D'Argo has gone absolutely nuts. John's actually hiding up in the ceiling as D'Argo stomps and shouts and acts crazy, hunting him. He punches a DRD in the face, that's how mad he is, and the camera goes staticky for a sec. So, like, John and D's little "I'm so horny!" "God, me too!" "Let's be best friends!" "Yes, because we are so horny!" thing last week, I guess that really worked out all the issues. Or started new ones.
Three days later. Aeryn, John, Rygel, and Zhaan are all klatched around the table in command, watching a tiny little recorded hologram D'Argo run around the ship shouting for John's blood. Man, this is a good beginning to a very variable episode. Rygel: "You're dead!" John marvels about how D'Argo's been like this for three whole days. "He still can't be freaking like that." Aeryn explains to us that we're seeing "Luxan hyper-rage -- it doesn't just go away." Zhaan congratulates John for hiding as well as he did, and Aeryn notes that they looked for him for three days to tell him D'Argo was off the ship. "You hide very well. You must have had a lot of practice." Rygel laughs at this, and John tells him to cram it. "It comes natural, especially when you got that chasing you." His accent, even after three days, signals major wigged. "Why the hell is he raging after me, anyway?" Zhaan explains that it's because John is another male, and John asks why, then, he wasn't going after Rygel. "Spanky here is male [happy grunt]...I think [sad grunt]." Rygel harrumphs and says D'Argo knows better than to fuck with him. Aeryn tells John that D'Argo took her Prowler down to a planet, and Zhaan hopes "the rage has had time to dissipate." "Or" -- and I think that John's got his finger on this better than she -- "he's killed something." Rygel smiles gleefully at the thought.
As hilarious as gay panic is, I think this has more to do with seeing that pseudo-Luxan (and that pseudo-pseudo-Luxan) last week. I think it's analogous to the discomfort Aeryn feels about Urp -- almost right, not exactly right, you're maybe willing to split the difference, and then it turns on you, horribly. Bites you hard. For somebody who is a born warrior, a pack hunter, to be exiled from not one, but two races, and then spend a bunch of time in jail, and finally brush up against a jacked-up kind of fulfillment -- only to have it taken away viciously again -- that's gotta hurt. And John kind of stuck his face on that loneliness last week. I wonder if Scorvians look like Sebaceans. I bet they do. Or maybe this is just to make up for the fact that the women got all bitchy last week -- it's the other side of that "girls only fight over men" coin, and if anything it's more damaging, this idea that sometimes men just get violent and sometimes men just want a beer and a blow job or they might get violent.
Aeryn heads out on a transport pod and lands on a dark planet, looking for D'Argo. For some reason she has brought John, along with Zhaan and Rygel. Poor John, as usual he's the worst bet, due to D'Argo wanting to eat his lunch. All the people are wearing red, mostly knit fabrics, and they have white hair and they are ruddy and dirty and they have creepy pale eyes. They look like Fremen, and that is really not a compliment. They have their stupid hair all in crazy ways, including sticking up out of their stupid headbands, and the first thing I think of is Big Brother 3006 when we're all food for Morlocks, and then the second thing I think of is Burning Man, and I realize we're already there. Biceland. The people are uniformly gross and stupid-looking and they all have pothead smiles and they all sell t-shirts and sell furniture on the side of the road for an older, grosser hippie that can't even make change because he's so burned out. It's a good thing I like this episode or I would be very cross just based on looking at these bastards. John makes some reference nobody gets (Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which...those movies look very different to me right this second), as usual, and then doesn't bother to explain it at all, as usual, and talks shit about Thunderdome in the process, for which he will soon answer to Master Blaster, because that movie rocks.
(You know what else looks really different to me right now? The Peacekeepers. They've chosen for themselves the moral authority to police the galaxy, and whenever anybody makes the mistake of complaining they can say, "You asked for it," they're just Keeping the Peace, and meanwhile they're self- and double- and triple-dealing and committing atrocities everywhere you look, because money talks and the armed forces don't recruit the best people, because the military has always been a really efficient machine for killing poor people. And nobody's morality is really all that impeccable in this world, at least not in a way you can centralize, so the insane commanders just roam all over the place with their insane agendas and insane amounts of power, and nobody actually knows who's in charge, because it's all...well, this is just a TV show so I guess fascism for its own sake is enough. You don't really need oil money or straw-man abuse of religion for that to play, in the context of the show. But remember Lynndie England, with her 80 IQ? Remember how they threw her white-trash ass to the dogs? Although it's funny you should bring up oil money, Dick, considering where this episode ends up. This episode aired April 23, 1999. Back then the Peacekeepers were an ideological metaphor. If you'd told me in 1999 we'd all be living there in 2006, I would have punched your face because I loved my country and the really fucking hilarious part is that I still do.)
Zhaan asks Aeryn if she'll be okay in the heat, due to the delirium factor, and she says she'll be okay as long as it's nighttime. Rygel points out how it's fairly bright outside, and John spares a second to explain the planetary concept of white night, which translates here as an infinite workweek. Rygel calls the phenomenon "find the Luxan and save ourselves from heat seizure," instead, and they halt outside a rockin' bar. "Shall we?" says Zhaan drolly.
