"This is where you're supposed to twirl your moustache and gloat."
Standard disclaimer: this post and/or the comments may and probably will contain spoilers for the entire series. Previous episode posts here.
Poll Worst episode of Season 2
Since Maldis is connected to Zhaan, and Zhaan plays a key role in the episodes where he appears, I think this is as good a place as any to talk about what I see as Zhaan's growing irrelevance as a character over the course of Season 2, and why by the time "Self-Inflicted Wounds" rolls around, although I am sad to see her go, it's more because of the impact her death will have on Aeryn and John than for anything else. Over the course of Season 2, she becomes less and less central to the show's dynamic; at least in "Picture If You Will," she's interacting with the rest of the crew, a part of the main plot. By the end of the season, she's often working on her own in the B plot.
In the beginning of the show, despite the aspects of her that were also alien and familiar, Zhaan performed the vital function of assuring John, our POV character, that his human values, his compassion and desire to believe in inherent good, were valuable, were things that existed in this strange new universe as well. At the same time, Zhaan also had a story, her struggle with her dark impulses, and John's optimism and belief in her helped her get through some very dark times.
But that was pre-Aurora Chair John; when he away from that gammak base, from his pivotal experience of helplessness and violation, he left behind what he'd managed to retain of that belief in inherent goodness and took with him what he thinks for now is a ghost in his head. He's mistrustful of strangers now, and can't spare much thought or concern for anyone besides his friends. There's a very telling moment in this episode where he tells Aeryn he wishes he could lock Moya's doors and keep the critters and other enemies out, and as lightly as he says it, he's not really joking. He doesn't want to talk about his real problems to anyone, or even admit them to himself, but when he does speak, it's often to Aeryn-Aeryn's hardheaded utilitarian outlook is something he still has trouble with, something he disagrees with in this very episode, but it's come to seem a more fitting response to the universe than Zhaan's more universal brand of compassion. John is in no position to cheerlead someone else in a struggle against dark impulses; his own personal nightmare is whispering in his ear for him to shoot his friends. And John's own descent into madness as the season progresses is similar enough to what had been Zhaan's only independent storyline up to this point that the two can't coexist on the same show.
So Zhaan's role on the show becomes less and less interwoven with those of the other characters, more and more driven by plot demands in individual episodes. The two Maldis stories provide a good illustration of this. In "That Old Black Magic," Zhaan's defeat of Maldis was tied directly to her personal struggle with her dark impulses and her fear of losing control of her power; it's a story with ongoing emotional impact for her and her relationship with John. In "Picture If You Will," on the other hand, Maldis returns for revenge and Zhaan summons up the strength to defeat him with John's help; the episode has no lingering meaning for Zhaan because it's not a part of her ongoing story; she has no coherent journey, so all of the connections to events outside of the episode are tenuous and fractured, bits and pieces like her ongoing friendship with John, which is not a developing element so much as it is a known quantity. And that is, ultimately, why I think "Picture If You Will" is the worst episode of Season 2; it's not just that I dislike the plot and many of the characterizations in the episode, but that unlike other episodes with weak individual elements, it has no ongoing impact.
I make no secret of my lack of fondness for Maldis. Calling something implausible or unrealistic on Farscape is always a dodgy and somewhat arbitrary enterprise, but like John, I'll take a critter over a god-like alien any day because the critters at least operate under some rules and limitations. Another thing I dislike intensely about the episode is that Chiana comes across as such a petulant and frightened child. That's another blurry line, because Chiana often can be a petulant and frightened and terribly young, but usually she has a much harder edge, and this is the only time I can think of where her vulnerability tips over into abject helplessness.
I also think Aeryn's behavior in this episode is a little strange, though that could be at least partly a function of episode order. I've chosen to go with disc order, but if we look at this episode as having occurred before "The Way We Weren't" (filming order), her harshly utilitarian judgments of her fellow crewmates and John's frustration with the way she handles Chiana's "death" make a little more sense, though I'm still not sure they fit in with what she's become by the beginning of Season 2.
There are a few nice moments, though. I like the way John defends Chiana to Aeryn; he's not going to pretend Chiana doesn't cause trouble, or that she doesn't sometimes mean to; he values her for reasons that go entirely beyond that, not because he has a rose-colored view of who she is, but precisely because he can see her clearly. That lovely, sharp honesty is an ongoing theme in John and Chiana's friendship, one that I enjoy very much. And I like the way Rygel mourns for Chiana, that saying she would make an excellent Hynerian is such high praise, that Rygel saw kinship in their similar appetites and ways of dealing and scamming through life, that he feels that Chiana would have at least wanted them to get compensation for her death and he's probably right. I like that when Pilot relays Zhaan's command, Aeryn obeys without question, kills Kyvan and gets out of there, that it's an action that meshes so well with both her training and her instincts. And there's the fact that Maldis threatens Earth and John has his first realization that his adventures could impact more than him and his new friends, that he could actually bring something back with him. It's a small moment, lost in a sea of ineffectual taunting (Maldis's specialty), but although he still carries the hope of finding home in the back of his heart, Season 2 is, for John, mostly about adapting to this new place and surviving, and as his danger grows, so does his awareness of the danger he poses to his loved ones and his former home, to the very things he wants the most.
