"Officer Aeryn Sun. General Ka D'Argo. Sikozu Svala Shanti Sugaysi Shanu. Dominar Rygel XVI. Chiana. Utu Noranti Pralatong. The Pilot. These are the first extraterrestrials known to have visited this planet." And with that, we're welcomed to Alien Visitation, R. Wilson Monroe's latest muckraking Bashir-esque special, in which he will detail for us stupid Earthlings the recent visit of eight (nine) alien visitors, and their ties to the IASA space program. "It has now been several months since they left with Commander John Crichton aboard their ship, Moya...and besides their names, what else do we really know about them? Precious little, except the carefully orchestrated appearances allowed by our government. Good Evening."
We pull out: John's watching the special on the TV Aeryn bought him for Christmas. "And tonight, we will pierce the veil of secrecy, showing you these aliens as no one has witnessed them before." As though we're ready for that; as though the truths are literal. Rygel asks John how many times he's going to watch the awful thing. "Until I figure it out." Rygel bitches that he told Pilot to keep the transmission a secret from John. John, lost in thought, muses how easily Earth avoided his -- and the crew's -- pleas for understanding and interspecies trust. One of the cool things about this episode -- or lazy, depending -- is how it imputes so much that we didn't see in Terra Firma. We saw like two scenes of John fighting The Man and trying to get everybody to work together. Which to my mind was the best thing to do: his conversations with Holt at IASA were symbolic of the brick wall they were hitting. We didn't get to see them hoping, all that much, but now we can remember that they did. And it's part of the story, and we knew it at the time. But so much of it becomes real with this episode, looking back through their disappointment.
"Well, what do you expect?" asks Rygel, always at home with cynicism. John shakes his head. "It's not what you expect, it's what you hope for." A Catholic bishop appears on screen, discussing this and that. Rygel further explains some things about Earth: "It's a backward planet full of superstitious, xenophobic morons. Nothing makes sense if they didn't think of it first and, even then, it's simplistic drivel." John wanders around the room and Rygel pissily apologizes: "How rude! Are you from there?" The Dominar is forthwith expelled from the room by force, as Rygel grunts and waves his arms and whines. "My quarters. My life. My TV." He hurls a bowl of popcorn in Rygel's face as Rygel blusters.
And grumbles: "This won't bring her back, you know." There's concern in Rygel's voice, for all that, even as he's spitting out the popcorn. John's never rejected him like this, not ever. One of the amazing things about this episode is how seamlessly and subtly it weaves Rygel's love for John, and for Aeryn, into his unique perspective on their relationship. He really does believe in the Love That Oh My God, and you rarely get to see it. Just think about the first ten minutes of Peacekeeper Wars in that context, for a second: he's a bigger part of them than anyone else, including Stark and D'Argo, by the end. Which is as it should be: as their love passes the test of vulgarity, it is transcended. Through the body to what lies beyond, not below and not around and not skipping a step: that's the story of love. They had to have a lot of sex before Rygel could possibly administrate the physical expression of that love; they had to let their own Rygels into the conversation. Same as with all Zhaan's storied sexual prowess, she mostly fucked: the sun, probably Stark who's equivalent, and that dude she killed. And her own arrogance, of course. Am I leaving anybody out? That purple guy, yeah, but that was like some Sikozu/Scorpius stuff, and they didn't actually do it.
John pours himself a drink and comms: "Sikozu Shanu." Her answer, from command, is a simple "No." Upon which she elaborates -- in response to his "Nothin'?" -- that "nothing" is a "reasonable interpretation" of the word "No." John knows, in his heart, that the word for Aeryn is Katrazi. That her abductors, the Scarrans who so cruelly stuck him with yet another fake Aeryn, have taken her there. Onscreen, we see Aeryn in PK garb, to Cousin Bobby, being photographed in front of a lit Christmas tree. "As stupid as you must think them," Sikozu says with much ire, "the Scarrans have managed to build one of the most extensive empires in the galaxy. In part -- and I shall repeat this because it does not seem to sink in -- by not advertising the location of their secret bases." I always talk about how creepy she is, but I'm always on her side. Even with the hair later, she's really the most admirable among them in many ways.
She's a political operative, a terrorist and spy in an actual cause. None among them -- John, Rygel, even Scorpius -- can claim that. She's got to be so very many women at once, and that's exhausting; even more exhausting to find herself caring about these freaks all around her. And she does care: this is the voice of lost hope. She was just beginning to crack Aeryn, just beginning to make a friend and equal aboard the vessel. They didn't just take Aeryn away from John, and that knowledge, in this episode, is expressed in the quietest, saddest ways. "Are you asking the right people? Are you asking in Scarran?" She calls him an unkind word, because of course she is. We've had so many quasi-Sebaceans onboard through the years -- Aeryn, Crais, Scorpy -- and she's such a weirdo that it's hard to remember she's the Scarran version of them in a lot of ways. And the more you know about her, the longer her story gets, unfolding around itself, the more you see she really is just like them. She gets no credit at all, because her story is so veiled in secrecy that by the time you know the whole thing, the stakes are too high to go back and remember all the times you could have been kind. "I know what that means, and I love you too," John snits. She says -- by way of grudging apology -- that he earned the epithet: "Bother me one more time and you can come down here and do this for yourself." John sits again and turns the TV up; Sikozu continues to try.
"When we come back, we will meet Officer Aeryn Sun, rumored within many circles to be John Crichton's lover." Video footage of Aeryn; John continues to drink. "This alien, who looks remarkably human, will reveal a side of herself that you may find disturbing." The camera zooms in tightly on Aeryn's face as she admits that she looks like a human, which...something. "Please stay with us as Alien Visitation continues."
Commercial, and it does. R. Wilson Monroe sits on a stage with Aeryn Sun, wearing black, her hair down and straight, her manner perturbed. "Earth is under no threat from the Peacekeepers," she grits. Monroe protests. "Look. If you were to make a pact with an enemy...then perhaps." She needed to watch more TV. John's face is reflected on the screen, behind Aeryn. "So the possibility exists that your people one day would attack?" She sighs and laughs -- Monroe's not doing his best to make us look smart. Or well-intentioned. "Why are you so determined to twist this into something it's not?" Because, he says, she's an admitted soldier an alien army. "You look human, indistinguishable to the naked eye." How could any of us know there aren't thousands of Peacekeepers roaming the planet, preparing for destruction? Homeland Security: when you start looking at people and pretending they're not people, everything looks like the enemy. Anybody could be anything. She says John must have explained the PK situation and he shakes his head: "We need to hear it from you." Hear what? That Earth is sacrosanct? That your perfect isolation can somehow be restored? Is that it? When the veil breaks you can't fault them for fearing; she's wrong about that. The correct response to a breach is terror and a quick response. What's on the tip of tongue is that hatred is not the correct response, but she doesn't know about that yet. "Look...you're not a threat. Technologically speaking, you're not even a potential ally, so..." -- she sighs, fucking this up just so bad by being the one thing you can't be: honest -- "if someone wanted to enslave you, if they wanted to destroy you, could it be done? Quite simply, yes." She shrugs and smiles, and the image freezes.
