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primeidealNote: discussion of Episode 17 contains vague spoilers for later in the series, also TMI about my health issues.
John is still making tape recordings, so the data tape he lost in "Till The Blood Runs Clear" isn't what he was using for that.
"There's a part of me inside you." - Zhaan being creepy
John's idea of a farewell to Rygel consists of pranking him
The Farscape shuttle is still intact after the tropical island world? Did they just tow it onto Moya? Not sure how that's supposed to work.
(I do think it's kinda funny that "Farscape" is the name of the shuttle that John used to get through the wormhole and then barely works. Like, I would expect the show to be titled something like "Moya" or "The Leviathan" given the actual premise/setting of the ensemble cast. But no, this is "Farscape.")
John estimates his time away from home as seven months. Three of those were on the tropical island, so he's probably been with the gang for four months.
Ty Cobb! Babe Ruth! "He's a fat guy who played for the Yankees." Haha, love me some baseball trivia. If you don't know anyone else, you can always namedrop Babe Cobb!
Why did Zhaan not come with the others?
Aeryn's never seen rain and she's catching it on her tongue, awwww.
Beer makes them do it.
John bursts into the pool hall with his gun, what a bizarre setup. I kind of wanted to see him go around the room pistol-whipping people and namedropping how he knows them, but we get the point.
Hahaha, the women's bathroom, I was just wondering about that!
Aaaand it's the gates of hell. Nice pivot from potty humor to existential horror.
John accuses the alien of "stealing" his memories. Is it really stealing or just duplicating? I feel like impersonation/misleading John is something else to be rightfully criticized for, but that's different from theft.
"If you ignore the messenger, which is effortless" - D'Argo about Rygel
Pilot and Moya actually weigh in and have opinions of their own! "We are most at ease when serving others" comes off as a slightly creepy "Be Our Guest" vibes--like, do they have no independent goals/desires? But then we get the impromptu starburst.
Last episode, the final segment (after the last "commercial break," that part's usually pretty short) gave us John meeting the aliens and getting a little bit of closure with his "father" (the ring!) but no denouement in terms of "how does he get back to the ship." I guess we're supposed to believe the others were "really" there in the cells and they just all shuttled back together? The tagline for this episode on Prime was "Crichton races to reunite Moya's passengers, who are stuck in different dimensions from an other-worldly alien," so I wrongly assumed it was picking up where the last one left off.
"This is one of the good days" - John to Chiana
We had Rhapsody in Blue, this is a Rhapsody in Red.
I don't think this is supposed to be a depiction of what a migraine is like, but based on how John is gripping his head in pain, sometimes vomiting, and closing his eyes to block out the painful light, they're pretty darn accurate! (I almost never vomit anymore but there were years when this happened frequently.) Maybe the red glow is supposed to be an "aura" that some people have? (I don't have those.)
This is also the kind of thing that makes me appreciate TV as a medium. Like, a text-based version of this episode would be much worse at getting across the effects that the color-shifting and background noise in the blue level do. And the technobabble about how starbursts work is not very convincing, but the shot from outside of the red, blue, and yellow Moyas coexisting is very effective!
Chiana is competing with Rygel for least-popular crew member.
"We don't even go to the moon anymore" - John
"One, two, fire!" "What happened to three?" My dad would like D'Argo, he always takes pictures by going "on two: one, two..."
"Piss it off." "How?" "Pretend it's me." I was expecting something like "just be yourself" from John (to Chiana) but this is almost as snappy.
"Pretty smart for a girl who can't do homework." "It's military tech." Aeryn still downplaying her scientific abilities.
"Enjoy the green slob! Hahahahaha" Chiana making the most of the yellow reality.
Zhaan puts the robes on because she wants to die as herself. There's a TV Trope like this, but an even more specific case (not exactly resisting the enemy within, just choosing to express their full title/honorifics) late in the WoT books. (That character survives too.)
