"We all have things in our past that we'd rather not have on instant replay."
Standard disclaimer: this post and/or the comments may and probably will contain spoilers for the entire series. Previous episode posts here.
It is really difficult for me to talk about this episode as opposed to flapping my arms and meeping incoherently with delight. It is, in my opinion, one of the finest of the series. We finally get some backstory on Aeryn, a look at her past and some of the things that have shaped her, and as Chiana points out, she was not picking baskets of rauliss buds while all the other mean Peacekeepers did all the really nasty stuff-she was a Peacekeeper, and she owns her past even if she isn't happy about it in retrospect, and the show refuses to whitewash it. Her crewmates, and we the audience, have come to know her as someone who is clever and brave and loyal to her friends, and it is a shock to be confronted with the ways in which the same things that make her what she is now made her what she was then. And the same holds true for Pilot, the last person you'd ever expect to be holding onto guilty secrets.
There are so many interesting connections and convergences exposed in this episode, so many unexpected things tied together. Aeryn and Pilot have a link in the present, both through DNA and through friendship; their pasts are tied together too, both of them brought on board Moya because of Velorek, both of them brought by ambition to places where they advance at the expense of others. The strange triangle between Crais and Aeryn and Talyn stretched further into the past, as Aeryn and Crais's first interaction involves the installation of the contraceptive shield that prevented Talyn's earlier conception. And there's another triangle, one between Velorek in the past and John in the present and Aeryn between them. John and Velorek both see the same thing in Aeryn, her potential to be more than the narrow scope of Peacekeeper life will permit. And while Aeryn feels nothing but contempt for John when she first meets him, for his softness and concern for others, she was drawn to Velorek-felt something for him that she is later able to identify as love-and he possessed many of those same qualities, independent thinking and concern that the breeding program was going to lead to Moya's death, compassion. In "Premiere," Aeryn didn't know the meaning of the word; now she sarcastically thanks Zhaan for her compassion as Zhaan treats her throat, because she knows the meaning all too well, knows that Zhaan is treating her out of duty and habit rather than feeling.
Zhaan and D'Argo and Rygel and Pilot and Aeryn were all on board Moya before, in very different roles-more convergence-and the video brings all of the ugliness of their pasts to the present. John is an outsider in this conflict; he wasn't there. Out of all the troubles they've all been through recently, here is something he thinks he knows how to solve-trying to get Aeryn to talk, trying to listen and understand, even if he doesn’t like what he's hearing. His own (deteriorating) mental state isn't an issue for once, and it's remarkable how much more calm and collected he is under these circumstances than he is when he has to struggle with the whispers in his head and his own dark impulses. Jealousy may not be pleasant, but it's at least a known and human quantity-and it's all there, in his remarking over Aeryn's use of the term lover to refer to Velorek, in the set of his mouth as he listens to her describe this past relationship and is confronted with the fact that she isn't pushing him away because she's never felt love before, but because she has, and it frightened her so much that she was willing to do anything to excise it from her life. I think there's something remarkably beautiful about the fact that when Aeryn finally opens up to John about herself, something he's been pushing her to do for so long, she tells him things he doesn't necessarily want to hear, and he takes it in, deals with it, deals with her as who she is, flawed and capable of making terrible mistakes and in no way diminished in his eyes because of it. He never set her on a pedestal, so there's no knocking down, only learning more, trying to understand her. And it's Aeryn's experience with John that has led her to identify what she felt for Velorek as love, she's starting to develop the emotional vocabulary and awareness, and it's because of John bursting into her life and changing everything that she's in so much pain about what she did in the past-things she would once have been able to reassure herself were the right things to do, to not think about twice-but she's at the point where she can start opening up to him, can apply what she's learned from him toward helping Pilot.
