FARSCAPE Revisited Mini-caps / Season 3, Episodes 17-19

Farscape: where your mom is trying to kill you and your dad may be a half lobster.

Stewart here…and fair warning, some spoilers lie within…

Hey, fellow travelers of the Uncharted Territories, its time for some mini-caps on Farscape. Well, John Crichton is dead…and John Crichton is still alive. Being doubled has that advantage, except when it comes to love interests, like Aeryn Sun. She’s a wreck, and the other Crichton on Moya has no idea what’s going on. And that brings us to…

“The Choice”

Aeryn grieves for John’s death alone on a planet, where she meets someone claiming to be her presumably dead father, Talyn (the half lobster face does cast doubt on that), but this turns out to be a trap set by the also presumably dead Xhalax Sun. It’s a pretty heavy Aeryn-centric episode this week, which starts with her mourning a death of a loved one, to…her mourning the death of another loved one. Too bad Peacekeepers don’t believe in shrinks. Plus, Stark leaves to find Zhaan’s spirit (see season four for how that quest went, and spoilers, not well).

“Fractures”

Talyn and Moya reunite, and things are dicey, especially with Green John finding his double dead and Aeryn rather chilly to him. But for the moment, there are other problems, like a batch of escaped Peacekeeper prisoners arriving and a murderer among them. It’s a good enough episode, with some fun alien body humor involving Jool and Crais reassembling a still alive but in many pieces alien. Plus, we get a final message from dead John to alive John, which leads our hero to a bold plan: going to stop Scorpius’ wormhole project.

“I-Yensch, You-Yensch”

Crichton tries to set up a meeting with Scorpius through Rygel and D’argo, who get trapped with Scorpius and Braca in the middle of a robbery that has a hidden motive behind it. As bad as that goes, things are worse when Talyn goes nuts and forces the crew into a really drastic action: lobotomizing the hybrid Leviathan. That lobotomy goes over a lot easier than Rygel and Scorpius’ plan to take down the dim-witted thugs holding them hostage. A nice set-up for the final episodes of season three.

This is like that episode of Cheers where Norm and the Coach bond over killing guys who are stealing from the beer tap.

As fun as the split Crichton stuff has been, its good to see us back to one Crichton again, and with it, some wonderful tension between the crew has been set up for the last three episodes of season three. Now with Crichton securing safe passage into Scorpius’ wormhole project in order to sabotage it, we get to see all of this season pay off in an epic way. This “season of death” is about to end with, well, more death.

–My guess: I think Aeryn realized the guy claiming to be her missing father wasn’t really him because of the insect half of his face (I keep thinking about that quip from Claudia Black regarding that faux reveal on the “Jeremiah Crichton” commentary track from season one: “My dad is a half lobster? I did not know that.”)

–For the record, I’ve always been a fan of Aeryn with her hair down than up.

–We all realize it would’ve been easier if Crais just said to everyone he made a deal with Xhalax to leave them alone, right? Not that it mattered since she came after them anyway, but…

–So let’s see: Aeryn has lost one Crichton, and now her mother. Yeah, I can see how that would mess with your head.

–Some nice ambiguity with Aeryn’s final meeting with the Seer regarding contacting dead Crichton’s spirit. At one point, that Seer was considered to be brought back, but what happened after season four seemed to change those plans.

Hey its a…maaannnnn…in a box! (cue Alice In Chains)

–I just dig the oddity of all the escaped prisoners Moya picks up: a depowered Scarran, a female Hynerian, a hermaphrodite Nebari, and an alien that can survive being blasted to pieces.

–A great meta-moment when Crichton asks which shirt should he wear: green or black. D’Argo suggests black, because green doesn’t work for him.

–We get to see D’Argo’s new pimpmobile spaceship in action in the retrieval of Rygel.

–That response from Aeryn to Crichton not knowing about her and the other Crichton’s Budong run-in in “Green Eyed Monster” was a nice moment of weakness that showed her confusion over things.

–Speaking of fun responses, that one-sided but somehow not moment with dead Crichton’s hologram knowing what the other Crichton was probably thinking was a nice way to wrap up that story arc.

–I feel bad for that poor exploded but still alive alien having his body parts rained down on Crais and Jool.

huh huh huh huh…he’s touching an alien’s schlong…huh huh huh huh…

–More Chiana future flashes, which come too late for most of the poor souls she sees them for.

–Nice how its never verbalized how Essk decides to go through with her boyfriend/cook’s plan to burn the diner down for the insurance money anyway, even after he’s dead.

–Funny to see Rygel betted on Scorpius having armor in his suit to take that laser blast. Even funnier was when asked if Scorpius didn’t have armor, how either way, shooting Scorpius benefited him.

–The Braca/D’Argo nerve attachment running gag was fun, especially when the device was used by D’Argo on one of the thugs, and D’Argo knocked him out by hitting his own head into the floor repeatedly.

–Kind of hard not to feel sorry for Crais having to shut off Talyn’s brain. Kind of.

–“No, we started this together, Crichton. That’s how we’ll end it.”

NEXT TIME: Season Three of the Farscape minicaps ends with a brief review of the season’s highlights. Before that though, we got a confrontation against Crichton and Scorpius that not everyone walks out of alive in the epic two-parter “Into The Lion’s Den”, and the season ends with a funeral, some departures, and a really last-minute reveal in “Dog With Two Bones”.