"The reason you have not seen that interview before is because it was held back, after requests from both our own government and the United Nations Secretary-General. Tonight, we have our first look at over one hundred and twenty hours of previously unseen videotape on the aliens. Tonight, you have the chance to see portions of this material, along with comments from various experts and leaders." But first, he introduces Cousin Bobby, who comes onstage nervous and smiling. Bobby explains about John being his uncle, and how he stayed with the aliens and John and his mom in Florida for "a couple of weeks." He insists that the aliens are "normal, just like you and me," but of course Monroe's not feeling that. "Some more than others," Bobby admits. "Did you ever feel threatened?" No. "Did you ever get a sense that there was a conspiracy between them?" No way. In the asking of the question there's the other answer to the question, and that is journalism. "So why did you and your family wait so long to make these tapes public?" Because everybody wigged out, and "all these weird accusations" were surfacing, and Olivia and her son decided to let the tapes out: "...That it was best to help everyone not be afraid."
D'Argo on video, on the balcony of Chez Alien: "I've seen lots of your movies, and in every film, the aliens are always evil...and Earth always is victorious." Bobby asks if he's saying we have to learn that there are good aliens; he pans in on D'Argo's reply: "No, I mean you have to learn you won't always win." This is D'Argo's truth. It's the only truth he knows: you can be overtaken. Dr. Garrett Hamilton, anthropologist from the University of Michigan, gets all oxygenated: "This is a watershed moment in human history, the equivalent of a huge meteor smashing Earth during dinosaur times. Will we bend under the sudden weight of it? Or respond and flourish?" He's one of the good ones. This show Alien Visitation is some expertly edited (though let's not talk about the fishy perfection and professionalism of Bobby's footage; that's nitpickery and not allowed in this particular dojo because what's the point) propaganda. It just gets worse and worse.
Aeryn cocks an eyebrow at Bobby at the counter in the kitchen, wearing a long-sleeved dress: "You can't even fully accept us, and we're the nice aliens...what about some of the ones that come down through the wormhole?" She picks up a sandwich, takes a bite out of it. Dr. Jason Fletcher, the president of the International Society of Sociology: "My biggest fear, exacerbated in part by these tapes, is that the fabric of our society may come under an assault it is not yet prepared to withstand." ...Less hopeful, but still understandable.
The camera zooms in on Sikozu, sitting in the den. "The political complications that may arise from a simple wormhole floating in your atmosphere will devastate a planet that is still in the throes of intraspecies chaos." She speaks matter-of-factly, and she should know; the camera pans back and back as she goes back to her reading, surrounded by information. Dr. Edith Anderson, Psychologist -- and author of What Makes Us Tick: A Study Of Evil -- has a serious case of Mean Old Lady face. "I'm particularly concerned with the effects of another alien visitation on society in general. Since they've left, there's been a seven-hundred-percent increase in panic and anxiety attacks." Just the kind of medical claim that...cannot be verified or tested. I smell another bestseller! Rygel sits at a table, adorably covered in pumpkin pie and whipped cream: "If Earth is remembered at all, it will most likely be for the quality of its manual labor." Heh. But also, yikes! Stop him talking!
Monroe segues to D'Argo -- in his words, the "one alien visitor...who never failed to elicit extreme curiosity" among network staffers. He is good TV, I will give him that. Bobby and D'Argo sit inside Lo'La, which Bobby pronounces "so cool." D'Argo, who is apparently in no mood, gives a grave answers, even as Bobby's whirling around and shooting her from every angle. "It's a weapon. It kills people." Like monsters and stuff? D'Argo chuckles dryly. "Yes, sometimes. But sometimes just, uh...kills those who are in the wrong place at the wrong time." Yeeowch. Get him off the screen! Bobby says D'Argo promised to give him a demo, and he puts Bobby in front of the telemetry controls: "It's a recording captured through my targeting array." Bobby takes one giant step back in his enthusiasm as he watches the video. "Whoa! It just...that...it just...disappeared." D'Argo explains it's a recording of the rogue Leviathan that attacked them (In "Dog With Two Bones"), and how Lo'La was called upon to destroy her. Now might be a good time for a gut check: how far, just hypothetically speaking, would you go to save the one you loved? How far could mourning push you? Rage? Terror? Love? How rogue do you go when your heart destroys the world? Just a question; I'm just curious. No reason. "Could you...I mean, could we stop you if you tried to attack us?" D'Argo answers honestly, as they all seem hell-bent on doing: "With your current defenses? No." It's the message, the "look upward," that's the problem here; he just looks too weird to let it stop there.
Major General Stephen Walcott, USMC, Ret.: "The most frightening aspect of this Pandora's box we've opened is, he may be right. From what I've heard, his ship has our best and brightest utterly perplexed." Old Lady Edith chimes the fuck in: "By indicating that our current defenses could not contain him, General D'Argo is performing an act of psychological terror." We judge others by our own standards, always. If anything, that's a good reason to be inclusive: it's a much better color on you. John fast-forwards; D'Argo approaches and watches with him as Video D'Argo tells Bobby they'll be leaving soon. "There are some people here, some very powerful people, who don't appreciate what we're doing." Not kicking the Moyans out, exactly, but "making it very difficult for us to continue." John fast-forwards: "It might be a bit dramatic for one Luxan, but, uh, I can do enough damage to your world to change it forever."
D'Argo opens John's door and comes in, telling him to stop watching the show, offering a tape of a football game John brought on board. "State wins, no big plays: put mine back in." He tosses himself off the couch and starts toward him. D'Argo levels: "Katratzi. We can't find it. Pilot searched every frequency..." John shakes his head and all his body: "No. The Scarrans have Aeryn in a box, D'Argo." Known. John demands to know why he knows the word. "Katratzi. Katratzi." D'Argo reminds him that Sikozu overheard the Scarrans say it while arresting Grayza. "No," says John crazily. "From before! You know it too." D'Argo shakes his head, worried about his friend, and tells him to get some sleep and stop watching the horrible show. "They hate you guys," John says, appalled. D'Argo is grace personified: "Well, I liked it there." John asks if he's seen it yet, and D'Argo says he has not. "You should. It's educational: They're not ready." The loss of hope, now, so far from home. It's broken and sad. D'Argo says they'll have to move on, and start asking around on planets. John stutters and stammers and says they won't know, and he knows this for no reason, and please put the tape back in, and points wordlessly at the screen. Like a child.
