I missed a lot of it last season, and I’m really confused. What is the deal with Scorpius and AerynSun? What happened to D’Argo’s son? When did AerynSun get such long hair? So many questions…
( SPOILERS for Seasons Three and Four )
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Aeryn left Moya to join some mercenaries and was gone for four episodes. Scorpius was left for dead by the Peacekeepers, but survived (surprise!) and went looking for Crichton et al. He found Aeryn Sun incapacitated and brought her back to Moya.
They found Jothee in Season Two and he came aboard, but departed five eps later when D’Argo discovered that his lover, Chiana, was also banging his son.
She’s always had long hair, but it does seem to have grown. Perhaps it’s a side affect of being…no, I won’t give it away.
Of course I’ll bet anything that if Heloise saw last night’s episode, she’s probably more confused than ever!
But then again, this is Farscape we’re talking about…
A quick recap of Farscape Season 3 (and the last bit of Season 2 and the first bit of Season 4) Obviously, spoilers abound, so…
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Season 2
At the end of Season 2, Moya and her crew go to a Diagnostician who says he can heal Moya from the damage caused by burning out the parasites they picked up from the Shadow Depository. The Diagnostician also thinks he can safely remove the Neural Chip from John’s brain. However, the Neural Clone still controls John and he leaves Moya, attempting to contact Scorpius and his Command Carrier.
Aeryn goes after John but John damages her Prowler with his module and she is forced to eject. She crashes through the surface of a frozen lake and drowns.
Distraught, John briefly regains control of himself and the crew holds a funeral for Aeryn. Having completed his work on Moya, the Diagnostician begins work on John. The others return to Moya to wait since John, feeling responsible for the death of Aeryn, to whom he had finally pronounced his love and who had pronounced her love for him, did not want them around.
The Diagnostician is able to remove the chip but destroys John’s speech center in the process. He is about to restore John’s speech when Scorpius appears and kills the Diagnostician then takes the chip, leaving John screaming incoherently on the operating table.
Season 3
Fortunately Rygel, who has made a deal with the Diagnostician’s assistant for a ship, returns to the planet and finds John. He contacts the others and is able to revive the Diagnostician. The facility contains thousands of frozen bodies and the Diagnostician is able to determine that three of them, a race known as the Interion, are compatible with Humans. He is able to use cerebral fluid from one of them to heal John but the Interion is killed in the process.
Meanwhile, Zhaan has found where Aeryn’s body is also frozen. With the unwilling aid of Stark, she is able to revive Aeryn and bring her back, but at a great cost to herself.
Aeryn, in turn, is able to save John and D’Argo from a Scarran who is in the facility looking for Scorpius. Unfortunately, the Diagnostician and his assistant are killed and Scorpius and Braca escape. The crew leaves, taking the two remaining frozen Interions with them.
A remnant of the neural clone still exists within John’s mind. Weaker than it was before, it appears to John from time to time to offer advice, observations or insults. Often these conversations take place within an imaginary mental landscape. John names the neural clone Harvey.
Chiana learns that D’Argo is planning to ask her to marry him and to move to a farming planet. Not wanting that as her life, she begins an affair with Jothee. When D’Argo learns of this he breaks off his relationship with Chiana. Jothee leaves in shame and Chiana struggles to regain the trust of D’Argo.
The two frozen Interions are accidentally released. One dies but the other, Joolushko Tunai Fenta Hovalis (known simply as “Jool”), survives and becomes another (semi-unwilling) member of the crew.
The saving of Aeryn’s life has cost Zhaan dearly and she is dying. Moya is attempting to reach a planet where she may be saved but stops briefly so that John can examine a wormhole. A ship, belonging to the Pathfinders exits from the wormhole and collides with Moya, fusing the two ships together and trapping them within the wormhole.
John is obsessed with the wormhole, especially when he picks up a television transmission from Earth within it. Almost too late, he realizes that the Pathfinders are using Moya’s crew. The ships are able to separate and the Pathfinder ship is destroyed along with Zhaan, who was forced to remain on the other ship in order to achieve the separation.
A small ship of Luxan design is discovered and brought on board Moya. D’Argo, still upset over Chiana’s betrayal, begins to spend much time aboard it while trying to learn how to operate it.
The crew encounters an alien who has the ability to duplicate individuals, one of which it then consumes. It duplicates John but the alien is destroyed before he can be eaten, resulting in there being two Johns, each identical to the other.
Moya encounters Talyn and Crais again, who are now being pursued by a Peacekeeper Retrieval Squad being lead by Xhalax Sun, Aeryn’s mother. After repairing Talyn the two ships and crews separate. One of the Johns, along with Aeryn, Rygel and Stark leave on Talyn with Crais. The other John, D’Argo, Chiana, Jool and Pilot remain on Moya.