Inside the bar there is not-entirely-horrible drummy dance playing, and everywhere there are horrible hippies dancing stupidly. John's like, "Sebaceans, right?" Aeryn snorts, disgusted -- I feel you, girl -- and tells him they're just "common laborers," a "distant cousin species, at best," and notice how we're still not going to the Marx place there, and John calls them "kissing cousins, just like humans and Sebaceans," which is hilarious because of last week, and the whole kissin' cousins issue there. I doubt this is on purpose, but I do like that we're getting another offshoot so early in the game. Maybe week there will be people just like Zhaan, only...green! Aeryn chuckles at the concept of human-Sebacean links, saying that the day they prove that is the day she'll "let Palmolian meat hounds tear all the flesh" from her bones. I, of course, assumed immediately that somehow John and Aeryn would be making out by Act Three. And then the dogs would come, I guess.
John sees D'Argo across the bar and takes off like a shot, but D'Argo chases him down and tosses him onto a couch and jumps on top of him. John squeals and smacks D'Argo a couple of times, but D'Argo just laughs and gets closer and closer to his face...but then he giggles and squeezes John really hard -- "Is this the end of hyper-rage? I get hugged to death?" -- and tells him how great it is to see him. Credits, during which probably they make out. Come on. Just a little?
Everybody is sitting at the bar and the music is still going on, and the very giggly and weird D'Argo is walking Rygel through apparently his first chug. Aeryn watches D'Argo and the look on her face is really complicated. She's a soldier, a warrior, like him. That's their thing that they have in common. That and John. So imagine she's about to either puke or burst into tears for the rest of this whole scene, and you'll have the right image: "D'Argo, you've been laboring." He has. "What is wrong with you?" "Nothing," he says. "Everything is right! Everything's very right." Across the bar there is a totally grotsky lady staring him down with her shiny teeth and creepy eyes. Rygel asks -- almost off-hand -- if he killed anybody, with the hyper-rage. "No, that is all gone. Now there is just...contentment." Aeryn now adds "terrified" to the list of "barfy" and "sad," and smacks the hell out of him. "You are a warrior. Act like one." D'Argo claims he is not, in fact, a warrior, and points out that, technically, he's been a prisoner and a fugitive longer than he ever was a warrior. "Don't you feel it's time I stopped lying to myself about who I really am? Here, my efforts have purpose." And, like, that's a way better point in this episode than the undergrad political stuff: the confusion of what we are with what we do. There's at least one scene in each act in which they directly talk about how D'Argo has absolutely no plan for his life and no career to speak of, no army since the Ilanic approximation didn't work out. How he has no family; how if he's nothing, that means he can be anything, which is terrifying...and then there's Aeryn, looking like she might kill him. If she can stop shaking.
"Purpose?" asks John, but the grotsky chick grabs D'Argo and they run off. John wows about "My boy D'Argo, into the Promised Land," and Aeryn's still grossed out. "Yes, and he's left his brain behind." Which is admittedly the other part of this, because it's as much Aeryn's episode as D'Argo's: if you're not a warrior, with a warrior's mind, what are you?
A skinny albino lady with pretty features but intense red eyes and gray veins all over and white woolen extensions comes tottering up, looking crazy, with some bodyguards that she leaves behind. She's wearing all white (the hippies are wearing all red, Aeryn's wearing all black). The visual here is that the people are ruddy because they work all day in the fields, while she stays creepy-lily white indoors like a fat hive queen, and that's how you know what the deal is. Her name is Volmae, and Zhaan greets her warmly, and formally, touching her hands and doing mysterious Delvian gestures. "Greetings. I am Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan. This is John Crichton" -- John gives her a peace sign, in keeping with their hellish environment -- "Aeryn Sun. And his eminence, Dominar Rygel the XVI." She talks like she's having a stroke right this second, the entire episode, but unlike last week, it is not horribly annoying, because she's actually ambiguous, whereas last week, Matala was obviously evil before she'd even docked her shuttle. She says it's a pleasure to welcome them to Sykar, which is the planet of course, and calls herself their leader, "as much as anyone is our leader." Hippies! Run! She says D's been talking about the Moya crew, and Zhaan's like, "In that he probably told you we are not staying here for more than one hot second and that we're harmless, right?" Volmae's all, "Basically, but like just feel some vibes and get groovy and do whatever."
She takes off and Aeryn says, clearly and loudly, "She gives me a woody." Zhaan gives her a quizzical look, John gives her a bemused and kind of horrified one. "A woody. A human saying, I've heard you say it often: when you don't trust someone, or they make you nervous, they give you --" And John interrupts her, loving it: "Willies. She gives you the willies." He's insistent on this point but still kind of mind-blown about the conversation. An indecipherable announcement that doesn't actually matter comes over the PA, and they all scatter. John says that only a "simple people" would've managed not to invent last call.
Outside the bar, the announcements are still going on. You can hear bits and parts but it's all like, "Working is awesome and tomorrow is Saturday and Rupert Murdoch loves you and Ignorance is Strength and Bah-Dah-Bah-Bah-Bah I'm Loving It" and the like. Aeryn checks out Rygel, who's in distress. What kind? Digestive, of course. He takes off, belching. Aeryn sees D'Argo wandering in the throng of gross hippies and catches up to him. "You're staying the night! Excellent. Tomorrow is a rest day -- I'll be able to show you all the wonders of this planet," he sing-songs at her, carelessly, and then disappears with the gross chick.
