XOXO, Puppet Girl #9
Farscape 1x17 & 1x18
Through the Looking Glass
The crew gathers in the dining room for dinnertime discourse (triggering to the recent Thanksgiving attendees among us): Zhaan, Rygel, and D’Argo want to abandon Moya because her pregnancy continues to interfere with her ability to starburst and thus escape pursuers. John and Aeryn object to leaving their friend and protector. Chiana points out that Pilot and Moya can hear them, and Pilot cuts in to tell them that they’ve hurt Moya’s feelings. To prove her health, Moya starbursts despite the constraints of her health, and obviously it goes horribly wrong, triggering a crazy explosion that knocks everyone unconscious.
When our crew wake up, they can’t find Rygel or Pilot. D’Argo walks out the door, he gets sucked into a weird red glow. Then Aeryn gets sucked into a blue one. John rushes off alone to Command, where he is able to contact Pilot and update him on the situation. Pilot’s lost control of most of Moya’s systems.
John gets sucked into the red reality. It’s Moya again, but it’s super-red and it makes John ill. He barfs grandly, because it’s Farscape. Making it down to Pilot’s hideout, John discovers Pilot isn’t there, which should be impossible since he’s a dude with no legs. D’Argo almost reaches Crichton, but can’t manage to stand because of the crazy light.
John hears a weird noise, and he’s sucked into a blue reality where the worst alarm plays continuously. He finds Aeryn but they can’t hear each other over the horrible sound. They do a funny charades routine as they try to communicate. John’s not able to find the way back to the red reality. They split up to search for D’Argo and that’s when John sees a scary claw mark appear in the fabric of reality. Eek!
There are so many dutch angles in this episode.
John finds another reality hole and gets sucked into a yellow reality. Rygel’s there and he’s overcome by relentless gigglies upon seeing John. He might be stoned. The silly vibe starts to affect John too. The two of them bumble around the ship, telling bad knock-knock jokes to each other. They make it back to the dining room and they see the scary claw marks again.
John proceeds through another reality hole, back to the normal reality. There he reunites with Zhaan, Chiana, and Pilot. He explains his theory on what’s happening: Moya has been stretched across four different realities. Pilot admits that Moya wasn’t ready for starburst when she launched and now the ship is stuck in a strange hyperspace splinter state.
John tells Zhaan and Chiana about the scary clawmarks. Zhaan is excited to hear that there is an unseen higher reality. John and Chiana are afraid of the monster.
Pilot and John talk about Moya’s state and John apologizes for the conversation about abandoning Moya.
John, Zhaan, and Chiana arm up to menace the clawmarks, but the clawmarks menace them. John and Chiana teleport to the red reality, finding D’Argo. Chiana proves immune to the barf rays. John unveils his plan: reverse Moya’s engines in every universe and push the splinter realities back together into one Moya outside hyperspace.
The clawmarks come back and become a whole scary beast, but our heroes blast it away. The three of them descend to Pilot’s empty nest, leaving D’Argo to operate the engines in the red reality because Chiana refuses to stay alone despite being immune to the light. John barfs again.
John and Chiana go to the blue reality, where the noise is so painful to Chiana that she can’t walk. John carries her through the halls to Rygel’s room so she can teleport the yellow reality. The clawmarks chase John, but Aeryn appears and saves him. She’s rustled up some noise-cancelling headsets in the interim. Via the headsets, John explains the situation and his plan to Aeryn. Aeryn is confident she can handle launching the engines in the blue reality and sends John onward to the yellow giggles reality. He finds Rygel and Chiana goofing off in Pilot’s lair and deputizes them to manage this reality. They aren’t helpful, though.
John makes it back to the mainline reality, where he reunites with Zhaan. John sees signs of the clawmarks in this reality. Pilot offers to induce a miscarriage in Moya to divert more power to the engines, but John and Zhaan assure him it isn’t necessary. The clawmarks appear, but John resists the impulse to fire. He realizes the clawmarks are making a prime number code. It’s not a menace, it’s trying to communicate. John steps through the reality hole created by the clawmarks.
