When the Long Hot Farscapey Summer was go, this was one of the episodes I was most excited about, which led invariably to questions of the "Why the hell do you like that random episode so much?" sort. I tell you this upfront: it's one of my favorites, so it's going to be one of those recaps. I'll keep it short.
Last week, everything happened, and then this episode got kicked out of sequence. Which at the time might have been better, because it is about a lot of things that don't really become clear until a few episodes in, but it's now in its right place because we can look at the whole picture at once. Basics: it's John's first day in his new school, and everybody's freaky and kind of off-putting, so he's still incredibly lonely. He's also twitching up a storm thanks to a siren that's going on all through the halls of Moya. We get to see a bunch of DRD's bumping up against a hatch, but nobody else has noticed that yet.
Twitching John is joined by Aeryn and D'Argo in the corridor, and D'Argo asks where the hezmana the sound is coming from, and John tries out his new vocab word for the day: "Sounds like it's from the inside of my head -- and what the 'hezmana' is it?" It's cute. Aeryn recognizes the beacon as a Peacekeeper thing, and immediately demands that he stop twitching at her. There are hilarious nonverbal twitching movements, and she gestures at her eye. I am so feeling her on the stop-fucking-twitching issue. It's pretty obnoxious. He's like vandalizing his own face with that shit. John apologizes and blames the frequency of the alarm, giving the simile that it's like it's melting his brain...and then realizes that this is Farscape, so it's quite likely that it's actually melting his brain. My question is this: if the alarm were actually melting his brain, would anybody notice? What, like he'd start acting really erratic and shifting in and out of his accent and going crazy for no reason? Wouldn't that be fucked up?
Zhaan and Rygel have located the hatch where the DRD's are going nuts, as has Pilot. Rygel is, of course, complaining about the noise, and Zhaan is, of course, pretending that she's in control. She removes the hatch cover as John and the Adrenaline Twins come pounding around the corner. D'Argo peeks inside, Aeryn peeks inside, John twitches and peeks inside. The camera is very woggly so you know this is no ordinary Moya malfunction, but something really important. Zhaan congratulates Pilot on having stopped the alarm, and the silence is something that you, as the viewer, are in a position to also feel grateful about. "I have only neutralized the internal sound -- the device itself is still broadcasting some kind of signal into deep space using Moya's hull as a maximizer." Twitching John: "Using my skull as a maximizer. Why am I still twitching?" He just told you, dolt. Aeryn identifies it as a "Paddac beacon," which is set to go off if it doesn't get a regular signal from the control collar the PKs put on the Leviathan. Which, Zhaan reminds us, was removed when they escaped. D'Argo asks Aeryn why she hasn't brought this up, and her answer is just vague enough that I think it's kinda obvious. The things that lady will do without letting herself know she's doing them. I generally think Aeryn's got her shit together better than anybody else, but her capacity for denial rivals that of even Zhaan's stupid blue ass. John's simple, but there's something nice about being so very simple that you have to actually take drugs to start repressing, you know?
Aeryn makes to stomp off after snitting at D'Argo all, "Look, I'm new to all this escaped prisoner crap, alright?" I assume she wants to leave immediately so nobody will have the chance to remind her that "Don't expressly notify the enemy where you are" is not exactly on the AP curriculum -- it's more of a Fugitivery 101 kind of thing -- because that would lead to questions about how she still can't admit that she's not a Peacekeeper anymore, and that while she knows with her head that they'd shoot her ass in the eye, her heart just wants to go home. Luckily, she's saved by a DRD, which enters the hatch and gets fried all to hell. Pilot notifies everybody that the broadcast is actually getting more intense and that if there's a PK patrol within a "quarter light-cycle," they're nicked. D'Argo looks at Aeryn and she's like, "Hell." The whole time, D'Argo thinks the mission is to help Moya, but Aeryn thinks the mission is really to keep running: ops v. tactics. I like that.
I thought at the time that a lot of this D'Argo bugging Aeryn stuff was just shorthanding it for us that nobody trusts anybody else because it's only the second episode, but now I think he's got the right idea. Zhaan asks if the beacon can be removed, and Aeryn shrugs like she just wants a cigarette and why can't they just stop bugging her. Claudia Black doesn't have a whole lot to do in this episode, and we don't really get inside Aeryn very much except for the scene, but I love the choices she makes in this episode: 40% annoyed, 30% out of her depth, 10% condescendingly amused by everybody, 100% kind of an asshole. She's hilarious almost the whole time. Less so: D'Argo getting all slapsticky "I'll handle this," and sticks his giant head in the tiny hatch, and that's as far as he can get, because he's gigantic, which: maybe D'Argo just doesn't have a gift for spatial relationships but I'd think you could eyeball that one pretty easy. (Poor Chiana. Or, I guess: "Way to go, Chiana!")
Zhaan, who is still not the boss of me, asks Pilot whether the device can be removed, as if nobody thought of doing that. Pilot says the jury's still out, and Rygel bitches some more and says they're broadcasting their position "like a two-headed drunken..." something, that I'm going to pretend was "trelkez," which will make more sense when we get to "That Old Black Magic," because that episode bookends Zhaan's story here. As well as exposing her as a big blue fraud, and being the only Maldis episode that doesn't make me want to poke out my own eyeballs with fondue forks. John asks if they can't muffle it somehow, and everybody tells John he's an idiot and makes "John is an idiot" faces at him and each other, because (for the third time, now) it's using Moya's entire hull. D'Argo tells Pilot to shut down the entire section of the tier, and Pilot is very pissy because he's already thought of each and every one of these ideas: "That is Moya's primary neural nexus, I cannot shut that down." In these early episodes it's like a zombie movie, and everybody thinks they know best all the time. Well, that is a constant throughout the series, but in these early ones they're also strangers, which is the best part of any zombie movie, the thrown-together part.
