"Run! Fight! Surrender! Pick one!"
Standard disclaimer: this post and/or the comments may and probably will contain spoilers for the entire series. Previous episode posts here.
Rygel lays out their three options very neatly at the beginning of the episode, and by its end, Aeryn has started running, and John has surrendered, and both of them are bitterly disappointed by the other's choice not to fight.
I think this episode marks the beginning of a couple of important trends for the show. For one thing, the scale of the show expands here-this is the place where John Crichton comes to the attention of more than just a single obsessive Peacekeeper, where he stumbles into intergalactic politics. The simple chase story is about to get a lot more complicated. And one thing Farscape is very good at doing is worldbuilding, establishing the way the Royal Planet fits into the Peacekeeper-dominated space we've seen so far, setting up the rivalry with the Scarrans, establishing the precariousness of being stuck between the two powers. For another, John's relationship with hope is starting to change, though he doesn't know it yet. He still thinks of finding his way home as the thing he lives for, but at the beginning of the episode, he's actively pursuing a relationship with Aeryn, trying to build something important out of his new life in the Uncharted Territories. And by the end of the episode, as painful and disappointing as it is, he's come to the decision that there are some things more important than getting home-his life, keeping his brain intact, the possibility of a family, a glimpse of his future children, familiar responsibilities in a new setting. Ultimately he escapes the Royal Planet and his marriage to Katralla, has the opportunity to resume his search for home, take up his old hope-but he's also got a new one, with Aeryn, with the taste of sweetness from their kiss.
John's idealism does take a big hit in this episode. He's a romantic; he wants to marry for love. It's a real sign of how badly he was frightened by his experience in the Aurora Chair, how helpless he feels around Scorpius, that he's willing to give that up. At this point, Aeryn doesn't understand the depths of John's fear of Scorpius, and expects him to fight, or at least to run. And John doesn't understand-or has lost all patience with-Aeryn's fear of intimacy, and expects her to fight, or to surrender, to admit what she feels. They have a conversation, toward the end of the episode, where she asks him to run away and he wants her to admit that she wants him to run away with her. And she just can't bring herself to say it. She's gotten a very good look at where all of this is leading, has seen the delight on John's face when he held that baby, and she's as incapable of resisting that fear as John is of fighting Scorpius. That conversation interests me, because John is so clearly looking for a sign, and Aeryn so clearly knows it and can't give it to him, but I'm not sure, if she had, if he would have made a different decision. It would have given him the words he wanted, but it wouldn't have changed anything about the physical danger he was in. And that's another place where he and Aeryn clash here, because the words are important to him, and the actions are important to her-he wants her to be at the wedding, feels that they still have things to say, and she sees the action of his marriage to someone else, of his leaving Moya and her, of her being at the wedding as an endorsement of his choice, and doesn't think there's anything more to say but goodbye. He's operating on a symbolic level, and she's operating on a literal one; one of the neatest things about her coming to him, at the end of the trilogy, with that vial of compatibility serum, is the way that gesture is both.
I love the contrast between the epic drama of John and Aeryn's romance and the earthy lack of complication in D'Argo and Chiana's, the way the test is just a game for Chiana and something D'Argo fears will complicate their relationship, the way they just toss aside the results and get on with it. John and D'Argo's friendship is also lovely here; getting laid regularly seems to have mellowed D'Argo out considerably, and he's the one giving out the calm advice while John freaks out. Going forward, as John falls further into chip-induced madness and then obsession (with Aeryn, with wormholes), D'Argo steps up more to be the voice of reason, and that is, I think, another trend that starts in this episode.
"Look at the Princess" is, above all, a fairytale, through the looking glass, Farscape-style. John's uniqueness gets him into trouble, because unique is always valuable, and the fluke of his compatibility with Katralla balances Scorpius's obsession with the knowledge he carries. There's a princess in danger, an evil brother, ogres lurking in the background. And John, who very much wants his kisses with Aeryn to mean something, gets stuck when his kiss with Katralla means way more than he could possibly imagine. There's another kind of wooing going on too; one thing that really struck me, when I watched the episode this time, was how sure Scorpius seemed that he could work out an arrangement with John, that John would yield to reason and persuasion. This is the first, but hardly the last, time Scorpius fails to realize the damage he did with the Aurora Chair, how irretrievably wrong a foot he got off on with John. He makes a surprising number of misjudgments with John-first the Aurora Chair, then killing Aeryn, and eventually thinking that he can join the crew of Moya and join with John's fight, that John will see the rightness of his cause against the Scarrans rather than the ugly things he's done to him-and even when he finally gets to see the wormhole weapon he's been after all this time, he won't get how far John's willing to go to keep it out of everyone's hands. Scorpius is a skilled manipulator, someone with a lot of insight, and that makes his John-shaped blind spot and the way it both feeds and frustrates his obsessions terribly ironic.
