Farscape 1.01

[shipperx]

So, okay, I'm bored. Nothing is on TV. And, having seen several mentions of Farscape on my f-list recently, I decided to indulge some nostalgia and rewatch parts of the series.

Farscape 1.01 - "Premiere"

"Boy, was Spielberg ever wrong. “Close Encounters” my ass..."

Generally I find a lot of Season 1 Farscape to be the show trying to find itself. I don't think it began as a fully formed creation but more as a pastiche of ideas and references, which isn't to say that I don't love it because I do. Season 1 is like a baby. It's a little soft and pudgy, but quite cute. And, you only get a hint of what it's going to become even though the main parts are already there.

That said, I think that the premiere does a lot of hard work. It sets the stage, and it does so best with Crichton.

Poor, innocent John. Look at him claiming to be a scientist and not a soldier. Look at him dressed in white. Classic hero...or Alice before she fell down the rabbit hole. And, having seen the entire series multiple times, I appreciate innocent, idealistic, dressed in classic hero white John because I know that he'll be broken, tortured, and pushed to -- and over -- the edge of sanity so as to one day become the haunted, black leather clad, slightly mad, increasingly desperate fugitive that we love.

The opening shot of the series is John looking at the shuttle at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Australia doubles for Florida nicely here. This gives grounding to what is going to be a far-out show. The same is true of John's scene with his father.

What's nice about that scene is that it tells us a great deal about John.

Jack Crichton is an old school astronaut from the days when people actually knew the astronauts' names. John sees his dad as a hero, one that he both respects and, in the way of many sons, perhaps resents just a little. He feels as though he lives in the shadow of his father's importance. It's John and Jack's scene that always sets up John's hero's journey for me:

Jack: I talked to Pete Maxwell and the others at Control. They're going to take real good care of you while you're up there. [silence] I heard that you went AWOL from the Rat Cage this morning. Man, in my day, if I'd ever broken quarantine like that they'd... Son, you got rattlers in your stomach?

John: I've been up on the shuttle before, Dad. Twice.

Jack: Didn't matter how many times I went up. Every time -- rattlers. First time I walked on the moon--

John: I'm not walkin' on the moon. I'm just running a little experiment.

Jack: An experiment to prove your own theory. Do you have any idea how proud that makes me? That's something I never did. All the guys in the collars and neckties got to use their brains. All I ever got to use was my--

John:[perhaps just a little irritated] Guts and [imitating his father] 'the seat of my flight suit!'

Jack: Son, I can't help being who I am -- who I was.

John: It's not who you are, Dad. I love who you are. It's being the son of who you are... Look, I can't be your kind of hero.

Jack: No, you can't be. But each man gets the chance to be his own kind of hero. Your time will come and when it does, watch out. Chances are, it'll be the last thing you ever expected...

Hero's journey, right?

So John heads off to his mission on the shuttle with his Farscape module and everything goes disastrously wrong. As the series title credits tell us, he got 'sucked through a wormhole'... and through the looking glass, and over the rainbow

And into an asteroid field that reminds me of Star Wars. He isn't responsible for killing Crais's brother, though.

The advantage of a rewatch is that I can appreciate character growth from a different perspective. I can appreciate how this works into Crais's character arc, and it's a tribute to Crais that in retrospect Crais's reaction makes even more sense.

Crais is in guilt-filled denial and desperately looking for someone -- other than himself -- to blame. Crichton, being in the collision, is an incredibly convenient target. So John's ship colliding with Crais's brother's ship, leading to Crais's brother's death, is actually a more pivotal moment for Crais than it is for Crichton, which I think is as it should be.

Crichton is then swept into the escaping ship of prisoners. Not many prisoners as it turns out. Just a handful, Dominar Rygel XVI (who is sort of Yoda's quasi-evil cousin), Zhaan (the female anarchist priest), and D'Argo (who has some overlap with the Klingons I think, at least in his introduction. But, it's somewhat complicated by the revelation that in his race's terms, he's more or less just out of adolescence, and because as we grow to learn about D'Argo, we find that he isn't just a warrior but also a romantic and a farmer. He's more than what he first appears to be).

It being a rewatch also works in that it makes Rygel's, Zhaan's, and D'Argo's treatment of Crichton make sense. As far as they're concerned, Crichton is a Peacekeeper, the species that has held them (and tortured at least two of them) as political prisoners for years. John appears to be part of the group that they are trying to escape. So they toss him into the brig where he's met with...

Well, hindsight allows us to say that he's tossed into the brig with the love of his life, only neither Crichton nor Aeryn realize this yet. He's just relieved to see another human face, and she's content to beat the crap out of him and demand name, rank, and whatever is the Peacekeeper equivalent of serial number may be. Hee! Of course it'll turn out to be true love.

Let me admit it, I have a straight-girl's crush on Aeryn. She was a fighter pilot trying to apprehend the escaping prisoners who got caught in their escape. I like that Aeryn is a kick-ass soldier who schemes hers and Crichton's own escape from the prisoners. And the pilot episode works almost as much to launch her storyline as it does to launch Crichton's.