In that he's alone for most of the episode, because Zhaan and D'Argo and Rygel all have their own baggage, their own memories of that time. But it's a complicated situation; Aeryn calls Zhaan on her hypocrisy, on the fact that the three prisoners, so outraged over Aeryn killing a pilot, were at one point eager to trade this Pilot's arm for a way home. John's right that they all have things in their past they'd rather not have others see, that there is ugliness in all of them. Chiana's the other outsider to these events, the only other person on board who wasn't there when the old pilot was killed and Pilot was installed, and her attitude-that of course Aeryn was a Peacekeeper, of course she did bad things then, and it shouldn't be a shock, shouldn't be an issue-has an interesting unspoken conclusion, which is that it isn't necessarily who she is now, that what she does now defines that. Because although they are different in so many ways, I think Chiana also recognizes that many of her shipmates wouldn't like things she's done in her past, and that she wants to be judged by her present. And for someone who lives in the moment as much as Chiana does, the present is the thing that carries all the weight.
I love the friendship between Aeryn and Pilot, but it never occurred to me before this episode how similar they are in some ways, that they were once both so young and ambitious and determined to the point of making choices at the expense of others, and carrying around the guilt for years afterwards. And they both approach the past the same way-as something that's done and can be regretted but not changed, and must not be mentioned to anybody else. So it's fitting that their terrible secrets are tied together, that they confront them at the same time and move forward together. And I think it says everything about the life Pilot and Moya had under the Peackeepers and the life they have now that Crais wouldn't allow Pilot time to bond naturally to Moya, that Pilot's guilt went hand-in-hand with physical pain, and that that pain is excised here, that he can bond naturally with Pilot, that like many other relationships and people warped by the Peacekeepers on the show, there's a chance to grow beyond those origins.
In addition to the actual plot, all of the rich interactions between the characters, the threads weaving together, the episode is also just really beautifully made. There is the striking film technique (I believe it's called bleach bypass?), the contrast of past and present, the scenes of the past shot in washed-out grey tones, Moya crawling with marching, anonymous troops in helmets and functionaries with equipment and never silent, always echoing with rote announcements, versus the present, the warm color tones, the familiar faces, the soft, organic noises of the living ship. There's the scene of Aeryn sobbing in John's arm on the Peacekeeper rug, and then the overhead shot of the two of them sitting on that rug, the red wedge dividing them, as she opens up to him for the first time about herself. And there's Aeryn, usually so contained, falling apart, face open and vulnerable in ways we've never seen her before. (I have been trying to quantify what Claudia Black does with her face here, but Ben Browder did it for me in the commentary by identifying her Puss In Boots eyes. That's exactly it.)
One thing I think is interesting is that I gather the first scene of Aeryn and Velorek, the misdirection when she enters her quarters and he jumps on her from behind, gave a lot of people the initial impression that the secret from her past was that she'd been raped. I didn't get that from the scene at all, and was surprised to read about it in others' reactions later, and I wonder why that is. Perhaps such a backstory just didn't fit with my view of the character to such an extent that it never occurred to me; perhaps I was so pleased with the way the episode was going already, the unflinching look at Aeryn's past that I couldn't imagine the introduction of such a cliché at that point, since it would have cleared the deliciously muddy waters. But rewatching the episode, I can see why it looked like that, and I have no idea why it just went straight over my head. Anyway, I'm very glad they didn't go there-I have a hard time imagining, after seeing the entire series, that they would have-because what we got instead was so uncompromising and yet so full of Aeryn's potential.
There's a question of whether the characters change over the course of the series, or whether they become more themselves, pared down to the core by adversity. It's something I'm thinking about a lot as I rewatch it. In many ways, I think what the show does beautifully is show the interaction of person and circumstance, how people react to events and how that reaction in turn feeds into who they become. This is something I'll probably get into more in the best and most clear-cut example of that interaction, the two Johns. But in this episode, I think it's interesting that so many core things about Aeryn-her loyalty, her instinct to subsume her own desires into her duty, her need to be a part of something bigger, her desire to excel at what she does, and her fear of her own individuality-led her down one path in the past and, having learned some painful lessons and grown, lead her down a different path in the present.