John suddenly notes that they're passing through a system that has a planet with water, and Pilot corrects him: "Not so much water as...bog." John says they can just use that, and everyone's completely weirded out: take Moya down to the surface? There are good things and bad things about being the new kid in school -- such as having ideas that nobody else would have, because they're scary or wrong or weird. "She can do that, right?" Twitch. "Right?" Aeryn's scared, but Zhaan is intrigued, and asks Pilot if it's possible. There's a subtlety to the way Pilot answers that young Leviathans often "play with a planet's gravity" and "see how close they can come." "There's a tale about an adult male who once touched down on a planet's surface, though ... no one knows if it's true or not." John twitches some more at the scary tone, and John -- because his is the only idea currently -- says that if she can't do it, they can all just stick their heads between their legs and kiss their asses goodbye. Which ooks everybody out, because: what does that mean, why would you do it, and how would that help? He just shrugs. "It's a saying."
There's a long scene with everybody in command as Moya heads down. I guess we left out the part where they talked her into it. Rygel freaks out because he's small and bounces, being made of rubber; Pilot's image bounces around in the clamshell, which is funny and adds to the chaos; everything is shaking; Zhaan still thinks she's the boss of me; the music is insane; D'Argo falls down. But guess what John and Aeryn are up to? It's an episode of Farscape, so I'm sure you already guessed that they found the one niche in the wall that's just a titch two small for grown adults, and have managed to get themselves tossed in there with her arms around his neck and his hands at her waist. I don't know how probable that is, because I don't know about all of Moya's crevices, but I do know that John and Aeryn have an eerie way of landing in one of them and getting smooshed together about twice a week. They land, lots of staring, John and Aeryn standing in their little niche as though they haven't noticed but simply just don't feel like stepping out of there. Both of these -- the not noticing and the not doing anything about it -- are also central parts of the ongoing grab-ass tableau. Maybe John can repress, just a little. Rygel notes that they are sinking in the mud. Credits.
Moya's actually sinking quite rapidly but eventually stops once they've almost completely submerged. John asks Rygel if he's okay, and Rygel emphatically -- at some point his voice stopped being quite so gruff and British and regal, and I missed that for a while -- and gruff-Brit-regals that he is not okay, because they are "In mud! Under the mud!" Aeryn notes that Hynerians are aquatic, not that we'll see it in the 86 episodes, so what's the diff, and Rygel gets very pissy: "Aquatic. That's water, not mud. Mud is...mud! You can't breathe in it, you can't move in it. It holds you, it grabs you, it sucks you down. You want to know about mud? I know about mud!" John nods the hysterical poignancy of this little speech: "Guy knows mud." Among other things. Farts, feces, urine, exploding urine, uterine fluids, blood of all colors and various viscosities, explosive diarrhea, six different kinds of vomit, and assorted other goos, schmutzes and assorted nastiness. And when he's not literally dealing in these, his personality pretty much smells and behaves like them anyway, which is why he's tough to watch but essential to the show and the psychological makeup of the crew. And to this particular episode, actually. I hate him, but I don't blame him, so much as the fact that they filmed in Australia. Fart jokes are just funnier Down Under. D'Argo confirms that the beacon's now insulated, and Pilot tells the worried Zhaan that Moya is scared as hell.
So now what? Stuck in the mud with a quiet beacon they can't get rid of. Aeryn checks out the hatch and notes that the beacon was "hastily installed," and D'Argo says they should just chop it out. Aeryn pours out some forty about the fried DRD and everybody realizes that Rygel's the only person that can get in there. This is probably his best episode, to be honest. I like him a lot here: "Oh no! You covered me in mud because I had no say. But in this, I have a say -- and I say no! Get someone else to do your dirty work!" Aeryn makes to smack him, and Zhaan is of course very put upon. D'Argo rumbles, "He'll do it," and Pilot tells them all to cram it for a sec. "That is Moya's primary neural nexus. It is an intensely sensitive area." John asks "how sensitive is sensitive?" but Aeryn doesn't even know what that word means: "Look, she's just going to have to endure it." Pilot tells them that the level of pain involved in cutting the beacon out will be intolerable, and might kill her. Just one quick thing here about how, on this show, biology is personality -- which is why all the farting and shitting all the time -- so dig what we're saying. There's a thing in her brain, her mind, that's endangering her -- and getting rid of it would be so painful that it might kill her. Now, everybody on the ship wrestles with the same thing, in every episode basically, and they all think that it's so painful it will kill them, but that is because they are fucked up. Moya's the only one who could say, "I simply cannot cut this thing out of my brain because it's too hard" and you wouldn't accuse her of being a whiner. Well, I can think of one other example, about two seasons from now, but that's it -- and it's not a metaphor in that case either.
Because Zhaan is all about the palliatives, she immediately wonders if there's an anesthetic or something they can use. "For a Leviathan? There is without question no such...." Pilot trails off, and D'Argo warns him to continue. It's something called "chlorium," he explains -- and Claudia Black continues to be hilarious, staring into different areas of nothing space at random and being incredibly bored by all these grubby people doing surgery on the poor little Leviathan. She does everything but glance at her watch. Pilot explains that chlorium is one of "the six forbidden cargoes" -- this one because it's a numbing agent. Makes sense. D'Argo asks if maybe they happen to have some around, and Pilot's scandalized reply -- "Never!" -- is hilarious. Zhaan explains that it's a common element that comes in many forms ("an atmospherically induced isotope of twinium"), and John asks if there's any out on the planet.
Some time later, John comes to get Aeryn for the mission. She stares into space and ignores him and is irritated and pissy. John yells that it's finally her chance to "flex those big Peacekeeper commando muscles out in the field!" and gets very enthused, but she's like, "Peacekeeper. Yeah, really." John asks what the problem is, and it's Aeryn so you know it's crazy talk. Her problem is that she has found and explained a "top secret tracking device" to a "bunch of escaped prisoners" and will now be leading a mission to destroy it." John takes care of these with a quickness. "Well, number one, you're not leading the mission. Number two, those Peacekeepers you're so worried about, they'd kill you right now. It's the Peacekeepers who..." and she cuts him dead. "Turned on me for speaking up for you. Don't know what I was thinking." He says that back home, it's called being stand-up, and she replies that she stood up, and consequently is homeless, not to mention marked for death. "Well, join the club," John twitches, and she looks away. John gets crazy cute about the twitch. "Hey, does this bother you? Because it bugs the crap out of me. So can we go? ...Before my EYE falls OUT?" She rolls her eyes but she clearly thinks he's a funny little thing.