On Talyn, John and Aeryn finally consummate their relationship and become lovers, which causes some problems with jealousy from both Crais and Talyn. They also encounter Xhalax several times and Aeryn attempts to reason with her mother but her attempts are rebuffed.
The John on Talyn is later contacted by the Ancient who has taken the form of his father. The Ancients are concerned that John is misusing the wormhole knowledge they have given him as they have seen his module traveling through a wormhole. It is then learned that the module was not John’s but was instead one built by Furlow, based on the notes he gave her several cycles before.
Furlow had been working with a race known as the Charrid but they have now taken her prisoner and are dealing with the Scarrans. John, the Ancient and the others rescue her but the Scarrans escape with the details of the phase stabilizer, a device necessary for safe passage through unstable wormholes.
The Ancient comes up with a plan to destroy the Scarran dreadnought by using a wormhole as a weapon. They construct the device necessary for this but Furlow kills the Ancient and runs with it. John catches her and retrieves the device but Furlow escapes. John activates the device and the dreadnought is destroyed but he is unable to get out of range and receives a fatal dose of radiation.
John returns to Talyn and says goodbye to those on board; all of whom are his friends, even Crais. He and Aeryn profess their love for one another one final time and he dies.
Talyn goes to a world of the dead so that Aeryn can mourn for John. There, she encounters Xhalax again. This time it seems that they may reach an understanding when Crais appears and, misunderstanding what is happening, kills Xhalax.
Stark leaves again, this time to look for the sprit of Zhaan.
Meanwhile, on Moya, John continues his obsession with wormholes which strains his relations with the rest of the crew to the breaking point.
At one point a strange energy parasite invades Chiana while another takes over Pilot. The crew manages to get rid of the parasites but as a residual effect of her possession Chiana begins to have random visions of future events.
John finally pushes D’Argo too far when D’Argo thinks John has been interfering with his ship. D’Argo knocks John into a coma, from which he barely recovers. D’Argo, meanwhile, learns that the interference was caused by Jool, who was hoping to gain his respect and attract his attention.
The two crews eventually reunite and the John from Moya is shocked to learn that the other John has died. Is is more distraught by the fact that Aeryn avoids him and will not talk to him. She feels that “her” John is dead and that this John is not the one she fell in love with. John learns of what happened to Talyn and her crew from a recording left for him by Stark.
Talyn becomes increasingly hard to control and finally, in a moment of panic, he destroys an unarmed hospital ship. Reluctantly, the crew shuts down his higher functions which leaves him in a state similar to a coma.
Realizing the implications of the wormhole weapon the Ancient created John decides that no one should have such knowledge. He determines to destroy Scorpius’ new base and make sure his wormhole project ends forever. He is supported by Aeryn and Crais and reluctantly by the rest of the crew.
Rygel works out a deal with Scorpius where the crew will be taken aboard Scorpius’ Command Carrier, where the wormhole research is now being carried out. They will be given full immunity while on board and both John and Scorpius will wear I-Yensch You-Yensch bracelets, which will cause each of them to feel any pain inflicted upon the other. In exchange, he tells Scorpius that John will willingly help him with his wormhole research.
Everyone goes aboard the Command Carrier but the Peacekeepers there do not welcome them. Especially shunned are Aeryn and Crais, both of whom are seen as traitors. Crais convinces them to take Talyn on board and Talyn’s main weaponry is removed.
D’Argo is given information about the location of Macton, his wife’s murderer.
Scorpius tells John of his history and John comes to realize why Scorpius considers the Scarrans to be a threat. He starts to question if he should destroy the research or not and begins to slow his plans. Scorpius further threatens him by showing him an image of Earth. He has located it and says that if John does not cooperate then he will see the Earth destroyed. Even without wormholes, the Peacekeepers could reach Earth in 60 cycles.
Things are complicated by the arrival of Mele-On Grayza, a senior Peacekeeper officer from High Command. She orders the crew arrested and the wormhole project canceled. She feels that a diplomatic solution can be reached with the Scarrans but they must stop their research to show good faith.
She also wants John and the others arrested. The exploits of Moya’s crew are becoming legendary and the Peacekeepers are now a laughingstock on many worlds due to their inability to capture them.
John decides to proceed with the destruction of Scorpius’ research and eventually they decide they must destroy the Command Carrier. To do so, Crais goes aboard Talyn and restores his higher functions. Then, they Starburst from inside the docking bay, destroying themselves but also causing an implosion and the destruction of the Command Carrier.
