:: a toe in the water... ::

:: Thursday, August 29, 2002 ::

Travelling The Wormhole from the opposite direction

Cross-posted from the list, and a discussion of whether or not Einstein intentionally put Moya back in an unrealized reality, slightly edited here for clarity. With thanks to Karen, who asked the question.

My feeling is that it could not have been *intentional* since they're all about trying to prevent distortion of reality...but I can entertain the theory that even if the (unintentional) difference were an overlap of seconds, the ripples may have become wide enough to be felt by now. The only thing I can think of is that a) they're god-like, but not omniscient, and do not see what is outside the edge of the wormhole. (Einstein said they expected the Pathfinder ship, because of the beacon.) And...whoah...b) No, they could not have put Moya back exactly where/when they found her. John would have still been there and Moya would have immediately picked him up.

Perhaps all Einstein's people can ensure when they send something back through a wormhole is that it won't arrive where it was before it left.Or perhaps they can't even ensure that. They may be the air traffic controllers, but they're not the pilots, not the navigators.

Now, if Moya had arrived back before she left, no one would know. Except...Noranti kept saying Pilot knows. I took that to mean Pilot knew where Moya had gone. Or does Noranti, seeing outside reality as she does, know -- as Pilot knows -- that this is not quite the universe they knew before? Is it part of Pilot's species, or of being bonded to something that can traverse space in starbust, to sense these sorts of things, or at least be more sensitive to them? And if they know, why aren't they talking?

Um, yeah, like anybody is. {g}

Oh dear, I just had a horrible thought. You know that dramatic moment when the coin hung in midair, the one we all thought was a mind-frell to make us think "to be continued..." was going to appear? What if Moya came back then, that precise moment? Which might explain why TPTB keep bringing up the coin toss.

No, that's *got* to be barking out my arse.

But honestly, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am we have been seeing an unrealised reality all season long -- well, as much as we can still use the term, being as it's obviously realised now. You know, clever us, blathering on about how this or that felt off -- meanwhile the Folks Down Under were probably jumping up and down with glee because we frelling *got* that something was wrong. Which is just what they wanted. And somehow I'm sure their egos will survive being told they don't know how to write the show anymore. {g}

But if not the coin toss -- and I'm not sure I'd want it to be that anyway -- when? When did the universe tilt slightly to the left? The reality we're in is preciously close to the 'real' one (leaving out the whole question of Truth And Subjective Reality, etc, which is another long scary post) so it probably wasn't too long ago.

For the sake of this argument, let's just assume it is off by design (and I think most of us do). I tend to use Aeryn as the yardstick just because the oddness in her has been progressively the most pronounced, but all of the old characters have something...off. D's on Prozac, Rygel's lost his moxie and fallen in love with a brush, Chi's visions have mutated from mere flashes of the future to these blinding timestoppers...

Time, time, it's all about time, isn't it?

Chi got the power in Losing Time and it's been slowly growing ever since. Rather like a ripple. Could it be that the riders fold, spindle and mutilate the fabric of the universe just a little? Crichton and the others stayed still in space while time flew by them. The rider left a permanent mark on Chi -- what mark did the hunter leave on Pilot?

Wormholes: According to Einstein random travel wasn't the problem. It was exiting into a where before the last time you'd left. Theoretically, even if a wormhole gains/loses time as one passes through it, if you do not exit out the other end but turn around and come back the way you came, you exit exactly when/where you started. Makes sense. So, Crichton's travels with Scorpy shouldn't have done any damage. I'm inclined to say nor the travelling he did with the Pathfinder wormhole, as he also ended where he began, even with Rygel's interference, because he re-entered the wormhole at the same juncture where Rygel threw them out.

But...if, theoretically, one gains/loses ten years passing through a wormhole, is it likely one gains/loses five if thrown out halfway across? Could the ripple have begun when they split the ships?

I'm looking for clues dropped into the text more than a quantum theory and this one seems...unlikely, but not out of the question. DD did come straight after and did deal directly with time travel paradoxes. It may have been laying down the groundwork for Farscape physics, but I'm not sure it was the deliberate (on the part of TPTB) beginning of the situation we're in now.

