Stewart here…and fair warning, some spoilers lie within…
Mini-cap time on Farscape! Holla at your boy, J.C. (John Crichton)!
Hey, fellow travelers of the Uncharted Territories, its time for some mini-caps on Farscape. Last time, Crichton got twinned, and not by his own choosing. This would be enough for Moya’s crew to handle, but now they have bigger problems: a Peacekeeper black ops squad lead by Aeryn’s mom is after them, and the group has to separate, with a Crichton being on Moya and Talyn. Oh, and the Crichton on Talyn (we’ll call him Black Crichton, based on his t-shirt) has made the next step in his relationship with Aeryn. How will Green Crichton (the one on Moya) react to Black Crichton sleeping with his, um, their, wait, I mean… Look, let’s just get to business, okay?
“Losing Time”
Once again, a random energy cluster in space leads to trouble for Moya, mainly an energy creature that has taken up residence in one of the crew, and another energy creature seeking it. Its not really another version of The Thing for very long, when dealing with creature in Moya’s crew leads to having to deal with the other energy creature in Pilot. And Scorpius’ wormhole project runs into trouble, namely it returns liquefied people from the experiments. I’m told this is an improvement from the previous tries. Okay enough episode, but considering how good the other episodes in this round of minicaps, it could have been better.
“Relativity”
While Talyn is recuperating on a jungle planet, Black Crichton, Aeryn, and Crais try to lead Xhalax’s retrieval team away from the recovering Leviathan. That confrontation doesn’t go well for anyone, like Aeryn having to deal with her mother and Xhalax almost gutting Rygel. Talk about crappy family reunions. Tense episode with its rather uncertain end (come on, Crais did kill Xhalax, right? RIGHT?), and oh hey, some of Crais’ personality has to be put into Talyn to fix him. That can’t end well.
“Incubator”
Scorpius gets annoyed with his wormhole experiments (the whole “pilots returning as goo” thing is a stickler) and hooks the neural chip into himself, making a Head Crichton that Scorpius wants to convince to help him. He does this by showing some family home videos, like the horrific birth of Scorpius and conditioning by Scarran interrogators. So yeah, its as fun as it sounds. Also, Moya gets a visitor in one of the scientists from Scorpius’ project, who seems to have survived…for a while. A noteworthy episode in it reframes what we know about Scorpius, his real plans for the wormhole tech, and amps up one of the big plots of the series so far: the brewing Peacekeeper/Scarran conflict.
“Meltdown”
Talyn ends up in orbit around a star, and some narcotic leaking from Talyn is affecting our crew in different ways. Turns out Leviathans are drawn to a horrible death into this star, and with the tension of a ghostly image and a mysterious stranger added to the mix, things get dicey. Some nice humor watching John and Aeryn trying to keep their hands off each other (to no permanent success), Crais losing his gord, and Rygel going on a massive eating binge (good thing he has three stomachs still). Good episode, but by no means essential.
All in all, a decent batch of episodes showing how each crew is handling things. Plus, we can start to sympathize with Scorpius (well you might, but he needs some more pain after what he did to Gilina in season one, IMHO), and we get some decent progress in the story arc so far. Our next installment brings some more surprises (and tragedy), so stay tuned…
I thought Hentai involved big eyed anime girls? Ewww.
–Funny how everyone blows off Green Crichton’s fear he’s the photocopy and maybe falling apart. Wouldn’t that actually be a BIG concern?
–A Star Trek joke, with the blinking light response system Green Crichton conjures up.
–Like the brief moment of the DRD trying to escape Moya’s central core as she’s restarting. Poor little thing.
–Looks like Chiana may have got some psychic powers from the Rider, huh?
–“Believe me. This plan is so bad, it has to be ours.”
–I think Black Crichton kind of enjoyed treating injured Crais with all that smelly stuff and then using him as bait. I know I would.
Usually this image in my head accompanies someone taking swing practice with a baseball bat.
–Really, we got to go with Crais as a personality to imprint onto Talyn? Even Stark’s a better idea than Crais.
–One of the advantages of not watching the show after a while is getting shocked by stuff like Rygel getting filleted.
–Speaking of Stark, he can’t sew Hynerians up well, and Zhaan is talking to him from the afterlife.
–Remember the old comic book rule with Xhalax: no corpse, no death.
–Rygel’s response to Stark’s question of friend or foes outside: “Of course it’s a foe! We have no friends!”
–Some great make-up for young Scorpius in “Incubator”.
–Speaking of young Scorpius, nasty little move stabbing his Scarran captor in the eyes. Ow.
–A nice touch to have “head Crichton” not really know Aeryn is still alive, thanks to the timing of when the chip was pulled out.
–One of the advantages of this two Crichton storyline is seeing each Crichton’s reaction to pursuing further knowledge of wormhole technology. Not much on Black Crichton’s end, though, until we get to the two-parter in our next installment.
–Another Star Trek joke, with the reference to “holodeck Crichton”.
–“You really want to push this, Mr. Let’s Go Find My Son?”
–Crais lied (somewhat) about a makeshift Pilot’s Den in Talyn. Big surprise there. This guy’s trust issues have trust issues.
–Always know the right usage of “frell”.
–Word of advice: never get near a hungrier than usual Hynerian.
–Another great makeup job on Mu’Quillus. He looks particularly evil enough.
–“Good old Stark, count on him to jump in and wig right out.”
This is pretty much what I almost did after I saw the pilot for the CW’s Beauty and the Beast.
NEXT TIME: D’Argo and Green Crichton talk about a trip to a nearby planet gone horribly wrong in “Scratch ‘N Sniff”, Black Crichton is faced with a pivotal and tragic choice regarding wormhole tech and Scarran invaders in the two part “Infinite Possibilities”, and Green Crichton goes into an animated wonderland after getting knocked into a coma in “Revenging Angel”.
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The introduction of Aeryn’s mom and the subsequent arc, are quite interesting because it gives more depth to her character. I also liked the backstory stuff with Scorpius because when he’s first introduced, he hints at stuff and makes comments but there are still a lot of questions. I still enjoy the two separate crews and you just know that when they meet back up, it’s gonna mess with everything!
One of my favorite episodes is in the next batch. Makes me squee!
I have to admit when I was originally watching the show, i had missed these eps (for reasons to complex to explain, but the short answer is I didn’t have cable for a a month or two) and always skimmed them until these minicaps. Things really picked up in the two parter in the next post, and yes…that episode…