The others all manage to escape. John encounters Scorpius one last time and they release each other from their bracelets. John offers to help Scorpius to escape but he chooses to remain behind. The two part, still enemies but with a mutual respect for one another.
Moya carries the remains of Talyn and deposits them within the sacred Leviathan Burial Space. The crew, which now includes the seer Noranti who they rescued from the destruction of the Command Carrier, plans to go their own ways. D’Argo plans to go hunt for his wife’s killer, Rygel plans to return and reclaim his throne and Chiana plans to go searching for her brother.
John, sometimes with the aid of Noranti, has visions of a life on Earth with Aeryn but the visions end in disaster. He realizes that he must make a choice between returning home and staying with Aeryn and his friends.
He confronts Aeryn, who is leaving to join a mercenary band, but their relationship is still strained. The death of the other John (and those of her mother and Talyn) is still on her mind and she cannot be with him.
John sits alone in his module as his friends, D’Argo, Rygel, Chiana and Aeryn, leave to go their separate ways. He is about to return to Moya, where only Pilot, Jool and Noranti remain, when Harvey helps him remember something that Noranti told him; Aeryn is with child.
John yells for Pilot to retrieve him so they can go after Aeryn but before he can do so a wormhole appears from nowhere and Moya is pulled away through it. John is left floating in space, his module out of fuel, in the Leviathan Burial Space.
Season 4
Fortunately, John is rescued by the ancient Leviathan Elack and her Pilot. Elack and her Pilot had agreed long ago that when it was time for them to die they would go to the Burial Space. John stays aboard Elack for a quarter to a half cycle, his only companion a DRD he names 1812. During this time, he is able to finally work out and understand wormholes.
He is interrupted by the arrival of Sikozu Svala Shanti Sugaysi Shanu. (No, really). She is an academic and researcher but has little actual experience. She has located the Burial Space and given its location to a group which harvests Leviathan neural tissue. They now want to kill her in order to prevent her from revealing the location of the Burial Space to anyone else.
Chiana and Rygel arrive and with their aid John and Sikozu are able to save Elack. In gratitude, Elack takes John and his friends to a planet where they think they may meet others of the crew. Sikozu comes along as a semi-unwilling companion.
Chiana and Rygel report that there are wanted beacons for them everywhere, issued by Grayza. She also tells John that her visions have advanced; now she can see things in the present but in very slow motion. She was using this ability to win an unbeatable casino game but was captured, raped and tortured for it.
Elack and her passengers arrive at a planet to which Jool had apparently said she would be going to. (Apparently, since this scene does not appear in any previous episode.) Jool is here and working on an archeological site, along with D’Argo and Noranti. Jool does not mention what happened after Moya was pulled through the wormhole and Noranti only says to ask Pilot when he and Moya return. D’Argo does not mention anything about Macton.
Braca has been promoted to captain and is now commanding a Command Carrier of his own. He is working under Grayza, who has taken Scorpius prisoner. Scorpius is tortured in the Aurora Chair and has a yellow rod inserted into his cooling unit which apparently robs him of his motor control.
Grayza, it is revealed, has a gland implanted in her breast which secretes a chemical which has an aphrodisiac-like effect on men. She uses this to control Braca.
Grayza arrives at the planet and takes everyone prisoner. She uses her ability on John in an attempt to learn what it is that makes him so important. Also, as a gesture of “good will” to him, she brings in Scorpius on a chain, being lead on a collar like a dog. Later, she has Scorpius shot and buried. Before she does so, Scorpius tells Sikozu a code word which causes Grayza to let her go free.
D’Argo and Sikozu are able to come up with a plan to free John and the others. Elack helps them in the escape by, in her death, crashing into the Peacekeepers Marauders. Jool remains behind on the planet in order to continue the archeological research.
The others leave on D’Argo’s ship, which he has now named Lo’La after his dead wife, with John’s module being towed behind it. They reach Moya but Pilot claims to not remember anything about the wormhole and seems to be somewhat evasive.
The crew land on Moya and they find Aeryn on board. John’s happiness at seeing her is short-lived when it is revealed that she is suffering from heat delirium and when she asks John to promise to not kill “him”.
“Him” turns out to be Scorpius, who is on board. He claims he found Aeryn while looking for the others. She was suffering from heat delirium and that he has saved her. He does not offer an explanation as to how he escaped. John keeps his promise to Aeryn but has Scorpius locked up in a cell.
It is revealed that Aeryn was infected with heat delirium while on a planet where she assassinated the local ruler. A representative from the planet confronts them and says he will save Aeryn if she tells him who she was working for. She refuses.