D'Argo puts in a different tape, instead. Olivia says that John has changed -- as he screws around with a photo album -- for the better. In some ways it's true. "He's even more thoughtful than he was. He studies everything keenly before deciding what to do." I don't know who she's talking about! Bobby interviews John, who's sitting on the Crichton staircase -- his face is framed by the stair-rail's carving. A heart. "I'm here with IASA Commander John Crichton, the first and only human to boldly go where no man has gone before. You spent over three years in deepest, darkest space..." John leans his head on his hand and looks at him as he speaks. "Battling aliens and evil races...What was the worst part?" John says that it was the "complete and utter lack of toilet paper," then gets a serious smile. He holds up an old black-and-white photo. "Missing family." The picture is of his mother. Leslie. He is framed in love. "When you got back, what was the most different about Earth?" John says nothing: "Earth's pretty much the same."
Bobby: "Are you different?" And there are two Johns, in that moment, with the same look. John on the video; John on the couch on Moya, watching with us. And for just a second, there's a look I don't ever want to see on another man's face. Is he different? He's broken, hollowed out, skin scraped with glass from the inside. Is he different? He's terrified, all the time, one tiny man trying to keep the devils of the universe from shredding up his home -- both of them -- worse than they've already done. He's haunted by all the things he's done, and all the things they've done to him, even here in his repose, even framed in love he is terrified. He is a killer. He is a man who has taken what was most precious to him and crushed it in his hands. He's caused death and heartbreak. He has suffered both of these. He has traded science for violence on a hundred planets, made choices no man should ever have to make, under the harsh light of a hundred suns, and he has broken his own heart and had it broken for him more times than you can count. He has been tortured and hounded and raped. Is he different?
"Yeah, I'm different. Things that used to bother me don't bother me that much anymore. The world seems smaller. I keep waiting for something to happen...and I have to remind myself when it doesn't happen, that that's normal." What he said. Edith Anderson pinches at us: "Post-Traumatic Shock Syndrome. It's hard to tell without examining him, but from this little snippet of tape, I'm most concerned about his constantly waiting for something to happen. This suggests he's been under enormous and continuous stress." And if you were the lead character on a weekly sci-fi adventure show, you'd have room to talk. I like this little moment not only because I am unrepentantly emo, but also because it recycles the fact of the show back on itself: You think the rate at which things happen to these people is unrealistic? Try living it. It'll fuck you up!
Sikozu sits, tapping her boot on a cushion, as Chiana walks by and notices her not looking for Aeryn. They discuss this at length, Chiana being the only person in the universe less willing to take no for an answer than John himself. Sikozu admits to keeping John in the dark about how she's given up, because he needs to believe, and rolls her eyes at Chiana: "They're not lying," she sighs, about never having heard of Katratzi. "How can you tell if they're not lying? You can't tell when I'm lying!" says Chiana, getting right up in her grill. "Yes we can," says Sikozu, coming a little too close to home for comfort: "We all can." And she twists the knife, leaning close: "You open your mouth, and words come out of it." Chiana grabs hell out of Sikozu and throws her at the console again: "Don't you lie to Crichton." Sikozu laughs at her, but stands more calmly. Chiana orders her to keep checking; finally Sikozu's had enough. "All right, I'm done. You try!" She leaves, tired and too disheartened to hear that silence again. Alone, Chiana stares at the console.
Bobby approaches Noranti in the kitchen, where she's kicking a totally cute pulled-back hairstyle, with braids hanging down around her face and drop earrings. She looks -- I know! -- very pretty. She's making rat poison. "Gonna kill a few?" asks Bobby knowingly, and he angles in on the glass dishes into which she's grinding her stuff. "On the contrary," Noranti jokes. "The rats asked me to make this so that they can kill some humans." This is like the coolest she ever is, on this show. She's maybe the best part of the whole episode. "Every planet has its indigenous potions," she says in a lofty voice, "just waiting to be blended and discovered! I'm playing!" He asks -- as John paces in Moya, watching -- what Noranti thought about South America. She turns to face him. "Very verdant -- uh, 'green.' No green people, though: now, that's a shame." Bobby mentions a rumor that her third eye scared some people, she shrugs but you can tell she's a little put off. I love how vain she is. "Something about witchcraft. They were very fearful. ...Rygel's going down to sort it all out." Dr. Garrett Hamilton, the hopeful anthropologist, appears. "I was in South America when she came through: many of the 'miracles' she's credited with have yet to unravel under scrutiny." He tries so hard. An anonymous commentator, voice distorted, is identified as "High Level Administrative Source, Intelligence Community": "We're fairly certain we know how she...cured the...blind boy in Brazil." As Noranti talks animatedly, we return to Hamilton: "Why is it so hard for us to believe that someone from another planet can do things that we find extraordinary? Isn't she, herself, extraordinary? Just by being here?" I'll say.
Noranti speaks to the camera: "I like that you're always striving to reach higher. Hoping for a better tomorrow. It's the quality that first attracted me to your uncle." That humans dream? "Yes! You're so ignorant, but you never give up. Even in the face of insurmountable odds." Fletcher (the sociologist who's afraid we're reaching some kind of social critical mass with the introduction to aliens) smiles hugely. "Listen to what she's saying about us! Humans never give up. Now, for that to become impressed upon an alien mind -- this simple fact that we would tend to take for granted ourselves -- becomes validation that we eventually will fit in! Never give up!" There's an awful part of me that thinks he's airing his own shit at this point, every time I see the episode, but you shouldn't let that make you think I have anything against sociologists. They all talk like that. Before he can pull out his copy of Slim's Table and bore us all into the fearsomest Death By Ethnography, we turn back to the video. Noranti offers to mix something up to get Bobby's voice to drop; he declines the offer, but she's clearly feeling affectionate: she leans crazy and manic into the camera, woggling her face all over like the best grandma on the best day ever: "Watch out for the rats! They go for the young ones first!" This episode does more for the Association For Loving The Hell Out Of Noranti than...any episode, ever. She's a new woman!
Olivia Crichton tells us all about it: "She's actually really spiritual. You should hear her stories about religions of all the worlds she's visited! Really an eye-opener. So much cruelty, and so much kindness." And that's Noranti: no filter to distinguish between the Zhaans and the Rygels, so somehow she gets the best out of them both. I love that lady. She sits now outside on the deck, surrounded by a plethora of religious accoutrements: books and cards and a small silver skull; a crucifix. "What constitutes a good religion?" she asks Bobby, her hands folded. "Respect for life? Do unto others." She asks: "Belief in a higher being?" He says of course, she's not so sure. Me neither. "Hmm. Hypocrite." Bobby wonders if she means him, or everybody. "Well? Your religions justify killing, and all forms of atrocious behavior." She looks at the crucifix. So much cruelty, and so much kindness. Bobby, troubled: "Yeah, that's...hard to deal with."