Why is John on this mission anyway? Because (a) he's a "scientist," (b) he's a liability and can't be left on his own at any time, and (c) Zhaan's the only one who's a bigger girl than he is, which (d) leaves only a Muppet.
Stepping out of Moya into the wet air, John stares around. He's so happy and still: "Kinda like Louisiana. Or Dagobah." "Where Yoda lives," he says off Aeryn's confused look, grinning and messing with her affectionately: "...Just a little green guy. Trains warriors." Aeryn's like, "Whatever," but he grins outrageously cutely anyway. They head out into the swamp, and D'Argo immediately gets angry with the analyzer they're using to find the chlorium. "Peacekeeper technology! You use it," he grumbles, shoving it at Aeryn, and she won't even touch it. "Techs use them, not infantry." Which means several things simultaneously, because this is the first we've heard about the PK Tech Boys and PK Tech Girls, or about Aeryn's technophobia, both of which are major points in her development...and in John's, who takes it from her and immediately gets it going. "Pilot says you touch this, this and this. Works just like a VCR, except easier." Techs use them, not infantry. Not warriors like D'Argo and Aeryn: scientists like John and Lyneea, whom we'll meet a little later. I love these little fractal moments in the show, where some tiny little interchange actually tells the whole story in twenty words or less.
But even cooler, this is further paralleled within the episode itself, which is about a clash between military and pure science, once the bad guys show up and Lyneea has to decide on her allegiances. Which is the other reason Zhaan and Rygel didn't come down with them for the mission: Story A is about what it's like to be a scientist, surprised by beauty, other uses of knowledge than violence, so all you have are scientists and soldiers. (Story B is about the strength inherent in passivity, the balls it takes to be a healer, which is another path that doesn't involve active violence -- what makes it surprising is that neither of the fighters, Aeryn nor D'Argo, is really punished for straying into this episode at all, which usually they would be, although it continues the painful job of breaking Aeryn's indoctrination wide open, announcing that intention throughout pretty loudly.)
Of course, the analyzer immediately starts working. Aeryn says the reading is weak, and that if that's the level they're going to find, they'd have to "bring back half the planet," and D'Argo agrees they need a more concentrated source. Some kind of vehicle approaches, and they scatter. As people search all around for them, John lies in the brush, staring -- and then is startled by D'Argo and Aeryn as they drop on either side of him, protecting him. He's just a tech, he can't take care of himself, and I love that even at the beginning of the show, before anybody makes friends, they just naturally cover him whenever the shit happens, because they know he's not up to it. D'Argo says they need to draw the people away from the ship, but that's too short-term for Aeryn, who wants to get the hell out of there -- warrior v. soldier -- and she corrects him: "We need chlorium." D'Argo gives them their orders: he and Aeryn will distract the searchers, John will find a better source of chlorium, and they all will meet back up at the ship. As plans go, it's one of the least lame these three will ever come up with: D and Aeryn can take care of themselves, and John only operates properly when there's nobody around whatsoever. D'Argo makes a scary growling noise and takes off in one direction, Aeryn does a crazy bird sound and runs off in the other, and John skulks out into the forest.
Zhaan wanders into Pilot's chamber and looks at the freaking out DRDs. Pilot informs her he's done analyzing the connections between the beacon and Moya's neural system: "The interlacing is...extremely intricate." Zhaan asks how on earth the PKs could have managed getting something like that aboard without him or Moya even noticing. Rather than explaining the horrible truth, he just tells her that they tranked Moya upon first capturing her. "The weak and the old do not survive, which I suppose is part of its purpose," he says. Which is pretty horrible on its own. "I thought I had discovered all they had done to Moya. Obviously, I had not." Zhaan tells Pilot not to blame himself, which is very sweet if you ignore the fact that that's her answer for everything, and Pilot says that even with a bunch of chlorium, "there will not be enough time to complete the separation before Moya succumbs to her own intense weight." That's what K-Fed said!
Twitching John approaches a farmhouse with an intensely huge and vaguely crazy-looking satellite dish setup outside, which some weird music is all wow about. He goes into the barn of the farm, and quickly gets a good chlorium reading. He then notices that he's totally in a barn. Like a normal human barn on a normal Earth farm, and starts to wig. He picks up a lightbulb, which is like a normal Earth lightbulb except with a weird green filament instead of the normal kind. Temptation and refutation, which will keep him on his toes once he starts interacting with the people and the environment rather than just waving the analyzer around. D'Argo hits him on comm, and John and Aeryn both try to fill each other in at the same time, talking all over each other. It's funny and human, but I think it's also kind of telling that it's John and Aeryn that can't wait to fill in the gaps for each other. As John begs them to join him in the barn, because he's in over his head as usual, some scary feet come down a set of stairs and head toward the barn, hauling a bucket. As the owner of the alien feet comes closer, John finally drops his comm badge and hides behind some hay or something. Barrels.
The alien is, of course, a little boy who looks like Henry Thomas, but with freckled, Botox-looking alien cheeks and crazy elf ears. His name is Fostro and he lives here. "Who's there? Who are you and what are you doing around my Mom's stuff?" Seeing it's a kid, John stands and comes out, trying to be calming. "Don't be afraid. Ah, I'm not here to hurt you." Elliott asks where he's from, and John's like, "Um, out of town." The kid identifies him as an alien, and they trade names, but then the kid suddenly drops the bucket and runs off, I assume to grab some Reese's Pieces so they can do this shit right. John calls after him, but Elliott's all, "MOM!"
John follows Elliott into the house, the kitchen, and the kid grabs some kind of scary-looking weapon and points it at him. John realizes that he's been brandishing the analyzer, and apologizes, dropping it onto the table. It's scientific equipment, not a weapon, and the whole episode is about knowing the difference or getting stuck in the middle. Elliott's mom, Lyneea, comes toward the kitchen, talking. John approaches to introduce himself, and a very wary Elliott finally shoots him with the weapon thing. After some crazy Bojangles knee action, John goes down. Commercial.
