![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieAfter about a month's break, I started rewatching Farscape. I got side-tracked, but it seems my FS groove is back on, and from now on, it's a steady diet ;)
Anyway, behind the cut are my thoughts on "Taking the Stone" and "Crackers Don't Matter" (2.3 and 2.4). I really enjoy TtS, though I know it's considered a lesser ep, and CDM is one of the craziest, brilliant eps out there. Spoilers for all of S2-3 but nothing beyond it.
Taking the Stone is considered a lesser ep but I really really like it. (The only eps in S2 I find dull are Dream a Little Dream and The Locket. Yeah, I know The Locket is ultra-shippy and I am a shipper, but there it is...)
What do I love about TtS? For one thing, it has an amazing set design. I love the image of the grave planet, stark blue and blacks and inks. I love Chiana's back-story, her love and loss for her brother (because Chiana is, like Crichton, all about family, because like Crichton, she's lost her own, is lost in the world, and is trying to make a new one).
I love seeing Crichton on edge. He's slowly been slipping further and further and I love that he is beginning to notice. I also love that Aeryn and the others don't notice, won't notice until it's too late, even when he'll tell Aeryn he hears Scorpius in his head in Look at the Princess. I think it's because as fellow-Earthlings :D we forget how off-kilter Crichton must come across to the Moyans anyway, with his weird speech patterns and references that make no sense. So they can't tell he is being odder than usual because he is always odd (remember S1 and Aeryn and Zhaan's 'he is Crichton' conclusion at Chrichton's freak out in the Matala ep). It's only when he starts acting bizarre, physical actions, like not fighting Scorpius, trying to kill Aeryn, that they really notice. (Of course, they are also not familiar with PTSD in general, but here it's something more severe of course).
But to get back to TtS. Crichton can't let go, can he? Not of the 'family' he's finally got. He will go off-kilter, doing crazy things for those he loves, and it's not the result of Crichton losing his mind, it's just him. His frustration of having to let Chiana go is palpable and what comes the most to me from this ep is the bond between Chiana and John. When he cheers for her when she jumps 'you did it' or when they walk off and they both mimic that arms pose? I think it's significant that this ep centers around the 'death' of Nerri because in a way, Crichton might be replacing his missing sisters (though I don't think he was ever as close to them as he will get to Chiana. They were never in extreme situations like this), but Chiana is replacing her brother with him.
It also has some great lines (though not as many as the Crackers Don't Matter ep which is incredibly quotable), I love Chiana's funky hair etc etc etc.
CDM:
You know what I am struck by, this time? How crazily Farscape works. I am faced with the next to last scenes of Farscape: John with green face-make-up, shiny cover, attacking a bug-looking alien with a sword as it gibbers, screaming 'humans are superior' and marvelling at the fact that somehow, it all works. How crazy is it? It works, works brilliantly. Farscape took some odd risks, some stange choices, but IMO, they always worked out.
I am also struck by how tight the writing is. It's obviously an organic show: it didn't have every plot detail worked out years in advance. But when things come up, they get so incorporated for later, they get brought up again, it all just fits. Just think of the little throw-away comment by Maldis in S1 that John lost his virginity to Karen Shaw, and how it comes to play in Kansas in S4.
Why am I thinking of this for this ep? It's the fact that here is Harvey (his very first appearance), telling John that revenge is a dish best served cold, his whole attitude, his whole statement is so in line with the whole late S3 ep 'Revenging Angel' which echoes it so well. In RA Harvey fails to understand what makes John tick, what makes him stay alive: he is limited by his creator Scorpius. He fails to realize that what keeps John alive is hope and that for John, Aeryn is hope. (That is why chip!John in Scorpy's head in Incubator is so intractable, so final: he is post-loss-of-Aeryn, he really has nothing). What Scorpy fails in (and by extension Harvey) is to understand John on a very basic level: they don't really fit, like two odd pieces of a puzzle. Grayza of course makes the same mistake on Arnessk. It's going to sound corny, but Scorpy fails to understand goodness (not surprising considering his upbringing) while John has one-up on his opponent because he understands evil, because his face has been rubbed into it until it's raw.
OK, that is quite a digression. Back to the episode. I kept thinking, why is John the least affected by Traltixx in this ep? I am sure the eyesight has something to do with it (I love how Farscape turns on its head the old trope of humans being saviors because they are better. Crichton is 'better' because he is handicapped, because he doesn't see so well). But I think there are other issues here: for one thing, Crichton is a researcher, someone who must be analytical by nature. More importantly, he is attuned to oddness not just because of his post-Scorpy paranoia but because he is a stranger to a strange land, sensitized.