Sociologist Fletcher: "Miss Noranti is not wrong, that we have a history and culture of killing that we continually attempt to wallpaper with justifications and platitudes. I see nothing wrong with what she's saying." This last as though his life depended on it. I think I've made my own position clear. "See," she says. "Killing is often a part of life. What's hypocritical is to condemn, and then make allowances when the situation suits." So, Bobby struggles: "It's okay to kill?" Absolutely, she smiles. "Sometimes you must." But that's not what she's saying: she is saying that the second you divide yourself into the half that is loved and the half that is condemned, you've cut yourself off from God. You divide Canaan and that which is indivisible, and the thing you know, your eyes go red and you start spiking Rygel and tiny cute little birds. It pulls in upon itself, like a black hole, and you create evil in the world. You learn to fear that which is part of you, and if you're divided in your own house how the hell can you relate to the world outside? Bobby asks if she's in a cult -- "...like a witch or something?" -- and about half the viewing audience rolls their eyes with a grunt of frustration, but Noranti makes everything better: she holds up the skull beside her face and gives the best possible answer with the best possible wacky face. "Not at the moment!"
Reverend Nathan Buckley, National Religious Leader and Gross Stereotype of the Moral Majority, which is neither, and which takes the name of so many good Americans in vain for its own purposes. "If her religion justifies killing, then she's not someone I want telling us what to believe." Um? Ivan Chanderpaul, Federation of American Buddhists: "There is never an occasion when murder is allowable. Life is the font of all that we hold with respect." Wow, not getting it. Usually the Buddhists are a bit quicker on the uptake with this stuff. General Harwell Zawicki, United Nations Space Command: "After she's had to kill somebody, then I'll accept her pronouncements." Well, at least the Buddhists are ahead of you, sir. What in the hell does that have to do with anything? At all? And she has, and she will, and it will be holy, which is more than I can say for you. Stop talking about yourself if you're going to be on TV. Noranti fiddles with a deck of cards on the table in front of her as Bobby asks if religions hate each other where she comes from. "Oh, good heavens no! Religions are grand, lofty ideals. Religious followers, now...that's a different story." Wars? "Unspeakable." So we're not so different? "That's nothing to be proud of." Yes. I wish Zhaan had been able to meet her. She would have loved her so much; they could have saved each other. Makes me sad.
Dr. Jayne O'Connor, Criminal Psychologist, Duke University: "This is a dangerous woman. She effortlessly twists her simple logic into something that is almost believable, until you look deeper...and it unravels. Not the kind of personality you would want running around unchecked." It unravels. You're a criminal psychologist: it's your life's work to unravel. Meanwhile, the rest of us will go on being happy.
Back to Monroe: "Sometimes it's hard to remember that just a few short months ago..." John fast-forwards; stops as Aeryn begins to speak. "Well, what you have to understand is, while cultures and civilizations may vary wildly from socially primitive to hyper-mechanized, there is still a uniformity in the way that people conduct their lives." We're back in the interview set. "You're saying wherever you go in the Universe, we're all the same?" Essentially, yes. In that way, Earth is no different from other planets. "Other species, from different worlds...do they have relationships? Marriage? Children?" Aeryn...answers not actually the question he asked, but the one on her mind. She's got so many tells, even Monroe knows when to push and prod and bite. "Most definitely," she says. "...There are limits. The genetic patterns would have to support such a union." Wow, I think he was asking if Sebaceans got married, not if you and Crichton were S-I-T-T-I-N-G, but since the whole point of these two episodes is the fact that John still doesn't know if your child is his, thanks for getting us there that much quicker, babe. No more going on TV until we sit down and have a serious talk, because you just handed him not only his sound bite, but the rest of the series that's left: "And could a Sebacean, such as yourself, procreate with a human male?" Her mouth drops open as she traces back and realizes she just did that to herself. And then just stops thinking altogether. John rewinds. "And could a Sebacean, such as yourself, procreate with a human male?" Her mouth drops open as she traces back and realizes she just did that to herself. And then just stops thinking altogether. "...Officer Sun?" She does not speak. If she could smile, she would, and we'd see her again the last way we saw her: unspeaking, unable to talk about the baby. Unable to bring up any emotion at all. Shocked into nothingness. John stares intently at Aeryn on the screen.
Pictures, images, memories, bioloids: everything but the real deal. Which -- if the baby's not his -- is as close to the truth as we'll get. I think this is where God steps in, honestly. Aeryn on the screen turns to John, her voice like an echo: "I believe Katratzi to be some sort of base. Highly guarded." John blinks, not the least because VCRs are usually the province not of God but of his opposite number, and rewinds the tape again. "...Officer Sun?" She does not speak. If she could smile, she would, and we'd see her again the last way we saw her: unspeaking, unable to talk about the baby. Unable to bring up any emotion at all. Shocked into nothingness. John stares intently at Aeryn on the screen. Aeryn: "Uh...uh...uh..." She tilts her head, blinks; however long this is taking you know for her it's twice, five times as long. "Yes," she smiles. "I was just thinking. Well...there's no way to be sure at this point. However, our physiologies do appear to be very similar." Remarkably so, he notes, and she nods. Several times. Out of her depth in every way.
John continues to stare as R. Wilson Monroe returns to the Alien Visitation backdrop: "Was Officer Sun's hesitation at my question an honest moment of introspection? Or was it something more? These are now the issues we grapple with." (P.S. This is not Monroe talking either. Not really, and maybe not actually.) "How much to trust? How open do we allow ourselves to become? Do we view an alien commingling of our gene pool as a favorable step towards integration into a larger community, or as a threat?" And what if it's a lie?
Aeryn in the kitchen, joined by Bobby. Buddhist guy: "Well, one can only hope that a union between those of Earth and elsewhere is possible -- such marriages will foster bonds of family, and generate trust between disparate peoples." Mean old Edith Anderson: "If you thought children of race-mixed parents took abuse at the hands of other children, wait until one is born with tentacles!" Gross. Your speech betrays you. AGAIN. Stop fucking talking until you can get your mind around what an asshole you're making yourself out to be. Olivia Crichton laughs, onscreen: "Seriously now, what is the big deal? Firstly, I do not believe Aeryn's pregnant with John's baby and, secondly, if she was?" Olivia shrugs, full of love for them both.
On video: John at a workbench on Moya; Bobby's spying between struts in the bay, whispering quietly to himself: "Am I going to get in trouble for taping this..." John and his sister, having a talk. It begins with this: "Not of the physical kind, no." Olivia joins him, staring him down. "You gonna be okay?" Fine, he admits, but never the same. "Aeryn," she says suddenly, into the air, and he begs her to stop. She reminds her whining, begging little brother of his long-ago attempts to hide his crush on Jill Steiner; finally John gives: "What's my tell?" His lips; when he sees Aeryn, "they soften just a bit." I never thought of it that way, but she's right. Aeryn, he explains, has "a word for us: Yesterday." She snorts, and he can't look up or at anybody, barely raises his voice above a murmur: "She have a tell?" She does: "Her eyes. She's waiting for you." She's waiting for you.
As John begs Olivia to change the subject -- and we wonder when this happened, if it was before or after Christmas Eve, and how retarded that means John actually is -- we cut to John on Moya. Watching quietly. All that drama, so recently solved, so lovingly. All that Christmas pain wiped away; Christmas in fact postponed and played again, the last day he saw her alive. The last time they were together, they were writing a better Christmas over the one they so effectively destroyed in that house, and this scene he's watching contains within it the seeds of his perfect happiness and he didn't even know it. How rogue would you go, if that were taken from you? Chiana joins him, where he leans on his chamber door, and silently puts her hand in his. He squeezes it gratefully, and weakly, and holds onto it for everything he's worth. Chiana's hand, saying he is not alone.