He experiences a crazy mental communion with a pulsating jellyfish-brain being. It tells him that Moya must go forward, not back, so it can conduct her into the appropriate dimension. John rushes back through all the realities, delivering his news to each crewmember and reversing the travel direction of each Moya. He is so sweaty and he barfs again.
His odyssey ends in the yellow reality, where he completes the unification sequence despite Chiana and Rygel cuddling him as helpfully as my cat does my keyboard. The various Moyas merge back together, all the crew members reappearing around Pilot in the main reality. Everyone collapses with the gigglies. Another fine day on Moya!
They go back to the dining room to eat again, but this time they all have fun. Pilot announces that Moya’s baby is doing so well it will soon be born. Rygel suggests naming it Rygel. Everyone toasts. They all experience #gratitudeseason.
This is a fun adventure episode, but it may give you a migraine. In a way it is about the experience of having a migraine. It’s nice to see everyone happy at the end. This may be the happiest anyone ever is in Farscape.
A Bug’s Life
We open to Zhaan chaining D’Argo up. It’s not not a weird sex thing; it’s also a ruse because Moya is about to be visited by Peacekeepers. Luckily they’re not from Crais’ ship, so they’re not on the lookout for our heroes. All our alien friends return to their cells to pretend to be prisoners again. John and Aeryn meanwhile pass themselves off as the Peacekeepers controlling Moya.
The Marauder ship docks. It’s damaged. John meets it in a leathery Peacekeeper fit and he’s doing a deeply comical British voice. He and the leader of the Marauder team, Larraq, have a dick-measuring contest. John wins by deploying Moya’s army of wee laser-armed DRD robots.
John and Aeryn give the now-fearful Peacekeepers a tour, showing off their alien prisoners and spinning an elaborate story about how they’re test pilots controlling Moya through a devious new technology. Larraq reveals that he needs to deliver a special cryo-crate to a Peacekeeper Gammak Base hidden here in the Uncharted Territories and he needs to do it within 20 arns. He demands that Moya head there immediately.
The Peacekeeper mooks unload the cryo-crate. Chiana, pretending to be a servant/sex slave, comes into the cargo bay to deliver drinks and spy. She also hits on one of the guys. He looks distressingly like Andrew Tate. Chiana fully fondles him in order to get a mold of the key to the cryo-crate.
Meanwhile, Larraq is fairly chadsome. He and Aeryn hit it off while John is busy taking care of Zhaan and D’Argo. D’Argo and Zhaan advocate for killing the Peacekeepers but John resists. He wants to get information from the Peacekeepers, and he doesn’t want to kill people.
Rygel and Chiana both try to break into the crate, OBVIOUSLY. Chiana needles Rygel about how much he ogles her while they try to open it up. The puppet, yes, is horny. We learn that the Farscape equivalent of “filch” is “snurch”.
They open the crate with Chiana’s counterfeit key. There’s a mcfucking thing inside! It’s wet and weird and its lung light up. Andrew Tate shows up to check the cargo and gets possessed by the creature. He immediately kills one of the other Peacekeeper soldiers, then he kills the mcfucking thing in the crate.
Chiana and Rygel blow their cover. Andrew Tate forcibly kisses Chiana and the creature possesses her instead. She beats up Andrew Tate. Aeryn, Larraq, and the Peacekeeper scientist, Hassan, arrive, but Possessed-Chiana hides before they see her. Larraq explains they captured a fugitive, and that fugitive is a sentient virus which possesses people. Given enough time it will spore and take over millions if it can.
Andrew Tate wakes up with amnesia. Possessed-Chiana creeps out of cover and tells an exciting story placing the blame on Rygel and suggesting he’s the one who’s possessed. The Peacekeepers leave to hunt him, and Aeryn berates John for crafting this disastrous plan. John recruits D’Argo and Zhaan to help search for Rygel, still pretending that they are his prisoners.
