Farscaping across the universe...part II
I am doing REALLY WELL at actually writing about Farscape. I am doing much better at watching it, though I almost gave up at an episode that I want to give a clever and witty alternate name to, but instead am stucking with Fucking Dull. For that was what it was. FIVE TIMES I tried to get through it. FIVE TIMES. That isn't one of these episodes though, these ones I mostly liked.
106 Back And Back And Back To The Future
So there are these dudes Our Heroes are helping out and they're sort of like Luxans and so D'Argo loves them a lot. And then Crichton gets zapped with, um, a bit of a black hole and keeps jumping into the future and increasingly bad things happen.
My main question about this is the first future flashes that Crichton gets are to him and one of the not!Luxans having sex, so what was it that Crichton did to change that and end up with people getting killed instead?
DS9 did this plot. And they did it better, mostly cause theirs had Romulans in it and I really, really love Romulans. But this does have Aeryn using her military skills to work out not!Luxan was a spy, and I do love that Crichton went to Zhaan with his crazy future tales and Zhaan was tots credulous and plans were made rather than any time being wasted on whether he was telling the truth or going crazy or whatever. And I love that Crichton's first thought was Alien Sex Pheromones. Yay, genre!savvy heroes.
But there was a lot of D'Argo in this. Who I do like. But not on his own. On his own or with any non-regular so far, he is still excessively boring and I just don't care. SORRY D'ARGO.
107 PK Tech Girl
Our Heroes find a great big abandoned spaceship and pop onboard, and then get attacked by scavengers and have to do skience-y things to make the shields go up and save themselves from aforementioned scavengers. And, despite a fair bit of the episode being devoted to Crichton doing a Kirk, I really really love it.
The tone makes me glee. See, this spaceship is REALLY REALLY BIG. It is the biggest baddest spaceship that the Peacekeepers ever made and Something happened to it a hundred years ago and no-one knows what and now they've found it abandoned it space. And it's all dark and creepy onboard and there are scary looking corpses and cones of white-blue torchlight as Our Heroes go a-wandering. It just feels EPIC. It makes the Farscape verse feel vast and exciting, and I love it for that.
Also there are aliens with wee aviator hats that can spit fireballs at you.
As one episode romance things go, it could be worse. Chellina's not very interesting, but there is a smashing scene with her and Aeryn at the end, and her presence does highlight Aeryn's feelings of isolation, as well as precipitating the first overt admission of an attraction between Aeryn and Crichton. (I'm sure there are points where I eyeroll at their relationship, but most of the time I love it.)
On the downside, D'Argo talks about how he is big on honour in combat. Because what D'Argo really needs is to sound more like a bloody Klingon.
108 That Old Black Magic
Our dudes have landed on a planet and there is a bad guy there, and the bad guy zaps Crichton into his castle and then zaps Crais into his castle and they yell and fight and fail to work out their differences. Then Zhaan zaps the bad guy with her brain and Crais kills the doctor offa Casualty.
This is one of those episodes that I think is quite good, but I don't like. I don't care enough about Crais and Crichton's relationship to want to see an episode about Mostly That and zapping Aeryn halfway though so she's absent for the rest of the ep is just A Bad Plan. Though there is some nice Team!Aeryn/D'Argo/Zhaan just before, where D'Argo and Aeryn are all "we have an awesome plan: it involves going in there and shooting stuff, you're surprised, I can tell" and Zhaan is "hmmmmmm" at them.
The stuff with Zhaan is much more interesting. Building on Throne For A Loss's hints that she's more than a Benevolent Alien Priestess, she gets some Nice Sensible Angst over how she's worked REALLY HARD so she doesn't get off on using her powers for Eeeeevil and now she's going to have to do that to save Crichton and that sucks. Points for everything not being all happy at the end, since otherwise Zhaan would seem rather OOC next ep, but following on from this, it's more Unpleasant Pay-Off.
And Maldis, the bad sorcerer dude, ugh. He's scary, yeah, but as a character I can't stand him. Hurrah again for Crichton's genre-savvy ways (I like to assume he was thinking of Star Trek's Day of the Dove when he works out Maldis's motives) but a villain who's a Chaotic Malevolent Force feeding on Anger and Hate and given to the occasional bought of Evil Laughter is not the most compelling of villains to watch. Unless he’s got a dead bird stuck on his head.
