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Greetings Scapers!
Like horror movies? Well, then you probably loved last week's installment. It's too bad this one didn't air over Halloween, because it's about as creepy and gory as I'd ever expect this show to get. Read on as Farscape goes Night of the Living Dead on your ass.
Season III, Episode VI
"Eat Me"
Original Air Date: 4.20.01
Director: Ian Watson Writer: Matt Ford
Crichton, Chiana, D'Argo and Jool are aboard a transport pod on some unnamed mission (presumably to some commerce station) when something goes wrong. Jool's tinkered with the controls and all hell's breaking loose. Just as it seems hopeless, they make it back to Moya, except that it's not -- it's another leviathan, and it has a control collar on it. D'Argo recognizes the danger involved with landing on a ship full with PK's, but John assures him that they have no choice.
It's once they get inside that things start to go really wrong. D'Argo is immediately attacked by some ravenous, vaguely sebacean looking creature and the ship is decaying. Yet someone is aboard, that's for sure, because they were allowed to enter the airlock and it closed behind them. As they split up to find the necessary parts to repair their transport, each of them sees some pretty nasty stuff. John finds the ship's pilot, who is being eaten alive by more zombie-like cannibals. What's even more horrible, they allow him to live, so that his arms will regenerate, and then eat them again. The pilot begs John to kill him, but John insists that he tell him what happened. As it turns out, this particular leviathan was carrying some criminally insane prisoners, but was attacked by Scarrans, which left the ship crippled, and one prisoner, Kaarvok, was able to take control. As for the cannibals-- Kaarvok has a device that duplicates people, but the more times it's done, the person basically becomes a raving idiot.
This episode is fairly light on plot, but gets by exceptionally well on it's direction and atmosphere, much like Beware of Dog from season II. Everything is just right, from the extended use of the signature swaying camera to the spooky music. And of course, along the way, there were some splendid highlights. Jool, scared out of her mind, tried to shoot herself in the head but can't operate the pulse gun properly. She's becoming some pretty solid comic relief, despite her annoying tendencies.
The "twinning" device also played some havoc in this ep. D'Argo got twinned first, and John and Chiana witnessed Kaarvok sucking the brains out of the copy. Assuming D'Argo was dead, it was a pretty heavy moment. To ensure he wouldn't be eaten, they burned and disposed of his corpse. And then Chiana got twinned, and again, the copy was killed. John started to really freak out when he saw the cannibals munching away on the nebari beauty. Of course, the main problem is, whose to say it was the original D'Argo and Chiana that were killed? It doesn't seem possible to ever know for sure, and that notion had Chiana noticably disturbed.
So this episode was well on its way to being a delightfully entertaining filler story, but it ends up being much, much more. Eventually the crew does escape the doomed leviathan in the repaired transport, but not before two Crichton's get on board.
The final scene has the two playing rock, scissors, paper indefinitely, seemingly trying to prove who is the "real" Crichton. It doesn't prove anything, however, because neither can win and break the tie. How this plays out in future episodes will certainly be very interesting.
Episode Rating: 8 out of 10
Now, the bad news -- no more new Farscape until June 15...but hey, at least between now and then another DVD and the first book, "House of Cards" will be released.
- your resident Farscape guru, Ultra Magnus
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