However, one of the things I always marvel about with this show is the writers' ability to seed their universe with possibilities that sprout even seasons later. I mean, we hadn't heard about the Pathfinder beacon from 304 till now. So the lessons of DD have to be taken into account. By design or retrofit, it doesn't really matter. It's real now {g}.

DD: Harvey knew. The universe is elastic -- it can accommodate some stretching, but if pulled too far it will snap back. Hard. I'd thought that was merely foreshadowing for the two Johns, but it may have been more.

Now, Harvey is Scorpius, yes? Well...not necessarily. Harvey -- by then -- is also John. 'Nother post, but in short: Harvey might be a blend of Scorpy's neural patterns, his methods of analysis, but he has John's information, conscious and not. Harvey knew because *John* does.

FS physics, of course, could easily be writing the equation Harvey knew = Scorpius knows. These are not mutually exclusive theories and John's interpretation will be key, regardless of the objective truth that John is an astronaut who took a degree in cosmic theory, so of course he'd be familiar with all the relevant concepts. Harvey telling John to stick as close to events as possible, that the universe has a way of righting itself, is also John talking to himself, reminding himself of things he already knows.

I'd throw out two other possibilities as more likely that may or may not have to do with traveling backward within one's own time: 1) John detonated a nuclear device inside a wormhole. He dropped it off, then came out the way he'd gone in, but something of that magnitude has got to have some kind of residual impact. 2) Crais starburst inside a closed container. Now considering that starburst is a form of instantaneous wormhole-like travel this too may have begun a tiny ripple effect which we are only noticing now. And Noranti did appear out of nowhere right after.

Last, don't forget the mask & TJ's message -- Furlow is still out there. To paraphrase from the article on time travel in Scientific American (thanks Elishavah!) it is theoretically possible to stabilise a wormhole near a neutron star so that the star's intense gravity slows time at one end.

Ooh, yeah. There's got to be something very important about that but dinner's going to burn if I get into it right now. Feel free to jump the gun, anyone.

As to The Meaning Of It All, I have no definite opinion yet, apart from this: as things-we-leave-you-to-ponder-over-hiatus go, this beats the hell out of debating whether or not Aeryn is really pregnant {g}.

Oh yes, and may I, until January, hold onto the hope that 'tormented space' is *supposed* to sound ridiculous? Just cause, you know...giggle.

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:: fialka 1:29 AM [+] ::

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Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Spoilers for 411. Oh yeah.
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So, fear is not the mindkiller, not the little death which brings total obliteration. Fear is sense and sensibility, the natural reaction to the knowledge that one is in control of far more than 'me'. That the universe hangs not only upon one's actions to save it, but upon one's ability to navigate an uncharted time/space sea with absolute precision.

Yep. That would scare the hell out of me.

I'm not a physics major, nor do I play one on TV, so any discussion of physics here is purely physics as presented in the Farscape universe. Real physicists will probably be able to poke lots of holes in my theory. I refer them to DK.

But let's start at the very beginning. John floats tetherless in space while Aeryn sits in a window, nigh-on oblivious to any danger, using Talyn John's notebook as her English primer.

I'm beginning to worry greatly about Aeryn, whose affect in terms of John seems completely out of sync with the reality of their relationship -- or non-relationship, as the case might be. Aeryn is acting as if the man out there is Talyn John, learning English as if they're still going to Earth together when all this is finished. And that was not the cleverest plan they've come up with, anyway.

There are metaphysical reasons why her insistence that there is 'no distinction' between the two Johns might be objectively true, and I'll get into them later, but subjectively it should be pretty obvious that John missed that dance and he's still horribly cut up about it. Aeryn doesn't seem to be operating with that in mind. Instead, she seems as blind as Chiana after a couple of raslaks and a vision.