Sociology Hamilton, back on his personal shit: "I, for one, like the idea that we're not alone. So why not go all the way? Become part of the cultural fabric of the new world in which we'll live? If they're in love, they're in love." He spreads his arms out and shrugs; John caresses Chiana's hand as they watch the screen together.
There are ways in which Karen Shaw has accomplished what Namtar did for Pilot and Aeryn, I think. Or maybe it was always there and I'm just obsessed with Karen Shaw: if the latter, I think, it's just heartbreaking now because Chiana's spent the entire season refusing to be touched by anybody, including John. Shrinking back, never front and center in her fear, but it accumulates and you see a space around her, negative space around her like a force field. And to see her so sweetly touching him again, touching Rygel, grinning and laughing and teasing D'Argo; to see her with the old fight back, telling Sikozu to fuck off. Even though Sikozu's doing the best she can, well: you have to cheer a little, right? Thank God for Chiana. "You know this word Katratzi," he says, and she shakes her head. "Wasn't a question. You heard it with me." Only from Sikozu; he says again, emphatically, that it was with him. She won't lie to him. Not ever. "No."
Christmas; Olivia's telling Aeryn she didn't need to buy her a present. "Under the tree?" Aeryn asks, smelling her way in to family tradition, and Olivia smiles at her: "Yeah, absolutely." As Aeryn crosses in front of the camera she tells Bobby hello, dropping some gifts; he asks if there's one for him and Olivia chides him. "No, actually...um, yours is so big that it wouldn't fit under the tree," Aeryn says sweetly. She was already in, and still thought she had to push. It makes both episodes sadder, to see how welcomed she really was, and never entirely bought it: "Cool," grins Bobby behind the camera. "'Cause I got you one, too."
Chiana asks when John will give up. What the moment will be. "I don't." But he's got to give up sometime, she says, determined to be honest with him. "No. I don't."
Bobby asks Olivia to shoot his picture with Aeryn; she goofs off into the camera very believably -- like with John in her last episode, she gives good goofy -- and says she was thinking of shooting him. Bobby awkwardly puts an arm across Aeryn's back and admits they've made him the coolest kid in school; Aeryn assures him he was pretty cool before.
Chiana asks John where they'll find her, his mouth goes hard. "We find her." Chiana suggests that, all things being ruined, he could still return to Earth. "Not without Aeryn," he promises. It's not anger, it's just the hollow determination of a man with one star in the whole sky. It's not anger; it's love.
"When you're born into military service the way I was," Aeryn explains to Bobby. "It's deemed best to not have any ties to anyone but your unit." He points the camera at her face. "No brothers or sisters? Aunts or uncles?" He sits down to her before the camera. "Didn't you miss that?" Merry Christmas: "Only once I was exposed to it." Chiana complains to John: "They don't like her there. They don't like any of us." John just looks at her, and tells her she watches too much TV. It's getting harder; education is at less of a premium as the footage continues. Do you let your TV get you down, or do you learn from it? Chiana whispers, "Yep." As Monroe signs off for another commercial break, John almost spits. "Bet this sumbitch wins an Emmy." Okay, now I'm sure there's a joke there, but it's probably in the commentaries and I'm not watching those for this show. I think we can probably guess.
"Amidst all the readily identifiable dissimilarities between our human race and the alien visitors we've been learning about, occasionally on these startling videotapes we come upon a moment that seemingly unites us in spirit across endless chasms of space." That was more tortured than any sentence I have ever written. Good one, Monroe. We cut now to Chiana sitting in the bushes, her eyes gone that black that tell you her heart is breaking. She's holding something small and broken in her hands, and whispering to it: "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay." Bobby comes around on her, in the bushes. "Is that a dead rat?" I almost started crying right then. What did Einstein say about ripples? What did that guy say about Noranti's mere presence warping the world? Simply by existing, the Moyans have brought change and destruction to the world. Simply by standing in that kitchen and doing her work, she's broken Chiana's heart. The whole episode basically just says that over and over; trust me to only feel it once Chiana got involved. "He was my friend. We were just playin'... He just stopped outside the kitchen to eat something and just..." She pets the body, covers it with her sweater and her glove. Hides it from the world. She leans over, and kisses it on the head, and hugs it to her chest. "It's okay." Smallest and most precious, and the fact that it's a rat and not a bunny, well, that's sad in a Chiana kind of way. Olivia: "The more time you spend with Chiana -- and the others -- the more you realize, with incredible joy and relief, that we're not that dissimilar."
Bobby watches D'Argo on the deck at Chez Alien, looking out over the water: "What are you doing?" D'Argo breathes. "I am absorbing beauty." Bobby asks if that means he likes Earth, and D'Argo smiles to himself. "I didn't think I did at first, but I'm...beginning to realize it's one of the better places I've visited. It reminds me of my own planet, about ten thousand cycles ago. It was meant to be undisciplined and adventurous." Just like John. Fletcher is agog: "Imagine! Think of how we view ourselves: a sophisticated culture, growing, evolving...then look at how he views us: 'undisciplined and adventurous.' As time goes on, I predict we'll be forced to realign every concept by which we judge ourselves." You could draw a line in the pundits and some of them would see God in every detail and some would see fear everywhere. What's most scary, and most true, is how most of them fall somewhere in the middle. "They say you're a great warrior," Bobby prods. "That's an accident of birth. There are better things to do with your life." Bobby asks if he's ever killed anyone with his tongue, and D'Argo gets a little intense, coming closer and closer, trying to make the point and ending up being more menacing than he might think. "Bobby, my tongue contains adaptive venom. The victim takes in only enough to lose consciousness. No one dies." Bobby asks to see. D'Argo says no chance. Dr. Adrian Walker, Xenobiologist: "Look, you see only differences: tentacles, a tongue with venom. Everything about him screams ALIEN. Now, close your eyes. Listen." I didn't know xenobiology included the hurling of anvils like cabers, but it's a developing science after all. Bobby tells D'Argo he was "good on Letterman," and D'Argo fidgets adorably. "Yeah, thanks. Um, yeah...I thought everyone was laughing with me, so..." One of my favorite short stories of all time: "My Appearance," by David Foster Wallace. Find it, read it. (The other one is "Good Old Neon," ibid and ditto.) Things begin to spiral south.
"For every instant when we may be lulled into accepting these alien visitors as perhaps nothing more than peculiar-looking versions of people we know here on Earth, there comes another moment on these startling videotapes that seemingly shatters any illusion of potential coexistence."