Having been captured by the prisoners she had been sent to retrieve, she manages to escape, and heads to the closest planet to meet-up with her military unit. This is where she runs afoul of... not really the Peacekeepers exactly because I don't know that anything she's done thus far actually violated any rules, though Peacekeepers have a lot of them. It's really more that she's run afoul of Crais's guilt-laced vendetta against the man who -- Crais needs to believe -- killed his brother.

I do think it does a nice bit to establish Aeryn in that the Peacekeepers have very, very fascist overtones. The art direction for them definitely leads us to think of this sort of thing. But we're shown Aeryn protesting with her superiors that Crichton is not a threat.

Aeryn: "I don't believe that he is brave enough or intelligent enough to attack one of our Prowlers intentionally..."

Maybe John could have wished for a defense that wasn't quite so insulting. :) Still, we are introduced to Aeryn in a way that leads us to at least think that she does not blindly follow the orders of her fascist military culture. We're encouraged to think there's better in her, which leads me to the moment that I love.

I haven't watched the episode "The Way We Weren't" in a while, but I seem to remember there being a connection between that episode and the premiere in that it harkens back to Crichton's reaching out to Aeryn in this episode.

Like Crichton, Aeryn loses everything, including her world, in this episode. Crichton is ripped through a wormhole. Aeryn is labeled a traitor, branded as being 'irreversibly contaminated' by her defense association with lesser lifeforms, and D'Argo informs us that such a sentence means death for Aeryn. She protests. She can't believe it. As she says, it's her life, her breeding, it's everything that she is. She is losing everything here, and Crichton says to her:

Crichton: "You can be more..."

Aeryn has a journey to make too.

So she joins the escaping prisoners. They're all wanted now. They are all cut off from their homes and in danger. And it makes a pretty good premise for the show.

Not all the bits are in place. We're missing Chiana and Scorpius, who it's difficult to imagine the series without. But the premiere did a fairly good job of kicking things off, and I appreciate that even in retrospect I can see where it stands as a pivotal moment in Crichton's, Aeryn's, and Crais's lives. I have to admit that I appreciate the character development aspect of it the most.

Comments

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I got all goosebumpy watching that. *sniffle*

[rahirah]

I love that show so freakin' much.

[mlgm.livejournal.com]

What's not to love? The acting was good, the two romantic leads had mad chemistry from the very first, and while the writing staff didn't produce a masterpiece every episode you never felt they weren't trying. Sometimes they bit off too much and couldn't pull off what they were trying but you never felt they were just phoning in the filler episodes until they got to the "big" episodes - and yes, that last was directed at you Whedonverse.

[next_to_normal]

Oooh, Farscape is coming up in my "to watch" queue.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Hee. I just watched the episode The Way We Weren't last night - it has got to be amongst the best hours of tv I've seen. Cried at the end.

The connection between the two episodes is quite major.

3 years ago - when Zhann and Dargo and Rygel were put as prisoners on Moya, Pilot was first installed, and Crais impregnated Moya with Talon.

Aeryn Sun's lover - Dimitris (who is the one that installs Pilot into Moya and attempts to stop Crais from impregnanting Moya with a Peacekeeper War Ship) asks her to come with him, to leave all of this.

She protests that being a "prowler pilot" is all she knows.

But he tells her, "you can be more..."

A couple of moments after he says this - Crais and his soliders break in and arrest him, drag him off to be tortured. Aeryn is revealed to him and to us as the informant. In exchange for turning in her lover - she obtains the coveted "proller duty".

In the episode The Way We Weren't - Aeryn is racked with guilt and explains to Crichton that the reason she keeps him at arms length is in part that past relationship. How it ended. And after Crichton hears the full story, he asks Aeryn at the end of the episode, "you say you felt love for this guy? that was.."
"Yes, love." And Crichton's look is incredibly pained and haunted. Not jealous. There's no jealousy. It's a sort of pained look.

Re-watched several episodes of the first season, twice, before moving to the second. Including commentary. The commentary on the Premiere is rather brilliant by the way. It's also great on all the other ones - particuarly Jeremiah Crichton and Human Reaction.

Bowder states Human Reaction is the turning point and his favorite of the season, possibly the series - because it's when John goes from innocent guy in white - to well...he loses his innocence in this episode about both his home world, his own illusions, his species, and aliens. It's after this episode - that he starts to take the attitude "screw you" as Claudia Black states, to the aliens.

To really see the change in his character - watch PK Tech Girl, then watch Nerve. His interaction with Gelina, Aeryn, and the universe in both episodes are vastly different, but the writers take us there organically. I was blown away. Few tv series do that good a first season. Farscape's first season is much much better than any of Whedon's shows or anyone else I can think of outside of maybe Lost and BSG, who did fairly killer first seasons, but unlike Farscape meandered off course in later years.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that Farscape is one of the most rewatchable series I've run across. Part of that, I think, is that it ends in a place that makes it possible to appreciate the journey. The other is that it functions so well in the character arcs.