"I can't move," John mumbles. Lyneea enters bitching: "Fostro, I am in the middle of what could be a very real extraterrestrial event. This is not the moment for you to...." She sees the pile of John and drops what she was carrying. She stares as John mushmouths some more. "Why can't I move. I can't feel my body!" Lyneea creeps closer, and the joy in her! "Oh my God!" John's less concerned with the very real extraterrestrial event that's going on and more confused about his general rubberiness issue: "John: All my bones are... I'm going to recover from this right? Completely! Right?!" It's hilarious. I wish Lyneea could see the humor here. Instead, she grabs the stunner and aims it at the John puddle. "Fostro, move back." John pulls himself weakly to hold the table leg and she tells him to stop moving. "Please," he begs, "I already told your boy, I'm not here to harm you." Elliott tells his mom that John's from space, and surmises that he arrived in "that thing" she was tracking last night. John introduces himself, and points at the sky with his thumb, confirming Elliott's guess. "I'm talking to an alien? You're an alien? And I'm talking to you? In my kitchen?" That's when I fell for Lyneea. John too, I think. Or at least he recognizes that gleam in her eye. She sends Elliott out to the car and is very high-pitched. John tries to calm her down by telling an ugly lie. "You don't think we came alone, do you? If we wanted to contact some government, some agency, we would have." He's grossed out at himself. "We chose you."
Zhaan enters Rygel's quarters, where he's having himself a snot on the bed. "If this is about me climbing around in the ship's entrails, then you can simply turn round and go back the way you came." Zhaan asks His Eminence for permission to speak, because she knows his whole deal, and because she is manipulative. Rygel breathes regally and gives his leave. "Pilot's done all he can," she says, but the device is frying anything metal that comes near it, which is why that poor DRD got toasted. Zhaan tells him that they have to "start the separation procedure immediately" and can't wait for the others to return. I guess this is because of the intense weight issue. Rygel asks how they're supposed to do it without chlorium, and she smiles. "Among my sect, I am a ninth level Pa'u." Which is nearly true. "A priest of that level can harbor the power to...share another being's pain. If you are willing to begin the procedure, I'll do all I can to alleviate Moya's discomfort." He turns to look at her: "This is an awfully big ship," he grumps, and she smiles a bit ruefully. "Don't I know it."
Aeryn and D'Argo, those mighty warriors, are now hiding up a tree. Aeryn sits between D'Argo legs as they scan all around for the searchers -- at one point, D'Argo's hand drops to her shoulder, and she huffily shoves it off. D'Argo is awesome because he totally forgot that Sebaceans are racist pigs and think of Luxans like buffalo soldiers. Aeryn is less awesome because she didn't, and she doesn't even have the plausible deniability of being a robot lady because now she's even below him on the Racist Pig Flowchart of Peacekeeperism. He tells her to be careful and calls her "Peacekeeper," which makes her snort. "If I was a Peacekeeper, would I be sitting on this planet to you?" Aeryn, you're boring me. You can be more. D'Argo growls and does...something behind her back. I have no idea what it is, like he reaches down and scratches his ankle. Or, knowing this show, does a quick readjust. Aeryn's boring even herself and wants to leave, but D'Argo says they should wait until the "hounds" are further gone.
"Oh fine, let's just perch up here and do nothing then," Aeryn bitches, and D'Argo tells her to speak up if she's got any problems with his strategy. She laughs rudely. "I should have known that this would be Luxan strategy -- probably why you did so well against the Grezodians." D'Argo's like, "You don't even know about the Grezodians," but she says it's the biggest joke in the world, "how the Luxans went screaming into retreat so fast," and D'Argo tries to get real with her. "Those monsters killed thousands of Luxan women and children, we had no alternative to retreat." And then, as though to get our respect, points out that they later got their revenge. Aeryn hums condescendingly (and at the exact frequency of a complete hypocrite): "And killed thousands of their women and children." D'Argo protests that they had no alternative for that either, and Aeryn -- because Peacekeepers are so very above mindless conflict -- says the Grezodians probably believed the same thing. She's just having a conversation, not even thinking about the fact that this is his people they're chatting about. The idea that the PKs haven't done anything wrong -- that she herself is just getting fucked over by an accidental coincidence, and that even her death sentence and exile are correct. Well, I mean, she has to believe that, right? If it's not a Peacekeeper war, then war is stupid, because the Peacekeepers are always right. Even if it kills her coming from the other direction, it's all she's got. She's like an ideal Peacekeeper. Her loss of innocence has so much to do with realizing that people not only break the rules constantly -- but have been doing so the whole time. Pretty ugly stuff.
In Lyneea's kitchen, where she's still got the stunner trained on John. He explains about how they're looking for something for the ship, and she asks where it is, and asks if there are more like him. "Like me?" You're looking at her. He laughs. "There are...others, yeah." Lyneea gets very excited and starts babbling about her readings and how something flew in low over Kasta Swamp and realizes that's where his ship is. Elliott's like, "We gotta tell!" and she tries to hush him. "Look, I understand what a phenomenal moment this is for you," John offers, and Lyneea scoffs with a giant, adorable grin on her face. "Do you? Can you? I mean to you, space travel is commonplace, but to us here?" John gives her a short speech that parallels her day with the one he's been having, all about the wonder of being a scientist and loving E.T.s and having it all proven true in a moment, and she melts a little, and I think that they love each other, because they get it. She's a scientist, he's a scientist, they're both in love with space. And up on Moya, he's surrounded by a king, a priest, a soldier and a warrior. Nobody he understands, with troubling customs and no mercy in them at all, all of whom treat him like crap. Aliens = automatically better, because they have spaceships. And that's John now -- so he'd better turn it around and be sweet to this woman, because nobody was nice to him.