The crew is horrifically ugly to each other in this one, but the ep is also mind-blowingly hilarious. Not like Out of their Minds, which is just plain funny. This one is funny with a sting. Some pretty bad things are sad. I am struck not even as much by the Aeryn-John showdown (they know each other the best, so they really know where to hurt. Though I am still wondering how you can be both frigid and a skank :)) but I think it's because Aeryn and John cause each other such universes of pain, exactly when they are not trying to, but only trying to protect themselves or even do what
is best for the other, that this is small fry. What is a little exchange of gunfire and a hit at Aeryn's being a traitor or John not measuring up to his father in comparison with Die Me Dichotomy or the coin toss or so much of late S3 or S4?
What I am really struck by are other interactions: D'Argo with Rygel, flopping the little guy around like...well, a puppet, force-feeding him crackers. It's ugly. We haven't seen D'Argo attack a helpless being since DNA Mad Scientist, and we've forgotten, and it hurts. Though it does show a difference: here it's Traltixx doing an equivalent of drugging him. The inner savage is much further from the surface. The crew from early S1 would have succumbed to Traltixx in ten minutes flat.
And Crichton with Chiana. It's an unnerving scene, horrible to watch, precisely because normally John is so protective of her, because for Chiana, John is in many ways her safe harbor, her surrogate big brother, someone who she would always feel safe in the area of sex with (i.e. he won't, with her). But he turns that protection on its head, something ugly (though luckily, most of the horrible stuff comes from Harvey, not John, so she doesn't hear it). This is such a reversal of his attitude in Taking the Stone so I think it's interesting that the attitudes in here and TtS are juxtposed (in TtS Crichton is losing it a bit, slowly, but it makes him more protective, not less. That is the natural 'insane' Crichton, not the one where someone took over). And then of course, later, when he is back to sanity and tries to apologize, she blows it off, acts impressed. Chiana is queen of repression in some ways, however open she is in others.
You know, there is another reason why Crichton was the one to pull it together. (And no, I am not just referring to stubborness). He already has that endge of insanity to him and it's growing slowly larger. So has he figured out how to cope under weirdness while maintaining some control? He's had to persevere through some horrid stuff and had his head messed up with, so he can temporarily put aside distractions...
Anyway, this is really stream of consciousness, so I better stop for now...
P.S. Cool bit of foreshadowing, Chiana aligning with D'Argo here...
Anyway, behind the cut are my thoughts on "Taking the Stone" and "Crackers Don't Matter" (2.3 and 2.4). I really enjoy TtS, though I know it's considered a lesser ep, and CDM is one of the craziest, brilliant eps out there. Spoilers for all of S2-3 but nothing beyond it.
Taking the Stone is considered a lesser ep but I really really like it. (The only eps in S2 I find dull are Dream a Little Dream and The Locket. Yeah, I know The Locket is ultra-shippy and I am a shipper, but there it is...)
What do I love about TtS? For one thing, it has an amazing set design. I love the image of the grave planet, stark blue and blacks and inks. I love Chiana's back-story, her love and loss for her brother (because Chiana is, like Crichton, all about family, because like Crichton, she's lost her own, is lost in the world, and is trying to make a new one).
I love seeing Crichton on edge. He's slowly been slipping further and further and I love that he is beginning to notice. I also love that Aeryn and the others don't notice, won't notice until it's too late, even when he'll tell Aeryn he hears Scorpius in his head in Look at the Princess. I think it's because as fellow-Earthlings :D we forget how off-kilter Crichton must come across to the Moyans anyway, with his weird speech patterns and references that make no sense. So they can't tell he is being odder than usual because he is always odd (remember S1 and Aeryn and Zhaan's 'he is Crichton' conclusion at Chrichton's freak out in the Matala ep). It's only when he starts acting bizarre, physical actions, like not fighting Scorpius, trying to kill Aeryn, that they really notice. (Of course, they are also not familiar with PTSD in general, but here it's something more severe of course).
But to get back to TtS. Crichton can't let go, can he? Not of the 'family' he's finally got. He will go off-kilter, doing crazy things for those he loves, and it's not the result of Crichton losing his mind, it's just him. His frustration of having to let Chiana go is palpable and what comes the most to me from this ep is the bond between Chiana and John. When he cheers for her when she jumps 'you did it' or when they walk off and they both mimic that arms pose? I think it's significant that this ep centers around the 'death' of Nerri because in a way, Crichton might be replacing his missing sisters (though I don't think he was ever as close to them as he will get to Chiana. They were never in extreme situations like this), but Chiana is replacing her brother with him.
