Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lewis Carroll Never Imagined This
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 17 | Aired on 09.09.1999
...and in the blue dimension, Crichton finds Chiana writhing in pain from the sound. It's too bad she can't hear, because this would be the perfect time for Crichton to smug, "Doesn't affect me! Doesn't affect me!" Crichton, though, being the best person in the history of forever, does the only thing he can do, which is to throw Chiana over his shoulders, run to Rygel's quarters, and toss her into the next dimension. Along the way he does notice that the light seems to have consumed some of the ship. Once Chiana's gone, Crichton goes in search of Aeryn, but the creature shows up and slashes three marks into Aeryn's prowler. Crichton's looking at them quizzically when Aeryn appears and shoots at the creature, causing it to withdraw. Once she comes closer, we see that she's wearing a headset, and she beckons Crichton to follow her and then gives him one. Once he has it on, the noise stops. Crichton calls her a genius, and, enjoying the moment a bit, she says she modified her flight headsets to block out acoustic wavelengths. All that, and she can cook too. Crichton endearingly, if unnecessarily given that we've been here many times before, calls attention to her technical accomplishment, and she snaps, "Well, it's military tech. It's battle-tested." Hee. She asks why he didn't shoot at the creature, and Crichton confesses that he doesn't know. I think we're meant to infer that the creature touched Crichton's mind earlier, but that's left unclear. Crichton explains about the dimensional schism and where everyone is, and then gets to the part where the engines have to be turned on in all the realities. Aeryn: "That should have been the first thing you told me, Crichton." She's not wrong. She tells Crichton to scoot, as she knows the codes thanks to Pilot's DNA, but he stubbornly refuses to believe her until she recites the entire sequence to him. Unnecessary, but cute and amusing, and therefore rather fitting for this episode. Crichton notes, "It's gonna be harder to doubt you in the future." And therefore, in the future, you'll have caught up to the rest of us. He tells Aeryn to give him half an arn, which seems wrong given that D'Argo's half an arn must have started at least ten minutes ago, but it's not like this part of the plan is going to come to fruition anyway. Crichton does observe some more slashes that the creature left behind.
Crichton emerges in the yellow dimension, but Pip and Sparky aren't around. Crichton runs off, again seeing that the light is encroaching on a lot more of the ship. He finds Chiana and Rygel in Pilot's chamber, and gets to work as Chiana asks him if he knows any good jokes. Crichton: "Not besides the one I'm living." Oh, the irony that no one laughed at that one. Crichton refers to Rygel as Napoleon, and I could claim that he totally stole my joke if I were to ignore the laws of time and space. Recapping this show does have its conveniences. Realizing that getting Chiana or Rygel to remember and execute the sequence is more of an exercise in futility than even he's willing to undertake, he starts the engines himself and gives Chiana a simple instruction of what to do should they shut down. If starting all the engines at the same time isn't necessary, I don't know why he's having D'Argo and Aeryn wait around in their respective dimensions, unless he's read ahead in the script -- I mean, "wants to make sure that nothing goes wrong." Rygel sings a giggle-worthy song that he apparently made up on the spot, and I have to admit that hanging out in this nitrous oxide-y dimension with Rygel and Chiana wouldn't be the worst time I've had this week.