primeideal

Featuring a two-part adventure, and the first half of a "cliffhanger" that continues in S2! Fair warning, there are a lot of quotes I'm just gonna post because they are good quotes.

They need a DNA match for Aeryn...who has some of Pilot's DNA in her, I don't suppose they can wind up using that?
But we did get a continuity nod with "20 arns to the base" from last episode.
The military base has a 5 to 1 sex ratio, no wonder Chiana is popular. I've been in some math classes like that.
Gilina is back!
"You came to see if I was dead so you could take my stuff" - which Rygel also tried to do to John earlier in this season!
John's memory has an "impressive array" of other species, just a montage of all the places he's been this season.
And he has wormhole equations that the alien impersonating his father tried to put in his subconscious!
Crazy roommate for John in jail.
Chiana calls out the "technobabble" for what it is.
Crais is a Captain, what is Scorpius' rank and how does it relate? In terms of Scorpius trying to undercut Crais and boss his minions around.
Gilina wants to know if Aeryn means "that much" to John, oof. On the one hand, I think John would do this for any of the women, on the other hand, this is another reason why Chiana is here, to mess with Gilina's head and get her to help them.
"They're all in perfect health?" Nice bluff from John to take advantage of the situation.
Chiana's turn to technobabble. But the officer recognizes here.
Burnt corpse, yikes. That's Sebaceans for you.

This is the first time we've needed a "Previously on Farscape..." summary, despite the continuity.
Starburst is not available...shouldn't everyone besides Aeryn know that John isn't back yet?
First indication that something is wrong with the baby :( I recognize that this is the result of Peacekeeper experimentation, but why would they use "birth control" if they were trying to edit Moya's DNA?
Shouldn't Zhaan stay with the pregnant ship? I feel like she would be the most prepared to help Moya give birth.
The aesthetics of the island fortress are pretty neat.
"I've conceived hundreds of progeny and those are only the official ones" - Rygel (but he was never there for the births, what a cad)
Huh, I thought John was resisting to protect the memory of Aeryn, but he says it's actually about kissing Gilina. Which would affirm my previous claim that he'd do this for any of them.
Gilina fakes the memory!
Crais has to go into the chair to prove John is lying, oof.
We see the other half of Stark's skull, wowzers.
If Crais doesn't know anything about wormholes, why would he fight it? The chair should be able to clear his name.
We get multiple namedrops of "solar days" in different scenes a few minutes apart, sounds like they've given up on "arns" and "cycles" and want to go with a galactic standard.
"How many Peacekeepers do you know on this base?"
Okay Crais has a track record of murdering subordinates, that's a good reason why he would resist.
Gilina, Aeryn, and John hiding out in the vents...where did Stark get to in all this? I guess he makes it out first.
Crais and Aeryn talk about oaths and vows.
Gilina's love triangle problems.
Oh, no, Gilina, this is not the time.
Crichton, being Crichton, tries to go back for her (but Aeryn talks him out of it).
Chiana has to perform an emergency C-section.
Stark just snuck out to join D'Argo and Zhaan? Nice.
Two interwoven climaxes, with the crew down on the base fighting the Peacekeepers and Chiana trying to help the baby. But I feel like these could have been two different episodes, I don't see a thematic relationship between them.
The baby has to blast its way out of Moya, basically doing its own C-section. This is probably a metaphor for...something.
And Stark's memory comes in useful. :(

"Big green pieces of mucus" "quit it with the Luxan poetry" I'm with D'Argo on this one, mucus is a pervasive and often colorfully descriptive thing! Given that we have a running joke about Rygel's farts I can handle some mucus talk.
"Please help me!" "Calm down, where are the others." John's chivalry is less over-the-top here.
The baby likes Aeryn. Is it babbling? Maybe I'm just grasping but it kind of sounds like it's saying "anyone, anyone, anyone?"
All of the peacekeeper tech/art style "growing" inside Moya is a stretch. Maybe "programming" would be a better analogy?
"You're a plant." "Why, does that bother you?" John confronts his animal-centric biases :P
"That's why you like the light so much...photosynthesis" Eyyyy!
And it gives her the bonus power of invisibility, nice.
Yeah, something was definitely sketch about M'Lee, I am not the most observant but even I could see heavy-handed signs that something was Up there.
"You come from them [the Peacekeepers]...but so do I." Aeryn to the baby.
What a 3D printer!
M'Lee's people are living terraformers who Br'Nee's people didn't care about after they'd finished eradicating all the animal life here. Hork-Bajir and Arn vibes (from Animorphs).
Crais and Scorpius' hatred escalates.
I actually feel like so far their motivations have been fairly reasonable? Is there something that tips one of them over the edge from "internal rivalry" to "actively unhelpful to the cause?" Does Scorpius really need the Command Carrier to carry out his goals?
Is unleashing M'Lee on the Peacekeepers any better than letting the virus infest them? (They refused to do that a couple episodes ago.)
Br'Nee tries to rationalize that keeping Zhaan as a miniature plant could potentially let him discover new medicines, but John is just like "that's not fair, not if it means killing my friend." But what would Zhaan choose if she could? I feel like the super-empathetic priestess might actually be willing to sacrifice herself for the "greater good" here. (Of course it's a problem if she can't choose.)
The officers think Scorpius can sense weakness and fear. Would he really need the chair in that case?
John trying to be chivalrous again. "How about we just bring her with us, I'm sure we can figure something out."