109 DNA Mad Scientist
A generous science dude is offering maps home to Our Heroes. In return, he wants one of Pilot's arms. SO THEY CHOP IT OFF AND GIVE IT TO HIM. Then he tries to turn Aeryn into one of Pilot's species.
THEY CHOP OFF ONE OF PILOT'S ARMS. I know they want to go home quite a lot but OMG. It's still pretty shocking. And it's Rygel, D'Argo and Zhaan who go for it, and then there's an awful lot of plotting between Zhaan and D'Argo against Rygel when things go wrong. And, oh, Zhaan! She comes across quite markedly different in this ep than any other in the season and it's not cheery.
Hurrah for Aeryn and her judgieness at them though. And they're all "omg, compassion?! From you?" and she's "Pilot's a comrade-in-arms, filthy arm-stealers, NO PUN INTENDED." (She did not actually make a pun.)
Then she gets turned into a Pilot. Which is nice characterisation-wise since Pilot was all "it's weird being near a Peacekeeper and not being scared... THAT WAS A COMPLIMENT" and telling her how he is rub at science too in previous episodes, so it's A Nice Moment when he tries to help her with the way his brain works, but rather less fun when you have to get poked in the eye with a needle in order to be cured.
And there was was altogether far too much Poking In The Eye With A Needle going on this episode. I don't approve of that.
110 They Have Got A Secret
Or The One Where The Ship Behaves Oddly Then We Find Out She's Pregnant.
I do like all the wee details we find out about the various species, and how they often turn out to be plot points later on but that's totally fine cause the writers remembered to foreshadow them ages ago. But I would love to know just how Luxans evolved so they could spend a half hour frozen in a vaccum and be just dandy afterwards.
There's a lot of D'Argo backstory in this one, but it's totally tolerable since he thinks Rygel is his son, which amuses me a lot, and it's interspersed with lots of Running Around The Ship and Being A Team, two of my favourite things in Farscape. And Aeryn does PILOTY THINGS cause she was almost a Pilot last episode and, oh, I love Farscape, I love that this is a season of standalone episodes and yet it's still got the feel of a continuing story, that they've taken so much care with the character arcs and the world-building and when Stuff Happens it's remembered and it matters.
In conclusion PK Tech Girl is currently winning as Favourite Episode and I seem to remember one with the Nebari that's even worse for Poking Things In People's Eyes. OH YAY.
106 Back And Back And Back To The Future
So there are these dudes Our Heroes are helping out and they're sort of like Luxans and so D'Argo loves them a lot. And then Crichton gets zapped with, um, a bit of a black hole and keeps jumping into the future and increasingly bad things happen.
My main question about this is the first future flashes that Crichton gets are to him and one of the not!Luxans having sex, so what was it that Crichton did to change that and end up with people getting killed instead?
DS9 did this plot. And they did it better, mostly cause theirs had Romulans in it and I really, really love Romulans. But this does have Aeryn using her military skills to work out not!Luxan was a spy, and I do love that Crichton went to Zhaan with his crazy future tales and Zhaan was tots credulous and plans were made rather than any time being wasted on whether he was telling the truth or going crazy or whatever. And I love that Crichton's first thought was Alien Sex Pheromones. Yay, genre!savvy heroes.
But there was a lot of D'Argo in this. Who I do like. But not on his own. On his own or with any non-regular so far, he is still excessively boring and I just don't care. SORRY D'ARGO.
107 PK Tech Girl
Our Heroes find a great big abandoned spaceship and pop onboard, and then get attacked by scavengers and have to do skience-y things to make the shields go up and save themselves from aforementioned scavengers. And, despite a fair bit of the episode being devoted to Crichton doing a Kirk, I really really love it.
The tone makes me glee. See, this spaceship is REALLY REALLY BIG. It is the biggest baddest spaceship that the Peacekeepers ever made and Something happened to it a hundred years ago and no-one knows what and now they've found it abandoned it space. And it's all dark and creepy onboard and there are scary looking corpses and cones of white-blue torchlight as Our Heroes go a-wandering. It just feels EPIC. It makes the Farscape verse feel vast and exciting, and I love it for that.
Also there are aliens with wee aviator hats that can spit fireballs at you.
