Throwback Thursday, a weekly article in which we look back at our favorite TV episodes from over the years.
Few shows can survive the frelling test of time and be as relevant over a decade later as they were when they were airing.
Farscape is one of those very rare shows that has survived the cruel and merciless test of time and is still as enjoyable to watch as it was when it first went to air. The first episode of the series aired on March 19, 1999 and launched one of the greatest love stories to ever grace the scifi genre. Officer Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) and John Crichton (Ben Browder) faced many obstacles on their way to everlasting and eternal love. They faced the struggle of immediate attraction compounded by being from two drastically different cultures. To be together they faced down death, in Aeryn’s case she actually did die before being resurrected, and being tortured more times than can be easily counted. Still it wasn’t always smooth sailing for the crew of Moya as it took some time for them to come to an understanding that would allow them to form one of the greatest forces the universe had ever seen. Along with Ka D’Argo (Anthony Simcoe), Zhaan (Virginia Hey), and Rygel (Jonathan Hardy) they gave birth to a family that was unwillingly thrust together. They may not have liked each other at first, but they learned to work together and more importantly they learned to care about each other and they even came to love one another. As the series progressed they added Chiana (Gigi Edgley), Sikozu (Raelee Hill), Jool (Tammy Macintosh), and even reformed villains Crais (Lani Tupu) and Scorpius (Wayne Pygram) to that family.
Exodus From Genesis, the third episode of the series, is the episode that took Moya’s crew from frenemies and brought them together as a united force. When Moya is invaded by an alien life form and life support systems are taken over it puts the entire crew in danger, but no more so than Aeryn. When Heat Delirium, precursor to the Living Death, starts to take over Aeryn’s life is entrusted into the hands of people her kind once enslaved.
The episode starts off simply enough with the crew hiding from a Peacekeeper Marauder as Aeryn and Pilot work together to keep Moya hidden behind what they perceive to be an asteroid debris field. While they avoid detection they unknowingly became host to an alien species known as the Draks. Their Monarch is in her genesis period and needs the heat Moya can provide in order to reproduce. Part of the defense mechanism of this species is the ability to clone others, sans communication skills.
As she builds her nest her young sample DNA from the crew and clones of them are unleashed throughout the ship. In an attempt to birth her young faster the Monarch takes control of Moya’s environmental systems causing the heat to sky rocket. When Aeryn starts to rapidly deteriorate D’Argo reveals to John that Peacekeepers are incapable of regulating their body heat. Aeryn then reveals the gruesome process her body will go through as the heat causes Heat Delirium to set in leading up to the Living Death which is the only time her people will mercy kill one of their own.
It is at this point in the episode where the crew must either condemn Aeryn to her fate or rally to save her. D’Argo is the first to admit he doesn’t like Peacekeepers, but he doesn’t necessarily want Aeryn dead despite what John thinks. While this story could have easily been about the crew letting Aeryn die while John argued to save her it was more of a story of self acceptance by Aeryn. It was her perception of how she thought the crew saw her that was keeping the divide between her and the others in place. As the Heat Delirium grew worse John, Pilot, and even Zhaan cared for their ailing crewmate. D’Argo even comes to her aid, likely inspired by John’s earlier confrontation, and races to her side when Pilot announces she is nearly unconscious in his chamber.
With Aeryn hallucinating and growing worse by the second John is forced to negotiate a cease fire with the Monarch, who has taken over Zhaan’s body to communicate with them. He is successful and they are confined to a single room while the Monarch finishes her genesis. His negotiating got the heat turned down some, but not enough to alleviate the pain Aeryn was experiencing.
As the Peacekeeper Marauder from earlier boards Moya, through a cargo door Pilot opened to try and cool the ship for Aeryn, the stakes raise again. The Monarch believes it is the Moya crew attacking her offspring and spikes the heat again sending Aeryn into a fit of agony. Rygel, who has been separated from the others as he was sent on a mission to find the nest, also comes to Aeryn’s aid. With a little ego push from Zhaan, he finds the courage to negotiate with the Monarch and proves to her that the attackers are their enemies as well and they want to stop them as bad as she does. After his successful negotiations Zhaan is again taken over so the Monarch can collaborate with the crew. While she now trusts them and is willing to drop the heat it becomes painfully obvious to John that to stop the invading Peacekeepers the heat needs to rise to levels that could easily force Aeryn into the Living Death. She forces John to promise he’ll give her the dignity of a mercy killing if the Living Death takes her. With the promise made Aeryn gives her blessing for the heat to be spiked.