Rygel continues to be The Worst. (Also obviously M'Lee wasn't going to completely take out the Peacekeeper threat but I'd be interested in knowing how (say) Scorpius got out of it.)
"the alien girl you adopted" - Crais to Scorpius. What? Is this the redhead torture assistant?
Moya wants to starburst but the baby can't yet.
John: "It's not suicide, I just want to go out fighting." D'Argo: "Me too." Aeryn: "Ugh, men." I feel like this isn't super consistent, like Aeryn would have some other reason to volunteer for a heroic last stand, but it's still funny.
Is Crais concerned about the non-John prisoners and the ship? Or is he just looking for something to embarrass Scorpius with later?
D'Argo is asking Chiana to put on chains and pretend to be a prisoner, even though this is his least favorite thing to do himself.
The tape recorder :(
Wait, Aeryn remembers fake Earth through the wormhole? I thought that was all an illusion for John. Because if that means Aeryn just remembered the "beer made us do it" scene and neither of them are talking about it...??? Um. I have questions.
"Scarran half-breed." Crais is speciesist.
Crais: "I was just following orders." John: "oh please"
Aeryn: "I never thought I'd live this long."
Crais: "I recognize you didn't mean to kill my brother...it wasn't about him. It should have been, but my priorities decayed." Aww, character development. Maybe being in a cell lets him focus.
D'Argo: "We did draw lots, I just happened to get lucky and get to volunteer for the suicide mission, deal with it."
"Time is short and so is my temper" - D'Argo in one quote.
"You saved my life." "Pass it on." John and Chiana. And they get a goodbye kiss!
Crais is now irrevocably contaminated.
Crais is mostly excited about baby's military potential, Aeryn sees it as a person.
"Thank you...for the possessions." Counting the wormhole episode ("I'm going to give all my stuff away...to Aeryn") this is at least the fourth time Rygel has had some kind of scene like this, come ooooooon.
Zhaan's ritual, extending blessings she has received to D'Argo and John. Is this some kind of "adoption" to go along with the family stuff earlier?
"I hate this stuff, but chicks dig it" - John
"I have to pee" D'Argo in the ship, haha. See, we can talk about mucus, this is the kind of show we have.
"Talyn, after my father" who she barely knew. D'aww.
D'Argo can survive briefly in space based on the falling out of the ship episode (#10).
And Crais tries to kidnap baby Talyn, yikes. Okay so maybe some of that character development was an act.
And there goes the ring. :(
As a cliffhanger/potential finale, I almost think it would have been better if the end had been tighter? The pee joke was good, John's ring being the good luck charm was good, "shouldn't the moon have blown--AW YEAH" was good. But Crais trying to escape and flirting with Aeryn, and Aeryn circling around trying to pick up D'Argo and Crichton, just feels like it's taking away from the "we're going to blow this moon up and if we die, we die" climax. John's monologue to Moya about "we did this all for you and your baby, you have to save yourself first if you want to stay alive to save him later" interspersed with the corridors was a nice callback to John discovering the pregnancy, but I felt like it was more "loose ends/sequel bait" than "either to be continued next season, or, if this is the end, we died on our feet."

Overall thoughts--about the same as before. John and Aeryn, great. D'Argo and Zhaan, maybe not quite as interesting as they were when they were still kind of mysterious criminals, but still funny. Chiana...I liked her in the two-part "infiltrate the base" scene, where her "charm" kind of worked against Gilina. I don't feel like I have an overall sense of what her skills are/how she gets "assigned" to scenes. Like, she's the one stuck with Rygel in the yellow dimension, she's the one doing the C-section on Moya. Why?

Rygel continues to be very frustrating. The other characters treat him like dirt, he in turn treats them like dirt, and presumably will face no consequences for it! Ugh.

Pilot and Moya still continue to be "more setting than character," although the "Moya needs help communicating with the baby" subplot was nice. (Although now I have questions about whether that's supposed to be a metaphor for, like, speech therapy, I really hope not.) Talyn and Crais are the dynamic I'd osmosed might be RTMI so I'm excited to see where this goes, but I did not realize that their interactions start with an attempted kidnapping, yikes. We'll see.

So here's my crazy plan before I start S2. Farscape was originally released in the 1999-2003 timeframe. (So I'm only 22 years late to the party, nice.) Those were some of the early days of FFN. Which means it might be feasible for me to backread some of the fic that was posted while the show was still on air, based only on the canon that existed then. (As well as stuff that's been backdated on Ao3.) Will it be worthwhile? Will I stick with it? Maybe, maybe not. But I feel like it's worth a try anyway. So there may be a reclist in the future! (Or not. No promises.)