Behind them, nearer the bar, another gross native with hair sticking out all over grabs John and slams him into the wall, whispering close: "Listen to me. No matter what happens, no matter what you hear, you must stay." She scoots just in time for Aeryn to come find John, and of course she ignores him talking about how he just got manhandled. Her face is very spare, still. "I just spoke to D'Argo. He says he's content. He wants to stay, so I say we leave him. And we go." John takes a second to register this and then stutters, reminding her of how it's clear that "Woodstock" has done something to D'Argo's head. Somewhere else, there are explosions and screaming Rygel, and Zhaan joins them as they run toward the sound. There's a joke about Tim Leary and Mrs. O'Leary's cow here but I can't come up with it, so here's the runner-up. The PA's all, "Noam Chomsky will be speaking in the Commons area in twenty minutes" or whatever, so everybody heads over that way.
Rygel, on his Jazzy, is hovering around some kind of tumbledown architecture -- the whole city is kind of bombed-out looking -- and there's fire flashing all over, and he's shrieking. Rygel cries out to John and the others that "the assassins, the bastards" are trying to kill him. John asks what the hell happened, and Rygel tells him there was a bomb very close to where he was..."hovering." Heh. John pushes, and Rygel admits he was relieving himself. Aeryn climbs up to Rygel as he whines and gibbers. "...One minute, and the ? Bomb! I suffered many assassination attempts on Hyneria..." Aeryn interrupts and asks him why: "Nobody knows you here. It's only the people who know you who want to kill you." Also funny. This episode is funny. Zhaan murmurs to John that the sun'll be up soon, that the heat's going to get "very intense." John shouts up to Aeryn, and she swats absentmindedly at Rygel and tells them she'll take Rygel back to Moya. "Come on, Your Eminence." There's something missing from her face; everything she says is kind of disaffected. You can trace a line here from Matala, bringing up D'Argo's hopes and crushing them, to watching him self-destruct and have a pot-head existential crisis in the middle of his hyper-rage crisis, and across to Aeryn, seeing that's how it looks from the outside. Rygel whines, and she reminds John: "We agreed: no lingering. I'm coming back, and we're getting out of here. With or without D'Argo."
John and Zhaan knock on the door of D'Argo's apartment, and he answers in...is that a fucking cardigan? No, it's a robe. Damn. He giggles and wiggles and acts stoned and they chat for a sec before he invites them into the apartment: "It is provided." Zhaan tries to level -- "Something isn't quite right about this place, and it is affecting you" -- and John tries to back her up, asking D'Argo to come home with them. Before he can even bring up how expensive deprogrammers are, D'Argo pulls out a Murphy bed: "You are both welcome to stay as long as you want." It flops to the floor. John tries to continue the conversation, but D'Argo cuts him off with a languid "Tomorrow," and heads into his bedroom, where a horrible hippie with an admittedly amazing body is doing something very bendy. He grins at us and closes the doors; Zhaan and John agree that probably they're going to have to wait awhile, and negotiate their sleeping arrangements. Sex! That's so how they get you! Freshman year, remember? Along with drugs! And folk music! And collective ownership of the means of production!
Aeryn and Pilot are wigging out because there are now explosions happening on Moya. Somewhere. Aeryn runs all over the place and Rygel screams for help and Aeryn and Pilot have a little meeting about how it's coming from Rygel's quarters. She enters and Rygel's in the corner shrieking and scared and shooting fire out of...somewhere. I cannot handle seeing Rygel's penis right now, or ever, so again my respect for Officer Sun grows. She creeps close and tells him to hold still. Hilariously and dead-seriously. Claudia Black, and I totally mean this as a compliment no matter how it sounds, has really good chemistry with Muppets. She scrapes some mucus off his Muppet face and flings it; it explodes. Rygel's motherfucking functions.
From one crotch to another. In the Murphy bed, Zhaan rolls over in her sleep and her hand lands slap-bang on John's batch. He gingerly lifts it off. Anybody else, I'd call bullshit, because it's John, but Zhaan's fully hot in her own right, bald and blue or not, and would probably think of it as chimp sex anyhow. Aeryn calls John on comms, and he cutely climbs over Zhaan and whispers, like somehow Aeryn will see him in bed with Zhaan through the phone. She tells him there's a "situation" on Moya, and he says it could not possibly be "any more interesting" that the one down on the planet. "Well," she says archly, "remember Rygel's assassination attempt? He caused it himself. His body fluids have turned explosive." John stands corrected. Rygel whines at Aeryn, who whips around and points at him, awesomely. "You want to live?" She tells him that he needs to calm down or else his sweat is going to blow him up. John calmly tells her to run some tests. "Use the scanner thing in the maintenance bay." She shakes her head, scared all over again. "No. I am not the scientist." This is the first time you see how the war v. science thing plays out for Aeryn: it's more intense for her than anybody. Sebaceans have a class system; she's not a tech, she's infantry. We've talked about it before, but this is the first time you see how deep it goes. "I know that. Look, just have Pilot help you." He tells her to isolate Rygel, "no fluids, no food" -- which earns the expected groan, which earns in turn another hilarious hardcore look from Aeryn. John tells her to call back when she's got some results, and they'll figure it out.
"Good morning, citizens. A new day begins. Remember, rejoice in your work and keep feeding those 'personal accounts,' because after all, Social Security is in jeopardy..."