He smiles at her. "I'm not exactly what you expected, am I?" She grins at him and marvels that he's so much like them, that she assumed first contact would be with somebody "radically different." Thank God she's meeting him on a good day, then. "Radically insane" barely covers it. "So have you been searching long?" Comparing notes: how alike are we really? "Since I was Fostro's age. My parents bought me a telescope. I used to look up at the stars at night and dream...of this moment." They connect. "You said you chose me," she says, and his face falls. He didn't know how awesome you were when he said that, sweetie. Sad, now: "Well, we saw the radio telescope and we figured you'd be somebody who'd understand us, not hurt us. Hoped you would be." Since all John Crichton can do with his mouth open is dig himself deeper, he tries to change the subject. "You have star charts? And deep space photographs? There's a chance I might be able to recognize something. Constellations, galaxies. I might even be able to get a fix on the Milky Way." Elliott calls bullshit on the imputed omniscience -- "Don't you even know where you are?" -- and Lyneea looks back up at John. I bet he remembers that disappointment particularly well. It's kind of unfair that Lyneea even gets to have this limited degree of first contact excitement, considering things only started getting shitty when John discovered alien life. It's not Earth he misses, ever -- it's people. People and chocolate. I think we can all agree that he has the right idea.
Because of the metal-zapping issue, Zhaan has sent Rygel into the hatch with a bone knife, which she stole from D'Argo's quarters. Rygel realizes what it is and gets horrified. "This is a Tokkar knife! Do you know what ceremony young Luxans males use this for? On themselves? At that certain age?" She nods, like, regrettable indeed that you're messing around with something that gross, but when he's done bitching she goes back to her usual serene competence. "Then I suspect that D'Argo will want it back unharmed." She goes to the bulkhead pillar opposite the hatch and asks if he is ready. "Moya," she says, bracing herself against the bulkhead, "I will take your pain." She puts her cheek and hands against the pillar, and her pupils go away and then her eyes turn white. ("Shut up, Storm," is what my friend Lily would say at this point.) "You may begin." One of the things I liked best on first blush about this show is the way that everybody carries equal weight: John's the main character, but only provides our entry point as a human being surrounded by weirdness, which is what you are when you watch the show -- but as much as it's about John and Aeryn specifically, it's still an ensemble cast. I was struck by how many of the storylines in each episode didn't even include John. Whenever he's doing something, you can rest assured that somewhere, there are Muppets and people in tons of weird makeup doing stuff that's equally important, and I can't think of any other show where the weirdoes get equal time like that. Maybe Will & Grace, but they're all such caricatures that it doesn't really have the same bite. Rygel makes the first cut and both Moya and the camera go completely insane, shaking and whirling and moving too fast. Zhaan's clearly in pain. "Continue. Rygel, you must continue!" He...doesn't, and then finally lunges forward again.
Aeryn and D'Argo's tree, where Aeryn is marveling that "this primordial rock" actually reminds John of home. The way she says it, you can tell she was just sitting there thinking about John Crichton for a while before she spoke up. We've all done it. D'Argo scoffs, "No interplanetary travel, retrograde technology, fossil fuel-burning ground vehicles...." They giggle at what a savage he is, but Aeryn gives a different flavor of hum after they're done laughing. "Does that bother you?" asks D'Argo, grinning hugely and cheekily behind her in the tree, and her back goes very straight because she simply has no idea what he could possibly mean by that, and she changes the subject. "No. Of course not. Look, he's had plenty of time to find the chlorium, I'm going back." D'Argo and Aeryn agree that she'll signal him immediately once she finds him. And if he's not there, D'Argo says he'll find him. Aeryn rolls her eyes, like, just because they are united in looking down on John doesn't mean that she doesn't still get to look down on D'Argo too. You could be more. "You think I will not?" And she snorts, but it's not entirely unfriendly. "I think I will be searching for both of you in less than an arn."
Lyneea calls in Elliott, having made breakfast, and John makes small talk, asking if she's an academic. "Military," she says. Another connection. "They provide me with most of my funding. What's left of it... According to them, it's highly unlikely that you even exist. My biggest concern is, I'm not quite sure how they'd treat you if they knew you were here. Our military's not the most compassionate, tolerant group." He smiles. "No, militaries rarely are. So I'd be quite a coup for you?" She agrees that she'd be funded for life with the "walking, talking evidence" of him. She calls Elliott to the table again, and brings John a plate. "I don't know if you eat! ...Hell, for all I know this stuff could be horribly toxic for you." The analyzer freaks out on the breakfast food, and Lyneea goes into Mama Bear mode, grabbing Elliott and long-jumping across the room. John babbles nervously about how it's just the analyzer, "a science tool," and that the thing he needs is close by. He scans the food and the analyzer goes nuts. "It's in the food? How can it be in the...." Lyneea stares, arms around her son, frightened to death as John talks faster and faster. "I'm looking for an element called chlorium, it's what I'm looking for and there's gotta be some somewhere in this..." He finds a jar of the stuff that's setting the analyzer off. "What the hell is this? What is this?" He finally realizes he's being all weird and erratic and Asperger's-y and apologizes profusely for once again scaring the shit out of Lyneea and her kid. He hands her the stunner, which he's been waving around crazily, and gives her some mad puppy-dog eyes. "Whatever is in this container, this is what my ship needs." Lyneea hears some cars and vans coming toward the farmhouse, and realizes the military is on their way. She and John lock eyes, and from outside, Ryymax calls to her. He's not the real estate guy, he's a military guy. She tells Elliott to get John upstairs, and makes a steely face. John starts to tell her she doesn't need to lie or screw herself over on his account, but she just yells at him to get moving.
Moya's lights are flashing, and she's making weird rumbly noises, in pain, and Zhaan is straining to stay upright as Moya twists. They are both in terrible pain -- and Rygel's still cutting. Pilot screams that Moya is "in intense pain!" in that hysterical way he says stuff. Zhaan finally howls and drops, unconscious. Rygel calls out to her, and, getting no answer, finally crawls out to check on her. "Pilot," he says urgently, "I think Zhaan is..." but the corridor is just dark, and Pilot's not responding, and Rygel is very tiny as we zoom suddenly back away from him, still screaming for Pilot. Muppets with feelings, unending angst, constant bodily fluids, complicated serialized storylines, the Crichton's magical male ass motif, and main characters dying at a furious and unchanging rate: the Six Forbidden Cargoes of television. So how come it's so good? Commercial.