Scorpius now reveals that he has a spy on the Command Carrier and tells John that Braca and Grayza will soon launch a missile which will destroy Moya. With Sikozu’s help, they are able to defeat the other ship and get the cure for Aeryn. They also use the other ship as a decoy and the missle destroys it instead of Moya.
By this point, Sikozu has become infatuated with Scorpius. She almost looks on him with hero worship.
John proves that he has mastered wormholes. He is able to predict when and where a wormhole will appear.
Aeryn has revealed to Chiana that she is pregnant. She also tells her that she is not sure who the father is. Peacekeeper women can keep a fetus in “stasis” for up to seven cycles and it cannot be released to develop without the aid of a surgeon. She only learned that she was pregnant while on the Command Carrier and has not had time to have the baby’s DNA analyzed.
Chiana, of course, tells D’Argo who tells John. John later confronts Aeryn and is upset that she did not trust him enough to tell him.
Aeryn says she has now worked everything out for herself and she is ready to come back to John. John, however, is not ready to take her back. He says that he will trust her with his life, buty not his heart, and to “come back when you’ve got your story straight”.
And now, you’re up to date…
I really got to start watching this show…
Uh…yep!
Wow, I have to say thanks to you guys for giving me spoilers and a big thank you to tanstaafl for all the detail work! I appreciate it!
Tanks, too. I’m gonna have to get the DVD’s when they come out.
Wow, and here I thought I knew what was going on.
Huzzahs to tanstaafl for such a detailed wrap-up. I had to bump this, not only because it’s a damn shame this fine show’s been cancelled, but I gotta tell ya: You mispelled ‘Television’ in your sig line.
I just saw that this got bumped. Where is “television” misspelled? And did you know you misspelled “misspelled?”
And yes, I’m extremely bummed that the show was cancelled.
tanstaafl
That wrap-up did kick ass. I would like to hear what your explantion of the season finale. That one was extremely convoluted.
~t
postcards - Oops. Thanks for catching that… :smack:
PolishSausage - Are you asking about the third season finale (3.22 - Dog with Two Bones) or the last episode aired this season (4.11 - Unrealized Reality)?
Last last of the fourth season. It didn’t leave me with a good taste in my mouth.
~t
OK, Unrealized Reality…
First off, I think most everyone who watched this episode missed a few key items but I think that was intentional on the part of TPTB. All of these were in the teaser.
First, John is floating outside. Aeryn is inside trying to learn English. This is interesting because back in Dog With Two Bones the first vision he has in which Aeryn is unhappy on Earth shows her having trouble with English and being frustrated by it. This is one of the reasons he decides that she would not be happy on Earth and why he decides to stay in the Uncharted Territories with her.
But, her trying to learn English indicates that she does want to go to Earth with him. Which means the visions he had in DWTB of her being unhappy may be wrong.
Who was responsible for most of those visions? Noranti.
Which leads directly into the next scene. D’Argo discovers that Noranti has been giving John the Laka extract to help him get over Aeryn. D’Argo seems to think this is a Bad Idea[sup]TM[/sup] but John dismisses it.
This, I think, is a very strong hint that Noranti is not the harmless, senile mystic she is presenting herself as and that she may have her own, unknown designs on John. It seems that she wants to keep John and Aeryn apart, for some reason. I don’t think we know her agenda yet and I don’t think she has John’s best interests in mind.
There is also the interesting scene with Scorpius and Sikozu…
I just wanted to mention that since most of the analysis of this episode has tended to ignore the teaser and focus on the main plotline but I think there were some important bits there too.
Anyway, on to the main plot. John is pulled into the wormhole and finds himself in another place/dimension/space/plane of existence/whatever and encounters the being he calls Einstein. Einstein is, for lack of a better term, an ur-Ancient. The Ancients, who as you remember first planted the wormhole equations in John’s mind, were created by Einstein’s people.
The ur-Ancients live in a different space than we do, but our space and theirs are connected by the wormholes and because of them events in one universe can affect events in the other. The ur-Ancients cannot live in our space so they modified some of their own people to become the Ancients we knew. The Ancients were supposed to monitor and control wormhole knowledge in our universe but, for some reason, all of them have disappeared or gone into hiding.
Several questions are now raised. Why did the Ancients apparently abandon their mission and go into hiding? And why, before doing so, did they implant the wormhole equations in John’s mind? These questions are not answered in the episode.