But oh, speaking of Chiana. How I love the picture of Aeryn and Chi, heads together, Chiana leaning on Aeryn's leg. My, how things have changed between the two of them -- one of the most welcome changes of the season, for me. Aeryn never was one of the girls, despite John's insistence on using the term even to describe Zhaan, a woman 760 years his senior (and only a Southern gentleman gets away with that on my planet {g}.) Never one of the girls, but everyone needs at least one friend, and in the absence of John, it's wonderful to see Aeryn turning toward Chiana. I've always loved the teeny interactions between those two, the way CB and GE packed every single line with layer upon layer. It's why I actually like Taking the Stone, for the conversations between the two of them, for Aeryn's first moments of real empathic understanding.

As rare as those moments between them have been, the progression to Chi being allowed into Aeryn's private space seems quite natural. By the standards of Moya, they're longtime comrades, familiar faces after a time that went so bad no one wants to talk about it. And friendship, real friendship with another woman...I suspect that's even more foreign to Chiana. Aeryn at least had Henta.

So we have big sister to little sister but now the big sister is Chi and the talk is about love -- an emotion neither handles very well. Both of them have the tendency to remove sex from emotional attachment (albeit for very different reasons), but it's Chi who at least has some idea of what it all means. Some idea of men's romantic expectations -- John's, which are, when all is said and done, not so very different than D'Argo's. A home, a wife, a family. I do love that it's the men in this series that are all about that, and the women who are edgy, willful, very bad domestic material. Chiana is no more Betty Crocker than Aeryn, (though at least she can cook {g}.)

But...even liking it, there's something about this scene that strikes me as odd. Off. The way Aeryn has been off all season and it's not just about the hair and the makeup changing the cast of her features, though there's that too. I can't quite bridge the Aeryn of DWTB with this one who came back and stroked Chiana's face, who lets Chiana put a hand on her thigh, but won't touch or be touched by anyone else. I understand where the affectionate gestures come from -- she learned them from John on Talyn. I understood the Aeryn who arrived back in Promises. But I don't quite understand this one who looks all dreamy hopeful, mouthing English while John grows more distant with every passing day. One who's laughing with Chi while John is out surfing vacuum. Isn't Aeryn meant to hate/fear the wormholes as the thing most likely to take John away? Is this the same Aeryn who curled up in the corridor when Pilot mentioned going into tormented space?

I have only one explanation for the oddness of this scene and it's much tied up with language -- as is much of the season, though it's unclear so far where all the Spanish is leading. Love is a language Aeryn did not know how to speak, perhaps still doesn't. Chi is right -- English isn't the language she needs to learn to speak to John. And yet, there's something beautiful about the idea that Aeryn loved John and this was his language, therefore, to her, English is the language of love.

It's a beautiful idea, but oh so very wrong. And the thing that convinces me that Aeryn's oddness is not bad writing, that it's meant to mean something, is that Chiana seems to be aware that something's off with Aeryn too.

So. Aeryn wants her lover back, John wants to be her lover and really it shouldn't be a problem, should it, when they essentially both want the same thing?

But who is the Aeryn John kisses in his fantasy? And who is the John Aeryn is learning English for, because even if she did start to learn it for John back on Talyn, this John is not that John. And she should be able to see this. She did before. "No distinction" seems to indicate a dangerous conflation on Aeryn's part. She's not seeing the reality before her.

Which brings me to "Einstein" and for ease of typing I'm going to lose those quotes now. Just remember I mean Einstein the FS character, not Einstein the real one.

Einstein said there is only one John. Only one reality can be real at any time. The others exist around it; like the cloud of unmeasured electrons exist around a proton until one is measured and all others cease to exist.

I can go with this. It's different than SF usually postulates and we have to remember not to knee-jerk-Star-Trek-reflex into assuming alternate universes with alternate Johns, all existing at once. Farscape chose another explanation. One John. Always and ever, only one John.

Which brings us to the twin Johns and what appears to be a paradox, a bit of fancy rewriting, because we all know, do we not, that there have been two Johns?

But...what if there never were *two* Johns. Both Johns were John, equal and original, that's what Karvok told us. But there is a point in DWTB that the surviving John abandons the distinction himself, speaks of "not, him, not me, 'John Crichton'." An entity over and above his physical self. Something that was never halved, never twinned, but existed *between* them. This is what I mean when I say that they have not changed FS physics on us, that there never were two Johns.