Moya is most affected by the splintering because she's far more massive than the human-scale characters. But how big is the baby by now? Is it being affected?
The alien uses prime numbers to communicate. Maybe a nod to "Contact"?
And now we meet the weird-looking alien who explains what's causing the disturbance in reality...didn't we just do this last episode? I feel as if both these episodes would have been more effective if they weren't back-to-back.
So the directions were almost correct but they need to go forward instead of backwards. Does this mean we have to race the clock through all four sectors again?
...Indeed we do. Slightly predictable.
But all's well that ends well and we get a nice echo of the "this is one of the good days" line. And Pilot reports that the baby is developing well and is on pace to be a healthy ship, so the splintering didn't affect it. This is kind of bittersweet because, based on what I've osmosed, this baby is not actually going to turn out as a healthy, typically-developing Leviathan...but I don't think there's any indication of that yet?
Also, a bunch of the weird stuff we've seen in the last couple episodes is caused, directly or indirectly, by Moya's pregnancy. Are all Leviathan pregnancies this complicated? It feels like this is very inefficient, but maybe the crew wanting to avoid the Peacekeepers and stay in the Uncharted Territories makes it more complicated than normal.
John is trying to impersonate a Peacekeeper officer, so naturally, he needs a fake Australian accent. Nice.
"My feet didn't reach the pedals" - Aeryn on why she started driving fast ships so "late"
John's chivalry makes him protect virus-infected Chiana, sigh
And now we're in the "social deduction game" episode! Okay not really, but it's still a fun premise.
The special ops guy offers Aeryn a job and she can't explain why she has to turn him down :(
"Is everyone on this ship kinkoid?" I mean possibly, but not for this reason.
"Chiana can't be reinfected. We need lots of kill power so the good guys can take out the bad guy if needed." Zhaan with the social deduction strategy.
Deal with a devil...if the virus takes out a bunch of Peacekeepers, that's great for the main characters, but are they willing to sink to that level?
"Was the cesium leak ever fixed?" Callback!
John is still making tape recordings, so the data tape he lost in "Till The Blood Runs Clear" isn't what he was using for that.
"There's a part of me inside you." - Zhaan being creepy
John's idea of a farewell to Rygel consists of pranking him
The Farscape shuttle is still intact after the tropical island world? Did they just tow it onto Moya? Not sure how that's supposed to work.
(I do think it's kinda funny that "Farscape" is the name of the shuttle that John used to get through the wormhole and then barely works. Like, I would expect the show to be titled something like "Moya" or "The Leviathan" given the actual premise/setting of the ensemble cast. But no, this is "Farscape.")
John estimates his time away from home as seven months. Three of those were on the tropical island, so he's probably been with the gang for four months.
Ty Cobb! Babe Ruth! "He's a fat guy who played for the Yankees." Haha, love me some baseball trivia. If you don't know anyone else, you can always namedrop Babe Cobb!
Why did Zhaan not come with the others?
Aeryn's never seen rain and she's catching it on her tongue, awwww.
Beer makes them do it.
John bursts into the pool hall with his gun, what a bizarre setup. I kind of wanted to see him go around the room pistol-whipping people and namedropping how he knows them, but we get the point.
Hahaha, the women's bathroom, I was just wondering about that!
Aaaand it's the gates of hell. Nice pivot from potty humor to existential horror.
John accuses the alien of "stealing" his memories. Is it really stealing or just duplicating? I feel like impersonation/misleading John is something else to be rightfully criticized for, but that's different from theft.
"If you ignore the messenger, which is effortless" - D'Argo about Rygel
Pilot and Moya actually weigh in and have opinions of their own! "We are most at ease when serving others" comes off as a slightly creepy "Be Our Guest" vibes--like, do they have no independent goals/desires? But then we get the impromptu starburst.