Einstein and his people were interested in John because he had been spending too much time in and around wormholes. They were the ones who pulled Moya into the wormhole at the end of DWTB. They did this to find out what was going on (since the Ancients, their spies in our universe, had disappeared). Once they found John was the one responsible they returned Moya and waited to grab John the next time he entered a wormhole.
They wanted John because he is able to travel safely within a wormhole and is able to predict when and where they will appear. It also seems that his knowledge is still increasing.
There is a danger associated with wormhole travel (Beyond the obvious one of turning into goo whenever you do so… :)) Wormholes travel not only through space but through time. Actually, multiple times. There is only one “reality”, but wormholes also connect to what Einstein calls “unrealized realities”. Think of these as alternate universes. They do not exist, but potentially could exist.
If someone travels through a wormhole and returns to a place where they have previously been but at an earlier time (arriving before they left, so to speak) then they may land in one of the unrealized realities instead of the real one. If they do so and remain there, then the unrealized reality in question becomes the “real” reality. Not just for the person who went through the wormhole, but for everyone and everything in both universes. (Both ours and the ur-Ancient’s). This is generally considered to be a Bad Thing[sup]TM[/sup].
Normally, the odds of this happening are so close to zero that it could be assumed that it would never happen. (It was “mathematically disharmonious” as Einstein put it; love that phrase.) However, because of the knowlege John has, he is able to understand and control wormhole travel well enough that he could land in one of these other realities. This means that John is literally a threat to the stability of the universe as we know it. (No, really!)
(There is some slight techo-babble here about acquring a “space-time signature” everytime one travels through a wormhole and that the more often you do so the more signatures you “catalog”, which leads to more opportunities to return to the wrong time.)
Initially Einstein had planned to kill John once they captured him. But, once he realized that John had been given the knowledge he had by the Ancients, he decided that they must have had a reason for doing so, even if he cannot determine what that reason was. So, he and the other ur-Ancients decided to let John live.
But, by doing so, they allow him to remain a potential threat. So, they had to convince him of the potential danger of wormhole travel.
They do this in two ways. First, some of them take the forms of people he has known to try to demonstrate and explain the concept and effects to him. (These are the people in the “Biography” style interviews.) Second, they actually send him to several of the unrealized realities in order to show him what they are like. Realities where Aeryn is a Nebari tralk, where John is a Peacekeeper officer or one where he is working with Crais against the rest of the crew, or a reality where John is a Scarran/Human hybrid after the Scarrans have conquered Earth. These are all potential realities, but realities which could become real if John makes a mistake during wormhole travel and returns somewhere before he left.
The ur-Ancients continue with their persuasion and demonstrations until John finally accepts what they are telling him. He even suggest that they kill him. However, as they do not know why the Ancients gave him the knowledge in the first place, they feel they need to send him back.
(There is also the secondary reason that John has been preventing the more hostile species in the area (Scarrans and Peacekeepers in particular) from acquiring wormhole knowledge themselves. Einstein asks John if he plans to continue to do this and John tells him “not as a career”.)
Now that John recognizes the danger, they prepare to send him back to our universe but first try to tell him what to do if he does happen to land in an unrealized reality. They tell him to fix the first thing he finds that goes wrong. Time will try to repair itself and if he can push things close enough then things might go back to normal. John realizes that Scorpius (well, Harvey) told him the same thing in Different Destinations and so realizes that Scorpius knows a lot more about wormholes than he has been letting on. (Hmmm… Scorpius’ interest in John and wormholes suddenly becomes a bit more sinister, doesn’t it?)
Now, early on, Einstein asked John why he was interested in wormholes and John replied that he was trying to get “home”. But, where is home for John? Sure, after DWTB he decided to not return to Earth and to stay in the Uncharted Territories with Aeryn, but now he is keeping his distance from Aeryn and may be wanting to return to Earth again. (Hmmm… Noranti’s involvement here seems a bit more sinister too.)
When the ur-Ancients are preparing to send John back through the wormhole, he is repeating “home… Moya… after…”. So, he goes through the wormhole and finds himself home.
Not Moya though… Earth. As John says, “Oops.”
Now, has he arrived before he left? Well, the next episode (which will air here in the US in January) is titled Kansas.
That’s my take on the episode. The unrealized reality segments were there as demonstrations to John and shouldn’t have too much read into them except as humorous diversions. (Rygel as a Luxan warrior? D’Argo as an Interon debutante?) The only one I think might turn out to be significant is the one where John is a PK officer and Sikozu is a Scarran spy. (Since it seems that Sikozu may have an agenda we don’t know about yet. She has stated several times that she doesn’t want to be with the others on Moya but had the opportunity to leave at the end of A Prefect Murder and said she couldn’t.) Hope this helps.