'Eat Me' seems to support this -- each time Karvok twinned one of his creatures, they became less "conscious", as if there was only so much to be shared between them. So there were two physical bodies, but still only one consciousness that was 'John Crichton'. And those two bodies, being an aberration, tore the universe asunder as their experiences pulled them further and further apart. One John gathered more and more, gradually leaving the other with less and less. One John got it all -- wormholes, love, and fantastic sex -- while one John lost everything -- friends, money, purpose -- even dignity and self-respect. One John held all the consciousness, became the best that he could be, while the other lay unconscious. Until the universe could bear the strain no longer, and snapped itself back into shape. One living John, where he was meant to be, on Moya.

Could it have gone the other way? If the John on Moya had died from D'Argo's blow, would the John on Talyn not have needed to irradiate himself? Possibly.

What seems certain is that both Johns could not have what they most wanted -- Aeryn and the wormholes -- at the same time. Once the universe had snapped back, they became accessible to the surviving John again. Not that this means under optimal circumstances -- John has both Aeryn and the wormholes now, and neither of them are bringing him any joy. But just as the John on Moya snapped back to consciousness when the John on Talyn died, so too must some of the wormhole knowledge -- something Talyn John consciously knew -- have remained to subconsciously aid the surviving John in finding the answer himself. Rather quickly, actually, considering how long he'd been trying before the twinning and not been able to decipher it.

Aeryn was presented as the catalyst that pulled John out of his coma in RA, but this doesn't mean it's objectively true. I could postulate that MJohn's will to live, embodied in the concept of Aeryn, was returned to him when TJohn released it by accepting his inevitable death. Since MJohn had no reason at that point to believe he'd ever see Aeryn again it's the only thing I can come up with, and though I don't particularly like the idea that Aeryn is or ever was John's reason for living, that is what the show seemed to be telling us he believed at the end of last year. Or possibly still does, since he seems not to be able to think about anything but Aeryn. Hence the laka.

Unrealised Reality looks to be the wake-up call that John's been needing. A duty, a responsibility, a purpose he's been evading, hiding behind first the loss of Aeryn and then the laka. There is more to John's universe, and he is not attending to business. The laka has dulled the pain, but also the fear. John doesn't fear his own death these days, he doesn't really seem to care, but he cannot afford to be careless. Not if he has the power of wormholes, the power to change reality simply by missing the correct turn.

Yup. The god-like alien in this part of the universe is John.

Which brings me to the other major point of speculation: has John returned to Earth in such a way that the wormhole he just opened to get here is the wormhole that swallowed him to begin with?

It's a very cool circularity, very seductive, but if Farscape remains true to the physics lesson it just gave us, it can only result in two scenarios. Einstein said anyone could go anywhere at random, but only John could navigate with intent. That he can only go somewhere he has already been, within the span of his own life, which courts the danger of arriving before he's left. Rather than the usual SF scenario of matter/anti-matter imploding upon contact, the problem is that the original timeline, the original John, would then cease to exist (much as one could say that the original John ceased to exist at the moment of their twinning.)

Since Einstein stated categorically that there is only one "John Crichton" in the universe at one time, (hence my theory that this would have to mean the twinning gave two bodies to one consciousness), that would also mean if he'd arrived near Earth at the same time the original wormhole opened, he would have found himself in the module. Just as he found himself inside the John Crichton of each of the unrealised realities he briefly visited. He didn't, so this can't be the same wormhole that took him to Moya in the first place.

Einstein said this last reality would become permanent because he no longer had the strength to pull John back. If that's so, and he's arrived just before he took off, he never went. If he arrived just after the module went into the wormhole, then he can never have *exited* because he can't be in both places at the same time. That would mean John never got to Moya because he never left Earth's orbit (and he'll have some heavy 'splaining to do about that alien spacesuit, not to mention where the module is). But it also means that if Moya does arrive through another wormhole (or came with him and if he turns further he'll see her, as many have suggested) its occupants wouldn't know him.

