while playing the wide eyed vulnerable duck out of water to Aeryn's tough warrior woman early in the show, he then proceeds to get broken in as many ways as the show can figure out to do (seriously, Farscape has to set some kind of record for male lead getting put through rape and torture tropes) and emerges, not surprisingly, a very screwed up if also very interesting being (most definitely not a wide-eyed naif anymore), while Aeryn gets more openly emotional by the season. By the time The Peacekeeper Wars, a two part film that thankfully got made after the show got cancelled abruptly, wraps up their story, they're in balance re: their degrees of past guilt, present toughness and vulnerability.
Aeryn is also, with the lamentable exception of season 4, a character with a rich set of relationships other than the one with John Crichton. Her being the product of a fascist society and adjusting to a different life while never losing part of what originally shaped her is very much part of her characterisation (insert here, as in many other things, "with the lamentable exception of season 4"). She starts out her story on the show being stuck on a ship with people who have every reason to resent her, to put it mildly, considering she used to be part of the force that imprisoned and maltreated them, and is now on Moya not because she wanted to leave but because they kicked her out. It's not an easy place to be in, but she starts to make it her place. Other than the one with Crichton, Aeryn Sun's main relationships on Moya are with Pilot (if you never watched the show: he's the one everyone is thinking of when saying "the Muppets will make you cry" to people who don't want to get into Farscape because two of the regular characters are created by Jim Henson's people - Pilot is the symbiotic being with multiple arms who steers the ship), with whom it turns out she shares a breathtakingly tragic backstory (that directly involves what Aeryn used to do in her fascist past), and with D'Argo, whom she bonds with on a warrior-to-warrior level that's delightful to watch and never has a breath of UST. Her most interesting relationships outside of Moya, the sentient, living ship she travels on, are with her former superior officer, Bialar Crais, and with a character who like Pilot is not human but no less a person because of that: Moya's child (yes, another sentient space ship - they're leviathans, deal) Talyn. Crais spends most of s1 as the main villain before we get to meet the guy who takes over that position for the next two seasons, which benefits no one as much as Crais, from a Doylist pov, because Villain!Crais is your avarage crazed bad guy, whereas after Scorpius shows up he becomes Morally Ambiguous!Crais who might or might not be on a path of redemption (you'll find out when you watch) and whose actions are often a wild card because you can't be certain of his loyalties.
Crais and Aeryn start out as enemies, to put it mildly (what with him kicking her out of the Peacekeepers, and her taking the chance to avenge herself, three quarters of a season later, by putting him through torture), but once he's a renegade, too, they share not only the background and present opposite position but also, because Crais is cunning that way, unexpected child custody of a space ship. The earlier mentioned off spring of Moya's, Talyn, who basically imprints on Crais and Aeryn as his other parents, and the Aeryn and Crais interactions thereafter very much feel like that of a divorced couple (except for the part where they were never married) working together for the sake of the kid. You might argue they get to know each other far better through Talyn than they ever did while both serving in the Peacekeepers. Crais also gets romantically interested in Aeryn, but with the awareness he doesn't have a shot (though that he does so after she tortured him says some interesting things about Crais). For Aeryn, I think Crais - other than their shared bond via Talyn - is someone who gets what it means to be an ex Peacekeeper in a galaxy with a lot of Peacekeeper victims. Their goodbye scene in the s3 finale shortly before Crais' and Talyn's deaths is one of my favourite Farscape scenes of all time.
In s3, Aeryn discovers her mother Xhalax (previously assumed dead) is alive, still in the Peacekeepers and set on hunting her down. In many ways, Xhalax is who Aeryn could have turned into, if she'd never encountered Crichton & Moya, had never had any of those experiences but continued to serve in the Peacekeepers after having made a traumatic choice. (Aeryn turned in a lover whom she had real feelings for for the sake of her career; her mother had to kill either her lover, Aeryn's father, or Aeryn herself to prove her loyalties, and picked her lover.) The s3 storyline of Xhalax is a veritable Greek tragedy, and a might-have-been at the same time. Which is why I didn't have a problem with Aeryn eventually having a child on her own - between her Talyn (whom she named after her father) experience and her mother issues, it works as a symbol of Aeryn having come to terms with her past and going into the future - but what I did have a problem with, and what started the moment we found out about the pregnancy, at the very end of s3, was how it was handled in s4, because it was part of the general problem of how Aeryn was written in s4. You see, we find out not from Aeryn, or in a scene where Aeryn finds out; we found out via new character Noranti telling John Crichton "Aeryn is pregnant" as a cliffhanger. In other words, the new plot element of Aeryn being pregnant isn't about Aeryn at all. It's something more for John to angst about.
