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selenakFarscape is somewhat obsessed with physical and mental invasions, even in the first, "light" season.
"DNA Mad Scientist" was another one I missed during the original run, so the orgy of eye-ball stabbing (SOMEONE in the writing team of this show has been way too much into Philipp K. Dick and various film versions of same), Aeryn's stint as a Pilot hybrid and most of all the chilling ruthlessness with which Zhaan, D'Argo and Rygel hack away Pilot's arm to pay for their imagined map home escaped me the first time around. And they do it while none of them is in any way possessed or otherwise lacking of self control (which would be what would have happened on nearly any other Sci-Fi show, save B7). Incidentally, I don't think John would be able to do it even four years later. Sacrifice his friends for A Cause (the most likely cause being Aeryn's life or the fate of the universe), yes, but not take away one of their limbs.
Of course, after "DNA Mad Scientist" has shown us what everyone else would do to get home, "Till the Blood Runs Clear" presents us with a short but telling look at the Crichtonian obsession to do so. He sees his first wormhole since the pilot, and at that moment it doesn't matter a bit that Aeryn is with him and might not want to go to Earth; it's one of these early rare moments where John isn't just unaware of Aeryn but acting unabashedly selfish. Coincidence that he meets Furlow in this episode?
"Raphsody in Blue" I had seen and liked years ago; what I hadn't noticed then is the above named general theme, because of course there, we have minds (mostly, but not exclusively John's) invaded left and right. John sharing Unity with Zhaan voluntarily to restore her balance is the counterpoint to this. Someone, I forgot who, suggested Zhaan, who lives a part of herself behind just as Scorpius will later, embodies John's spiritual, caring side and that his growing harder after her death, more similar to Scorpius, is connected to this. The idea of Zhaan and Scorpius as John's good and bad angels, in a medieval-theology-fashion, appeals but only covers a level. Zhaan has her own dark side, and you get the sense that she needs John to believe in her as the good, caring person he sees her at (as she will later need Stark) to hold to this ideal. John as a distorting reflection who reforms the person he mirrors works for Scorpius, too (more about this later).
"A Human Reaction": and we continue with the mind-messing. A good episode which gets even better in hindsight. Originally, I thought it was an inventive spin on the "what if?" scenario I was familiar with other shows; now I think that this, even before Scorpius, is the point of no return, the invasion of self which puts an end to innocent, wide-eyed first season John Crichton. Because what the Ancients do to him, no matter their intentions, is a more complete and thorough violation than the Delvians ever managed, and it is not consensual by a long shot. What they bring to the surface is the paranoid side of John who fears that everyone is an enemy, that he will manage to get every friend killed, and that the hope he clings to will turn out to be poison. And what they leave behind, the coded wormhole knowledge, gives him the fellow obsessive from hell.
(On the other hand, if John wouldn't have had any wormhole tech hidden in his brain, Scorpius would have killed him in "Nerve", so you could say it saved his life.)
And right on cue, the dress code changes after "A Human Reaction". "A Bug's Life" sees John out of his white Astronaut garbs and into Peacekeeper leather, which he'll remain in. Speaking of "A Bug's Life", that was another one new to me, and I was glad to finally see Larraq. Aeryn's Gilina, but not quite; I don't think Aeryn would have seen Larraq as the road not taken. Since I was told this was the episode where John kills deliberately for the first time, I felt just the tiniest bit let down, because in the first case, it was the virus, and in the second, he really didn't have any other choice if he wanted to save the rest of the galaxy.
"Nerve" and "The Hidden Memory": enter Scorpius. But first some words about some of the others; the scenes between Aeryn and D'Argo reminded me that their warrior-bonding was quite an appealing thing in the early stage of the show but somehow fell away from season 2 onwards. Which I'm sorry for: Aeryn's relationships with the rest of the Moya crew, apart from John, feel like they've never really been fleshed out. (Well, okay, except for Pilot in "The Way We Weren't".) On the other hand, this might have contributed to what was to come with Talyn and Crais, and I wouldn't have wanted to miss those scenes.