I don't remember which episode commentary it's on, but I remember their saying that they always wanted the characters to remember what had happened in previous episodes. This method of storytelling ends up making even stand-alone episodes fit the overall picture, at least so far as the characters go. Even if a plot is disposable, it may inform character, so when you backtrack to the beginning of the series, you see the characters as they were. It's like looking high school year books, seeing how they started and who they used to be.

John is such an innocent at the beginning! He's us, a regular human guy, someone who grew up watching Star Wars, Star Trek, and even Buffy (He mentions her once or twice, once lamenting that if he ever makes it back to Earth, the series will be over. Heh).

Though an astronaut, John relates a lot of what he's going through to pop-culture (though absolutely no one but the audience ever gets his references). And, at the beginning, he's a pretty light character who tries to see the best in people.

However, he's been dumped into a difficult world/galaxy/universe where, though any individual is capable of good or evil and little is absolutely black or white, it's a little like living in Star Wars' evil empire. It's the anti-Star Trek. The Peacekeepers keep the peace through militaristic dictatorship. The 'humans' (in this case, the Peacekeepers -- and by the end that connection is explained) are not the good guys. Individually they can be good people, but as a society? They're fascists. The kind that have insidious racism and who take people's children and raise them to be soldiers in their constant cold war and arms race. The Peacekeepers are willing to be inhumane in order to win (though don't mistake that to mean that the enemy of their enemy are the good guys friends. The Peacekeeper's enemy the Scarrans are every bit as bad as the Peacekeepers.) And, Crichton gets more than a few first hand doses of just how inhumane the Peacekeepers can be... and it changes him.

Aeryn on the other hand is on the opposite trajectory. She is one of those Peacekeepers who has been raised in this style for as long as she can remember. The military was her family, such as it was. And as a member of that society, she never stepped outside it to understand what the Peacekeepers were. It's a rather ugly realization to finally see that not only her society but she, herself, had been one of the 'bad guys.'

John and Aeryn make a rather epic love story. Watching each of them change and grow is part of the joy of any rewatch.

But it's not just them. Most of the characters have storyarcs that span the series. People go and come, and a few die. But it's usually fun to go through the process all over again. Most everyone -- even the bad guys -- have comprehensible motives for what they do.

It tends to be quite wacky and very weird. But the character arcs within it are golden.

[next_to_normal]

I remember a little bit of that - I remember all the characters (at least the ones who were there in the beginning) and I kind of recall suspecting a John/Aeryn ship was in the works, but I definitely didn't watch enough to see actual arcs develop. :)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

So you've watched Farscape then? Or at least some of it? I have to admit that the first chunk of episodes is slow going. (You can tell by my post-yesterday as a zipped through a bunch of less than stellar episodes at the start of the series). It's weird that in a lot of ways I don't even consider "real" Farscape to have begun until almost midway in the first season and it's mythology doesn't really kick in until near the end of the first season. It makes rewatching Season 1 sort of a strange experience.:)

And, yes, they go full-on ship with John/Aeryn. There's no equivocating about it. There's some interview somewhere with Kemper and O'Bannon (the headwriters) where they straight up say that Farscape is the romance of John and Aeryn. It's very much a sci-fi adventure show, but it doesn't shy away from the fact that it rises and falls on the basis of its characters and their relationships.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how it's always good, isn't it?

It's just one of those show you can go to for a happy place. Even the gut-wrenchingly tragic stuff is good so it takes you to a happy place. :)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I think it's permanently up near the top of my favorite shows ever. It was just so gosh darn satisfying.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

What's not to love?

Exactly. And strangely it's a show where I never sought fanfic or even fandom because the show itself was satisfying. It feels complete all on its own.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I love The Way We Weren't. It's just such a great showcase for Aeryn. It allows her to be dark in a way that makes her such a more interesting character.

To really see the change in his character - watch PK Tech Girl, then watch Nerve.

I don't know that I've ever watched those two back to back, though I also adore Nerve.

I started watching Farscape midway through its run and prior to any DVD release so what I was doing was downloading (UK versions) of the episodes off line whenever they would pop up (especially the week that I was down with pneumonia) so I ended up watching Season 3 before I watched Season 1, which made for strange experiences in watching both A Human Reaction and Nerve because in both cases it worked as "Oh! OH!!! That's where _______ started! It makes so much more sense now!" :)

[next_to_normal]

Yeah, when it premiered it aired in a block with Sliders, which was my favorite show at the time. I may have seen the whole first season, I don't remember exactly. I stopped watching when Sliders was canceled, though.

[green-maia.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to watch Farscape for a long time.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It's totally worth it, though it does tend to take people time to warm up to it. It does have some overlap with Buffy and with Dr Who in that it also combines the goofy and the comedic with the scary and the tragic.