Mark Watches ‘Farscape’: S01E16 – A Human Reaction

In the sixteenth episode of the first season of Farscape, THIS EPISODE IS UNREAL and that’s the point. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Farscape.

Wow. WOW. I normally hate this sort of story – where the events don’t matter because of some twist at the end – BUT THIS IS NOT THE CASE HERE. This is a brutal exploration of humanity and Crichton’s desire to return home, and IT’S SO ENTERTAINING. Just??? Y’all, I’ve already forgotten “Jeremiah Crichton,” and these past two episodes have made me eternally excited for what else Farscape can do.

So let’s get started with HOW DARE YOU. This episode deliberately messes with the audience in a number of ways, like:

  1. Teasing us with a wormhole, then revealing that it looks like Earth is on the other end of it.
  2. ACTUAL EARTH, AND THEN JOHN CRICHTON IS SAYING GOODBYE TO HIS CREW OF WEIRDOS AND THERE ARE TEARS AND HOW THE FUCK IS THIS HAPPENING IN THE FIRST TEN MINUTES OF THIS EPISODE.
  3. OH MY GOD, HE ACTUALLY WENT THROUGH THE WORMHOLE.
  4. OH MY GOD, IT WAS ACTUALLY EARTH.
  5. that one thing that I can’t talk about because i’m so fucking upset.
  6. I’M REALLY UPSET AND DESPITE THAT IT WASN’T REAL I’M STILL UPSET.

Let us also acknowledge how certain I was that Crichton would never see his family again, nor would he return to Earth before the end of the series. And that’s actually a believable thing! I am embarrassed by my wrongness, of course, but in hindsight, bringing Crichton home would severely disrupt the narrative. This is a show about traveling through the galaxy with a bunch of non-humans. How do you deal with a narrative like this once you change the fundamental basis of it?

And that’s a huge reason why watching “A Human Reaction” is endlessly surreal for the audience. I kept expecting a complication that would send Crichton to the wrong side of the galaxy. Then he made it to Earth, and I had to adjust my view of the episode, and it was deeply uncomfortable! How could this be happening? How could he be back on Earth before the end of the first season? And what little we learn after Crichton is detained makes things even worse. I was definitely not surprised that he was treated with such disdain and mistrust by the Australian military. Y’all, he crash landed a spaceship on the beach. He’s been gone for seven months. It makes total sense that he’d be viewed suspiciously until he could prove his identity.

AND THEN NOTHING MAKES SENSE AFTER THIS. Well, I should say that in the context of how humanity would react to aliens? I suppose this isn’t all that nonsensical. Crichton is treated poorly because of their suspicion of him, but the ways in which this was taken further than necessary reflect the way that the military views him. They won’t give him news updates; they won’t let him see his father; they treat him as if he is an alien throughout this episode. It’s all foreshadowing for the eventual twist we get: THAT D’ARGO, AERYN, AND RYGEL FOLLOWED CRICHTON THROUGH THE WORMHOLE. If the humans treat Crichton as dismissively as they do, how the hell are they going to treat actual aliens?

I said this multiple times in the video for this episode, but the single best part of “A Human Reaction” was the decision of the show to include the native language of the three aliens. Aside from being the first chance for us to hear what these people really sound like, it’s a deliberate way to separate the aliens from the humans. The languages they speak have barely a resemblance to human dialects, or at least any that the people in the base are familiar with. But it also acts to separate Crichton as well. So much of the mistrust that the humans feel for him is exacerbated by Crichton’s demonstrable alliances with these creatures. He can understand what they’re saying, and he’s openly supportive of them. This is seen as a threatening thing, isn’t it?

I don’t know if this is why Wilson does what he does, because all by itself, Wilson’s decisions are emblematic of some part of human behavior. Wilson saw something he didn’t understand, so he had it taken apart. That thing was Rygel, and I don’t care that it wasn’t “real.” It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen on this show, and I CANNOT UNSEE IT. To have Rygel torn open like that just felt fundamentally wrong, and perhaps it was also because that was like the goriest puppet/creature I’d seen since a Cronenberg film. But Rygel’s “death” was intentional on two levels. Before the big twist at the end, the scene provides us with a clear point of no return. Rygel is dead, the humans will most likely dissect another alien soon, and the group is not safe on Earth. But for the true orchestrators of this alternate world, it’s a moment for them to gauge what a human reaction to alien life might actually be.

Chaos. Destruction. Disregard. And violence. It was undeniable to me that this had become a disaster, and, again, I couldn’t ignore that this was ALREADY HAPPENING ON THE SHOW. How??? There’s been a wormhole open over the Earth for seven months and Crichton is home and everything sucks and HOW IS ALL OF THIS HAPPENING??? Then you have to add to this Crichton and Aeryn’s escape, which dramatically pushes forward their romantic relationship from the previous episode, and THEY’VE HAD SEX NOW. Truthfully, “A Human Reaction” is just plain overwhelming, since it’s designed to stretch these characters and the story to a breaking point. But I never once caught on to how intentional this all was, which is why I was so shocked by Crichton’s eventual realization that something was deeply wrong with his experience. It made complete sense to me that the military would block Crichton from learning anything that had happened in the seven months he was gone. Plus, with Crichton’s father working as an ally, I thought that this episode would head in a very specific direction. Crichton and Aeryn would have to stage a rescue of D’Argo, and then the three of them would have to escape back out the wormhole and back to Moya. I accepted that Rygel was dead (JUST KIDDING, I DIDN’T, OH MY GOD I’M STILL MESSED UP ABOUT THAT) and that the team would have to move on without him.

I think that part of the reason I enjoyed this ending so much was that Crichton’s dawning was handle so beautifully. It’s somehow even more surreal than what comes before it, especially since I was struggling to understand it all. My initial thought was that the military was altering Crichton’s surroundings to spy on him, but then Crichton vocalized an impossible thought: everything and everyone in this reality was from his memories prior to the wormhole. It’s not until he purposely explores a room he never remembers going into that the perpetrators reveal themselves. I didn’t find this reveal to be cheap or gimmicky, especially since D’Argo, Rygel, and Aeryn really were there the whole time. They all experienced this detailed vision of sorts, and what happened was valuable and meaningful for the Ancients. And that is why this wasn’t a waste. The Ancients needed to run a scenario – one that was as real as possible – in order to determine if Earth would be a suitable place for them to transport to. Like I said earlier, what we’re shown is a brutal but (sadly) realistic depiction of how humans would probably interact with an alien force landing on our planet. And this episode was filmed and written years before 9/11! Could you imagine how much more paranoid and destruction humans would be? Could you imagine how much worse it would have been if Crichton and the others had landed in my country??? WE’RE THE WORST, LET’S JUST AGREE TO THAT.

So even if some of this wasn’t “real,” I wouldn’t say it was pointless either. Crichton’s attraction to Aeryn is completely undeniable at this point, and the entire experience wasn’t erased from his memory, either. I’ll be interested to see if it’s ever referenced again in future episodes. The show has been super great at callbacks to the past, and Farscape feels more serialized than ever.

STILL NOT OVER RYGEL. I WON’T BE FOR A WHILE, EVEN THOUGH HE’S CLEARLY STILL ALIVE.

The video for “A Human Reaction” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

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About Mark Oshiro

Perpetually unprepared since '09.
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