As one episode romance things go, it could be worse. Chellina's not very interesting, but there is a smashing scene with her and Aeryn at the end, and her presence does highlight Aeryn's feelings of isolation, as well as precipitating the first overt admission of an attraction between Aeryn and Crichton. (I'm sure there are points where I eyeroll at their relationship, but most of the time I love it.)
On the downside, D'Argo talks about how he is big on honour in combat. Because what D'Argo really needs is to sound more like a bloody Klingon.
108 That Old Black Magic
Our dudes have landed on a planet and there is a bad guy there, and the bad guy zaps Crichton into his castle and then zaps Crais into his castle and they yell and fight and fail to work out their differences. Then Zhaan zaps the bad guy with her brain and Crais kills the doctor offa Casualty.
This is one of those episodes that I think is quite good, but I don't like. I don't care enough about Crais and Crichton's relationship to want to see an episode about Mostly That and zapping Aeryn halfway though so she's absent for the rest of the ep is just A Bad Plan. Though there is some nice Team!Aeryn/D'Argo/Zhaan just before, where D'Argo and Aeryn are all "we have an awesome plan: it involves going in there and shooting stuff, you're surprised, I can tell" and Zhaan is "hmmmmmm" at them.
The stuff with Zhaan is much more interesting. Building on Throne For A Loss's hints that she's more than a Benevolent Alien Priestess, she gets some Nice Sensible Angst over how she's worked REALLY HARD so she doesn't get off on using her powers for Eeeeevil and now she's going to have to do that to save Crichton and that sucks. Points for everything not being all happy at the end, since otherwise Zhaan would seem rather OOC next ep, but following on from this, it's more Unpleasant Pay-Off.
And Maldis, the bad sorcerer dude, ugh. He's scary, yeah, but as a character I can't stand him. Hurrah again for Crichton's genre-savvy ways (I like to assume he was thinking of Star Trek's Day of the Dove when he works out Maldis's motives) but a villain who's a Chaotic Malevolent Force feeding on Anger and Hate and given to the occasional bought of Evil Laughter is not the most compelling of villains to watch. Unless he’s got a dead bird stuck on his head.
109 DNA Mad Scientist
A generous science dude is offering maps home to Our Heroes. In return, he wants one of Pilot's arms. SO THEY CHOP IT OFF AND GIVE IT TO HIM. Then he tries to turn Aeryn into one of Pilot's species.
THEY CHOP OFF ONE OF PILOT'S ARMS. I know they want to go home quite a lot but OMG. It's still pretty shocking. And it's Rygel, D'Argo and Zhaan who go for it, and then there's an awful lot of plotting between Zhaan and D'Argo against Rygel when things go wrong. And, oh, Zhaan! She comes across quite markedly different in this ep than any other in the season and it's not cheery.
Hurrah for Aeryn and her judgieness at them though. And they're all "omg, compassion?! From you?" and she's "Pilot's a comrade-in-arms, filthy arm-stealers, NO PUN INTENDED." (She did not actually make a pun.)
Then she gets turned into a Pilot. Which is nice characterisation-wise since Pilot was all "it's weird being near a Peacekeeper and not being scared... THAT WAS A COMPLIMENT" and telling her how he is rub at science too in previous episodes, so it's A Nice Moment when he tries to help her with the way his brain works, but rather less fun when you have to get poked in the eye with a needle in order to be cured.
And there was was altogether far too much Poking In The Eye With A Needle going on this episode. I don't approve of that.
110 They Have Got A Secret
Or The One Where The Ship Behaves Oddly Then We Find Out She's Pregnant.
I do like all the wee details we find out about the various species, and how they often turn out to be plot points later on but that's totally fine cause the writers remembered to foreshadow them ages ago. But I would love to know just how Luxans evolved so they could spend a half hour frozen in a vaccum and be just dandy afterwards.
There's a lot of D'Argo backstory in this one, but it's totally tolerable since he thinks Rygel is his son, which amuses me a lot, and it's interspersed with lots of Running Around The Ship and Being A Team, two of my favourite things in Farscape. And Aeryn does PILOTY THINGS cause she was almost a Pilot last episode and, oh, I love Farscape, I love that this is a season of standalone episodes and yet it's still got the feel of a continuing story, that they've taken so much care with the character arcs and the world-building and when Stuff Happens it's remembered and it matters.
In conclusion PK Tech Girl is currently winning as Favourite Episode and I seem to remember one with the Nebari that's even worse for Poking Things In People's Eyes. OH YAY.