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.
The episode’s plot is driven by hunger. The ship is out of food, and to make matters worse Zhaan is doing some sort of weird starvation-induced budding thing. She says that if she doesn’t get food, she’ll die. Of course, the same is true for everyone else on board (John has already resorted to attempting to eat fried dentics), but Zhaan’s plight lends a bit more urgency to the situation. The crew needs food, and they need it now. It quickly becomes clear that not just any food will do, however.
A few episodes ago, Chiana’s purchase of a shuttleload of crackers was met with general disdain. One cannot live on crackers alone, surely. On approach to the budong Aeryn similarly scolds John for his culinary experiments: “you can’t eat dentics!” Perhaps they are merely gross, as evidenced by John’s reaction after trying them (even after contesting that “you can eat anything if it’s fried”). Or perhaps the line Aeryn draws between the edible and the inedible is based on a more complex set of beliefs and assumptions. There are certain things one simply does not eat.
Another more egregious masticatory taboo is quickly mentioned by John in the opening minutes of the episode. He cautions (half in hyperbolic jest, as always) that if they don’t get food soon the crew of Moya will become the “Donner Party of the Uncharted Territories.” His allusion no doubt flies right over the heads of his non-Earthling companions but it’s meant more for us than for them. There are plenty of things that it is not considered “right” to eat, and cannibalism is very far to one end of the spectrum of morality. The line between socially acceptable food and socially unacceptable food is usually quite clear, but by the end of Home on the Remains it blurs somewhat.
The first challenge to our notions of what should or should not be eaten is the budong itself. A giant space creature might not be that objectionable as a food source (maybe it’s just like an enormous cow or something), but a dead one? Eating animals that have been dead for some time is reserved for lesser creatures like scavengers. The crew’s hunger may have already taken its toll, however, as Rygel exclaims almost gleefully: “you mean that thing’s edible??” Desperate times call for desperate measures, and if this were the solution to the crew’s food shortage we might be a little disgusted but not entirely without empathy. Sadly even this remote hope is quickly quashed: the budong is not edible (it’s toxic or something). But surely the people living on it have something to eat.
It turns out that the eclectic and impoverished bunch of “miners” on the budong are just as covetous of food as Rygel and the rest of the crew are. Food is not free, you have to earn it. Well, more precisely, good food is not free. The de facto despot of the mining colony is a guy named Budrow B’Sogg who, despite being willing to give John and the others some sort of vegetarian conglomerate at no charge, requires payment for the obviously much more desirable yet questionably sourced meat he possesses. Said meat is hidden inside the mines and the mines are currently off limits because of a rampaging creature called a keedva that must be killed. It just so happens that Zhaan’s condition will not be alleviated with anything less than “animal protein,” so B’Sogg’s terms must be met.
B’Sogg demands payment in exchange for his meat, either in the form of the valuable nagelti crystals that are mined from the innards of the rotting budong or in the form of Chiana herself. It’s clear that this latter option is much more preferable to him, and it’s also clear that his desires are purely sexual in the worst way possible. Equating Chiana’s body with the food the crew would presumably receive in exchange for it lends a pall of depravity to the proceedings, and D’Argo is quick to object. His feelings for Chiana no doubt provide the majority of the impetus for his rage but there is once again a vague air of cannibalism surrounding the “consumption” of Chiana (who B’Sogg says he would keep until he has used her up) as trade for food to be consumed by the others. Societal norms should not permit such a bargain.
The connection between sex and food in fact has a lineage reaching far beyond the Uncharted Territories. Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss noted a “very profound analogy which people throughout the world seem to find between copulation and eating. In a very large number of languages they are even called by the same term.” In French, for example, “the verb ‘consommer’ applies to both marriage and to meals.”[1] Dietary prohibitions, such as those forbidding cannibalism, are also usually (as in the case of the Bible) based on the prohibition of incest. Aeryn’s distaste at eating a dentic and D’Argo’s anger at the thought of Chiana “giving” herself to B’Sogg (particularly after her having been in a relationship with B’Sogg’s brother) each stem from similar and deep-rooted societal mores.
However repulsed the crew might be by the prospect of cannibalism, it keeps creeping back into the episode. The next instance is predominantly comical but reinforces the pervading theme. Fleeing from the murderous keedva inside the mines, John and Rygel find themselves cornered. As Rygel ascends into the air aboard his hoverchair, John jumps up after him and grabs hold. Their combined weight is too much for the hoverchair to support and they begin to lose altitude. Rygel protests that John will just get them both killed but after John demonstrates his refusal to let go, Rygel — taking advantage of their extreme proximity — bites John’s fingers.
John howls in pain and simultaneously notices that the keedva has been driven off by a mysterious whistling sound. In an attempt to regain Rygel’s attention and to get him to lower the chair (or at least to just stop biting him) John in turn bites Rygel’s ear. The two stay locked in dentacular embrace for several more seconds before releasing their respective holds on one another and returning to the ground. Though they obviously do not consume each other’s flesh, the two subsequently remark on the sensation: Rygel snipes that “the dentics tasted better,” and John retorts “you tasted worse.” The thought of eating another conscious being is repulsive, at least subconsciously.
The keedva is central to the resolution of the episode’s conflict and provides the final test of the crew’s dietary squeamishness. It is revealed that B’Sogg controls the beast, which he explains is “a primitive animal, but intelligent in its own way.” It’s bipedal, and though it seems unable to speak it behaves not unlike an alien version of an ape or other primate. John kills it in hand-to-spiky-door combat and Chiana kills B’Sogg by rupturing some budong bile on his arm. His flesh melts away. Back on board Moya the hunger crisis has been averted, but not with B’Sogg’s cache of food retrieved from the mines. The final scene of the episode instead shows the crew happily chowing down on the now clearly humanoid remains of the keedva, which John describes as having been “Carolina barbecued.”
This is perhaps the most gruesome gustatory display in the entire series and possibly a large portion of science fiction television in general, made all the more disturbing by the apparently complete lack of hesitation at the notion of consuming a humanoid corpse. If it weren’t for the overwhelming theme of cannibalism throughout the episode it might be easily brushed aside as simply a humorous resolution to a fairly bleak series of events. But given how much the episode foregrounds eating it seems necessary to examine this final triumphant digestion of the crew’s adversary. After vanquishing their foe they feast on his remains, Zhaan asking for second, third, and fourth helpings as Aeryn dutifully carves off another slice from what appears to be the creature’s chest cavity. Bon appétit.
[1] The Savage Mind (1966), p. 105. My use of Lévi-Strauss is largely cribbed from Tania Modleski’s analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Frenzy in her book The Women Who Knew Too Much (2005).
Unrealized Realities 