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Greetings Scapers!
We now enter the second week of this new fractured crew dynamic. Last time we had the Ben Browder-written Green Eyed Monster, which featured Talyn's crew. This time around the action shifts back to Moya and her passengers.
"Losing Time"
Season III, Episode IX
Directed by Catherine Millar
Written by Justin Monjo
For ten solar days, Pilot & co. have been humoring their Crichton by looking for a wormhole. Moya detected some deep space variances, and hell if Crichton can let such a thing go unexplored. When the search turns up fruitless, however, the crew becomes impatient, and demands they turn around. About this time, Pilot reports that Moya is entering an electro-magnetic cluster. And of course, in the strange, exotic universe that is Farscape, you can't have an electro-magnetic cluster without some noncorporeal aliens lurking about.
Sure enough, an energy being is loose on board, first passing through Crichton and knocking him out. Everyone else is quick to dismiss Crichton's account as a sleep-deprived hallucination until Pilot himself becomes possessed by an alien calling himself Tallip. He says that he's there to capture a diseased energy rider, who's hiding in one of the crew, and must be killed before he does irreversable damage to the host. Finding the host in question is easier said than done, however, as Tallip must 'taste' each crewmember in succession, a process which is nearly fatal. Of course, as it turns out, the energy rider is not the crew's only problem, as Tallip himself may have other motives...
All in all, a pretty decent, but not great episode. It's major failing perhaps is that it's too reminscient of better Farscape episodes, like the similary themed "A Bug's Life", where a virus was on the loose and hiding in somebody. That was a truly fantastic episode, and by comparison this one falls a little flat. For one thing, I don't quite find it believable that an energy being would voluntarily confine itself to a corporeal body, whereas the virus needed a host. Other than that, it just didn't really have much in the way of tension -- at least nothing like the Mexican standoff at the end of the aforementioned "Bug's Life." I also thought there might have been a minor plot hole or two, and from what I can tell, this was the first episode ever without even a single frame of the lovely Claudia Black -- simply a tragedy.
But that's not to say it was without merit. This episode hints at a plethora of things to come. And it also marks the return of Scorpius, which is where the biggest development took place. In a conversation with Braka, he tells him that Scarran forces are assembling for an all-out assault on the Peacekeepers. As if Scarrans weren't threatening enough, they now outnumber the PK's ten to one. With galaxy bragging rights on the line, the only thing postponing the imminent war is the deception that PK's have already cracked wormhole technology. A bluff that Scorpius fears the Scarrans will not believe much longer.
And on a less important note, did you see Jool's outfit?...ouch. Say what you will about her personality, that's one hot alien chick. Then there's also the "sexual" encounter between John and the infected Chiana. "That's not natural...Good God!", exclaims John as he leaves walking rather awkwardly. Funny stuff. Crichton also communicated with a DRD quite effectively by using a blinking system (one for yes, two for no) after which he dubbed the 'lil guy, "DRD Pike." There was also the usual lot of great lines:
Tallip: "How do I know one of you is not infected? That this plan is not the rider's plan?"
D'Argo: "It's not -- believe me. This plan is so bad, it has to be ours."
John: "How about you? Anything strange happen to you guys?"
D'Argo: "I live on this ship. Something strange always happens."
D'Argo: "No, you're both staying."
Chiana: "What if I have to piss?"
D'Argo: "Well, then we will all urinate together."
D'Argo's become quite the funnyman, eh? Well, like I said, an entertaining episode, but pretty average by the show's standards. And poor DRD Pike...have we seen the last of him?...
Episode Rating: 7 out of 10
Next week promises to be more of an event episode, as we shift back to Talyn and get to see the big confrontation between Aeryn and her mother. Stay tuned...
- your resident Farscape guru, Ultra Magnus
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