A few minutes later, Rygel's tenderly trying to wake Zhaan. "Wake up, you worthless weak shank of blue flesh!" The lights come back on, and Pilot calls out to Rygel. "Is anyone there?" he shouts on the clamshell, scared. "Yes, of course we're here," grumbles Rygel. "I'm been screaming my shunting head off!" Zhaan groans as she starts to come around, lights flickering. Pilot yells that Moya is "succumbing!" and Rygel says, sadly, "She's collapsing." The less people are around, the less of a dick he is. Which is I guess the point. Zhaan looks around, worried for Moya.
While Elliott and John bond over the childhood dream of meeting real live aliens -- and the relatively uneventful, kind of scary, mostly sucky reality they've both experienced at this point -- Lyneea's downstairs with a billion military lying up a storm. Ryymax hassles her about the phone -- which was the thing she dropped when she first saw John -- and about how he really needs her to get it together and confirm the sightings at Versant Observatory. When he asks her about her stinkface, she covers by reminding him how last year Versant's "definite UEO sighting" turned out to be nothing special. He hassles her about how excited she was earlier when her readings were going nuts, and she says she just wants to be sure. "Civilians have seen it," he says. "This is the day you prove to all of us who doubted you wrong. I don't understand -- when you first contacted me, you were extremely excited about your readings." She protests that she's still excited, but he says she's not. "You're nervous." It's true, she has no poker face at all.
Lyneea finally comes upstairs, and Elliott runs to her. "Looks like they're making us their base of operations," says John grimly. She tries to comfort him and sends Elliott downstairs to say hi to Commander Ryymax, so he won't know anything is up. John's like, "Does he have to?" So sweet. Lyneea tells Elliott not to say a word, and beeps his nose lovingly. She's really keeping this shit together. John's like, "How's that going to play out?" but she won't look at him. I don't really trust Elliott either -- he's kind of a nervous kid. "Look," says John. "There's a very good chance I'm going to get captured here, right?" And she's contrite without agreeing. He tells her at the least, he needs to notify Moya that he found the chlorium. She's still surprised by that, because it's just a common household ingredient -- like salt, or sugar, or cinnamon, or chocolate -- called "anlux," but he's like, "No matter how dumb it is, they need it." (Coincidentally I'm sure, but remember how anlux is an "atmospherically induced isotope of twinium"? It's pronounced like "twin" and not "twine," although I guess either is appropriate. Everything that happens here is an isotope of meeting Lyneea, John's twin out of all the planets in all the galaxies. Like I said, it's a coincidence probably, but still cool.)
Aeryn comes down the corridor, Rygel calling out to her. "We need to take off immediately!" he shouts. "The ship is collapsing and Pilot is refusing to follow my commands." Heh. I would like a whole episode of Pilot trying to deal with Rygel. Pissy v. Prissy: two Muppets enter, one Muppet gets shaken baby syndrome and then falls for a very long time. Aeryn notices Zhaan trying to get up, and Zhaan again starts saying they're out of time. "We need to remove the device right now," she says, and Rygel tells them both to fuck off. Aeryn reaches out to him to shove him back in the hole, and Rygel takes a nasty chunk out of her arm. She gasps, and there's a lingering, horrible shot of him chewing on her arm chunk with a grin on his face and blood everywhere. Gross me out, Rygel! God! Aeryn steps up again, I assume to rip his face off, but Zhaan touches her arm and asks her to wait outside. As Aeryn leaves, she mutters darkly and melodramatically, "Your greatest fear will come to pass, Hynerian. Someday you will die at the hands of a Peacekeeper." I get the same way when I stub my toe or get scratched by a cat. There's something very comforting about talking like Moses when you're in pain.
I like this part very much. Rygel grumbles off Aeryn's little speech that she won't even get the chance because they're all going to be crushed by Moya's Britney poundage "...or I kill her myself." Zhaan smiles and figures it out. "You're afraid! You're afraid this great ship will die." It doesn't push his usual bravado buttons because she says it lovingly and without scorn -- makes it something to be celebrated, not weakness. "I don't know what I'm doing. I've always had others to do for me. Even in prison I...I don't even know how to hold a tool." Those are for techs. I wish there were more meat for a Rygel/Aeryn comparison. All I know is that John loves them the most. More than Chiana, more than D'Argo, John loves Sparky. It drives me bats. "There's great pain in this for all of us, isn't there?" asks Zhaan, and it's not at all condescending -- she realizes the relativity of pain, which is something that few people on this show understand, and it's her greatest asset: there is no difference between his pain at fucking up, Moya's pain at having nerve surgery without anesthetic, and Zhaan eating a whole ship's worth of agony. It's not just Delvian bullshit either: that's the way things work. He looks up at her, entirely innocent. Which is probably his greatest asset, and the other reason it has to be him that does this. "Come," she says, taking his hand. "We'll face the pain together." She leaves, and he continues to think and sigh, but she's got him and they both know it.
"Will he do it?" Aeryn asks her outside. Zhaan says it's likely, and then touches Aeryn's wounded arm, offering to heal the bite. Aeryn pulls away and says they need to deal with the ship first -- again, PK training. Zhaan's like, "Right. I forgot you think everything's a training op and you're being graded. By all means, let that fester while we sit around doing nothing." Aeryn gets anxious about waiting for him to show, but Zhaan tells her to just give it a sec. "It's a big responsibility resting on those not-so-large shoulders," she chuckles annoyingly. Aeryn asks if it's true, that she can really remove the pain of the entire ship. "I only share the pain," Zhaan admits. "I'm afraid that Moya still bears the larger portion. I don't know how she's doing it." Aeryn's like, "Um, how about you?" and Zhaan sighs humorously and ever-so-slightly nastily. Of course, this gets Aeryn's back up, because she's an eight-year-old boy a lot of the time: "Are you laughing at me?!" And Zhaan's passive-aggressive priestly bullshit rears its head. "Oh! No, no my dear. I'm not laughing. You just seemed, very briefly, to be...concerned for me." It wasn't that I was making fun of you so much as trying to make you feel bad about yourself. Much effing better.
