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
Not even this bullshit episode, dude. Not even this one is without beauty. Zhaan approaches Matala in the corridor, asking if she can remember any tiny symptoms of trouble before their cruiser exploded. Matala gets pissy but still talks with a xanbar up her ass, repeating that there was nothing "until the phase couplers overloaded." Zhaan presses her about it, and Matala finally tosses her hair, all "What does it matter now? Our ship is gone." Zhaan totally calls her worthless: "Perhaps Verell will help." Matala's all, "Fabulously whatever. Hey's what's up with Crichton's chili?" Zhaan rocks so, so hard here: "Far too complex, I'm afraid, for you to know in the short time that you'll be here. I suggest you shouldn't try." Talk to me in a week, Blue. That rocked!
Rygel is...still eating. I really like him this week, and I'm starting to wonder if it's just that he's used so surgically (and so sparingly!) in the story. John comes in mumbling crazily. "D'Argo and Matala...Matala...I can interrupt these future events...I gotta..." He talks to Rygel, in the way that he looks at Rygel and seems to be addressing Rygel, but not so much in the way where he makes sense. "I need to keep people from...from seeing each other." Rygel asks if it's really necessary for John to "gibber" while he's eating, "or at all," and then flashes to the bay, where Verell's just been royally shanked ("Damn."). D'Argo rushes past him, to check Verell, and behind them, Matala creeps up and John grabs her by the cobrasnake, all, "I don't think so!" but then he flashes back to the galley, slamming Rygel's face into the table. Hooray for the future! Rygel chokes on the food he's still downing, and Zhaan comes in demanding to know what the hell is going on with John. Finally. He's like, "This is gonna take a lot of explaining." Which perhaps wouldn't have been true if you weren't so scared of your own lovely pants.
Matala, Verell and D'Argo are in the docking bay, where we're adding another layer to the proceedings: D'Argo's about to end up having to keep a secret, which means half the time he's being weird, it's not for the reasons that John thinks, which when combined with the time stuff means that he ends up with not a lot of personal reality either. Which is fine -- I really don't mind when the characters get suborned and shoehorned into John's story -- except that this episode is pretty much about D'Argo, from a plot standpoint, so he's doing like triple duty: antagonist, protagonist, symbol. Verell admits to D that they weren't doing research so much as field-testing a new weapon. How'd it work? You saw how well it works. The whole thing is a war between the Ilanics and the Scorvians that started three years ago, that D'Argo didn't know about because he was in jail on Moya. I don't know if this ever comes up again, but I do know that we will never, ever see a Scorvian. Which is fine, because they are apparently assholes. Matala admits that they didn't immediately understand that the containment field was necessary -- which is either stupid or a total lie, considering what the weapon is made of -- and that it was the breakdown of their cruiser that helped them understand they needed to shield it. "Luckily," says Verell, "we were able to save the weapon. It's in our shuttle." Which is where you say, "How about we just kind of shoot you toward the rendezvous point and we never, ever talk again?" But D'Argo's dumb this week. He at least asks if that puts Moya in any danger, and Matala says the containment field will protect her, and everybody else. There was a condom machine in a bathroom in Liverpool that said something like, "Safety tested and verified by the British Government" or whatever, and somebody had graffitied underneath that, "So was the Titanic!" I always think of that in these situations.