Bobby hounds D'Argo down the corridors of Moya, begging for something as he says again no. Why not? "For the same reasons that I've been saying to you ad nauseam. Why is it so important?" Bobby begs him to admit that it's "cool," which I completely agree is reason enough. D'Argo nods sheepishly: "It's cool." He asks Bobby to promise not to tell anybody, and to turn the camera off. Bobby, behind the camera, puts the camera on Moya's floor and lies that he's turned it off. "You ready?" He hisses, and lashes out with his tongue. Bobby grunts and drops to the floor, knocking the camera so that it only shows D'Argo's boots. Which tap their toes a couple of times, as D'Argo looks down, and then run off hysterically to get Noranti on the case. "I would have to say that we need to prevent these sorts of encounters from happening outside a research facility," says one of the kinder pundits; Buddhist guy points out that it was a learning experience: "The boy did not die. He is wiser." Anderson returns again to the worry about the aliens having "the run of our planet," without getting the full data on their psychology. Which was, of course, self-explanatory even in that brief clip, which is the point.
I hate this part. Chiana stands before a mirror in a bath towel, a lipstick in hand and blobs of color and blush all over herself. She looks kind of amazing. "What is this for?" Bobby tells her lipstick is for lips. "...I ask because my grandfather says you're a great bellwether on who we are as a species." She takes a huge bite of the lipstick and smiles at him around it: "Bellwether. Do males put these on their faces?" Bobby says that in his particular family, no, but for a second cousin no one talks about. Cruelty and kindness and all the monsters outside the house you decided to build. Chiana calls it a waste, and rubs the lipstick across the top of her head. "Make-up?" She points to the makeup all around the sink: "Why are there so many colors?" She holds up a compact of eye shadows; Buddhist guy calls it a condemnation of materialism. "One must look past the physical and see the spiritual side." He calls her "highly evolved," which is still not the point. Dr. Edmund "Actually Brian Henson" Johnston, Professor of Cognitive Behaviorism, Stanford University: "Remembering for a moment her otherworldly origins, Chiana's perspective is consistent, well-thought-out and, in my view, correct." She continues to lecture Bobby, about to spin Cognitive Behaviorism spinning on its ass. "I've seen water rooms like this that have two toilets, two showers, a sink and a tub...and a bubbling tub, bubbling." She laughs, dancing around, wild, explaining this to Bobby. On Moya, Chiana and Rygel sit watching the video together.
"How many places do you need water to come from? You can wash up in the toilet!" Bobby scoffs, but she kneels down at the toilet and scrubs her face with its water. "See? It's clean." Bobby, behind the camera, shudders. As he zooms in, she takes offense, not understanding but clearly being laughed at. Children destroy innocence better than any grownup. As the pundits hold forth, she angrily pushes Bobby out of the bathroom and shuts the door on him. There's no way she could have known; no way she could know that this show got cancelled because of its preoccupation with the silly fears and biology paranoia that inhabit our darker places. There's nothing worse she could have done than put her face in the toilet; and nothing more innocent or harmless.
Even the experts, even the ones formerly on her side and on the side of the aliens, recoil. "What we're seeing is a very young, disturbed alien girl." "Clearly a passionate, though troubled young lady." Bishop Mervyn Vosko: "This young woman should not be allowed near any impressionable child. She is clearly dangerous, troubled and a bad influence." Dr. Anderson: "I defy anyone..." but Chiana presses a button back on Moya, turning the TV off.
Rygel sighs, and says pitiably: "I'm sick of this popcorn." And I don't mean he's asking for pity. I mean he should be pitied. "I just feel sorry for Crichton," says Chiana, lying and being so much stronger as John goes down, down, down. Less innocent than she was just a few minutes ago, and so much stronger than we've seen her. "Noranti gave me this stuff that'll help 'im sleep. You think I should go find him?" Rygel sighs, older and far away. "No. Give it to me." She blows the dust into his face and he breathes in deep, tired and rejecting food so that he can sleep -- pretend this isn't happening. "Feel sorry for Aeryn," he says. That's who he's thinking of; that's why he's so tired all of a sudden. "He'll get over it," Rygel mumbles. Chiana closes her eyes and massages Rygel's neck. "I don't think he will, Ryg. You know, no matter how long it takes, I don't think he'll lose hope." The word for what gets you every time. How far would you go if you could actually see the finish line? How deep could you fall if you knew the rock bottom was coming up to catch you? What deals would you make?
John reflects, hearing Aeryn's voice again. "I believe Katratzi to be some sort of base." He sees her face, a flash on the screen. "Highly guarded." Her face, again and again: "They wouldn't have taken Grayza anywhere less secure..."
Rygel sits on a couch at Chez Alien, surrounded by ridiculous amounts of junk food. "Who's winning?" Bobby asks. "Me," says Rygel. This close to the end of the series, I can just go ahead and say he's my hero forever. "I mean the game," Bobby laughs. "Who cares?" Rygel just put himself on a Noranti level of love for the episode. Bobby wows at Rygel's crazy amount of sugary crap, and Rygel tells him to go get his own. "What do you like best on Earth?" Sugar, Rygel says. Anything with sugar: "[At home] it's used as a poison. Here, you can get it everywhere!" He laughs crazily and tells Rygel he also loves "grease" and "fat"; Bobby zooms in on a plate of burgers. Dr. Fletcher laughs and calls this a level of understanding about our culture that we're unwilling to admit. "As an outsider, his views are a prismatic tool for us to perhaps examine ourselves." Which nobody ever, ever does, so keep dreaming. "So, all in all, you could live here," Bobby prods. Rygel nods: "As long as I get to keep my slaves." Bobby clarifies that they're paid servants, hired by the government to make the aliens feel at home, and Rygel's like, "You're kidding! They come running when I call. If you want me to feel at home, bring me some real slaves." Bobby asks if they're anything else he's into, besides eating food: "Gamble: You can do it over the phone. You can call females, too. 1-900-SLUT-GIRL." Alana Lichtenstein, Outside Counsel, Immigration and Naturalization Service: "I was privileged to have interviewed the Dominar during his visit. Despite what I'm sure many viewers are thinking, this is the ruler of over 600 billion subjects. He must be doing something right." Like wanking on the phone, and being a deposed monarch of nothing. I love Alana Lichtenstein.
"A little known fact about this, the biggest story of the new millennium. There is at least one person who makes a credible claim that our alien visitors have been here before. In 1985, to be exact..." That trooper from "Kansas" appears: "Welcome Robert Shelmacher, former Sheriff of Orlando." He's older but recognizable and a HITG, in orange pants and a tan sport coat, with something weird on the floor beside him. "Still Sheriff. Always Sheriff. No alien's gonna run me off my job!" This part's awkward and weird on many levels, as he explains his adventures back in 1985: "Ears, tentacles, Cher." And he holds up his gourd, which has straw sticking out of it like earbrows: "Their leader." Monroe starts to notice that Shelmacher is fucking fucked up, but continues. "In the Sheriff's defense, way back in 1985 he filed a report with the FBI, giving what we now realize are fairly accurate descriptions of General D'Argo, Noranti, Officer Sun and Dominar Rygel." The files remain sealed, and no one in the government will talk about it. "Can you tell us what you remember of that time, Sheriff?" Shelmacher goes nuts at this point about how they kidnapped Johnny and sabotaged the Challenger to ground us and they put microchips in our heads but he's got a hat with tinfoil inside, and they are planning to make us fat so that we can be defeated through fatty foods and he's been in an institution for the last eighteen years, but at least he's still: "Lean! Undefeatable! Vegetables! Fruit! No saturated fat!" Which is a lot of words to say this: he's the rat, and worth your pity too.
