Episode Report Card Jacob: A | 366 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT A Human Reaction
By Jacob | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 1999.08.20
The music abruptly changes as we se John's module leaving Moya. He maneuvers it over the wormhole and checks in with Pilot, who's still worried about him cutting it too close as the wormhole continues to degrade. In command, the whole screwed-up crew watches. Pilot talks John through the navigations, and shouts when it's time for him to go. John is paralyzed, at the edge of the wormhole, too scared to go in, too scared to stay lost. (Buffy's got the Hellmouth, Farscape's got the wormholes, which starting with this episode pretty much slowly take over the show, for good reason. Even Stargate has, you know, the Stargates. Even Dune's got those huge traveling birth canals that change reality and perception with their excretions. Didn't Deep Space Nine have something similar? On the other side was God. On the other side is always God, or something just as wonderful, and just as scary. You come out of them reborn, and if you go back in, you turn into something else every time. Most genre shows are created by men. Just a thought. If the Giant Space Vagina Theory of Science Fiction creeps you out, I don't know that this is the show for you, because the relatively sterile wormholes are only the tip of the iceberg, in terms of the Rabelaisian goings-on in which this show excels. There's a reason the show is such a neverending dorky descent into the Australian BDSM scene, as they say.)
D'Argo, as the only other man onboard, gets it: "Crichton." He snaps John out of it as the rest of them yell insults. "...Yeah, D'Argo." Aeryn swallows, victim of her own, parallel choice paralysis, as D'Argo talks John through it: "I understand the fear. But if you don't do this now, you will regret it forever. You must go, now. Do it, John." John's face hardens, as back on deck, Aeryn stands, quietly breaking. She has nothing to add, because she just had the same choice, and wasn't strong enough to take it. "Thanks, big guy," says John, and hangs his dad's puzzle-ring, given him the day this adventure began, around his joystick, asking his father for luck as he drops down into the wormhole. Circles and circles: the ring's on a chain, the ring goes around your finger, the chain goes around your joystick, the joystick takes you down into the giant wormhole. John has his father's blessing; at the end of the tunnel lies home.