Speaking of Crais, here he has his last hooray in his old "You killed my brother, prepare to die" role, and not a moment too soon. It really didn't make much sense that a very rigid organization like the Peacekeepers would be unable to contain him from pursuing his private vendetta. We almost get a death-and-rebirth scenario for Crais; his encounter with Aeryn in "The Hidden Memory", when she uses the Aurora chair on him. "I give you your life", indeed.
(Sidenote: when John meets Aeryn, she beats him up and as he later puts it, she had him from day 1. Crais sees Aeryn as nothing but an insubordinate Officer until she puts him through hell in the Aurora chair; from that point onward, we get UST each time they meet, and she arguably becomes the most important person (person not being the right term for Talyn) in the world for him. Do these two and Spike have a lot in common or what?)
Rewatching thse two episodes, it struck me that compared with the rest of the show, Wayne Pygram uses an almost monotone speech pattern as Scorpius here. (My guess would be that this was originally intended as a deliberate contrast to Crais.) We don't get the usual Scorpian rhythms until "Family Ties" (just compare the scene with Braca there to the way Scorpius gives his orders in "Nerve" and "The Hidden Memory"). None the less, it's one impressive debut, and it makes character scene if one considers that Scorpius IS at this point completely detached. Which is why I've got problems with fanfic presenting those scenes as kinky sadism. One of the aspects which makes them chilling to me is the calm methological approach. And note that as soon as Scorpius finds out Crais is not hiding any wormhole info, he stops with the chair. He doesn't torture for the fun of torturing. Well, not people he isn't interested in; later in the show, when he has become interested in John Crichton the individual, things are different, but at this early stage? It could have been Rygel (save for that convenient Hynerian reaction to the chair), and Scorpius wouldn't have done anything different.
Which begs the question: when does Scorpius start to become interested?
And on a trivia note: when does he decide to equip John with the chip? My guess would be after the fake Crais memory. He must have decided the chair wasn't going to get him anywhere soon. But did he let him escape deliberately or did he originally plan for the chip to work with John still in prison?
"Family Ties": or, the episode which changed me from someone flirting with the idea to a full-blown John/Rygel 'shipper. No, seriously: John's little "Sparky, Fluffy, Buckwheat..." speech and the ensuing kiss remains one of my favourite Farscape scenes, because the "you sold us out, but I love you anyway" subtext gets me every time.
Apart from that, it's also the episode which got me interested in Crais as a character. Goodbye, raving vendatta pursuer; hello, shades-of-grey renegade. And you've got to love how they did this step by step; Crais does get to be ruthless and unabashedly selfish in kidnapping Talyn, but as it turns out he's quite sincere about burying the hatch with Crichton about the brother business. And about having a new relationship with Aeryn, see above. Another welcome change is Crais being allowed to display the intelligence which presumably made him Captain to begin with. One of Scorpius' few blind spots is his tendency to underestimate Crais and you can see it here as well as in "Into the Lion's Den: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing". It's Crais who correctly points out that Scorpius will prioritize keeping John Crichton alive over the preservation of his Gammak Base, and thereby makes it possible for the Moya Crew to come up with a winning strategy.
The destruction of the Base, complete with John and D'Argo free-floating in space, remains one of Farscape's most arresting visuals, but you've got to wonder: just how many people were on that base? People like Gilina, PK personnel, or Officers like Aeryn, for that matter. And John, prior to being arrested, has seen the base and the people; they're not just statistics. Not that the Moya crew had other options to ensure their own survival, but this is where John's massive body count starts. Another Blake's 7 comparison: Blake goes from surrendering because he doesn't want any more people to get executed in "Space Falls" to blowing up Federation bases within a season, too; within two season's, he's ready to accept the death of "many, many people" (to use the direct Cally quote; fanon usually quotes this as "millions", but it's not what she says) and general anarchy and civil war to end Federation rule. But Blake, as I mentioned in another entry, starts out having to reconstruct his self after brainwashing; John, after one year mental invasions, the last the most violent, has only just started to deconstruct himself, and the fact he's said goodbye to pacifism for good with this gesture is just one of the symptoms.