Last episode, the final segment (after the last "commercial break," that part's usually pretty short) gave us John meeting the aliens and getting a little bit of closure with his "father" (the ring!) but no denouement in terms of "how does he get back to the ship." I guess we're supposed to believe the others were "really" there in the cells and they just all shuttled back together? The tagline for this episode on Prime was "Crichton races to reunite Moya's passengers, who are stuck in different dimensions from an other-worldly alien," so I wrongly assumed it was picking up where the last one left off.
"This is one of the good days" - John to Chiana
We had Rhapsody in Blue, this is a Rhapsody in Red.
I don't think this is supposed to be a depiction of what a migraine is like, but based on how John is gripping his head in pain, sometimes vomiting, and closing his eyes to block out the painful light, they're pretty darn accurate! (I almost never vomit anymore but there were years when this happened frequently.) Maybe the red glow is supposed to be an "aura" that some people have? (I don't have those.)
This is also the kind of thing that makes me appreciate TV as a medium. Like, a text-based version of this episode would be much worse at getting across the effects that the color-shifting and background noise in the blue level do. And the technobabble about how starbursts work is not very convincing, but the shot from outside of the red, blue, and yellow Moyas coexisting is very effective!
Chiana is competing with Rygel for least-popular crew member.
"We don't even go to the moon anymore" - John
"One, two, fire!" "What happened to three?" My dad would like D'Argo, he always takes pictures by going "on two: one, two..."
"Piss it off." "How?" "Pretend it's me." I was expecting something like "just be yourself" from John (to Chiana) but this is almost as snappy.
"Pretty smart for a girl who can't do homework." "It's military tech." Aeryn still downplaying her scientific abilities.
"Enjoy the green slob! Hahahahaha" Chiana making the most of the yellow reality.
Zhaan puts the robes on because she wants to die as herself. There's a TV Trope like this, but an even more specific case (not exactly resisting the enemy within, just choosing to express their full title/honorifics) late in the WoT books. (That character survives too.)
Moya is most affected by the splintering because she's far more massive than the human-scale characters. But how big is the baby by now? Is it being affected?
The alien uses prime numbers to communicate. Maybe a nod to "Contact"?
And now we meet the weird-looking alien who explains what's causing the disturbance in reality...didn't we just do this last episode? I feel as if both these episodes would have been more effective if they weren't back-to-back.
So the directions were almost correct but they need to go forward instead of backwards. Does this mean we have to race the clock through all four sectors again?
...Indeed we do. Slightly predictable.
But all's well that ends well and we get a nice echo of the "this is one of the good days" line. And Pilot reports that the baby is developing well and is on pace to be a healthy ship, so the splintering didn't affect it. This is kind of bittersweet because, based on what I've osmosed, this baby is not actually going to turn out as a healthy, typically-developing Leviathan...but I don't think there's any indication of that yet?
Also, a bunch of the weird stuff we've seen in the last couple episodes is caused, directly or indirectly, by Moya's pregnancy. Are all Leviathan pregnancies this complicated? It feels like this is very inefficient, but maybe the crew wanting to avoid the Peacekeepers and stay in the Uncharted Territories makes it more complicated than normal.
John is trying to impersonate a Peacekeeper officer, so naturally, he needs a fake Australian accent. Nice.
"My feet didn't reach the pedals" - Aeryn on why she started driving fast ships so "late"
John's chivalry makes him protect virus-infected Chiana, sigh
And now we're in the "social deduction game" episode! Okay not really, but it's still a fun premise.
The special ops guy offers Aeryn a job and she can't explain why she has to turn him down :(
"Is everyone on this ship kinkoid?" I mean possibly, but not for this reason.
"Chiana can't be reinfected. We need lots of kill power so the good guys can take out the bad guy if needed." Zhaan with the social deduction strategy.
Deal with a devil...if the virus takes out a bunch of Peacekeepers, that's great for the main characters, but are they willing to sink to that level?
"Was the cesium leak ever fixed?" Callback!