Zhaan and John are spooned in the Murphy bed; John's hand is totally cupping her ass over the sheet. She wakes and smiles sleepily, "Good morning, John." He retracts his hand with a quickness and rolls away as D'Argo comes into the room. John starts in on him again, but D'Argo tells him he's going to be late for work. "I thought today was a rest day?" D'Argo corrects him lovingly: "No no no, today is the last day of the work cycle! Tonight there is going to be a great big celebration." The hooch comes out and her intense abs fill the screen; she hugs D'Argo goodbye and they leave, D'Argo with promises of meeting up later and then some wolfish growls in the direction of the hooch.
A bunch of disgusting hippies are lining up for work in the street. Following D'Argo, John and Zhaan join the procession. "Good morning, citizens. A new day begins. Remember, rejoice in your work and you will be rewarded. Be temperate. Be strong and healthful. Keep production line flowing. Efficiency in your task will be observed and noted. Your reward status can therefore be improved. Keep your mind on your task. Free yourself from all concerns. Focus only on the task. Be content. Be strong. Keep production lines flowing. Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson are well on their way to reconciliation. Anne Coulter is just a crazy nutcase and nobody important buys her best-selling books. Nicole Richie is much prettier, now that she weighs seventy pounds..."
Out in the fields, John sees a chick that's been staring him down -- and who smashed his face into a wall yesterday -- and follows her to a boxcar a few hundred yards from the work group. "You seem interested in me. What do you say we talk?" She says okay, and then a dude grabs John from behind and pulls him inside the boxcar. They hold him down inside, and one of them drops a creepy fat white worm on John, and it crawls inside his bellybutton. Ugh. Exploding piss oui! Bloated worms in the bellybutton non! The worm-wrangler, Hybin, tells him seriously and not unkindly: "Listen, you must tell no one of this. If they know you carry the worm, they will kill you for it. Eat and the pain will go away. Do you understand? You must eat." The boxcar starts to move, and the revolutionaries bounce. John writhes and moans and feels horrible.
Commercial break/lacuna: "Ashlee Simpson had a nose job. Kate Moss: it's like the whole thing never happened! JonBenet Ramsey is kiddie-porn snuff the whole family can enjoy. Please stop picking on Wal-Mart..."
John stumbles out of the boxcar, and you know, the great thing about John Crichton is he looks smokin' hot even when he's sweating and retching and hallucinating and rolling around, and the good thing about that is that that's what he's doing. He grabs some tannot root, which is the thing that they're all harvesting, and it's cool because the PA talks over the whole scene, framing it beautifully: "Be strong. Free yourself of all concerns. Be strong. Eat the tannot root. Be strong. Our way of life..." He considers the root and takes a bite, chewing madly. "Rejoice in your work. The guards are your protectors. Free yourself of all concerns. Trust them..."
I've completely lost track of what's being satirized here. I guess cults. I guess any time you realize you're fallible, and you stop voting for yourself and decide to put that power and trust in somebody else who's fallible -- because they automatically are, because that's part of the definition of being a person -- you are an idiot. An idiot in a cult. And worse, you're weak.
D'Argo and Zhaan are in the field, farming the tannot. They are both fucking awesome in this scene, just impeccable. Especially weird if you think about filming this scene over and over, in a field, with effed-up contacts in and/or a four-hour prosthetic face. Zhaan tries to get D'Argo to admit that a man as young as he shouldn't be committing to something like this all crazily, and he counters nicely: "Do you want to spend the rest of your days on the run?" She dodges this by talking about herself. "I know such decisions can come upon one quickly. My choice to join the Delvian Seek -- to become a priest -- occurred in the matter of a blink of an eye. One moment, I was lying in my cell, a savage capable of anything. The , the truth was revealed to me, and I knew my true path." She is so heartbreaking: she's trying to elicit sympathy and deprogram him by...admitting that she's in the exact same boat, living a made-up spiritual fantasy that does nothing but cover up the emptiness of truth. So she gets to condescend slightly, because of course, he's completely wrong, and on the wrong path, while when she sat in that cell and thought herself to holiness, that was the right call, not a cult of one, and nobody can question her about that, ever. Hooray for sudden epiphanies that wipe out your whole history! D'Argo agrees that it's possible, considering that's like exactly what happened here with him. Zhaan begins digging alongside him and chuckles languidly. "This feels very..." Satisfying? "Yes! It does! Let me help you..."
Aeryn stares at Rygel, who seems to be frozen in some kind of apparatus, and also wearing a diaper. She asks if he's for sure still alive, and Pilot snits that he's in "cryostasis" and that he "should be fine." Aeryn snaps off a little bit of Rygel's moustache, and Pilot clears his throat and "strongly suggests" she keep her hands off "any of his other protuberances." Um. Okay? But that's getting too close to the tech fear, this tiny moustache fuckup, so she tells him to do it himself and she'll just take off. Pilot explains that the scanner is ancillary to Moya's systems and he can't access it, and Aeryn offers to move the clamshell for him. So much fear, such deft denial, and for what? Because all this "you could be more" is nice in theory, but even something as small as this, to someone as rigid as Aeryn, is a jump off a cliff into nothing. No, it's tech stuff: it's off the cliff and into garbage. "Please, Officer Sun. I will instruct you through the process."
