2023/07/14

After watching the last season of Farscape, I am not sure which is my favorite but it definitely is either season 3 or season 4! For me this is, I think, mostly because of the more and more continued story-arc, the coming war between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans. Those episodes where the icing on the cake for me! What I was also happy with, with season 4 was that there are no black bars anymore on either side, it was presented in 16:9, which is of course preferable to 4:3 on a widescreen TV. Again the intro was updated, which was a nice touch where we see Scorpius and Grayza and even a Scarran in the clipshow passing by.

A new character was also introduced, Sikozu Svala Shanti Sugaysi Shanu, aka Sikozu, a Kalish bioloid, an operative of both a mysterious organization which employed her to study Leviathans (of whom she became a book expert) and the Kalish resistance movement. She was forced to join with Crichton and the rest and later on allied herself with Scorpius. Crichton said it right when he said: she is too smart! As said, I really love this season, of course there are episodes which aren’t as good as some others but on the whole this is a very solid season with a few lows and lots of highs. For me, the Scarran storyline was something I was particularly fond of, they were spoken of in the first 3 seasons, where shown now and again but in the last season they get to the center stage of the series, which made Farscape for me MUST SEE TV! Before this rewatch I liked Farscape, it was good SCI-FI, purchased it on Blu-ray all those many years ago not because didn’t like it! But with this last rewatch this has definitely changed, I do not just like Farscape anymore, I absolutely love it! It is in my top 10 favorite SCI-FI TV shows now and it has a lot of competition let me tell you.

I am going to discuss the episodes which I graded 8.5/10 or higher, most of them a 9/10! Which are 10 (!!) episodes! The first one is episode 5, “Promises” where the crew comes back to Moya and are in for a surprise. Aeryn is back but is accompanied by Scorpius and she asks Crichton not to hurt him. She is suffering from heat delirium and Scorpius is the one who saved her. Scorpius wants asylum. Apparently Aeryn has assassinated a high official and Ullom wants to arrest her and he is the one who induced her heat delirium. Episode 8, “I Shrink, Therefore I am” is also a favorite of mine, scores 9/10. When Crichton returns to Moya, he knows there something wrong because of Pilots answers. Moya has been seized by an alien called Axikor but Crichton destroys their transport and comes on board with the intention of taking out the boarding party. The head of the invaders has disguised himself as another species which his own crew isn’t aware of. He is a bounty hunter, initially working for Grayza but the alien wants to bring him back to his home world to figure out why he is so important to the Peacekeepers and Scorpius. And yeah, these aliens have the ability to shrink other beings! – Note – Serious but also time for humor, especially when the shrinking begins!

This is a start of a working relationship between Crichton and Scorpius. Although Crichton has not much of a choice, he doesn’t trust him but he now does live on the ship and he promised Aeryn not to hurt Scorpius in any way.

Episode 12 “Kansas” also gets a 9/10 from me where Crichton is orbiting Earth in 1986, the crew comes to pick him up, and go down to earth. His dad is preparing to go on the challenger where the entire crew gets killed! In the previous timeline his father didn’t go with the challenger so Crichton needs to convince him not to go. (Ancient) Einstein said that if he was able to correct the first difference, everything else would change too. Grayza has left an monstrous alien on Moya for Crichton. Note - Nice moment with his mum who had passed away 4 years before the Farscape project. Real fun episode, but also kind of emotional ride for Crichton to be back, seeing his mum and dad, seeing himself as a teenager. When they get back to Moya, present time, his dad is waiting for him.

Episode 13 “Terra Firma” is another one, 9/10, part two, directly ties into “Kansas”. Crichton finally has found his home, he brings his friends but it soon turns out that his friends aren’t very welcome. Crichton and his dad are at odds, Crichton wants to share the alien technology with the world, his dad wants to keep it for the US but at some point Crichton knows to convince his dad. Aeryn still loves Crichton, but he still uses the herb that makes him forget the pain and trying to move on. Alien creature that Grayza had left on Moya, also comes down to planet earth and even makes it to Crichton’s home! Note - Another perfect episode, Aeryn and Crichton’s discomfort towards each other makes the episode extra strong imo, and a very emotional goodbye when John leaves in the end.

