Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT ...And Wash Away The Rain
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 04.01.1999
Everything has a Schwarzschild radius, in layman's terms a gravitational limit, proportional to its mass. If something's smaller than its own Schwarzschild radius, it's a black hole. The Schwarzschild radius then becomes the event horizon, the line of gravity that surrounds the black hole, pulling you in. The good news is that the Schwarzschild radius of a sphere with density equal to critical density is the whole universe. Meaning that if you assign something a density that you can't look directly at, it will suck you in every time, but if you can see things as they are -- if you can taste the rain -- you get the universe in return. Aeryn's black hole has a Schwarzschild radius equal to the horrors she's perpetrated, and the ones she's let go on and on without complaint, and her own fear of the world outside; these episodes are her first tutorial. What's brilliant is that -- even in PK Tech Girl -- we never look directly at it, the action and the A-plot are always peripheral, and you -- like Aeryn -- have to do the math yourself. Which is the point: What's the difference between a black hole and a wormhole? A black hole has no point of escape: you hit the singularity and that's it, game over. But wormholes are two-way communication, two black holes (no white holes in this universe) joined up gap-to-gap. The difference is a voice calling back to you across that black gravity, saying "Come home."
But why are you talking about black holes and the Schwarzschild radius? Check out the ship in the screen, which has been steadily blowing itself up the whole time I've been going on and on. John notices the green energy surrounding the ship, but before he can ask what it is, there's a tiny ship onscreen, and Pilot sends them its transmission. We see two effed-up looking aliens, Ilanics, who are like Luxans but with longer, fruitier tentacles and horribly sing-song voices. I mean to tell you that you have never heard anything like the way these freaks talk. There's a girl one, who's a dead ringer for Debi Mazar, with extra creepy. Her name is Matala, and her game is a little confusing. The other one is Verell, an elderly scientist who looks like Snarf's grandfather. Matala goes, "Please! Help us. Power's malfunctioning. Life support gone." That's all I'd need to hear, that voice, to drop their asses cold, but there's something going on with D'Argo's face where you know for sure that this is not going to happen. He abruptly switches stance and says to bring them aboard, Pilot grumbling all over the place about D'Argo's fickleness. "We have our consensus," says Zhaan, even though I'm sure Rygel would disagree, and Aeryn too. "Deploy the docking web." The easy rhythm of Zhaan and D being in charge, I love it so much, because he's young and she's old, and Rygel doesn't actually care.