Rygel lays out their three options very neatly at the beginning of the episode, and by its end, Aeryn has started running, and John has surrendered, and both of them are bitterly disappointed by the other's choice not to fight.
I think this episode marks the beginning of a couple of important trends for the show. For one thing, the scale of the show expands here-this is the place where John Crichton comes to the attention of more than just a single obsessive Peacekeeper, where he stumbles into intergalactic politics. The simple chase story is about to get a lot more complicated. And one thing Farscape is very good at doing is worldbuilding, establishing the way the Royal Planet fits into the Peacekeeper-dominated space we've seen so far, setting up the rivalry with the Scarrans, establishing the precariousness of being stuck between the two powers. For another, John's relationship with hope is starting to change, though he doesn't know it yet. He still thinks of finding his way home as the thing he lives for, but at the beginning of the episode, he's actively pursuing a relationship with Aeryn, trying to build something important out of his new life in the Uncharted Territories. And by the end of the episode, as painful and disappointing as it is, he's come to the decision that there are some things more important than getting home-his life, keeping his brain intact, the possibility of a family, a glimpse of his future children, familiar responsibilities in a new setting. Ultimately he escapes the Royal Planet and his marriage to Katralla, has the opportunity to resume his search for home, take up his old hope-but he's also got a new one, with Aeryn, with the taste of sweetness from their kiss.
John's idealism does take a big hit in this episode. He's a romantic; he wants to marry for love. It's a real sign of how badly he was frightened by his experience in the Aurora Chair, how helpless he feels around Scorpius, that he's willing to give that up. At this point, Aeryn doesn't understand the depths of John's fear of Scorpius, and expects him to fight, or at least to run. And John doesn't understand-or has lost all patience with-Aeryn's fear of intimacy, and expects her to fight, or to surrender, to admit what she feels. They have a conversation, toward the end of the episode, where she asks him to run away and he wants her to admit that she wants him to run away with her. And she just can't bring herself to say it. She's gotten a very good look at where all of this is leading, has seen the delight on John's face when he held that baby, and she's as incapable of resisting that fear as John is of fighting Scorpius. That conversation interests me, because John is so clearly looking for a sign, and Aeryn so clearly knows it and can't give it to him, but I'm not sure, if she had, if he would have made a different decision. It would have given him the words he wanted, but it wouldn't have changed anything about the physical danger he was in. And that's another place where he and Aeryn clash here, because the words are important to him, and the actions are important to her-he wants her to be at the wedding, feels that they still have things to say, and she sees the action of his marriage to someone else, of his leaving Moya and her, of her being at the wedding as an endorsement of his choice, and doesn't think there's anything more to say but goodbye. He's operating on a symbolic level, and she's operating on a literal one; one of the neatest things about her coming to him, at the end of the trilogy, with that vial of compatibility serum, is the way that gesture is both.
I love the contrast between the epic drama of John and Aeryn's romance and the earthy lack of complication in D'Argo and Chiana's, the way the test is just a game for Chiana and something D'Argo fears will complicate their relationship, the way they just toss aside the results and get on with it. John and D'Argo's friendship is also lovely here; getting laid regularly seems to have mellowed D'Argo out considerably, and he's the one giving out the calm advice while John freaks out. Going forward, as John falls further into chip-induced madness and then obsession (with Aeryn, with wormholes), D'Argo steps up more to be the voice of reason, and that is, I think, another trend that starts in this episode.
"Look at the Princess" is, above all, a fairytale, through the looking glass, Farscape-style. John's uniqueness gets him into trouble, because unique is always valuable, and the fluke of his compatibility with Katralla balances Scorpius's obsession with the knowledge he carries. There's a princess in danger, an evil brother, ogres lurking in the background. And John, who very much wants his kisses with Aeryn to mean something, gets stuck when his kiss with Katralla means way more than he could possibly imagine. There's another kind of wooing going on too; one thing that really struck me, when I watched the episode this time, was how sure Scorpius seemed that he could work out an arrangement with John, that John would yield to reason and persuasion. This is the first, but hardly the last, time Scorpius fails to realize the damage he did with the Aurora Chair, how irretrievably wrong a foot he got off on with John. He makes a surprising number of misjudgments with John-first the Aurora Chair, then killing Aeryn, and eventually thinking that he can join the crew of Moya and join with John's fight, that John will see the rightness of his cause against the Scarrans rather than the ugly things he's done to him-and even when he finally gets to see the wormhole weapon he's been after all this time, he won't get how far John's willing to go to keep it out of everyone's hands. Scorpius is a skilled manipulator, someone with a lot of insight, and that makes his John-shaped blind spot and the way it both feeds and frustrates his obsessions terribly ironic.