The way that John causes ripples in the world everywhere he goes, and we have to watch them and take responsibility for them, fast-forwarding to see that the best we could wasn't quite good enough and there was collateral damage. That's kind of like real life, if you're brave enough to admit it. Chiana dances on the deck at Chez Alien; asks Bobby to dance and he begs off. She laughs and does a silly dance for him: "I'm drivin', I'm drivin'...and reverse! Reverse!" She laughs and heaves. Still dancing, curious. Innocent: "Bobby, what do you think of sex?" He's bewildered. She tosses her hair: "Sex." He asks why she's asking, and she says she's curious. He's thirteen, he hasn't had sex. "Thirteen? What are you waiting for?" He protests that it's against the law, and she's shocked. "To have sex?" At thirteen? Yes. "Well, that's...frelled. Who cares when you have it?" Starting with his mom? She continues to dance, and a lightbulb goes off: "Okay, so why are all the little girls wearing all those clothes?" Like she's got him in a conundrum. She does. "Because they see it on the TV and in the magazines." But somebody, Chiana stresses, sold them the clothes, "so somebody wants them to have sex." It was never Bobby's innocence she was after, at all. Ever. Again. She's not talking about sex. It's heartbreaking. She's so subtle, dancing around this shit over and over. I love her so much. I don't want to talk about it except to say that the surface of what she's saying is also true, and also terrible. And not in a "what about the children" way, I mean in a real honest-to-God way that there are men who are happier with things the way they are. Buddhist guy cheers for her: "There is an innocence about her that is wonderfully contagious!" Bishop Vosko joins the list of assholes across the universe that lines up to call her a whore. Olivia Crichton scoffs at all comers: "Oh please. Don't make more out of that than is there. She was not coming on to Bobby." Even the xeno guy's like, don't be gross: "I'm not a psychologist, but that's rather innocent, hmm? ...You get more juice from Dawson's Creek." On which subject I have been warned to shut the eff up, so I shall. ["Not much else to say, is there?" -- Sars] The video goes dark.
Bobby stands alone in Moya, talking to the air: "Okay, it's working. What did you want to show me?" Sikozu's voice, kind and friendly -- for her, which it turns out is a lot -- and it occurs to me that this episode is a love letter to the supporting cast. Everybody comes off brilliant in this, I suspect because the episode is designed to make you recoil out of disgust and right back into love. "Curiosity causes you to look in unexpected places...and find unexpected rewards." Her hand extends down, gorgeously, into the shot from above, tossing him a comms badge. "Have a go." Bobby smiles and comms to "Uncle John," to "Commander John Crichton," and John comms back with a question: "What the hell are you doing with the comms?" It's such a great little moment, all of it. Grace and humor in the funniest places. I might like this part almost as much as I hate watching the Chiana bit before. "Uh, Sikozu let me try it?" Sikozu walks down the bulkhead, light as air, and hops to her feet. "Where are you?" John: "Australia. I'm workin', Bobby." The video replays: Sikozu, light as air. The xenobiologist has an orgasm, but you can't begrudge him. Hamilton wows: "I met this young female and had no idea!" Cut to Sikozu standing in the kitchen with a dog, as Dr. Anderson tells a truth of sorts, even in her ugly hate: "In my opinion, there is nothing about the alien Sikozu that is not infused with anger and disdain. E.T., she is not." But did you see the part with Bobby? So fun!
Sikozu walks down a corridor on Moya, speaking from the places Dr. Anderson can't see. Tired still: "Pilot? Do you see any value in us continuing?" Pilot admits that, "despite his strong feelings for Officer Sun," he doesn't. Dude, when Pilot gives up? Fuck! Sikozu sets her shoulders back and offers to tell John; of course, she says this just down the hall from his room. "Tell me what?" She stands beyond the door, just like everyone else. He's alone with it and has been all throughout. "We cannot find Aeryn. We cannot locate this Katratzi. No one has even heard the name." He insists, again, that she heard it. "Someone said it on this ship." My friend Will, who hasn't seen most of the series, took this moment to ask, "Is this whole show about this dude going nuts? That's so sad." I didn't answer him except to say, "Fucking wait for the one, smarty."
Sikozu promises him, again, that she hasn't heard the word on Moya: "No, I heard it on the planet where we left Aeryn." He opens the door, finally, but grabs her arm and drags her inside the room, shoving her roughly. "What are you not telling me?" She does not plead; Sikozu never pleads: "I'm telling you everything," she says, cold as ice. "You're lying! You're not telling me! You know the name Katratzi!" She heads for the door and he shoves her again. It's ugly. "You have been nothing but lying from the moment you got on board this ship..." She finally loses her composure: hours spent looking, asking, speaking that hated tongue. For this? "I do not know!" John pulls his gun on her. "I will not let Aeryn die! Katratzi!" She shakes her head, sickened by him, by seeing him like this in his extremity: "It is not by my providence if she lives or dies. It is not my fault if she lives or dies. And it is not my will if she lives or dies!" Katratzi, he screams. Katratzi, Katratzi, Katratzi, he screams. "Crichton, listen to yourself. Everything lives, and everything dies! Whether you wish it to or not! And you have to deal with it!" It's not him she's convincing. Everything changes.
Sikozu is humming, on the screen. She has a beautiful voice. There's so much about her we'll never get to see. John suddenly turns, on Moya, to stare at Sikozu on the screen. (Images, bioloids -- John has no reason to trust her any more than he does Aeryn; just like with Aeryn in this episode, it's the screen that tells the truth.) Still humming sweetly, Sikozu holds up a silver ashtray, turning it this way and that, her face half cut off from the screen. John looks from Sikozu, still breathing hard and upset, back to her image on the screen: humming, face half-hidden by the steel silver of an ashtray become a mask. The sweet sound and his realization. He lowers his pistol and turns back toward the TV. How many times have we seen him like this? Retreating into his mind and his ugliness and depression, striking out at everything and then bam -- everything goes away, and it's just him. The least awesome John Crichton on the show. He sits down and picks up the remote control; a tear runs down his cheek. He rewinds, fast-forwards, as Sikozu hums again and again, and gazes into the dog's eyes, and forward to the hum again, turning the ashtray over in her hands. Recognizing and admiring its beauty, and her face half cut off from the screen. The tape stops and we flash to "Unrealized Reality," as John abuses the Stark that Sikozu could be.