John is convulsing and wiggling around sickly in the Murphy bed when D'Argo and Zhaan get home from work. D'Argo hails him in that creepy, joyful voice, and Zhaan pulls up a chair. John says he's happy to see her, and admits that he's been barfing all day. She interrupts him to say that she is sorry he wasn't out in the fields with them. "D'Argo was right, it's an absolutely wonderful place." The sickness of the worm turns into sickness of his friends joining cults: "Not you, too?" It's not played for laughs, it's very awesomely played very hardcore here. Fucking seriously? The accent comes in: "No damn way. You're not going to do this to me." She smiles and deflects, he begs and shivers. He points to her hands, and she grins. "The dirt and grime of an honest day's labor, John. It feels so good." D'Argo brings her some hippie clothes, and they mutter to each other about how comfortable these new hippie clothes are going to be. As opposed to her usual confining and uncomfortable garments? "This diaphanous potato sack dress is soooo much more flowing and relaxing than the identical diaphanous potato sack dress I was wearing before!" John continues to beg Zhaan for help, and comes close to admitting the whole worm issue -- which, you remember, will get him killed -- until D'Argo comes back out with another set of clothes, and then just drops it. Both of them staring at him, so happy. It's rough. Why does D'Argo have women's apparel and men's clothes in various sizes? Why? "It is provided," I guess. John takes the clothes and they head out for the celebration. "It's a rest day tomorrow!"
I don't agree with their stupid hair care, I don't agree with their stupid lifestyle, and I really don't agree with their stupid, awful dancing. However, I cannot say that I disagree entirely with their stupid hippie clothing, provided that it is John Crichton wearing the hippie clothing. He's wearing a red quilted vest over a sleeveless russet tunic, and some drawstring pants. I guess this is when wardrobe finally decided on the arms for good, and we thank them for it. And in this outfit he is walking, with drums almost too loud for conversation -- like these freaks have those -- through the bar again. The aggressive revolutionary chick, Tanga, once more grabs him from behind and pokes him with something sharp as she's saying a pleasant hello. "Come, join us for a drink!"
Tanga and John join her dad, Hybin, and another dude at the bar, where she begs her slumping father to sit up straight. John starts yelling about the worm, and Hybin patiently explains that it's the worm keeping him safe. "Without it, you would already be like them." John asks for some exposition, which is considerate of him, and Hybin obliges: the worm thrives on the toxin in the tannot. John finally figures out that the people are all wacky and stupid because of the food that they've been plainly handing out and ordering everybody to eat the entire time. Tanga tells him to pass and act like an idiot. Which...it's the low-key part that he'll be finding difficult. He's kind of jumpy, John Crichton. "If they discover you are immune, they will execute you." Wow. John asks if they've all been wormed, and Hybin says that they're just naturally immune to the tannot drug for whatever reason -- like, he doesn't even try to explain that part -- and again tells John they need his specific help, for some reason. They did not do their homework!
Hybin and the guy take off, and Tanga bounces after hissing again about how he's going to die if he doesn't act stoned all the time. The reason for their hasty retreat is Volmae, turns out, who admires his clothes while talking like a freak. He's like, "Thank you...these clothes are wonderful. They're just...wonderful." Hey, man: nice shot. Volmae asks if he's enjoying his drugged food and he continues to do a poor job acting stoned, and she asks about Rygel and Aeryn. John's like, "I will totally make them come back down here because they deserve bean bag chair time too and I feel great and really content and not at all alert. They should totally drop acting of their own volition like immediately, dude." She says that D told her about Moya being a cargo vessel, and acts very sketchy about that, and then together they intone once more that tomorrow is a rest day. John's grossed out as he says it with her.
Up on Moya, Aeryn is having a panic attack about beginning the tests. And by "panic attack," I don't mean to imply that she's shaking or hyperventilating; she's Aeryn Sun and she's having an Aeryn Sun panic attack, which looks like when a mule digs into the dirt and tells you to go suck a tannot. Pilot's like, "You were doing great!" and Aeryn tells him that the problem is that science is very boring. "Sometimes science is," he says wonderfully, "but Dominar Rygel's life depends on our finding the cause of this phenomenon, and rectifying it if we can." Aeryn bitches and says that Pilot doesn't get it because "all this analysis dren" comes so easily to him, and Pilot fills her in on how it's actually really hard for him to do complex science stuff. "When a pilot is bonded to a leviathan -- as I am bonded to Moya -- it is as a navigator, a monitor of all the living ship's functions. The analysis of scientific data is not something I know or easily understand." Aeryn cocks her head, really not getting it: "Yeah, but...you're good at it." Pilot tries to explain that hard work on things that are difficult is its own reward, and she tries to understand this concept. Immediately, she's like, "Does everybody know that you have to study things?" And he asks her to keep that a secret. So awesome. Body and mind. There's not a pool hall shark that got good by learning physics, and they're both pool hall sharks trying to explain physics to themselves.