Some fans nickamed Aeryn in s4 PodAeryn, an it's easy to see why, though Aeryn still has a few great scenes (mostly in the episode where she, Chiana and Noranti are the main characters, but also the one mid s4 in Kansas when she practises her newly learned English with the help of the Sesame Street muppets). All those other relationships I mentioned? No longer existant. Instead, Aeryn is nearly exclusively defined through her romance with John Crichton, and as opposed to the previous seasons, when the obstacles of said romance (which goes from UST to RST as early as s1, btw - having sex, or not, is never treated as the big issue between them) felt organic to the characters (Aeryn's intimacy issues, and then the way her relationship with one version of John, who gets cloned early ins 3, ended), in s4 they just feel gratitious (Aeryn brings Scorpius on board because he saved her life! John takes drugs from Noranti!), and are resolved in one of the most intelligence insulting scenes on tv. (Seriously. John tells Aeryn he distanced himself from her in s4 because he didn't want Scorpius to figure out he, John, really really loves Aeryn and would do anything for her. Because clearly Scorpius is so deaf, dumb and blind that he didn't realise that a few seasons ago.) And when we get an episode with a premise that could have made it the next big Aeryn character episode (the last we had was The Choice in s3) in s4, when she's imprisoned and there are flashbacks to what she did between s3 and s4, what is the big revelation, the point of it all? That Aeryn really, really, really loves John and no one else. I never was a fan of "I never loved another person in my life" declarations (with a very few exceptions, and those are sociopaths) to begin with, but that took the cake. S4, consequently, was the only Farscape season where I actively anti-shipped John/Aeryn, and I only have a few other anti-ships. (Kara/Lee on BSG come to mind, as do Adama/Roslin in s3 and s4.)
Thankfully, we then got The Peacekeeper Wars, which not only was a reminder that John and Aeryn as a couple could be engaging - instead of two obsessives angsting about their love life, they were in Butch and Sundance mode again - but also brought back Aeryn as not a pod person anymore in general, with, at last, D'Argo asking how she feels about this whole marriage and pregnancy thing. It also let Aeryn find out how the Peacekeepers started, and while the way peace between Sebaceans and Scarrans eventually is achieved comes with a question mark due to mental meddling, I was still on board with Aeryn, John and newborn baby sailing on to new adventures and the future in Moya as a farewell to the character. I never felt I had to worry about her; whatever happened next, Aeryn Sun would find a way to deal.
TV character wise, Aeryn Sun is in many ways a direct descendant of Susan Ivanova on Babylon 5 and Kira Nerys on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Not just for the general warrior woman archetype; Ivanova, Kira and Aeryn are all basically female Byronic heroes. They're the ones haunted by their part (and past guilt, in the case of two of them) while in the present presenting an every day cynicism, complete with sneer disguising inner vulnerability, being sexually attractive to many, when (except in Kira's case) in swoops a male wide eyed idealist who is openly emotional and cheerful in the way they are not. Of course, this is where the reversed gender Gothic novel pattern breaks down in all cases. Marcus Cole on B5, well, those are spoilers for another entry, and John Crichton while playing the wide eyed vulnerable duck out of water to Aeryn's tough warrior woman early in the show, he then proceeds to get broken in as many ways as the show can figure out to do (seriously, Farscape has to set some kind of record for male lead getting put through rape and torture tropes) and emerges, not surprisingly, a very screwed up if also very interesting being (most definitely not a wide-eyed naif anymore), while Aeryn gets more openly emotional by the season. By the time The Peacekeeper Wars, a two part film that thankfully got made after the show got cancelled abruptly, wraps up their story, they're in balance re: their degrees of past guilt, present toughness and vulnerability.
Aeryn is also, with the lamentable exception of season 4, a character with a rich set of relationships other than the one with John Crichton. Her being the product of a fascist society and adjusting to a different life while never losing part of what originally shaped her is very much part of her characterisation (insert here, as in many other things, "with the lamentable exception of season 4"). She starts out her story on the show being stuck on a ship with people who have every reason to resent her, to put it mildly, considering she used to be part of the force that imprisoned and maltreated them, and is now on Moya not because she wanted to leave but because they kicked her out. It's not an easy place to be in, but she starts to make it her place. Other than the one with Crichton, Aeryn Sun's main relationships on Moya are with Pilot (if you never watched the show: he's the one everyone is thinking of when saying "the Muppets will make you cry" to people who don't want to get into Farscape because two of the regular characters are created by Jim Henson's people - Pilot is the symbiotic being with multiple arms who steers the ship), with whom it turns out she shares a breathtakingly tragic backstory (that directly involves what Aeryn used to do in her fascist past), and with D'Argo, whom she bonds with on a warrior-to-warrior level that's delightful to watch and never has a breath of UST. Her most interesting relationships outside of Moya, the sentient, living ship she travels on, are with her former superior officer, Bialar Crais, and with a character who like Pilot is not human but no less a person because of that: Moya's child (yes, another sentient space ship - they're leviathans, deal) Talyn. Crais spends most of s1 as the main villain before we get to meet the guy who takes over that position for the next two seasons, which benefits no one as much as Crais, from a Doylist pov, because Villain!Crais is your avarage crazed bad guy, whereas after Scorpius shows up he becomes Morally Ambiguous!Crais who might or might not be on a path of redemption (you'll find out when you watch) and whose actions are often a wild card because you can't be certain of his loyalties.