Aeryn could have easily given into her Peacekeeper need for self preservation, but instead she put aside all of her preconceptions and placed her fate in the hands of her newfound friends. Her willingness to make this sacrifice earns her more respect from D’Argo and he makes that known by his silent squeeze of her shoulder as he exits with John. Even without words these two battle hardened warriors shared a moment of understanding they had failed to find prior to this moment. As John and D’Argo take on the invading Peacekeepers Zhaan and Pilot join forces to give Aeryn a fighting chance. Zhaan gets Aeryn into a shower and is doing everything in her power to cool her off enough to buy the others time. Pilot redistributes resources to get Zhaan more water pressure and cooler water to aid her efforts. It was a race against time and the entire crew rallied to save their onetime enemy.
When the episode drew to an end the Monarch took her young and left the ship. Thanks to her friends Aeryn survived the encounter and the episode ends with John and her talking about the events of the day. She doesn’t remember everything, but she is aware of what everyone did for her. For the first time in her life she has come to appreciate and even respect beings that she once thought of as lesser than her kind. The care the crew gave her was eye opening for her and many of Aeryn’s walls dissolved in the wake of the Draks encounter. When she asks John if he could have kept his promise and killed her he expertly diverts the topic to the beauty of the Draks out in space. And in this quiet moment the growing feelings between these two exploded off the screen. By the time this episode drew to an end Aeryn was fully accepted as a part of the Moya crew and she had fully accepted Moya as her new home.
Was it the best episode of the series? No, not by a long shot, but it served a very specifically critical purpose. There were so many extraordinary episodes of this series, but I feel this is where the crew finally became a singular unit. They were forced to work together in the premiere episodes, but in this case they worked together willingly for one of their own. Aeryn’s sickness and the threat to Moya united this ragtag team and for me this is the episode where they went from crewmates to a family. It may have been a dysfunctional family on most days, but this is the episode where it all began. Nothing else that came afterwards would have been possible without it.
Lifelong friendships were formed and love blossomed out of this episode. The attraction between Aeryn and John began the moment they met and she took him to the ground, but here unbreakable trust was born into their relationship. It was still many episodes before they shared their first kiss and that glorious moment wouldn’t have been possible without the trust formed thanks to this episode.
Thoughts On The Series:
While this look back review just focused on this one episode I wanted to take a moment to talk about the series as a whole. As a lifelong fan of scifi, and especially space operas, I have seen everything spanning from the
Star Trek shows to
Andromeda to
Battlestar Galactica to
Stargate and most recently
Dark Matter. All of the shows I’ve watched have been special in their own way, but none have been able to so effortlessly merge space adventure with an epic love story. Nor have any of these shows been able to find actor chemistry like Claudia Black and Ben Browder so effortlessly have.
Even though the love story of Aeryn and Crichton was the core of the show every character was given distinctive stories. The crew changed over the years and beloved characters were lost, but the core heart of this powerful family never changed. They fought for each other and sacrificed for one another. After the heartbreaking loss of Aeryn at the end of Season 2 the crew mourned her and no one wanted to accept her death. Crichton may have been Aeryn’s great love, but he wasn’t the only one who loved her. In their time together they all found a place in the hearts of the others and Zhaan couldn’t stand by and let a part of her heart die without a fight. She gave up a part of herself to breathe life back into Aeryn and rebirth her while knowing it would likely kill her. The loss of Zhaan a couple episodes later was the first big loss of a series regular and it broke the hearts of both crew and fans. Rygel, Chiana, D’Argo, and even Sikozu, Granny, and Stark of later seasons weren’t immune from the willingness to sacrifice for the family. Sure every character had their own agendas, but at one point or another they all gave a part of themselves for the Moya family. Sikozu literally gave parts of herself including her hand for John and a finger for Aeryn. Thankfully Sikozu’s limbs reattach and even though she turned out to be a spy she showed a willingness to make sacrifices for the others. I’ve seen her describe as a villain before and I can understand the argument, however I think it was far more complicated than that. Even the darkest of villains had motives they thought were for the greater good.