Without going into it in an irritating depth, the mind is built around the things you're conscious of and the things you aren't. Together, that's everything that there is; Jung calls it the Self but it's basic to most psychological systems, and here it's called Moya. And there are doors between where you're used to standing (ego, John), between the conscious and the unconscious mind (the id, Rygel; the shadow, D'Argo now, Scorpius later), and there are doors between where you're standing and the whole Self (the anima, Aeryn; dreams and the religious experience, Zhaan; and what's called the Ego-Self Axis, which is Pilot). Note how Zhaan and Aeryn's interactions are characterized by (a) not a lot of talking, and (b) talking completely over John's head in a language he doesn't understand. Note how Zhaan's connection to Moya is always sensual, not verbal. Note how Zhaan's true connection to Aeryn, when that connection matters most, takes place in the realm of dreams and the underworld. Point being, Aeryn and Pilot will always have this siblinghood because they comprise the two most powerful connections John has to the Self, which is literally everything -- and that this first break into their (emphatically central) relationship is made up of their shared inability to process John's verbal, scientific, logical, phallic skills. That's a big piece of tannot to swallow and I don't really have an excuse this week except for this scene; to say, watch how it moves and changes, as we proceed. In two episodes, and again season with Talyn, Aeryn will come up against precisely this brick wall, turning the intuitive skills she has into the analytic "tech" skills that offend her most. In this way she becomes more like John, rising up to consciousness, and in this way she becomes more. War edging toward science, body toward mind. And if you reverse the flow, you're talking about John and wormholes: turning his science into magic and warrior's intuition, becoming more like her; in this way he becomes more. So much beautifully more.
Done. Ooh! Look at John looking all sexy with the vest! The PA's going ("Stop reading so much into this stupid science fiction show and start cracking some jokes I've heard before in other hilarious contexts! Write some hate mail and make sure to misspell the word 'pretentious'! Ignorance is strength!") and we transition to John wearing a funny hat, digging with Zhaan and D'Argo.
Aeryn has finished, she thinks. Pilot is similarly ambivalent about whether they've done good science. "No...well, I can prep another slide of Rygel's blood and check his liver and altex functions again," says Aeryn, causing half the audience to fall over sideways and break into a cold sweat. "No need," says Pilot sweetly. "So, what are you saying? That it's done? That I did it?" She did. Aeryn immediately demurs and is all, "Oh, Pilot it was all you, all I did was wear a sparkly dress and turn the letters over as they lit up," and Pilot underscores pretty huffy-awesomely that it was all her. "Huh. It was me." Dust your TV screen before you kiss it, even with modest mouth closed, or you will experience a horrible taste sensation. FYI.
John carries a sack of tannot to the boxcar, and Aeryn rings in on comms. He leans against the wall and covers his badge with his hat. "Listen, I've worked out what's wrong with Rygel. A reaction to food." John puts together that it was a reaction to the tannot, and Aeryn stumbles through some science talk as John grins. "His Hynerian body chemistry acted like a...um...a catalyst. I've set up a leaching sieve. We're collecting all the volatile elements. We're just going to flush them straight out the airlock." He congratulates her lovingly, and it's been looked at too hard, her pride in doing something shameful and John's encouragement, so she looks away. "Listen, what's happening with D'Argo? Is he coming back or not?" John says it's unlikely at this time, and she declares again her desire to leave D'Argo behind. Keep running. John is, of course, horrified, and begs her to drop that idea. "It's gotten complicated." Tanga comes near and he shuts it down. "If I haven't come up with a solution by then, then you and I may have to leave on our own." Aeryn asks about Zhaan, and gets worried about the situation planetside. "Just fix Rygel. I'll be in touch." Aeryn sighs, frustrated, left hanging with the pride of what she knows and the fear of what she doesn't.
John tips his hat down over his face and helps Tanga up into the boxcar, loading her tannot sack for her. He takes off the hat, asking if she remembers all the hitting of him she's been doing, and drags her into the boxcar. "You going to scream? Call attention to us? Yeah? Well, go ahead." She reminds him that she's expected outside, working, and John gets intense on her: "Not before you tell me something. I want to know something right now. How do I get this worm out of me?" No answer. He asks her, frustrated and crazy, why they grow the horrible tannot in the first place; Tanga only knows it was brought to the planet by some mysterious "others." It made everybody stupid, and now once every six months the bad guys come and pick up all the harvest. Volmae was chosen at random -- "could have been any one of us" -- and given the worm, which is very rare and valuable. So why waste one on John? "You have a ship. You can find someone out there who can help us. Bring us weapons. Fight beside us." She implies that the tannot is destroying the planet's ecology and that it won't last much longer -- and then they are done for. Another immune Sykaran comes to retrieve Tanga, telling her that her father is ill, out in the fields. John follows them at a distance; Tanga tries to help her father but he says he's out of energy. "Please, just let them discover me. I would rather be dead." Ouch. And the work day is complete.
The bar, more music, more horrible dancing. Volmae interrupts Crichton -- dancing like an absolute idiot -- to ask him for a confab. They head into a warehouse, and before the door even opens, you can see Peacekeeper logos all over the place. "Would the cargo hold of your ship accommodate a significant portion of what you see here?" She indicates the crates of tannot all over the warehouse, and he admits Moya wouldn't hold the whole harvest. "I don't need it all," she says. She's very good in this scene, staying creepy as hell and giving the constant impression that he's about to get killed and/or that she's going to take Moya by force, but also seeming somewhat sympathetic. Which is a tough acting job, all of this at once, but can only be close to impossible when you're talking like you're about to have a seizure in white dreads and red contacts. "What do they do with all of this?" she muses. "If it has value to them, it must have value elsewhere." Volmae is now seeking ownership of the production itself. "You will bring the other two from your ship back down here immediately." He agrees, because he's fake-stoned, and Volmae leads him back to the celebration. John whispers, scared and grossed out, "Peacekeeper," and follows her.
