Farscape Rewatch: The Prayer (4.18.)
Wiki summary: . Crichton and Scorpius travel to the Bizzaro Moya from "Unrealized Reality" in order to find the location of Katratzi, where they believe Aeryn is being taken. Meanwhile, Aeryn is repeatedly tortured when the Scarrans realize that her baby may be Crichton's.
Turns out I don't dislike this episode the way I did back in the day anymore. (This was one of the ep whose rewatch I dreaded.) What I thought then: it wasted this season's (and as it would turn out, the last season's) opportunity for an Aeryn character exploration episode (a la The Way We Weren't or The Choice) in order to tell the audience for the nth time what the audience really really really knows - that Aeryn loves John, and loved no one the way she loves him. When at this point, after four seasons of J/A, anything but Aeryn loving John would have been more revealing and more interesting to explore. Maybe use the opportunity when she's away from Moya and her friends to tell us how she feels about the pregnancy and having a child per se, given her own parents and all the trauma reunions (and maybe/faked reunions) with same brought. Or maybe deep down, she shares Scorpius' conviction that the Scarrans will overrun the rest of the galaxy if the Peacekeepers don't gain a military advantage, and so the PK in her does want them to have wormhole tech, but otoh she also feels strongly that the people in command of the PKs should not be trusted with a such a terrible weapon, and so she's torn. Maybe she feels she's living on borrowed time (due to being brought back from the dead by Zhaan) and that's an incentive to do something with her life she never would have contemplated before. You know - anything that' not focused on how Aeryn loves John.
(Sidenote: I didn't object to the Aeryn-gets-tortured plot device per se. In another show, maybe, but John gets tortured in every possible way on a regular basis since season 1, so it's not like Farscape is a series is sexist about this trope, and also the episode takes care not to present any of the scenes of Aeryn in distress in any way as tiltilating. The body horror of the Scarrans having an obsession with "breeding hybrids" actually picks up on something the Scorpius backstory, Incubator, established.)
What I thought upon rewatch: since I didn't expect any of these type of reveals anymore, I could appreciate what we did get in the Aeryn part of the episode. For example: the Scarran is just there to provide menace, Aeryn's interactions in this episode are with two female characters. And they're both interesting. I appreciate the episode keeps you guessing about whether or not her fellow prisoner is a plant, and that Aeryn seems to change her mind about this along with the viewer but in the end guesses correctly (and proves her "I'm not a nice person" statement). The Sebacean doctor/nurse with the Scarran interests me now in a way she didn't back in the day. I can't remember whether we ever find out what happens to her, so please don't tell me, because while watching, I had two thoughts in quick order: 1) On the one hand, they picked an actress who resembles Xhalax Sun a bit, and 2.) speaking of Xhalax, who starts out a pilot who loves flying, falls in love, has a child, is terribly punished and made into nothing but a murderous weapon who can only give and receive pain - couldn't the doctor/nurse be a woman who started out as a captive to be used in the Scarran's "breeding" attempt, then bought her survival and relatively privileged position through collaboration - couldn't this woman have been Reilani, Scorpius' mother? Yes, Tauza said she died, but Tauza was a liar anyway, and the change of hair color certainly can be handwaved by circumstance as well. Farscape certainly loves to reveal supposedly dead characters to be alive. Also, perhaps because Incubator made Reilani as vulnerable and innocent as possible, I think it would be interesting if Scorpius' survival skills didn't all come from Tauza's brand of brutalization. The idea that Reilani survived, but in the way Xhalax Sun did, has a certain thematic resonance as well, and if this woman isn't killed off in the next episode - I honestly don't remember - I might do something with the idea of her and Scorpius reuniting post Peacekeeper Wars, once I've finished my rewatch.
(Whoever she is, though, here, too, is the whiff of ambiguity amidst the hardened collaboratorness - she did save Aeryn's life (for a while) by revealing her pregnancy.)
The Peacekeepers having a capriciously callous "because I can" deity in their past is interesting, though it feels to me less fitting than the Klingon myth in which they have killed their gods. Otoh I do wonder whether this deity is based on the sudden disappearance of the Eidolons who originally have the PKs their purpose?
Meanwhile, on Moya: the blood oath is pure fanservice for those of us who ship John/Scorpius. On a Watsonian level, too, it fulfills no practical purpose, and I doubt Scorpius assumes John would feel in any additional way bound by this if he doesn't intend to keep his word in the first place. QED: he's just doing it to fulfill a kink. Which I'm on board with.
All kidding aside, it's an episode with the arguable claim of presenting John at his darkest, since the answer to "how far would Crichton to to save Aeryn?" here includes "killing several people who look like merger of his best friends". That it's actually Scorpius doing the shooting is besides the point, given John brought him along precisely after monologuing he'll do anything and is profiting form the result. Indeed, it's hard not to conclude that he knew on some level there would be killing and/or physical violence involved and that with wormhole knowledge as the promised prize, Scorpius would do everything without hesitation, whereas any of the other people on Moya, even Noranti or Sikozu, would not or would at least have presented an argument, and he himself might hesitate too long. Moreover, the episode plays the various deaths absolutely straight, and not farcical, even the first, that of D'ArgoJool. And Raalee Hill is amazing as SikozuStark, making me feel the horror and the sadness viscerally. As for Claudia Black as AerynChiana, she has the Chiana body language down pat, and the intonation, and yet it's evidently her voice, not that of Gigi Edgley, which does create the impression of a mixture of Aeryn and Chiana and makes the mindfrell of John aiming a gun at this embodiment of the two women he cares for most complete.
The episode tries to give John a small way out emotionally since he knows everyone on this version of Moya will die half an hour later anyway, but it doesn't make those deaths less murder, for the sole purpose of finding Aeryn. Like I said, it's arguably the episode with John (while in his right mind, not possessed by someone else) at his darkest, and by the look on his face, he knows it.