Episode 16, “Bringing Home The Beacon (8.5/10), the female crew are on a dead leviathan melted with an asteroid to purchase a device when they see Grayza & Bracca. They think it is about them but then they discover they are there for a meeting with the Scarrans! Grayza offers them Luxan territory for peace but Scarrans double cross them. Grayza is lucky that Aeryn and the others decide to intervene because they don’t want the wormhole tech falling into Scarrans hands. When Grayza gets caught again, Aeryn gets back later to the transport but they go back to Moya with the device they needed. On Moya they find that they are being followed by Scarrans, it seems like a beacon knows where they are, Crichton figures out it’s Aeryn, he shoot her and she turns out to be a bioloid (a cross between a robot and a person). Note - The original intention was most likely for Grayza to be duplicated, so her bioloid could spy on the Peacekeepers while the Scarrans were free to torture Grayza without worrying about a rescue attempt. Having failed with Grayza, it seems Ahkna intended for the Aeryn duplicate to capture John for the Scarrans.

Episode 17 “Constellation of Doubt” (8.5/10) where crew is now looking for Aeryn after they’ve disovered the Aeryn on board was a bioloid. she is supposedly brought Katratzi but so far it stays hidden, no one knows of it. Meanwhile Crichton is rewatching footage from a TV show Pilot picked up called "Alien Visitation", it’s a show about the aliens when they visited earth. Is seems that one thing is certain: they don’t like these aliens. Note - A quiet episode but a very good one, where we mostly see Crichton before the TV.

Episodes 19/20/21 – We’re so Screwed Parts 1-3 all get a 9/10 from me, it is some fantastic TV. Crew arrives on a border station, where Aeryn is also, but their ship is about to leave. Noranti makes sure the station must go into lockdown so the ship isn’t allowed to leave. Aeryn is being held captive, her captor, Jenek, is a nasty one. He kidnaps Chiana so she can carries the fetus because Aeryn has become very weak. When our crew manage to free Aeryn and Chiana, they escape but Scorpius, who is sacrificing himself, stays behind. Part of the crew doesn’t want to go back for him, the other part does! Harvey suddenly is back in John’s head saying he should rescue Scorpius. So they do go back, inviting themselves to the peace talks with a nuclear bomb on Crichton’s hip. Stark is there, he seems to have different loyalties now but he turns out to be a copy, a bioloid. Rygel and granny save the real Stark. Our crew has an idea to free Scorpius, by causing havoc between Charrids and Sikozu’s people, which distracts them so our crew can save him but Scorpius, who admits earlier that he was a Scarran spy for 10 cycles, seem to be double crossing Crichton in the final moments of part two!

Scorpius’ reasoning to do what he did because Crichton’s plan would have failed, According to him the way to defeat them is to destroy the Crystherium Utilia, which gives the Scarrans power. When Grayza wants to attack the Scarrans, even though they are vastly outnumbered, Bracca, relieves her of duty. Crichton is able to destroy the Crystherium Utilia, they are protected themselves from the fall-out but everybody else is incinerated. Note – these 3 episodes are some of the best episodes of the entire series, I truly love these enemies, the Scarrans, such a pity we only saw them (mostly) this last season!

The 4th season goes out with a bang! “Bad Timing” is the season finale, 10/10! Crichton comes with the idea to implode the wormhole so the Scarrans cannot reach earth. He however needs help from Pilot to do it, which means he and Moya need to be disconnected! Before they do it, Crichton gets one more long distant call from the moon to his dad. Chiana loses her eyesight when she helps Stark take Pilot’s place, her eyesight does not seem to return. Aeryn tells Crichton she’s gonna have a baby, his, he’s ecstatic, asks her to marry him. Fun commentary from Rygel and D’Argo while watching them, but then an alien ship comes in and destroys Crichton / Aeryn who were sitting on a boat in water while Moya and Pilot were getting connected again. Note - D’Argo cries as he sees his friends be destroyed is soul wrecking.

Final Word:

I decided to only highlight my favorite episodes because otherwise the blog would become much longer! There are only 1 or 2 episodes which I wasn’t really fond of, the rest I rated 7 or 8/10. Especially the last 2 seasons where difficult to write a blog about. In part because of the fact that I don’t know the episodes as well as for instant Babylon 5 or Star Trek DS9 and Voyager. I also experience difficulties because with heavy story-arc shows, it is often difficult distinguish single episodes. For some shows it is much more easy to write a blog but for Farscape it was a challenge, especially this season. Hope you still enjoy the read, I am continuously trying to improve my writing, with shows like The Orville for instance, this is much easier.

Screencaps taken from: FarscapeCaps.com