I mean, I realize that Zhaan's bitter about the PKs and all that, and Aeryn certainly does act like a dick a lot of the time, especially w/r/t (a) other races and (b) the utter uselessness, as she'd see it, of Zhaan and her religious stuff. But you know what's better than telling everybody that you accept their faults all the time? Accepting their faults and shutting the fuck up about it. A real Ninth Level would know that. (Except when she pulls that shit on Crichton, because she's a lot funnier when she does it to him.) So Aeryn takes back that moment of admiration: "I am concerned only that you are able to complete your undertaking to share Moya's pain," and Zhaan's like, "Of course, of course. See? You're an asshole just like I said." There are a bunch of So There Eyes bouncing all around the corridor and Aeryn takes off, and Zhaan smiles after her and thinks about how superior she is to everyone in the universe. But most especially her oppressors, PKs like Aeryn, because how else could she have stayed alive for the hundreds of years she spent in prison except by thinking that, so you can't fault her.
Outside Lyneea's house, Ryymax is ordering up a hot dish of "biological containment" for when they trap the alien. It is regrettable that, among all the similarities to Earth, they have not invented bicycles, or else we'd already know how to get out of this one. Originally, like years ago, I thought the cool thing about this was the slap in the face for John: if you point the finger at aliens, and you're in the middle of outer space, you've got three more fingers pointing back at you, that kind of thing. But the episode's a lot better than that, because it takes it one step further: it's a reversal not so much of us/them as it is you/everything -- they're all aliens, the whole universe is aliens, singular and unique and fucked up and weird, and the way that you resolve that is by getting the hell over it, looking upward and sharing in the wonders you can see, all that crap -- by making the connections. They're not aliens because they're blue or gray or made of rubber, up on Moya -- they're alien because they're violent convicts and soldiers, and he's just a nerd. My side, your side. We assume, as nerds, that he's on the right side -- that violence and conflict are less necessities than just hiccups in the system, problems to be worked out -- but so much of his growth and becoming a man is about violence (the science of violence, the violence of science), about learning to cross and use both sides in order to become something else entirely from either of them. When he brings peace, it won't be through science and it won't be through violence. It'll be through both. It doesn't matter where you start as long as you turn into the opposite: that way you get A and you get B, but you also get everything in between.
Upstairs, Lyneea connects some kind of TV to the satellites and they talk shop -- she says they call wormholes "ribbon holes," and that they don't exist. John's like, "I agree with you to a point, and that point is the time I got ate by one." He admits that he really has no idea where he is, and then she asks him the awful question: "You didn't really choose me, did you?" But she's smiling, and they're connected, so he just makes a gah face and says, "No." She waves it off and smiles, and tells him the signal is routed through the big dishes outside, a very wide signal as strong as possible. John starts calling for them, and it's Pilot who eventually shows up, asking how he's doing this. Lyneea stares at Pilot, the music goes crazy, she's seeing a real alien. "Is this guy more what you were expecting?" grins John, and she just watches, transfixed, overjoyed. Pilot fills him in on the Moya stuff.
Ryymax finds the analyzer on Lyneea's kitchen table, but is interrupted by a terrible actor of a soldier, who calls him outside to see the other one they've captured -- D'Argo. Heh, Aeryn was half right. D'Argo fights a bunch of soldiers out in the house's driveway, and gets stunned as John watches, worried.
Aeryn watches Zhaan shivering with pain, holding fast to the bulkhead. Inside, Rygel apologizes to Moya. And continues to cut, and to hate it.
Lyneea comes into the barn, where Elliott stares at D'Argo. His wrists have been chained to the walls, so he's all spread out. They always do that to D'Argo because he's so big. D'Argo tries to tongue-whip the soldiers, but they step back. Lyneea and Elliott, for all their protestations of xenophilia, are as freaked out by D'Argo as they were by an armed and crazy John Crichton. "He's phenomenal!" crows Ryymax, who then tells Lyneea she and her son need to evacuate. "It's no longer safe for you here." She just stares. I've decided not to worry about the translator microbes here, except to say that the only person who speaks to Lyneea is John -- D'Argo just hisses and growls and yells and acts crazy, and may or may not actually be doing this -- because the only person who speaks to John, in the galaxy, is at this point Lyneea, and that's why I like this episode. There's a reason the only non-Aeryn girl he ever loves in this story is a PK Tech Girl -- he's an Urp Tech Boy, for now. That starts here, I think. I really like that Aeryn's at the end of the tunnel of love, though: start with things like you, and gradually move toward their opposite, because you change along the way. Start with chocolate, end up with broccoli, you know? He likes techs now, because the rest of it's too scary. (Don't even get me started on Winona.) The point is, this fellow-feeling and unspoken understanding between Lyneea and John is the best part of the episode, because it reads true (it's also what makes his relationship with Katralla in "Look At The Princess" work, too), not as romance but as love all the same. All this time I thought it was sad and he'd miss her because she was so human, and the planet was so Earthlike, but that's not it at all. It's sad because she's so John-like.
"What kind of ship are you?" Lyneea flips out, back upstairs. "That thing on the computer in there and now this one trying to pull down my barn! You said you were a scientist, a science ship!" Science v. war. "I am a scientist!" he shouts. This is like month three in the dating cycle, this part: the "Um, I know that you don't love Mamet because nobody actually loves Mamet so give me some credit" phase. "My ship is.... It's a prison transport. Escaped prisoners." She's like, better and better. So wait, you what? "It's a galactic misunderstanding," he lamely "explains," and she's like, enough. "Take your precious anlux and get out of my house." John protests that he's not leaving without D'Argo, and she explains, nearing tears, that he's going to be vivisected, "laid open on an autopsy tale by dawn tomorrow," which is what she's been bending over backwards this whole time to protect John from. Vivisection is a constant fear with this show -- like, in every episode somebody is getting cut open or excavated or having their parts traded out or turned inside out or surgeried or whatever -- because bodies will always, always be scary, and something that is inherently out of your control, and somebody else getting control of the thing you can barely even keep up with, and doing whatever they want with it, is terrifying. John steadfastly refuses to leave without D, and Lyneea is just like, "Fuck!"
