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
John locates the Peacekeeper shield but Zhaan cautions him he can't go much further down before he runs out of cable. "Okay, I'm cutting now," says Aeryn, and Zhaan warns John that Aeryn is beginning to cut the connections. Everybody talks over and over each other: D'Argo and Zhaan trying to figure out what's going on with John, John beginning to figure out the secret. "I'm not sure, Zhaan how much do you know of Leviathan physiology? Do you know how they reproduce?" Zhaan immediately hops on board: "That's why the particles are biomechanoid." It's the "catalyst" for her pregnancy; she wasn't trying to kill them at all. "No, she's been trying to protect her baby." They say "catalyst" about a hundred times, and then forgotten Aeryn comes over comms to call in her situation: "I've almost got it. The higher functions are almost severed." Everybody screams at her to stop, over comms, which are crappy this week just like everything else on Moya, and it's nail-biting freaky. John orders Aeryn to stop and she finally complies -- again, without asking why. Peacekeepers! Zhaan: "We'll explain later, just put down the saw." Heh.
"Moya," says John, "I wish there was some way I could communicate to you, to let you know that whatever you're doing to nurse your baby, it's killing Pilot. And us." He realizes why the DRDs are freaking out. "The baby needs the DRDs, we're killing the baby. Aeryn, you've got to turn on the DRDs." Aeryn, fed up, asks what the hell is going on down there. "Turn back on the DRDs now!" He shouts; she does. It's not about following orders, it's about trust. The DRDs advance on John. "Moya, I don't know if you can hear me through the DRDs...hell, I don't even know if you can understand me without Pilot translating, but we would never hurt you or your baby. We're happy that you're having a child. But do we have to die so that your baby can live?" The DRDs chill out, and Zhaan comms that the atmospherics are back on. The DRDs back off as John wonders at the baby: "How big is that thing gonna grow?" Especially in comparison to his britches?
Zhaan compliments Pilot on being "up and back on your feet," which colloquialism apparently translates, since John laughs about how Pilot doesn't really have feet to be back on, exactly. Pilot thanks her for her concern. "Here's what I don't understand," says John. "How could Moya do this without your permission?" Pilot shrugs it off, as always: "I'm here to serve her, she may do whatever she feels is necessary to for her survival ... now, I suppose, that extends to her offspring as well. To nourish the fetus through the very tenuous period right after conception, Moya needed to re-route a few resources." And the "service" issue comes back around: speaking as Aeryn or Zhaan, it's a beast-of-burden issue. "Droid work." Moya and Pilot in service of their crew. But as usual, only Pilot actually gets it: it's us that service them. The reason I love Look At The Princess, besides all the looove and angst and generally awesome story, is Zhaan's B-story: stewardship, not possession. In serving Moya, she realizes, she serves the Goddess; she sings back to the divine, in thanks and love. Not invasion or possession, but symbiosis.