It is really difficult for me to talk about this episode as opposed to flapping my arms and meeping incoherently with delight. It is, in my opinion, one of the finest of the series. We finally get some backstory on Aeryn, a look at her past and some of the things that have shaped her, and as Chiana points out, she was not picking baskets of rauliss buds while all the other mean Peacekeepers did all the really nasty stuff-she was a Peacekeeper, and she owns her past even if she isn't happy about it in retrospect, and the show refuses to whitewash it. Her crewmates, and we the audience, have come to know her as someone who is clever and brave and loyal to her friends, and it is a shock to be confronted with the ways in which the same things that make her what she is now made her what she was then. And the same holds true for Pilot, the last person you'd ever expect to be holding onto guilty secrets.
There are so many interesting connections and convergences exposed in this episode, so many unexpected things tied together. Aeryn and Pilot have a link in the present, both through DNA and through friendship; their pasts are tied together too, both of them brought on board Moya because of Velorek, both of them brought by ambition to places where they advance at the expense of others. The strange triangle between Crais and Aeryn and Talyn stretched further into the past, as Aeryn and Crais's first interaction involves the installation of the contraceptive shield that prevented Talyn's earlier conception. And there's another triangle, one between Velorek in the past and John in the present and Aeryn between them. John and Velorek both see the same thing in Aeryn, her potential to be more than the narrow scope of Peacekeeper life will permit. And while Aeryn feels nothing but contempt for John when she first meets him, for his softness and concern for others, she was drawn to Velorek-felt something for him that she is later able to identify as love-and he possessed many of those same qualities, independent thinking and concern that the breeding program was going to lead to Moya's death, compassion. In "Premiere," Aeryn didn't know the meaning of the word; now she sarcastically thanks Zhaan for her compassion as Zhaan treats her throat, because she knows the meaning all too well, knows that Zhaan is treating her out of duty and habit rather than feeling.
Zhaan and D'Argo and Rygel and Pilot and Aeryn were all on board Moya before, in very different roles-more convergence-and the video brings all of the ugliness of their pasts to the present. John is an outsider in this conflict; he wasn't there. Out of all the troubles they've all been through recently, here is something he thinks he knows how to solve-trying to get Aeryn to talk, trying to listen and understand, even if he doesn’t like what he's hearing. His own (deteriorating) mental state isn't an issue for once, and it's remarkable how much more calm and collected he is under these circumstances than he is when he has to struggle with the whispers in his head and his own dark impulses. Jealousy may not be pleasant, but it's at least a known and human quantity-and it's all there, in his remarking over Aeryn's use of the term lover to refer to Velorek, in the set of his mouth as he listens to her describe this past relationship and is confronted with the fact that she isn't pushing him away because she's never felt love before, but because she has, and it frightened her so much that she was willing to do anything to excise it from her life. I think there's something remarkably beautiful about the fact that when Aeryn finally opens up to John about herself, something he's been pushing her to do for so long, she tells him things he doesn't necessarily want to hear, and he takes it in, deals with it, deals with her as who she is, flawed and capable of making terrible mistakes and in no way diminished in his eyes because of it. He never set her on a pedestal, so there's no knocking down, only learning more, trying to understand her. And it's Aeryn's experience with John that has led her to identify what she felt for Velorek as love, she's starting to develop the emotional vocabulary and awareness, and it's because of John bursting into her life and changing everything that she's in so much pain about what she did in the past-things she would once have been able to reassure herself were the right things to do, to not think about twice-but she's at the point where she can start opening up to him, can apply what she's learned from him toward helping Pilot.
