Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Enemy Of My Enemy Is...
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 15 | Aired on 08.12.1999
But apparently, he moves as slowly as he speaks, as the goo from Rygel's mouth is still oozing down his face when we return. Rygel, however, can move surprisingly quickly when he wants to, as he launches himself at Durka and tries to sink his teeth into Durka's neck. Crichton's too quick for Rygel, though, and drags him back. Aeryn asks how it's possible that he's Durka, as even if he'd escaped the Zelbinion, he would have died of old age over fifty cycles earlier. This is the cue for a vaguely unsettling voice to cut in that Durka was "saved." Not from split ends, he wasn't. A middle-aged blue-skinned (or so it seems on the screen, anyway) male slides into the frame and introduces himself as "Salis," of the Nebari, and over Rygel's struggles and protests calmly asserts that Durka poses no danger. The Moya crew is still skeptical, but Salis says that the Nebari spent over a hundred cycles making sure Durka would be "incapable of evil," and if his lilting, deceptively authoritative manner of speaking wasn't already giving you the creepy-crawlies, the possibilities accompanying that statement sure should. I love this storyline, though -- it's been done to death in other science fiction, yes, but the moral ambiguity, eye-of-the-beholder stuff is almost always a winner, and it's even more so given how it relates to many of the Moya crew. Rygel, needless to say, is unconvinced by Salis's words, but Crichton eventually puts him down, and he Thronesleds away. Salis says that Rygel will soon understand that he's wrong. Brrrr. Crichton says it may take some doing. "Being tortured has that effect." Crichton will be even better able to attest to that soon, if a certain villain with a similarly deceptively creepy manner of speaking has anything to say about it. Salis counters that Crichton should know, as a Sebacean, but Crichton corrects him that he's human. Aeryn, for her part, doesn't pipe up that she's a Sebacean, and she really must sense how oddly tense the situation is if she's willing for one second to have Salis believe that she's from that backwater planet "Erp." Meanwhile, Salis replies, "Human. I'm not familiar with your species," in a voice that suggests he'd love to have Crichton pinned to an index card. Which is one of the few ways I wouldn't want to see him. Salis informs them that they're scheduled to rendezvous with another of their ships, but in the meantime, they'll "require" quarters and food. Durka asks if the ship has any containment facilities, which seems like an odd question at first, but I guess there's no way he would have known that Moya was once commandeered by the Peacekeepers. Anyway, the point is that they're transporting "a very dangerous criminal"...