Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Mothers & Fathers and Brothers & Suns
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 06.24.1999
D'Argo's doing the heavy lifting this week: his flipping back and forth between two realities describes the A and B plots in miniature. Two secrets coming to light, the annunciation of two unholy children, the miscegenation that hits the PKs in their greatest horror, the guilt and shame in the way both D'Argo and Moya have been misused by the Peacekeepers. How much of this show is about breeding? Things with things, Sebaceans with Scarrans, humans with Sebaceans, Leviathans with war tech, Luxans with Sebaceans, violence with science, love with fear, more with less. It's about coming up against your opposite and Other, and finding a synthesis, and it turns out okay if you can do that, which is about half the time. Either you find the balance between your good and evil sides, Zhaan, or you self-destruct -- have you ever thought of setting Zhaan down next to Crais/Talyn and following their stories in tandem? Or Talyn and Aeryn? It really kind of makes everybody look better when you do that. One of the reasons I adore Scorpius so much, and why I can't really hate Talyn: every time somebody harnesses the energy and internal tension of their own impurity, no matter how badly or poorly it goes, it still takes something away from that Sebacean "purity" that has gone so rotten. Clean lies becoming dirty truth: the "more" that only looks scary from the BEFORE side. How much of this show is about physicalizing that internal synthesis? Ask Katralla. Ask Aeryn, whose entire story started with just this: irreconcilable contamination, becoming more and less at once. How much of this show is about breeding? Ask Mele-On Grayza.
Aeryn is in Pilot's den, second-guessing herself: "I can't be certain of what I'm reading, what I'm doing." Down in the corridors, John tries to reassure her, confirming that D'Argo's still out of it, "short circuited," even as his flashlight is going wack. "Aeryn, we gotta be getting close to the source, there's some kind of emergency lighting in this section." He spots four DRDs aiming to misbehave: "Uh oh. Eyes." Aeryn's like, "Eyes?" Aeryn directs him toward a possible detour she thinks might head off on parallel passageways. "You think?" he whines. "Look, do you want to come up here and try to handle all of these thousands of controls?" He shakes his head. "I'm vectoring, I'm vectoring." Heh. He comes upon a whole clutch of DRDs, glowing scarily, advancing on him. They begin to shoot; he tries to back out and finds himself surrounded.