It also has some great lines (though not as many as the Crackers Don't Matter ep which is incredibly quotable), I love Chiana's funky hair etc etc etc.
CDM:
You know what I am struck by, this time? How crazily Farscape works. I am faced with the next to last scenes of Farscape: John with green face-make-up, shiny cover, attacking a bug-looking alien with a sword as it gibbers, screaming 'humans are superior' and marvelling at the fact that somehow, it all works. How crazy is it? It works, works brilliantly. Farscape took some odd risks, some stange choices, but IMO, they always worked out.
I am also struck by how tight the writing is. It's obviously an organic show: it didn't have every plot detail worked out years in advance. But when things come up, they get so incorporated for later, they get brought up again, it all just fits. Just think of the little throw-away comment by Maldis in S1 that John lost his virginity to Karen Shaw, and how it comes to play in Kansas in S4.
Why am I thinking of this for this ep? It's the fact that here is Harvey (his very first appearance), telling John that revenge is a dish best served cold, his whole attitude, his whole statement is so in line with the whole late S3 ep 'Revenging Angel' which echoes it so well. In RA Harvey fails to understand what makes John tick, what makes him stay alive: he is limited by his creator Scorpius. He fails to realize that what keeps John alive is hope and that for John, Aeryn is hope. (That is why chip!John in Scorpy's head in Incubator is so intractable, so final: he is post-loss-of-Aeryn, he really has nothing). What Scorpy fails in (and by extension Harvey) is to understand John on a very basic level: they don't really fit, like two odd pieces of a puzzle. Grayza of course makes the same mistake on Arnessk. It's going to sound corny, but Scorpy fails to understand goodness (not surprising considering his upbringing) while John has one-up on his opponent because he understands evil, because his face has been rubbed into it until it's raw.
OK, that is quite a digression. Back to the episode. I kept thinking, why is John the least affected by Traltixx in this ep? I am sure the eyesight has something to do with it (I love how Farscape turns on its head the old trope of humans being saviors because they are better. Crichton is 'better' because he is handicapped, because he doesn't see so well). But I think there are other issues here: for one thing, Crichton is a researcher, someone who must be analytical by nature. More importantly, he is attuned to oddness not just because of his post-Scorpy paranoia but because he is a stranger to a strange land, sensitized.
The crew is horrifically ugly to each other in this one, but the ep is also mind-blowingly hilarious. Not like Out of their Minds, which is just plain funny. This one is funny with a sting. Some pretty bad things are sad. I am struck not even as much by the Aeryn-John showdown (they know each other the best, so they really know where to hurt. Though I am still wondering how you can be both frigid and a skank :)) but I think it's because Aeryn and John cause each other such universes of pain, exactly when they are not trying to, but only trying to protect themselves or even do what
is best for the other, that this is small fry. What is a little exchange of gunfire and a hit at Aeryn's being a traitor or John not measuring up to his father in comparison with Die Me Dichotomy or the coin toss or so much of late S3 or S4?
What I am really struck by are other interactions: D'Argo with Rygel, flopping the little guy around like...well, a puppet, force-feeding him crackers. It's ugly. We haven't seen D'Argo attack a helpless being since DNA Mad Scientist, and we've forgotten, and it hurts. Though it does show a difference: here it's Traltixx doing an equivalent of drugging him. The inner savage is much further from the surface. The crew from early S1 would have succumbed to Traltixx in ten minutes flat.
And Crichton with Chiana. It's an unnerving scene, horrible to watch, precisely because normally John is so protective of her, because for Chiana, John is in many ways her safe harbor, her surrogate big brother, someone who she would always feel safe in the area of sex with (i.e. he won't, with her). But he turns that protection on its head, something ugly (though luckily, most of the horrible stuff comes from Harvey, not John, so she doesn't hear it). This is such a reversal of his attitude in Taking the Stone so I think it's interesting that the attitudes in here and TtS are juxtposed (in TtS Crichton is losing it a bit, slowly, but it makes him more protective, not less. That is the natural 'insane' Crichton, not the one where someone took over). And then of course, later, when he is back to sanity and tries to apologize, she blows it off, acts impressed. Chiana is queen of repression in some ways, however open she is in others.
You know, there is another reason why Crichton was the one to pull it together. (And no, I am not just referring to stubborness). He already has that endge of insanity to him and it's growing slowly larger. So has he figured out how to cope under weirdness while maintaining some control? He's had to persevere through some horrid stuff and had his head messed up with, so he can temporarily put aside distractions...
Anyway, this is really stream of consciousness, so I better stop for now...
P.S. Cool bit of foreshadowing, Chiana aligning with D'Argo here...