"Pull yourself together," he says, shaking her; she begs him to let her go. Now, he stares at the still image; Sikozu on Earth, half hidden in silver. Then, she screams at him: "You! You shoot me!" The Noranti that Rygel could be gets a reprieve as he turns his gun on Stark. "Shoot! Now!" He asks her again if she'll come back. She will. Stark always does. She looks up into light. "Katratzi."
John turns to Sikozu, who's too stunned by John's weirdness. She mouths, "What?" He turns back to the screen. Aeryn speaks, out of time, out of nothingness: "I believe Katratzi to be some sort of base, highly guarded. They wouldn't have taken Grayza anywhere less secure." Stark screams the name. John stares at the TV, tears running down his face. The hope he's held onto was a dream, a fantasy, a reality unrealized. The hope dies.
The hope surges into life. Tears running down his face as he realizes what he must do, he apologizes to Sikozu, who blinks. "Sumbitch deserves an Emmy," he says, and turns off the TV. His face goes cold, the edge of a knife. He stands, sniffling, and looks at Sikozu. But there's nothing to say.
John walks into Pilot's den: "Do you still know the location of that wormhole to Earth?" He does, he admits hesitantly. "Could you set a course, please?" This with the hysteria, that tired edge of a person out of his depth. Pilot stalls: "I'll...have to ask the Captain." D'Argo enters, still so sympathetic; still so frightened for his friend. "D'Argo? Aeryn." D'Argo stares at him: "Wormholes? Earth? What?" John can't explain; they've already had a conversation twice the size you'd think, from the words on the page. "Look, it's complicated." D'Argo regards him, and whispers. "I understand that." He raises his voice again and addresses Pilot, who knows that tone in D'Argo's voice all too well. "I need not remind you that Moya is now phobic regarding wormholes..." John promises that they won't have to go all the way, still hysterical and begging. "Just get me close enough so that I can make it in my module!" D'Argo's confused: "You're not going back to Earth!" No, he says, he's not. "It's complicated." He looks at D'Argo, pleading.
"We need to maintain clarity of thought, healthy skepticism, and aggressive inquisitiveness. To that end, we at this network call upon the government to release all files pertaining to Officer Schelmacher's allegations of past visitation, and any other related matter. When the aliens return -- and they will -- we also urge an aggressive quarantine until the true nature of their presence is ascertained. Recall that the same extraterrestrials we behold with wonder, as they learn our language and dance to our music, also bear weapons, as well as potential illness, which could destroy us. Alien visitation is a reality. They've been here once, and we seem to have dodged the bullet. The truth is, can we be as certain the time?"
He's not talking about aliens and he never was. It's still about Aeryn, it's always about Aeryn. It's about Aeryn and John. How far can you trust her? If she's not who she seems to be, what's the use in going after her? Who's the daddy? Who's John in love with? Once you find love, what keeps your faith in it? You can't touch it, feel it, smell it. All you have is blind faith that she won't change shape again. The first and last question: where does this wormhole lead? This season is hard to understand; it's hard admitting these ambiguities when the show itself, not to mention all other television shows in the history of television, have held one belief sacrosanct: that love is forever, and unquestionable. Once you fall in love, that's it, that's your happy ending. John and Aeryn, through death and fear and pain and rage, have finally found each other. Even sexier, because they've got to be in secret, they've got to hide from Scorpius, and that keeps it fresh, but in the end, they win. The end. No body doubles, no bioloids, no lying images, no tabloid lies. Just John and Aeryn, together forever and ever, amen. Like marrying your high school sweetheart: safe and self-satisfied, forever and ever, amen.
How likely is that? If Season One was about finding her, and allowing her to find him, across all the galaxies. And if Season Two was about the darkness in him, staving her off, going crazy, eating itself. And if Season Three was about her discovery -- this just in! -- that happy endings don't exist; that endings don't exist. Then Season Four is about the question, old as time, the question the heart that loves has to answer every day, on into history: How can you be sure? What if she's a robot? What if she's an assassin, Harvey's Lovely Daughter, the laughing Pwintheth, the scowling doctor dominatrix? What if she hates you? What if she never loved you? What if she's a spy? What if she's a whore? What if she's been watching you fall in love, and fight it, and cried tears because that's what was required, to bring you home again? What if she's just keeping her eye on you? What if she's a terrorist, sneaking bombs and landmines into your heart at every opportunity, and waiting for the chance to disappear forever? It's unavoidable and ugly: How can the heart that loves ever trust what it holds dearest? The only thing the show ever takes is what you love the most -- how can you be so sure that the irony isn't just around the bend? How can you have faith in love, when the entire universe has its sights set on destroying love before all else? How can you be so stupid? How can you be so brave?
"I thank you for being with us; there will be more in the days and weeks ahead. But, for now, from New York, this is R. Wilson Monroe saying good night." And the lights go out.
Scorpius lies on his back, in his bunk; the door has none of Moya's usual curves and lines, it's a lightning zigzag as sharp as knives. John stands beyond them. "You set me up." Scorpius turns his head to the door, almost lazily. "...Not that I care." He opens the door and enters, willingly. "I don't care 'bout much." He looks down at Scorpius: "War. Death. And wormholes: I don't care about the things you care about. Peacekeepers rule the Scarrans; Scarrans rule the Peacekeepers...let them rule together. Put your ass in a cage." Scorpius lies unmoving, a snake pretending it's asleep. "I care about one thing. One. God have mercy on my soul." John looks upwards, kneels beside Scorpius. Handing it over. The one thing the universe rewards is sacrifice. Yesterday's cunning plan and secret fear becomes today's proffered sacrifice. The one thing Scorpius can't know, he told us, was that Aeryn is the key. And now Aeryn is gone. Again.
"I think I'm gonna need your help, Mister Scarran half-breed, to get Aeryn back. Help me get her, and I will give you wormholes." (One scene! We got one scene of the secret make-outs! The world is cruel!) Scorpius opens his eyes by a fraction and turns his head by a fraction and he stays silent. "I have an idea of how to find the Scarran base. Aeryn for wormholes. That's the deal." You'd think just hearing him say it was bad enough; it'll get worse. We're trading science for somebody else's violence -- trading Scorpius's protection, too, for obsolescence. No matter how much Scorpius loves John, he's there to safeguard the knowledge. He's changed not at all, he's given up nothing. John is handing Scorpius his own death sentence in the same hand as he's giving the most hateful person in the universe the most powerful weapon imaginable. He's signing more death warrants than we have numbers to count. It's not just a deal with the devil, as we say. It's a deal with the devil in himself, that he made staring at the television, tears rolling down his face. It's not just that he's cutting a deal, it's that he's cutting the exact deal that Scorpius would have him cut. All those twisted Aurora plans, in Scorpius's twisted love for him, for John's strength, and for his soul. For his growth. Scorpius wins again. All of these and more are inscribed on John's face, which is indescribable. He backs away; Scorpius rises like the dead, turns his head. Looks at the door where John just was.
But John is gone.