"DNA Mad Scientist" was another one I missed during the original run, so the orgy of eye-ball stabbing (SOMEONE in the writing team of this show has been way too much into Philipp K. Dick and various film versions of same), Aeryn's stint as a Pilot hybrid and most of all the chilling ruthlessness with which Zhaan, D'Argo and Rygel hack away Pilot's arm to pay for their imagined map home escaped me the first time around. And they do it while none of them is in any way possessed or otherwise lacking of self control (which would be what would have happened on nearly any other Sci-Fi show, save B7). Incidentally, I don't think John would be able to do it even four years later. Sacrifice his friends for A Cause (the most likely cause being Aeryn's life or the fate of the universe), yes, but not take away one of their limbs.
Of course, after "DNA Mad Scientist" has shown us what everyone else would do to get home, "Till the Blood Runs Clear" presents us with a short but telling look at the Crichtonian obsession to do so. He sees his first wormhole since the pilot, and at that moment it doesn't matter a bit that Aeryn is with him and might not want to go to Earth; it's one of these early rare moments where John isn't just unaware of Aeryn but acting unabashedly selfish. Coincidence that he meets Furlow in this episode?
"Raphsody in Blue" I had seen and liked years ago; what I hadn't noticed then is the above named general theme, because of course there, we have minds (mostly, but not exclusively John's) invaded left and right. John sharing Unity with Zhaan voluntarily to restore her balance is the counterpoint to this. Someone, I forgot who, suggested Zhaan, who lives a part of herself behind just as Scorpius will later, embodies John's spiritual, caring side and that his growing harder after her death, more similar to Scorpius, is connected to this. The idea of Zhaan and Scorpius as John's good and bad angels, in a medieval-theology-fashion, appeals but only covers a level. Zhaan has her own dark side, and you get the sense that she needs John to believe in her as the good, caring person he sees her at (as she will later need Stark) to hold to this ideal. John as a distorting reflection who reforms the person he mirrors works for Scorpius, too (more about this later).
"A Human Reaction": and we continue with the mind-messing. A good episode which gets even better in hindsight. Originally, I thought it was an inventive spin on the "what if?" scenario I was familiar with other shows; now I think that this, even before Scorpius, is the point of no return, the invasion of self which puts an end to innocent, wide-eyed first season John Crichton. Because what the Ancients do to him, no matter their intentions, is a more complete and thorough violation than the Delvians ever managed, and it is not consensual by a long shot. What they bring to the surface is the paranoid side of John who fears that everyone is an enemy, that he will manage to get every friend killed, and that the hope he clings to will turn out to be poison. And what they leave behind, the coded wormhole knowledge, gives him the fellow obsessive from hell.
(On the other hand, if John wouldn't have had any wormhole tech hidden in his brain, Scorpius would have killed him in "Nerve", so you could say it saved his life.)
And right on cue, the dress code changes after "A Human Reaction". "A Bug's Life" sees John out of his white Astronaut garbs and into Peacekeeper leather, which he'll remain in. Speaking of "A Bug's Life", that was another one new to me, and I was glad to finally see Larraq. Aeryn's Gilina, but not quite; I don't think Aeryn would have seen Larraq as the road not taken. Since I was told this was the episode where John kills deliberately for the first time, I felt just the tiniest bit let down, because in the first case, it was the virus, and in the second, he really didn't have any other choice if he wanted to save the rest of the galaxy.
"Nerve" and "The Hidden Memory": enter Scorpius. But first some words about some of the others; the scenes between Aeryn and D'Argo reminded me that their warrior-bonding was quite an appealing thing in the early stage of the show but somehow fell away from season 2 onwards. Which I'm sorry for: Aeryn's relationships with the rest of the Moya crew, apart from John, feel like they've never really been fleshed out. (Well, okay, except for Pilot in "The Way We Weren't".) On the other hand, this might have contributed to what was to come with Talyn and Crais, and I wouldn't have wanted to miss those scenes.