This show wasn’t just about the heroes and it even had a great villain turned hero story in Crais and provided an epic villain in Scorpius. Even the villains were portrayed as having hopes and dreams. They had their sinister moments, but in the end even Scorpius came around to team Moya and fought with them. Sure he was always after the Wormhole Weapon, but he sacrificed Sikozu when he found out about her deception. He could have easily allowed her to go on sabotaging the crew, but he gave up his complicated relationship with her for the greater good. This is a show where the villains could have so easily been one dimensional, but they all had a purpose and clearly defined motivation.
Even more unique to this series was the incredible puppetry deployed to bring Rygel, Pilot, and countless other characters to life. When you watch the show you don’t even think about these characters being puppets because they were so expertly manipulated and voiced that their every action seemed fluid and alive. It is the puppetry that made this show truly unique in the then crowded field of space operas. The puppetry is also what would ultimately help this show stand the test of time. Had the series chosen to somehow CGI these characters instead of making them these practical puppets those graphics would have surely shown the age of the series. Instead the only sign of the era this show was filmed in is the occasional scrunchie they stuck in Aeryn’s hair during Season 1.
The cast was the heart of this show and they had such an effortless chemistry. John and Aeryn’s love story only worked thanks to the natural chemistry between Claudia and Ben. While the show rested on their shoulders the heaviest their fellow castmates held their own and turned in extraordinary performances. The voice actors were spot on with their performances and the actors that had to work around crazy prosthetics and makeup did phenomenal work emoting through it all.
If you are unfamiliar or only vaguely familiar with this series I highly recommend checking it out. This is a series that is truly binge worthy and I can say that from intimate experience. I wish I could say I watched this show live, but I didn’t get around to checking it out until after I saw Ben Browder and Claudia Black on the final seasons of
Stargate SG-1. A year or so later I bought the
Farscape series DVD on a whim and binge watched the entire series over the course of a couple weeks. I was enthralled from the very first episode and pulling myself away from the show to go to bed or work was a struggle. To me that is the sign of an extraordinary show. It was late 2008 when I discovered this show and even all these years later I still find myself going back to it at least a couple times a year to watch episodes again. Revisiting this show to write this article has led me to believe a binge watch of the whole series may be in my future and I encourage others to revisit this extraordinary show as well or discover it for the first time if you’re just finding out about it. If you are a lover of space operas I can promise you that you won’t be disappointed.
Rumors have been rampant for years that the show would either find life as a webseries or another movie. In 2014 new rumors began about the possibility of a movie, so perhaps one day in the future this series will again find new life. Until then hop over to Netflix or Amazon to stream it, or track down a copy of the complete series on DVD or BluRy and enjoy all the special features that further break open the immense universe
Farscape crafted.
Hit the comments and tell me how you discovered this show. What was your favorite episode? Do you think we’ll ever get another incarnation of this groundbreaking show?
Much like Aeryn and Crichton’s love
Farscape will forever live on as will the hope for future incarnations of this series.
About the Author - Aimee Hicks
Aimee works for a local newspaper and has a BA in Broadcasting and Cinema. She has been a TV lover since before she really understood what TV was. She has a long list of shows that she loves to watch and can be found on twitter (@ahicks83) live tweeting about each new episode whenever she can. A list of her favorite shows includes (but is not limited to) the following: 12 Monkeys, Orphan Black, Outlander, Chasing Life, Scorpion, The 100, The Night Shift, Bitten, Black Sails, 2 Broke Girls, Arrow, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, Continuum, Lost Girl, Faking It, Falling Skies, Finding Carter, Once Upon A Time, Orange Is The New Black, Switched At Birth, The Fosters, The Flash, The Originals, Teen Wolf, Under The Dome, & Z Nation. The upcoming shows she is most excited about are: Supergirl, Dark Matter, UnReal, Blindspot, Lucifer, Legends of Tomorrow, Stitchers, Recovery Road, Shadowhunters, Quantico, Code Black, Heartbreaker, and Chicago Med. She has a large and passionate dislike of ""reality"" TV, especially ""reality"" dating shows, but has a weakness for Americas Got Talent and So You Think You Can Dance. But those two don't really count as ""reality"" shows, at least that's how she justifies those guilty pleasures. She was the original creator and co-founder of LOST Video Island (lostvideo.net) which is still operating under the management of the very capable and skilled group she turned it over to.
You can email her at aimee@spoilertv.com.
