The Remains of One Solar Day

Season 2, Episode 16 – The Locket

In The Locket, the crew of Moya is trapped in a space resin that exists outside of time. To escape the amber mist fossilizing around them, the crew must consider whether it is better to live a safe and secure life or to live the more dangerous and risky life that truly provides them with meaning. In this sense, the locket worn by Aeryn in this episode functions as an extended metaphor about relationships, memory, and regret. The episode pushes the understanding of preserving memories or mementos to explore the affect of that act of preservation on both the person who possesses the locket and the person whose image has been stored away in the locket. To move forward, some in the crew must decide whether they are cherishing memories or simply anchoring themselves to what is familiar and less scary then the unknown of the present.

Lost in Television

Lost In Television

Season 2, Episode 15 — Won’t Get Fooled Again

At the beginning of the series John was sucked through a wormhole into a distant part of space. This week he’s instead transported to the faraway land of… television. Specifically, John thinks he’s in something like the season 1 episode A Human Reaction, in which aliens referred to as “the ancients” tested him to determine if Earth would be a hospitable site for their relocation. This time John is ready for such games, and immediately rebels against the episode itself.

At Least Two Things

Season 2, Episode 14 – Beware of Dog

Suspicion of a parasite infestation on Moya leads the crew to bring aboard a creature that hunts those parasites. While a seemingly run of the mill sci-fi plot, the proceeding parasite hunt dramatizes and questions the essentialist notions of personality as singular and uniform. Additionally, the overtly figurative approach of the episode ushers in a run of episodes that rely heavily on multiple layers of narrative play and diegetically mess with perceptions of reality.

Devoted

Season 2, Episode 13 — Look at the Princess, part 3: The Maltese Crichton

Characterization in serialized television is often a fraught endeavor. With only 40-some minutes after commercials to tell a story, very little time is left to let characters grow or become targets of empathy for the audience. To quickly show who a character is and why we should care about them, it’s sometimes useful to show what they care about. A character with a specific set of qualities and traits might be interesting but a character with convictions is compelling. The Maltese Crichton focuses on just such character development, concluding the three part story with an in-depth look at the things and people that our characters are willing to risk their lives for.

Three Twists of the Kaleidoscope

Season 2, Episode 12 – Look at the Princess, Part 2: I Do, I Think

Picking up from the cliffhanger ending of last episode, agents, presumably in the service of Prince Clavor, attempt to kill John. Just as it seems John will succumb to the classic x-ray laser death, Clavor’s fiancé, Jena, with ninja-like skill, fends of John’s attackers. Jena immediately questions John’s allegiance, suggesting that John must be a Peacekeeper spy and acknowledging that she is. John proves himself much better at dodging questions than x-ray lasers and Jena accepts John’s avoidance as consent. John takes his leave and heads off to confront Clavor.

Verifying Compatibility……

Season 2, Episode 11 — Look at the Princess, part 1: A Kiss is but a Kiss

John and Aeryn’s on-again-off-again relationship boils over just as the crew arrives at a planet where the chief means of entertainment at the moment seems to be determining a couple’s sexual compatibility. Compatibility (genetic, romantic, or otherwise) immediately becomes a major plot point as the culture and politics of the planet shape the way each crew member understands what it means to love and to be loved.

Being John Crichton

Season 2,  Episode 10 — My Three Crichtons

A mysterious sphere dangerously lodged in Moya’s hull produces two different versions of John, pulled from his evolutionary timeline. In order to save Moya, John must decide which version of himself must re-enter the sphere and presumably die to save Moya and the crew. In an episode, where multiple versions of John jostle for preeminence, it is revealed that identity is constructed as much by what it is not as what it is.

Need Some Body

Season 2, Episode 9 — Out of Their Minds

You’ve seen it before: it’s the body-switching episode. The episode where the characters get to act like someone they’re not, the episode one assumes was more fun to make than it is to watch. It’s difficult to recall a science fiction show of Farscape’s era that doesn’t have an episode like this (one that lets characters act differently than they usually do — think Star Trek’s “Mirror, Mirror” or Stargate SG-1’s “Holiday” or any episodes where all the characters get mysteriously inebriated), but Farscape manages to twist the cliché around on itself. While the characters in the episode are so fixated on their physical appearance — on their bodies — we as viewers are invited to step back and reexamine the role that those bodies — that all bodies — play in the construction of societal norms and practices.

Dreams in Words

Season 2, Episode 8 – Dream a Little Dream

In an episode that takes the form of flashback, Zhaan, imprisoned on the planet Litigara and lost in feelings of guilt and despair, is unable and unwilling to defend herself from the accusations of corrupt Litigarans. As such, Chiana and Rygel must take the law into their own hands (literally?) to prove Zhaan’s innocence and undermine a political conspiracy. This plot makes evident the self-conscious use of language by the characters to construct various notions of truth.

Eat It

Season 2, Episode 7 — Home on the Remains

John, Zhaan, Chiana, and the others, living beings on board a living starship — an enormous animal — are all dwarfed by the budong, itself another spacefaring creature (though this one is no longer living) that Aeryn points out is so large “Moya could fit in its mouth.” By landing at the budong in search of something to eat — by traveling inside the giant beast’s mouth — Moya and her crew offer themselves up, figuratively at the very least, as food. And so begins the gradual digestion of everything in sight.