Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Believing The Strangest Things
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 05.07.1999
"What kind of ship are you?" Lyneea flips out, back upstairs. "That thing on the computer in there and now this one trying to pull down my barn! You said you were a scientist, a science ship!" Science v. war. "I am a scientist!" he shouts. This is like month three in the dating cycle, this part: the "Um, I know that you don't love Mamet because nobody actually loves Mamet so give me some credit" phase. "My ship is.... It's a prison transport. Escaped prisoners." She's like, better and better. So wait, you what? "It's a galactic misunderstanding," he lamely "explains," and she's like, enough. "Take your precious anlux and get out of my house." John protests that he's not leaving without D'Argo, and she explains, nearing tears, that he's going to be vivisected, "laid open on an autopsy tale by dawn tomorrow," which is what she's been bending over backwards this whole time to protect John from. Vivisection is a constant fear with this show -- like, in every episode somebody is getting cut open or excavated or having their parts traded out or turned inside out or surgeried or whatever -- because bodies will always, always be scary, and something that is inherently out of your control, and somebody else getting control of the thing you can barely even keep up with, and doing whatever they want with it, is terrifying. John steadfastly refuses to leave without D, and Lyneea is just like, "Fuck!"
Rygel: "Only a few more to go." He continues to cut, and apparently hits a really bad one. Moya groans, Zhaan screams, and loses her grip on the bulkhead. Aeryn catches her as she's shuddering, "Help me back! Get me back!" I'm really quite proud of her today. I bitch about her, but I mean: this isn't about getting her off, for once. This is done out of love, pure love. Nobody's going to clap for her except Moya, who loves her anyway. Zhaan and Rygel have been onboard longer than you can count, which means they know each other the most, and they love Moya the best. Aeryn yells to Rygel to "get it done in there," and he "thanks" her for her encouragement, and everybody's really stressed, except for a woozy Zhaan, now being held against the bulkhead by Aeryn, who is beyond stress and in agony.
Upstairs in Elliott's room, Lyneea and Ryymax are at the computer, and she's lying her ass off about how the transmissions are getting interrupted, but that before, there was this awesome thing she saw completely randomly. She plays a tape recording of Pilot ("Crichton, is that you? How is your signal getting though?") -- which is AWESOME, because she's a scientist and Ryymax is a soldier, and she's dicking with him using a VCR -- just like John with the analyzer, when he surprised D'Argo and Aeryn with his tech skills. Ryymax pops a boner and asks if she can tell the "signal's" origin, and she smiles. Gotcha.