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"You can't take them all at once." - Scorpius
"How dumb do you think I am? Take 'em one by one, the Die Hard way." - Crichton
Episode 4.08, "I Shrink Therefore I Am"
Written by Christopher Wheeler
Directed by Rowan Woods
Air Date: 8.02.02
I'll be the first to admit, I had serious misgivings about an episode that featured incredibly shrinking crewmembers. But talk about your pleasant surprises - "I Shrink Therefore I Am" is my new favorite episode of season four so far.
The premise is simple enough - a group of Coreeshi bounty hunters have taken control of Moya and her crew with amazing efficiency. Only Crichton and Noranti, who are just returning from a supply run, have yet to be captured. But Crichton is the real prize to these bounty hunters; the crew is merely leverage. The Coreeshi, by the way, are probably the coolest race of aliens we've been introduced to in a long time. They even make those Tarkans from "Lava's..." look pretty tame by comparison.
But John's no idiot. Between Pilot's subtle hints ("everyone's eating, except Rygel") and seeing an alien ship attached to Moya's hull, he knows what's up, and proceeds to eject himself and Wrinkles as he kamikazes the transport pod into their ship, completely destroying it. Then, he leaves granny outside in a 'vacuum coma' as he proceeds to infiltrate the ship and take out the Coreeshi one at a time, Die Hard-style as he points out.
Now while the entire crew is indeed incapacitated, Scorpius has managed to evade capture by escaping his cell. As it turns out, he could have escaped at any point, but simply chose not to. This goes a long way to win over John's trust, albeit troubling. So Crichton and Scorpy go off Coreeshi hunting together. I gotta admit, I thought it was pretty cool watching these two working together side-by-side. A classic scene is when they meet up with their first bounty hunter in the atmospheric scrubber chamber. Scorpius sneaks up behind the guy and says, "looking for something?" only to find out John gave him an uncharged weapon. He manages to get out, "Thank you, John" before taking a shot in the chest. That's good stuff. After that, however, John does actually give Scorpy a loaded weapon.
The whole shrinking thing comes into play shortly thereafter, when Axikor, the head bounty hunter, reveals his containment method. Each crewmember is summarily shrunken and placed into little canisters which fit into the Coreeshi armor. So now John's problem is made more complicated by the fact killing the Coreeshi risks killing his friends.
Crichton's Die Hard antics eventually fail, but he's saved by vital information provided by Scorpius. It turns out that the head Coreeshi is actually a ruling class Scarran, who's been surgically grafted into one of their armor exo-suit things. This saves Crichton's life as he's able to get the other bounty hunters to question Axikor. Unfortunately, Axikor simply kills them all, and in the end it's just him and Crichton.
It's a great fight sequence as John's procured some Coreeshi tech at this point and is able to counter all of Axikor's tricks. It sets up a fantastic finish as Crichton un-shrinks himself as Axikor is still tiny and squashes him like a cockroach. In fact, Crichton even says, "Donde esta la cucaracha?" I don't know what's prompted his sudden use of spanish this season, but it's pretty damn funny.
Before he died, though, Axikor warned Crichton that they'd be seeing more of his kind. You know, you'd think the galaxy would be a pretty big place, but I guess it gets small real quick when you're being hunted in PK space, Scarran space, and just having generally bad luck in the uncharted territories to boot. Facing this dilemma, Crichton and Pilot come up with an idea - flea to Tormented Space, an area so hazardous no one dares to go there. Now this is the only part of the episode I wasn't totally about. So lemme get this straight - there's a region of space that is a nexus of wormholes and other spacetime anamolies, yet they never thought this would have been relevant to Crichton before? But wait -- as it was presented, Crichton already seemed to know about it, which doesn't make any sense. I feel like there's a scene on the cutting room floor where Pilot first tells of its existence to John, and then they ask Aeryn for her opinion. As it was though, it just seemed to come out of nowhere. I don't necessarily mind that, since that's kind of Farscape's style - we only learn tidbits about the galaxy as John does. But we weren't there when he first learned of this, which I guess is what bothers me. Okay, it's a small thing I guess. Rant over.
All in all, just a fantastic episode. The whole thing's got a really cool, ominous vibe to it, largely thanks to the direction and score. And how can you not love an episode where the aliens think Crichton is such a worthy adversary and call him 'ingenious.' About time he got some props. It'll also be interesting to see just what this Tormented Space thing will be like, and how much of the season it will encompass. At least we finally got another glimpse of the impending Scarran War with Axikor's last words.
Episode Rating: 9 out of 10
- Rafael "Ultra Magnus" Pujals
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