In the seventh episode of the third season of Farscape, the crew deals with the bizarre ramifications from the last episode while hiding in the atmosphere of a planet embroiled in a power struggle. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Farscape.Â
Trigger Warning: For body horror.
Remember when this show was barely serialized? Remember when it was just about a single human thrown into an alien universe? Remember when Crichton was just trying to get home? LOOK AT WHATÂ FARSCAPE HAS BECOME NOW. IÂ do think the framework for what’s happening here in the third season was laid long ago. It’s not like the darkness we’re seeing is entirely new, either; it’s always been there, lurking on the surface. It’s just a lot more apparent now.
Still, this show is so fucked up right now, oh my GODS.
My Two Crichtons
There are two Crichtons. They are identical. They are not clones, neither one is the original Crichton. They both are. And it’s clear from this episode that the show is absolutely sticking with both of them, and I CAN’T DEAL WITH HOW AMAZING THIS IS. What show does this kind of shit? It’s a complicated thing to introduce, and yet the writers take it in stride, utilizing two Crichtons in increasingly fascinating ways. Initially, they’re both concerned with being the “original” version, but it’s not long before we see how having two Crichtons works in the crew’s favor. That scene where the uninjured Crichton walks in to absolve Sarota was ONE OF THE BEST THINGS EVER.
What’s even more fascinating to me is that as the two Crichtons diverge in their own experiences, they’re doing so while literally diverging. One Crichton ends up on Talyn with Aeryn, Crais, Stark, and Rygel, and the other is on Moya with D’Argo, Chiana, and Jool. And I think it’s important that the show makes it obvious that these are now two different people who will have their own experiences and developments. I have no idea how long this side arc will last, but how different will the two Crichtons be in the future? Can there be much change if the two share so much in common? HOW IS THIS SHOW REAL?
Jool
Sometimes, it’s hard to track subtle character growth over a season or over a series of books because I do so in such an episodic fashion. In the last review, I spoke of my suspicion that Crichton had changed in his approach to conflicts over the course of this show, and I think you can still see some of that here. Look how impatient he is with the Kanvia’s people, especially towards the end when he finds out that the Chromextin was poisoned. Is that the same Crichton we knew at the beginning of the series? No, I think he’s a lot more brash and confrontational than he’s ever been.
But it’s a challenge to be able to pick this stuff out when I’m doing my best to also cover all the minutiae of a single episode. I bring this up because I think this also applies to how I perceive Jool. I think there’s some growth here in terms of how the crew views here, but I’m not so sure. It’s so subtle! But multiple people – Crichton, Aeryn, Crais – all depend on her for what little medical knowledge she possesses. With the loss of Zhaan, there’s no one with Jool’s knowledge around, so she’s sort of like Zhaan’s makeshift replacement. That’s not to say that anyone can replace Zhaan, of course. (NOT IN MY HEART.) But Jool does know a thing or two in the science department, and I found it refreshing that people valued that knowledge. There’s less snapping at her, less jokes made at her expense. ARE THEY FINALLY WARMING UP TO HER?
AerynÂ
HAHAHAHA WOW, WOW. I’ll repeat what I said in the video because it’s so relevant: This show revealed that Aeryn’s mother loved her and conceived her out of love, is still alive, AND IS THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR NEARLY DESTROYING TALYN. Hi, your mom is still alive, and she’s trying to kill you. What the fuck, Farscape, you didn’t even let Aeryn have the joy of her mother’s love for sixty seconds before you destroyed it. It is, of course, a huge development and not just because we finally find out what it was that Crais wanted to tell her at the end of season two. Aeryn, the Peacekeeper who has been struggling with love and companionship since defecting from the culture she was raised in, was born out of the exact same sense of subversion. Her own parents rejected the narrow parameters of Peacekeeper culture and created a child.
OH GODS IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL, I LOVE IT, HELLO MURDER MOM. Y’all. Xhalax. LOOK AT HER. I want to be her best friend forever, mostly because she seems like a horrific enemy to have. I don’t want to have too much hope for their inevitable confrontation because this is Farscape, and everything I love on this show eventually dies. (It’s literally true. Every single character I’ve enjoyed has died, y’all, and nearly all of them IN THIS SEASON ALONE. Of course, I should also point out that at one time or another, LITERALLY EVERYONE HAS DIED. Oh, Farscape.)
KanviaÂ
Ah, there’s such a wonderful blend of the whole creature-of-the-week episode and the serialized arc in “Thanks for Sharing,” and I’m gonna be a broken record yet again. How the fuck does this show continually create so many disparate alien races out of scratch? We meet the Kanvian folk in this episode, who seem very uninterested in anyone doing anything in their world. The power struggle between the two siblings here was interesting, and I had a hoot yelling and hissing and booing at Talven, who is so stereotypically antagonistic that he’s just plain fun. But y’all.
Y’ALL.
Stranit. No. NO. NO. And for the record, that’s not even the biggest NOPE in this episode. I really loved that this creature was used to bring about terror and tension, was then manipulated by Crichton, and then later gave Talven his comeuppance. I was confused as to how this was ever going to be resolved if Talven was able to trick the Stranit into believing he was telling the truth. But Crichton – bless him – asks Talven a question that makes him falter, just for a moment, and it’s all because Talven’s father was standing right there. Crichton hit a nerve because this culture valued loyalty and honesty, and he called into question Talven’s moral standing in front of his father.
Really, I thought nothing would be as gross as the Stranit boring into Talven’s head, but I also completely forgot that something stood over Sarova after the bombing. We find out what it was: JUST KIDDING WE DON’T. I mean, we see the thing. Taking a cue from the Alien films and John Carpenter’s The Thing, this show introduces a being that can take the form of any person, AND XHALAX SUN IS THE ONE USING IT. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD WHY. NO, THIS IS AWFUL, PLEASE GO AWAY, YOU ARE TERRIFYING.Â
The video for “Thanks for Sharing” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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