Rygel, unthawed, is shivering and bitching a whole lot. Which Aeryn is not feeling: "I did the best that I could! It wasn't in my training, you know," she says proudly. Rygel points out that "Peacekeeper training" amounts to Advanced Killing with Nastiness Workshop, and Aeryn says that it's even more interesting, then, that a Peacekeeper just saved his life. He nods, and thinks, and then asks what the hell John wants with both of them coming back down planetside. "Well, can you understand Crichton?" Rygel grumbles. Actually, they kind of both do.
Aeryn grabs John outside in the destroyed main street, and he jumps. "Damn! Why can't you come in the front like regular people?" That's funny. She notes that he looks "terrible," and asks what the problem is. He says he feels worse than he looks, and asks after Rygel. Rygel is hiding in the transport pod, because this planet sucks. Some stoners walk by and John tells her to smile -- "That's what they do around here" -- as they continue to plot. She asks what he's on about and he gets pissy, so she says she's not following orders until he clears up what's going on. Instead of doing so, he whines some more, so she asks where Zhaan is, and he admits that she's with D'Argo, "dancing with the Grateful Dead." She shakes her head and suggests that they grab both of them and run. "We can't do that, okay? Not unless Volmae orders it, and Volmae's got plans of her own." He tells her about Volmae's plan to jam Moya with a bunch of tannot, and Aeryn's awesomely not having that: "I don't think so." John's like, "Okay, we're briefed, let's do some kind of plan," but Aeryn still wants some details, like what's going on. "Aeryn, it's complicated."
Aeryn's all, "'Complicated' as in 'I am too stupid'?" Interesting how this would never have occurred to her until today. "No! You know what? I did not say that." He then whines at length about how he's been out in the sun all day, picking up "magic turnips," and he has a worm crawling around in his guts and he's very put out, in general, so could she just shut up and help? (a) Do not tell Aeryn Sun to shut up or you will get what you're asking for, but also (b) could you not just lay out a précis on this for her? Is it really important to play the obscurity angle again? I don't know why he's being dense about this, and I've been thinking about it for a while. "Help? What do you think I've been doing up there in the ship -- playing games with Rygel?" John scoffs that it's just soooo terrible up on Moya, where there is no destroyed planet with no sundown and no winter and magic turnips and no worms in the guts, and she goes off very wonderfully on him, taking a break halfway through to "smile," as a hippie walks by. The cool thing about the "smile" is that it is a rictus so hideous and terrifying in the middle of her lovely face that is the funniest thing in the whole episode. "Difficult? I had to stop him from blowing himself up into bits. I had to figure out what was causing the problem and I had to fix it." John pointlessly compares her to Madame Curie, and at least this time he explains the reference: "A scientist." Oops.
Aeryn's like, I'm totally different from Madame Curie? "What I had to do up there was like a field strategy exercise, only the enemy wasn't trying to kill me, the enemy was a puzzle, and there were lots of different pieces and independently, separately, they didn't make any sense, and I had to think it through really hard, and I had to work it out and try different combinations of putting things together and then finally I worked out what had happened, and I worked out what I had to do." That is like, top-ten one of my favorite things in this entire show. I always forget it because this episode is wedged between something horrible last week, and then week starts the slide into the truly moving and painful. John laughs exactly as loudly, and as lovingly, as you did. She is just the most wonderful thing. "This is great. You're trading in your pulse rifle for the junior chemistry kit." She looks at him archly but answers pragmatically: "Well, my pulse rifle wasn't any use to me this time." He says that might not be true too much longer, and they head out.
John now becomes totally rockin' awesome and the episode ends really quickly without a lot of "sub" in the text. And if you're bothered by the quickness of this resolution, you need to get right with the proletariat, because those bitches can turn on a dime. He's sitting on the bar watching the awful dancing when Volmae comes up and tells him to quick like a bunny fetch Aeryn and Rygel so she can have the whole family. "Don't think so. I think I'd rather have you step outside, princess." She goes from seeming seizure to actual seizure. "I order you to bring them here." John signals Aeryn on comms, and the music abruptly stops. John walks out, and behind him in the silence, Volmae angrily orders the musicians to continue. When you actually have to tell the drum circle to stop fucking around and get to drumming, I bet that's, like, so weird.
Outside, John and Aeryn are booking it to that beam where Rygel gave himself his first assassination attempt. Volmae follows, with a crowd of useful idiots who don't actually know what's going on or anything. "I heard Dane Cook was coming." John requests his friends back, and Volmae fronts about "How dare you make demands?" He calls her "Snow White" and reveals the obvious fact that he is immune to the tannot. Zhaan's confused about what John's up to; Aeryn locks and loads. D'Argo protests that he's really happy at Burning Man and he will not let John destroy the futile, brainless contentment he has found. "If necessary, I will destroy you first." John signals Rygel, who gets pee-shy up on the ledge, giving D'Argo time to grab Aeryn's gun and Volmae to order ... somebody ... to grab John and Aeryn. I don't know who she's talking to; neither do they. Every hippie stares stupidly at every other hippie, like they can't remember if Dave Matthews already did the second encore and they should just stop clapping or what.
Rygel pisses directly at D'Argo and everything explodes. Everybody falls back and pouts about the buzzkill of explosive urine. John thanks Rygel sweetly and explains that the "demonstration" was, in fact, fueled by the tannot. "The ones who collect the tannot, they use it to fuel that pulse rifle, there." D'Argo's like, "They're Peacekeepers?" Volmae is horrified, and I think she's sincere: "No! They say they only use it for food!" John asks D'Argo how far you can trust a Peacekeeper, and continues explaining the science Aeryn figured out: "When the tannot is processed and mixed with the right chemicals, like it is in Rygel's stomach," he begins, and Aeryn proudly finishes his sentence: "...It makes chakan oil. Do you understand what that means? It fuels all Peacekeeper weapons." John points out that being a peace-loving bunch of retards is awesome, but they're contributing to the killing and subjugation of entire systems by the Peacekeepers. "They use it to imprison and to enslave," he says.