Crais and Aeryn start out as enemies, to put it mildly (what with him kicking her out of the Peacekeepers, and her taking the chance to avenge herself, three quarters of a season later, by putting him through torture), but once he's a renegade, too, they share not only the background and present opposite position but also, because Crais is cunning that way, unexpected child custody of a space ship. The earlier mentioned off spring of Moya's, Talyn, who basically imprints on Crais and Aeryn as his other parents, and the Aeryn and Crais interactions thereafter very much feel like that of a divorced couple (except for the part where they were never married) working together for the sake of the kid. You might argue they get to know each other far better through Talyn than they ever did while both serving in the Peacekeepers. Crais also gets romantically interested in Aeryn, but with the awareness he doesn't have a shot (though that he does so after she tortured him says some interesting things about Crais). For Aeryn, I think Crais - other than their shared bond via Talyn - is someone who gets what it means to be an ex Peacekeeper in a galaxy with a lot of Peacekeeper victims. Their goodbye scene in the s3 finale shortly before Crais' and Talyn's deaths is one of my favourite Farscape scenes of all time.
In s3, Aeryn discovers her mother Xhalax (previously assumed dead) is alive, still in the Peacekeepers and set on hunting her down. In many ways, Xhalax is who Aeryn could have turned into, if she'd never encountered Crichton & Moya, had never had any of those experiences but continued to serve in the Peacekeepers after having made a traumatic choice. (Aeryn turned in a lover whom she had real feelings for for the sake of her career; her mother had to kill either her lover, Aeryn's father, or Aeryn herself to prove her loyalties, and picked her lover.) The s3 storyline of Xhalax is a veritable Greek tragedy, and a might-have-been at the same time. Which is why I didn't have a problem with Aeryn eventually having a child on her own - between her Talyn (whom she named after her father) experience and her mother issues, it works as a symbol of Aeryn having come to terms with her past and going into the future - but what I did have a problem with, and what started the moment we found out about the pregnancy, at the very end of s3, was how it was handled in s4, because it was part of the general problem of how Aeryn was written in s4. You see, we find out not from Aeryn, or in a scene where Aeryn finds out; we found out via new character Noranti telling John Crichton "Aeryn is pregnant" as a cliffhanger. In other words, the new plot element of Aeryn being pregnant isn't about Aeryn at all. It's something more for John to angst about.
Some fans nickamed Aeryn in s4 PodAeryn, an it's easy to see why, though Aeryn still has a few great scenes (mostly in the episode where she, Chiana and Noranti are the main characters, but also the one mid s4 in Kansas when she practises her newly learned English with the help of the Sesame Street muppets). All those other relationships I mentioned? No longer existant. Instead, Aeryn is nearly exclusively defined through her romance with John Crichton, and as opposed to the previous seasons, when the obstacles of said romance (which goes from UST to RST as early as s1, btw - having sex, or not, is never treated as the big issue between them) felt organic to the characters (Aeryn's intimacy issues, and then the way her relationship with one version of John, who gets cloned early ins 3, ended), in s4 they just feel gratitious (Aeryn brings Scorpius on board because he saved her life! John takes drugs from Noranti!), and are resolved in one of the most intelligence insulting scenes on tv. (Seriously. John tells Aeryn he distanced himself from her in s4 because he didn't want Scorpius to figure out he, John, really really loves Aeryn and would do anything for her. Because clearly Scorpius is so deaf, dumb and blind that he didn't realise that a few seasons ago.) And when we get an episode with a premise that could have made it the next big Aeryn character episode (the last we had was The Choice in s3) in s4, when she's imprisoned and there are flashbacks to what she did between s3 and s4, what is the big revelation, the point of it all? That Aeryn really, really, really loves John and no one else. I never was a fan of "I never loved another person in my life" declarations (with a very few exceptions, and those are sociopaths) to begin with, but that took the cake. S4, consequently, was the only Farscape season where I actively anti-shipped John/Aeryn, and I only have a few other anti-ships. (Kara/Lee on BSG come to mind, as do Adama/Roslin in s3 and s4.)
Thankfully, we then got The Peacekeeper Wars, which not only was a reminder that John and Aeryn as a couple could be engaging - instead of two obsessives angsting about their love life, they were in Butch and Sundance mode again - but also brought back Aeryn as not a pod person anymore in general, with, at last, D'Argo asking how she feels about this whole marriage and pregnancy thing. It also let Aeryn find out how the Peacekeepers started, and while the way peace between Sebaceans and Scarrans eventually is achieved comes with a question mark due to mental meddling, I was still on board with Aeryn, John and newborn baby sailing on to new adventures and the future in Moya as a farewell to the character. I never felt I had to worry about her; whatever happened next, Aeryn Sun would find a way to deal.
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Date: 2013-12-21 08:18 am (UTC)My last Farscape rewatch was several years ago; if my life weren't so crowded right now, I'd love to do another.