Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Putting Out, With Dark Sunglasses
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 06.17.1999
Rygel hums and plays with the crystal on a console in command as D'Argo picks the cell's lock. Zhaan and D'Argo grumble about getting the cell door open. Worthless bastards.
"Pilot," says John, in Pilot's place, "This is Kornata. She's here to help Aeryn." Kornata pronounces Pilot magnificent, and we breathe a sigh of relief: once somebody says it, everyone will be okay. Just believe. "Pilot, we don't have a lot of time. In fact, we have no time. We need your assistance." And he offers it "without hesitation." As he would, as he does, as he always will. And Moya standing behind him, full of love and no hesitation, and in her gigantic heart and soul only the desire to hear you singing; only the desire to hear your love for her. To see the stars and to love, and that's your entire life. Could you cut, bash, injure the glory in that? Could you live with yourself if you did? It's not really rhetorical; they've got a lot on the line, or think they do, and I respect that.
Kornata talks a bunch of 'babble about how she's going to get Aeryn out of this pickle; Pilot multitasks this science without hesitation, though we know it's hard. John offers to help, and Pilot and Kornata shush him. "Crichton, I think you should know: Rygel has nearly finished reconfiguring the data on the cartographic crystal." Kornata lets slip that the crystal is not only worthless but a virus: "If you import the maps into the ship's data stores, it'll erase everything there." Welcome to the world of being an asshole, assholes. Here's a map worth exactly that much.
Where's the phone? I'll fucking call Crais myself. D'Argo finally opens the cell door and they run toward command, where John is wrestling with Rygel, who tries to bite. He takes it from Rygel and it shatters, worlds evaporating, gasps all around from the unforgivables. "What have you done?" hisses Zhaan, to John, still big enough to see enough of their perspective to know how painful that must have been: "It would have destroyed all of Moya's data. It was never meant to work." Pilot clamshells that "it's ready," and John leaves. We don't get to know what they're talking about because we're not worth it, just like Zhaan and D'Argo. It's an effective moment. John and Pilot are above and talking about things that we don't get to hear, because we're with Zhaan and D'Argo and Rygel.
Namtar mixes something and bitches at Kornata. "The final stage serum is nearly complete and I need your help!" John enters and makes some faces; Namtar tells him to bite it. "I don't have time for you now. I will need simply to kill you." Kornata works as John speaks: "I'm not here to attack you. I know that there's nothing I can do to you. I'm here to see Aeryn." Good science. "I'm afraid your friend Aeryn is no longer here, but...there is someone else you may be interested in meeting." He pulls the curtain on what Aeryn's become: "Step forward. Don't be modest." And she does. "John?" And how can Namtar do this to her? How can science set free from morality be so free still to horror? "Is that how you speak to someone who is fast approaching perfection?" John calls bullshit on that one; he's a scientist, he knows this. "You expect credit for using innocent lifeforms as specimens in your research? You of all people should understand the horror in that." Namtar's surprised that John knows about the rat part of the story. "What I didn't understand then is, all species are seeking perfection. That's what evolution is: the road towards perfection. How many generations of your species have lived and died to lead to you?" Just the right and most gorgeous amount, duh. "How many will die after you? All in the name of achieving a state of perfection." Or damn close. John's like, "The fuck you say?"