Rygel: "Only a few more to go." He continues to cut, and apparently hits a really bad one. Moya groans, Zhaan screams, and loses her grip on the bulkhead. Aeryn catches her as she's shuddering, "Help me back! Get me back!" I'm really quite proud of her today. I bitch about her, but I mean: this isn't about getting her off, for once. This is done out of love, pure love. Nobody's going to clap for her except Moya, who loves her anyway. Zhaan and Rygel have been onboard longer than you can count, which means they know each other the most, and they love Moya the best. Aeryn yells to Rygel to "get it done in there," and he "thanks" her for her encouragement, and everybody's really stressed, except for a woozy Zhaan, now being held against the bulkhead by Aeryn, who is beyond stress and in agony.
Upstairs in Elliott's room, Lyneea and Ryymax are at the computer, and she's lying her ass off about how the transmissions are getting interrupted, but that before, there was this awesome thing she saw completely randomly. She plays a tape recording of Pilot ("Crichton, is that you? How is your signal getting though?") -- which is AWESOME, because she's a scientist and Ryymax is a soldier, and she's dicking with him using a VCR -- just like John with the analyzer, when he surprised D'Argo and Aeryn with his tech skills. Ryymax pops a boner and asks if she can tell the "signal's" origin, and she smiles. Gotcha.
John crouches outside the barn as, inside, Elliott and D'Argo stare at each other. Elliott finds the comm badge John dropped at the beginning, and then John and Elliott have a long ridiculous conversation that takes place entirely in twitches and winks. Ryymax orders the team standing around D'Argo to move out, and the couple that are left warn Elliott not to get too close to D'Argo, as John sneaks up behind them and knocks them out. D'Argo complains at John for taking his time, and John scowls at him as he unties him. He offers Elliott the chance to shake the hand of a real alieny-looking alien -- "Go ahead! He doesn't bite." -- and grins at D'Argo's scary look. John watches, happy, as Elliott and D'Argo shake hands. He can at least give the kid that, bicycle or no.
Stuff's now fully coming out of the walls on Moya -- that's gotta be one of the six signs to take your Leviathan to the ER. Rygel cuts, the lights flicker, Zhaan and Moya completely freaking out. Aeryn, bracing herself against Zhaan's back. I like any scene with the two of them, because it only works when they don't talk. You have friends like that? I like it. It makes sense, I think. (What the hell would they talk about? God? War? Anarchy? The awesomeness of rules? Prison recidivism? "This one time at Boot Camp?" And every time they do, it goes horribly wrong. But when they don't talk, it's beautiful.) They each have the strength that the other lacks -- and they touch the part of John where the other doesn't reach. Aeryn lends her this strength now, but she won't know how much strength Zhaan herself commands for a long time.
Outside the farmhouse, Elliott gives John his comm badge back as Lyneea explains she sent Ryymax off to Acon's Field -- opposite direction from the swamp. John wishes there were more he could do for her, and she chuckles: "You've altered the perceptions and beliefs of an entire planet." You've told them they're not alone. He smiles and agrees that this was a big day as far as the task list. D'Argo urges haste, and John says goodbye: "Keep watching the skies." He kisses Lyneea, tastes the chocolate, and she licks her lips. "That's how your people say goodbye?" He asks if, given all the similarities, they don't do that here. No bicycles and no kisses. What a shitty planet. She's lonely, too -- surrounded by soldiers, raising her son. I'm glad they got caught so she can get funding and stuff. I hope she does awesome things. She licks her lips and smiles adorably. I love her. Elliott shakes D'Argo's hand again, says goodbye to his first real alien, and they take off back to Moya. "You are the luckiest nine year old around. Someday you are going to have a very singular story to tell. Can't tell it for a long time of course but...someday." She bites her lip, tastes the chocolate, watches them leave. Of all the guest stars, I think she's probably my favorite. Well, Ancient Jack is pretty awesome too.
As John and D'Argo call over to Aeryn on comm, Rygel's finishing up. She tells Pilot to get her in the sky, and Pilot says he can't: "The pain along the neural nexus is too great!" But they have the chlorium now. You know, by the end of the series that's like a minor miracle: they always show up late or fuck it up somehow, but it's rare that it helps anyway. Rygel cuts the last connection, and Pilot confirms the beacon's no longer transmitting. Rygel is beautiful for a moment: "I did it! I did it! I did it!" John pokes his head in the hatch and tosses him the bag of chlorium, asking him to spread it all over the places that he cut. But it's not just Rygel who did something new: "Prepare for lift off. Moya has never done this before. I don't know what to expect," worries Pilot. Down in the hatch, Rygel tosses equal handfuls of chlorium around the nexus and into his own mouth. Heh.
There's still shit dripping down the walls and weird noises, but the environment is already much improved. Aeryn sits down on the corridor floor, where Zhaan lies unconscious. She wakes her quietly, and Zhaan smiles. "Ouch." John calls Aeryn to command, like they can do anything to help Moya wherever they are, and she sighs and gets up. Rygel crawls out of the hatch and lies beside Zhaan, exhausted. "Never, ever, again," he grumbles, proud and tired. It's a beautiful little moment with the two of them, the most alien and the oldest among them all. The cutter (violence, destruction) and the healer (science, knowledge). The Muppet and the crazy-ass.
Commercial. John and Aeryn come running into command as Moya slowly lifts out of the swamp and into the air. Pilot calls triumphantly that they're going to make it, and everybody stares out.
Lyneea watches them go from her steps, her child asleep beside her. The music is triumphant music, and her face is full of wonder. She is facing to the right. John stares back at her, facing left, looking out at the planet. They miss each other. It's painful. Aeryn watches him and finally murmurs, "Don't tell me you're going to miss that rock?" And he smiles sadly. "No, not that rock." Aeryn leaves him alone, still looking back. He's not talking about Earth.