Speaking of Crais, here he has his last hooray in his old "You killed my brother, prepare to die" role, and not a moment too soon. It really didn't make much sense that a very rigid organization like the Peacekeepers would be unable to contain him from pursuing his private vendetta. We almost get a death-and-rebirth scenario for Crais; his encounter with Aeryn in "The Hidden Memory", when she uses the Aurora chair on him. "I give you your life", indeed.
(Sidenote: when John meets Aeryn, she beats him up and as he later puts it, she had him from day 1. Crais sees Aeryn as nothing but an insubordinate Officer until she puts him through hell in the Aurora chair; from that point onward, we get UST each time they meet, and she arguably becomes the most important person (person not being the right term for Talyn) in the world for him. Do these two and Spike have a lot in common or what?)
Rewatching thse two episodes, it struck me that compared with the rest of the show, Wayne Pygram uses an almost monotone speech pattern as Scorpius here. (My guess would be that this was originally intended as a deliberate contrast to Crais.) We don't get the usual Scorpian rhythms until "Family Ties" (just compare the scene with Braca there to the way Scorpius gives his orders in "Nerve" and "The Hidden Memory"). None the less, it's one impressive debut, and it makes character scene if one considers that Scorpius IS at this point completely detached. Which is why I've got problems with fanfic presenting those scenes as kinky sadism. One of the aspects which makes them chilling to me is the calm methological approach. And note that as soon as Scorpius finds out Crais is not hiding any wormhole info, he stops with the chair. He doesn't torture for the fun of torturing. Well, not people he isn't interested in; later in the show, when he has become interested in John Crichton the individual, things are different, but at this early stage? It could have been Rygel (save for that convenient Hynerian reaction to the chair), and Scorpius wouldn't have done anything different.
Which begs the question: when does Scorpius start to become interested?
And on a trivia note: when does he decide to equip John with the chip? My guess would be after the fake Crais memory. He must have decided the chair wasn't going to get him anywhere soon. But did he let him escape deliberately or did he originally plan for the chip to work with John still in prison?
"Family Ties": or, the episode which changed me from someone flirting with the idea to a full-blown John/Rygel 'shipper.
Apart from that, it's also the episode which got me interested in Crais as a character. Goodbye, raving vendatta pursuer; hello, shades-of-grey renegade. And you've got to love how they did this step by step; Crais does get to be ruthless and unabashedly selfish in kidnapping Talyn, but as it turns out he's quite sincere about burying the hatch with Crichton about the brother business. And about having a new relationship with Aeryn, see above. Another welcome change is Crais being allowed to display the intelligence which presumably made him Captain to begin with. One of Scorpius' few blind spots is his tendency to underestimate Crais and you can see it here as well as in "Into the Lion's Den: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing". It's Crais who correctly points out that Scorpius will prioritize keeping John Crichton alive over the preservation of his Gammak Base, and thereby makes it possible for the Moya Crew to come up with a winning strategy.
The destruction of the Base, complete with John and D'Argo free-floating in space, remains one of Farscape's most arresting visuals, but you've got to wonder: just how many people were on that base? People like Gilina, PK personnel, or Officers like Aeryn, for that matter. And John, prior to being arrested, has seen the base and the people; they're not just statistics. Not that the Moya crew had other options to ensure their own survival, but this is where John's massive body count starts. Another Blake's 7 comparison: Blake goes from surrendering because he doesn't want any more people to get executed in "Space Falls" to blowing up Federation bases within a season, too; within two season's, he's ready to accept the death of "many, many people" (to use the direct Cally quote; fanon usually quotes this as "millions", but it's not what she says) and general anarchy and civil war to end Federation rule. But Blake, as I mentioned in another entry, starts out having to reconstruct his self after brainwashing; John, after one year mental invasions, the last the most violent, has only just started to deconstruct himself, and the fact he's said goodbye to pacifism for good with this gesture is just one of the symptoms.
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Date: 2003-06-10 07:57 am (UTC)Not at all.
Date: 2003-06-10 08:23 am (UTC)Totally pointless bit of personal trivia:
Date: 2003-06-12 11:49 am (UTC)I remember you raving quite a bit, too. <g>
Date: 2003-06-12 10:17 pm (UTC)