In that he's alone for most of the episode, because Zhaan and D'Argo and Rygel all have their own baggage, their own memories of that time. But it's a complicated situation; Aeryn calls Zhaan on her hypocrisy, on the fact that the three prisoners, so outraged over Aeryn killing a pilot, were at one point eager to trade this Pilot's arm for a way home. John's right that they all have things in their past they'd rather not have others see, that there is ugliness in all of them. Chiana's the other outsider to these events, the only other person on board who wasn't there when the old pilot was killed and Pilot was installed, and her attitude-that of course Aeryn was a Peacekeeper, of course she did bad things then, and it shouldn't be a shock, shouldn't be an issue-has an interesting unspoken conclusion, which is that it isn't necessarily who she is now, that what she does now defines that. Because although they are different in so many ways, I think Chiana also recognizes that many of her shipmates wouldn't like things she's done in her past, and that she wants to be judged by her present. And for someone who lives in the moment as much as Chiana does, the present is the thing that carries all the weight.
I love the friendship between Aeryn and Pilot, but it never occurred to me before this episode how similar they are in some ways, that they were once both so young and ambitious and determined to the point of making choices at the expense of others, and carrying around the guilt for years afterwards. And they both approach the past the same way-as something that's done and can be regretted but not changed, and must not be mentioned to anybody else. So it's fitting that their terrible secrets are tied together, that they confront them at the same time and move forward together. And I think it says everything about the life Pilot and Moya had under the Peackeepers and the life they have now that Crais wouldn't allow Pilot time to bond naturally to Moya, that Pilot's guilt went hand-in-hand with physical pain, and that that pain is excised here, that he can bond naturally with Pilot, that like many other relationships and people warped by the Peacekeepers on the show, there's a chance to grow beyond those origins.
In addition to the actual plot, all of the rich interactions between the characters, the threads weaving together, the episode is also just really beautifully made. There is the striking film technique (I believe it's called bleach bypass?), the contrast of past and present, the scenes of the past shot in washed-out grey tones, Moya crawling with marching, anonymous troops in helmets and functionaries with equipment and never silent, always echoing with rote announcements, versus the present, the warm color tones, the familiar faces, the soft, organic noises of the living ship. There's the scene of Aeryn sobbing in John's arm on the Peacekeeper rug, and then the overhead shot of the two of them sitting on that rug, the red wedge dividing them, as she opens up to him for the first time about herself. And there's Aeryn, usually so contained, falling apart, face open and vulnerable in ways we've never seen her before. (I have been trying to quantify what Claudia Black does with her face here, but Ben Browder did it for me in the commentary by identifying her Puss In Boots eyes. That's exactly it.)
One thing I think is interesting is that I gather the first scene of Aeryn and Velorek, the misdirection when she enters her quarters and he jumps on her from behind, gave a lot of people the initial impression that the secret from her past was that she'd been raped. I didn't get that from the scene at all, and was surprised to read about it in others' reactions later, and I wonder why that is. Perhaps such a backstory just didn't fit with my view of the character to such an extent that it never occurred to me; perhaps I was so pleased with the way the episode was going already, the unflinching look at Aeryn's past that I couldn't imagine the introduction of such a cliché at that point, since it would have cleared the deliciously muddy waters. But rewatching the episode, I can see why it looked like that, and I have no idea why it just went straight over my head. Anyway, I'm very glad they didn't go there-I have a hard time imagining, after seeing the entire series, that they would have-because what we got instead was so uncompromising and yet so full of Aeryn's potential.
There's a question of whether the characters change over the course of the series, or whether they become more themselves, pared down to the core by adversity. It's something I'm thinking about a lot as I rewatch it. In many ways, I think what the show does beautifully is show the interaction of person and circumstance, how people react to events and how that reaction in turn feeds into who they become. This is something I'll probably get into more in the best and most clear-cut example of that interaction, the two Johns. But in this episode, I think it's interesting that so many core things about Aeryn-her loyalty, her instinct to subsume her own desires into her duty, her need to be a part of something bigger, her desire to excel at what she does, and her fear of her own individuality-led her down one path in the past and, having learned some painful lessons and grown, lead her down a different path in the present.