The other episodes This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1460389.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Turns out I don't dislike this episode the way I did back in the day anymore. (This was one of the ep whose rewatch I dreaded.) What I thought then: it wasted this season's (and as it would turn out, the last season's) opportunity for an Aeryn character exploration episode (a la The Way We Weren't or The Choice) in order to tell the audience for the nth time what the audience really really really knows - that Aeryn loves John, and loved no one the way she loves him. When at this point, after four seasons of J/A, anything but Aeryn loving John would have been more revealing and more interesting to explore. Maybe use the opportunity when she's away from Moya and her friends to tell us how she feels about the pregnancy and having a child per se, given her own parents and all the trauma reunions (and maybe/faked reunions) with same brought. Or maybe deep down, she shares Scorpius' conviction that the Scarrans will overrun the rest of the galaxy if the Peacekeepers don't gain a military advantage, and so the PK in her does want them to have wormhole tech, but otoh she also feels strongly that the people in command of the PKs should not be trusted with a such a terrible weapon, and so she's torn. Maybe she feels she's living on borrowed time (due to being brought back from the dead by Zhaan) and that's an incentive to do something with her life she never would have contemplated before. You know - anything that' not focused on how Aeryn loves John.
(Sidenote: I didn't object to the Aeryn-gets-tortured plot device per se. In another show, maybe, but John gets tortured in every possible way on a regular basis since season 1, so it's not like Farscape is a series is sexist about this trope, and also the episode takes care not to present any of the scenes of Aeryn in distress in any way as tiltilating. The body horror of the Scarrans having an obsession with "breeding hybrids" actually picks up on something the Scorpius backstory, Incubator, established.)
What I thought upon rewatch: since I didn't expect any of these type of reveals anymore, I could appreciate what we did get in the Aeryn part of the episode. For example: the Scarran is just there to provide menace, Aeryn's interactions in this episode are with two female characters. And they're both interesting. I appreciate the episode keeps you guessing about whether or not her fellow prisoner is a plant, and that Aeryn seems to change her mind about this along with the viewer but in the end guesses correctly (and proves her "I'm not a nice person" statement). The Sebacean doctor/nurse with the Scarran interests me now in a way she didn't back in the day. I can't remember whether we ever find out what happens to her, so please don't tell me, because while watching, I had two thoughts in quick order: 1) On the one hand, they picked an actress who resembles Xhalax Sun a bit, and 2.) speaking of Xhalax, who starts out a pilot who loves flying, falls in love, has a child, is terribly punished and made into nothing but a murderous weapon who can only give and receive pain - couldn't the doctor/nurse be a woman who started out as a captive to be used in the Scarran's "breeding" attempt, then bought her survival and relatively privileged position through collaboration - couldn't this woman have been Reilani, Scorpius' mother? Yes, Tauza said she died, but Tauza was a liar anyway, and the change of hair color certainly can be handwaved by circumstance as well. Farscape certainly loves to reveal supposedly dead characters to be alive. Also, perhaps because Incubator made Reilani as vulnerable and innocent as possible, I think it would be interesting if Scorpius' survival skills didn't all come from Tauza's brand of brutalization. The idea that Reilani survived, but in the way Xhalax Sun did, has a certain thematic resonance as well, and if this woman isn't killed off in the next episode - I honestly don't remember - I might do something with the idea of her and Scorpius reuniting post Peacekeeper Wars, once I've finished my rewatch.
(Whoever she is, though, here, too, is the whiff of ambiguity amidst the hardened collaboratorness - she did save Aeryn's life (for a while) by revealing her pregnancy.)
The Peacekeepers having a capriciously callous "because I can" deity in their past is interesting, though it feels to me less fitting than the Klingon myth in which they have killed their gods. Otoh I do wonder whether this deity is based on the sudden disappearance of the Eidolons who originally have the PKs their purpose?
Meanwhile, on Moya: the blood oath is pure fanservice for those of us who ship John/Scorpius. On a Watsonian level, too, it fulfills no practical purpose, and I doubt Scorpius assumes John would feel in any additional way bound by this if he doesn't intend to keep his word in the first place. QED: he's just doing it to fulfill a kink. Which I'm on board with.
All kidding aside, it's an episode with the arguable claim of presenting John at his darkest, since the answer to "how far would Crichton to to save Aeryn?" here includes "killing several people who look like merger of his best friends". That it's actually Scorpius doing the shooting is besides the point, given John brought him along precisely after monologuing he'll do anything and is profiting form the result. Indeed, it's hard not to conclude that he knew on some level there would be killing and/or physical violence involved and that with wormhole knowledge as the promised prize, Scorpius would do everything without hesitation, whereas any of the other people on Moya, even Noranti or Sikozu, would not or would at least have presented an argument, and he himself might hesitate too long. Moreover, the episode plays the various deaths absolutely straight, and not farcical, even the first, that of D'ArgoJool. And Raalee Hill is amazing as SikozuStark, making me feel the horror and the sadness viscerally. As for Claudia Black as AerynChiana, she has the Chiana body language down pat, and the intonation, and yet it's evidently her voice, not that of Gigi Edgley, which does create the impression of a mixture of Aeryn and Chiana and makes the mindfrell of John aiming a gun at this embodiment of the two women he cares for most complete.
The episode tries to give John a small way out emotionally since he knows everyone on this version of Moya will die half an hour later anyway, but it doesn't make those deaths less murder, for the sole purpose of finding Aeryn. Like I said, it's arguably the episode with John (while in his right mind, not possessed by someone else) at his darkest, and by the look on his face, he knows it.
The other episodes This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1460389.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.