The crew find Rygel hiding deep in a little alcove. P-Chiana realizes that Rygel knows she’s possessed, but Larraq hits him with a stasis gun before he can speak the truth. While everyone’s distracted, P-Chiana transfers the virus into John. Chiana goes back to normal, and Zhaan and D’Argo go back to jail.
Aeryn, Larraq, and Hassan pack Rygel into the special crate. Larraq admits that Rygel will be killed. He also invites Aeryn to join PK special ops, trying to hit on her as he does so. She is tempted.
P-John goes to find Hassan, and murders her violently so she can’t create a cure for the virus. He also destroys the stasis gun used to capture Rygel.
Meanwhile in jail, Zhaan has summoned Chiana for an interview, as she noticed Chiana was off during Rygel’s capture. Zhaan makes her lick a bedsheet. Chiana wonders if everyone on Moya is “a little kinkoid”. The answer is yes.
Anyway, because the virus messes with its hosts’ personal pHs, Chiana’s spit turns Zhaan’s sheets red. Zhaan and D’Argo realize this means the virus is still loose, and Chiana helps them break out of fake prison.
P-John accelerates Moya towards the Gammak base, and then begins to hit on Larraq. Andrew Tate interrupts them to report Hassan’s murder. Then Zhaan, D’Argo, and Chiana interrupt Andrew Tate to report that the virus walks among them. Zhaan accuses P-John, correctly, and everyone beats him up. But of course melee is a mistake because the dog pile allows the virus to transfer again, and to an unknown host.
John comes back to himself as everyone holds each other at gunpoint. The Moya crew’s cover is blown, but since everyone is a hostage to each other right now, it’s not that urgent. Everyone goes to Zhaan’s lab so she can develop a vaccine or something, which I guess is easy after all. John feels very bad about killing Hassan, but Chiana commiserates about the vagaries of mind control. Zhaan finishes the vaccine and administers it to herself first, to prove it works.
John takes it next, to prove it’s not poison. Aeryn’s willing to go next (John administers it, obviously, for sexual reasons). Then Andrew Tate goes, which leaves only D’Argo and Larraq. They aggro each other due to bro reasons, both refusing to take it if the other won’t and both holding each other at gunpoint. John chooses to inject D’Argo, who’s also fine. The virus is in Larraq, who immediately flees. Somehow no one gets him before he kills Andrew Tate and takes Aeryn hostage.
P-Larraq explains that he wants to get to the Peacekeeper base so he can spore and infect the hundreds of people there. He offers to leave Moya peacefully, but D’Argo reminds us that the virus could infect and take over the whole galaxy if it’s allowed to roam free. P-Larraq stabs Aeryn in the abdomen and runs away. John and Chiana, immune from further infection, chase Larraq. Chiana gets his dog tags, but can’t stop him in time.
John realizes the Maraudar ship is still damaged and leaking cesium fuel. He lets P-Larraq go and then has Moya activate starburst while in contact with P-Larraq’s cesium trail. P-Larraq and his ship blow up entirely.
The crew free Rygel from the cryo-crate. He’s fine, just cold. D’Argo chews him out for helping to open the crate. D’Argo also announces that he’s destroying the chains from his cell, as he will never be chained again. Rygel complains relentlessly, and even Zhaan has to yell at him.
Aeryn wakes up in the medical bay. John fills her in on what she missed, assuring her that they’re leaving the Peacekeeper base far behind. She questions why he’s there waiting by her bedside, but we all know.
Another fun adventure on the books, with only one stabbing and a bunch of Peacekeeper mooks dead! Remember that what made the virus evil is that it engages in mind control. This seems obvious, but coercion is Farscape’s other iceberg. We will be talking about mind control again.
Tune in next time for the arrival of the most beautiful girl in the world (“girl in the world” here meaning “science fiction television villain”).
Accounting for Farscape’s Crimes
Times I Have Said “What Is Happening” Out Loud to Myself So Far: 9
Times John Crichton Experiences a Sexual or Romantic Violation by a Villain: 1
Doubles Episodes So Far: 4
Weird Sex Things So Far: 18
Tears Shed So Far: 3