("But also for freedom! The French and UN are stupid bastards! And gay! And they want to get married! It's your duty to buy an SUV and demonstrate both your capital and your ability to consume oil! Get really angry when you read something with a perceived liberal bias, because obviously it's meant to taunt and enrage -- nobody honestly believes that shit! Everywhere you turn they're shoving it down your throat, and you have no option of considering it rationally and deciding what you believe on your own terms, because you mustn't think for yourself EVER! Tannot root, the pause that refreshes!" says the PA.)
Volmae's like, "Food, weapons, it doesn't matter. Our planet is already dying." John's like, okay, buck-passer, "but your people are enslaved by you. You think when this planet is dead that somehow you're going to escape? That you're going to outrun the Peacekeepers?" D'Argo tells her how unlikely it is that she will be outrunning or outfighting the PKs, and Aeryn offers to show Volmae how to make the chakan oil. Freedom through war through science: not a John move; it's a PK move but it's good.
Tanga and Hybin make their way to the front of the crowd as Volmae's complaining that they're not paying attention: "Look around you! We have no weapons!" John's like, "Pshh. Make them." Hybin says they once did, stepping out beside John and Aeryn. Volmae calls for the guards; none responds. "They have deserted you, Volmae. If we are to die as a people, let us at least die fighting."
"There is nothing we can do," Volmae cries. "The Peacekeepers, they are in control of me. They are in control of you." John outlines it again: "No, they're not. You are." Volmae's still too scared; Hybin steps in: "We will do it. One day at a time." Sigh. Well, I like the addiction level a lot here, the idea that your drug helps nobody but especially not you, and contributes to a global economy of oppression and murder, and that blaming your inability to do anything about it on your addiction itself is about the stupidest, weakest thing you can do. And the most common. Or maybe they're still talking about buying a Prius, I don't know. This episode and its context have changed the most in the can, as I said. Because from here, it looks like John and Aeryn just invented the Taliban. "It's your decision. It can all start tomorrow."
Volmae: "No." She raises her hands to Hybin, and they touch: "Tomorrow is a rest day. A real rest day." I kind of love her, you know? Can't blame a girl for respecting the power structure, even if her fear was clearly unfounded.
Back on Moya, Aeryn's removing John's tummy worm. Rygel is watching from near John's head. She pulls it out, and it wiggles around in her hand, and it is gross. "Hybin was right. This worm was quite easy to coax out of you." John says that Hybin was also right about how painful it would be. Rygel tells him to drop the bitching, considering His Highness got frozen twice and had exploding pee. Aeryn tells them both to STFU and get ready for starburst, all competent and adorable.
"Hey, Rygel? What's up with her?" Rygel grumbles. "Oh, she thinks she's a scientist now. False superiority." Aeryn clarifies that she is not a scientist, but that she's what she's always been, which is superior. The thing about jumping into those kinds of scary changes is that on the other side you don't feel different, just bigger. Now that she has some science under her belt, she's Aeryn-with-science. The monster outside the house becomes a pet. Gorgeous. "If I were warmer, I would have an appropriately venomous reply. Be warned: I owe you one." He hops down adorably and takes off.
John asks Aeryn how she's doing, and she admits it was nice to "triumph" using her mind. He pushes -- "Doesn't have to be this once" -- and, having had enough of that, she thanks him curtly for his assistance. He thanks her and heads for the door, and still full of competence, she calls out to him. "I'd wait...and let D'Argo come to you when he's ready." Look at Little Miss E.Q. all of a sudden! So awesome.
Zhaan's quarters, where she and D'Argo are processing. D'Argo says maybe it's just the case that he's never going to be happy. "But you were, for five glorious days," says Zhaan, which is exactly the right answer. He says it wasn't really real, and she points out the subjectivity of experience: "There are no guarantees, D'Argo. We take each breath as if it is our last. And hope that the air is sweet." And it was. It was hell to look at, but it was definitely compelling; you can see somebody like D'Argo giving in without the benefit of drugged food, even. Just the chance to rest. D'Argo stutters: "I was going to...approach you. At the celebration." She smiles and says she would have accepted, then holds out a hand, indicating the seat to her. He continues. "When I was a boy, I dreamed of two very different lives." She laughs: "Only two? I wanted hundreds." (Your Sagittarius boyfriend says, "What are you talking about? She's fucking awesome!") D'Argo says that two was enough. "I would be a magnificent warrior. Merciless in battle, fearless... The kind they write shintok sonnets about." She pronounces this dream a healthy one, and he brings up the other, secret dream. The one at the heart of his loneliness: "I also wanted a simple life. Family, children. A frotash garden that I planted with my own hands. I thought I'd found that." And it...sucked. Right? "Those kinds of dreams cannot be found, brave Luxan. You have to build them, and I promise you, your hands are still strong. There is plenty of time." Sweet and kind of eye-wateringly sincere and touching at the time; later maybe profoundly different. I love you, Ka D'Argo. There is plenty of time.