If you enjoyed this episode more than I did (which wouldn't be hard), why? I'd love to hear from people who like it, because it may very well have merits I'm missing.
Poll Worst episode of Season 2
Since Maldis is connected to Zhaan, and Zhaan plays a key role in the episodes where he appears, I think this is as good a place as any to talk about what I see as Zhaan's growing irrelevance as a character over the course of Season 2, and why by the time "Self-Inflicted Wounds" rolls around, although I am sad to see her go, it's more because of the impact her death will have on Aeryn and John than for anything else. Over the course of Season 2, she becomes less and less central to the show's dynamic; at least in "Picture If You Will," she's interacting with the rest of the crew, a part of the main plot. By the end of the season, she's often working on her own in the B plot.
In the beginning of the show, despite the aspects of her that were also alien and familiar, Zhaan performed the vital function of assuring John, our POV character, that his human values, his compassion and desire to believe in inherent good, were valuable, were things that existed in this strange new universe as well. At the same time, Zhaan also had a story, her struggle with her dark impulses, and John's optimism and belief in her helped her get through some very dark times.
But that was pre-Aurora Chair John; when he away from that gammak base, from his pivotal experience of helplessness and violation, he left behind what he'd managed to retain of that belief in inherent goodness and took with him what he thinks for now is a ghost in his head. He's mistrustful of strangers now, and can't spare much thought or concern for anyone besides his friends. There's a very telling moment in this episode where he tells Aeryn he wishes he could lock Moya's doors and keep the critters and other enemies out, and as lightly as he says it, he's not really joking. He doesn't want to talk about his real problems to anyone, or even admit them to himself, but when he does speak, it's often to Aeryn-Aeryn's hardheaded utilitarian outlook is something he still has trouble with, something he disagrees with in this very episode, but it's come to seem a more fitting response to the universe than Zhaan's more universal brand of compassion. John is in no position to cheerlead someone else in a struggle against dark impulses; his own personal nightmare is whispering in his ear for him to shoot his friends. And John's own descent into madness as the season progresses is similar enough to what had been Zhaan's only independent storyline up to this point that the two can't coexist on the same show.
So Zhaan's role on the show becomes less and less interwoven with those of the other characters, more and more driven by plot demands in individual episodes. The two Maldis stories provide a good illustration of this. In "That Old Black Magic," Zhaan's defeat of Maldis was tied directly to her personal struggle with her dark impulses and her fear of losing control of her power; it's a story with ongoing emotional impact for her and her relationship with John. In "Picture If You Will," on the other hand, Maldis returns for revenge and Zhaan summons up the strength to defeat him with John's help; the episode has no lingering meaning for Zhaan because it's not a part of her ongoing story; she has no coherent journey, so all of the connections to events outside of the episode are tenuous and fractured, bits and pieces like her ongoing friendship with John, which is not a developing element so much as it is a known quantity. And that is, ultimately, why I think "Picture If You Will" is the worst episode of Season 2; it's not just that I dislike the plot and many of the characterizations in the episode, but that unlike other episodes with weak individual elements, it has no ongoing impact.
I make no secret of my lack of fondness for Maldis. Calling something implausible or unrealistic on Farscape is always a dodgy and somewhat arbitrary enterprise, but like John, I'll take a critter over a god-like alien any day because the critters at least operate under some rules and limitations. Another thing I dislike intensely about the episode is that Chiana comes across as such a petulant and frightened child. That's another blurry line, because Chiana often can be a petulant and frightened and terribly young, but usually she has a much harder edge, and this is the only time I can think of where her vulnerability tips over into abject helplessness.
I also think Aeryn's behavior in this episode is a little strange, though that could be at least partly a function of episode order. I've chosen to go with disc order, but if we look at this episode as having occurred before "The Way We Weren't" (filming order), her harshly utilitarian judgments of her fellow crewmates and John's frustration with the way she handles Chiana's "death" make a little more sense, though I'm still not sure they fit in with what she's become by the beginning of Season 2.
There are a few nice moments, though. I like the way John defends Chiana to Aeryn; he's not going to pretend Chiana doesn't cause trouble, or that she doesn't sometimes mean to; he values her for reasons that go entirely beyond that, not because he has a rose-colored view of who she is, but precisely because he can see her clearly. That lovely, sharp honesty is an ongoing theme in John and Chiana's friendship, one that I enjoy very much. And I like the way Rygel mourns for Chiana, that saying she would make an excellent Hynerian is such high praise, that Rygel saw kinship in their similar appetites and ways of dealing and scamming through life, that he feels that Chiana would have at least wanted them to get compensation for her death and he's probably right. I like that when Pilot relays Zhaan's command, Aeryn obeys without question, kills Kyvan and gets out of there, that it's an action that meshes so well with both her training and her instincts. And there's the fact that Maldis threatens Earth and John has his first realization that his adventures could impact more than him and his new friends, that he could actually bring something back with him. It's a small moment, lost in a sea of ineffectual taunting (Maldis's specialty), but although he still carries the hope of finding home in the back of his heart, Season 2 is, for John, mostly about adapting to this new place and surviving, and as his danger grows, so does his awareness of the danger he poses to his loved ones and his former home, to the very things he wants the most.
If you enjoyed this episode more than I did (which wouldn't be hard), why? I'd love to hear from people who like it, because it may very well have merits I'm missing.