I tend to shy away from this scenario for two reasons: One, they've kind of just done It's a Wonderful Life by showing us all the unrealised realities, and two, it negates the entire series. If they do it as per the physics lesson they just gave us, once an unrealised reality is made permanent, it has always been. That means John wouldn't know Moya either. He couldn't get back to where he should be because he wouldn't remember there was anywhere else to be. It would be a total reset. (Though if anyone could pull something like that off, it would certainly be Farscape, I still hope they don't try it.)

And, third,

-- spoiler space for anyone who hasn't looked at the SciFi website since Friday--
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412 is called "Kansas". Which is a whole 'nother set of metaphors. (We won't even mention Maayan's story. Spoooooky. {g})


I haven't hit on a fraction of the things I want to mention about the ep yet. (Whoever says TV kills the mind hasn't seen Farscape.) But in a weird way, the whole season so far makes more sense to me now, even though precious few of the major questions have been answered. There is, dangling before us for the next four months, the possibility that the universe we've been seeing *is* the unrealised reality John just made manifest, and that's why it's seemed slightly off since the start. All I can say is, if that's what they've done and this is how they're unfolding the story...that's a level of brilliance that's nearly as stunning as their faith that we'd stick with them long enough to figure it out. Like the way Crackers Don't Matter told us about the neural clone, John Quixote may have told us much more that we realised at the time.

Game death resets the level. Just think about that one for awhile.

Yep. May not be science, but it's damn good art.

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:: fialka 1:22 AM [+] ::

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Ask and ye shall receive

My kid made me lego Farscape. Tiny Aeryn in a tiny prowler. A module for John. Scorpius sweeps the space station because he's been bad, while the others drink in the bar.

Ah yes, I've trained her well. {g}




Looking forward to 411 and a weekend with Maayan. Escape from the news. It's good to live in a country where the death of two girls still matters so much, but I look at my own and there's just too much I don't want to think about.

Hailstorms in the East German village we just moved from. Twelve meters of water in Dresden, but everyone I know is fine, if a little damp. Friends in Prague are home again, digging themselves out of the mud. I could go off on a whole metaphysical tangent about Mother Earth trying to shake these frelling humans off her back, but I won't. I could go off on the whole thing with Iraq as well, but this really isn't the place for that.

Trying to write, instead. Don't know why it comes so hard these days, but it does. This one is coming out of nowhere, and I don't know where it wants to go, but it's looking suspiciously like it may have a plot.

And damn if that's not exactly how Arizona started. I am *not* writing another 750k fanfic novel. I am not.

The planet is gritty, just like any one of a dozen others. Unlike most, this city is built from a substance uncomfortably like adobe. Crichton is standing in a baked clay road, U2 soundtrack running in his brain. Something he heard years ago. Many somethings, any number of songs. Things come back to him this way sometimes, titles appearing without warning in his mind, a riff of opening chords.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. Bad.

Bad, yeah. He suddenly remembers the first time he heard that, up all night with DK and Maxime. Bob Geldorf, looking half-dead, inserting his plea between the songs.

Give us your money. No beating round the bush.

No bush to beat around here. Just a guy, blue like Zhaan, but nothing like a Delvian flower. Crichton doesn't recognise the weapon but it's big and most likely lethal. Oh yeah, and pointed at his head.

Same day, different dren, yadda yadda yadda.

"You have currency! Don't lie to me!" the blue guy screams. Crichton has an odd thought, disconnected as if he's still talking with Harvey, leaning against a wall in some corridor in his head. The thought has something to do with the fact that this guy is too crazy to be reasoned with, that he's on these too-familiar streets alone because that's how he wanted it, that it's distinctly possible this idiot is going to end his life in the next five microts. Following close on the heels of that, scampering like a puppy, is the thought that wouldn't be half bad.

"Why so difficult?" the guy screeches, spittle flying from his lips. Crichton shrugs. Damn good question and if he knew the answer half his problems might be solved.

"I'm not being difficult. I don't have any currency. I don't have any credits."

"Well, what do you have?"

"A pulse pistol," Crichton answers, pulling it in one smooth motion and giving the blue guy a real good look down the inside of Winona's barrel.

Well, it would have been if Winona had a barrel to look down. Damn how the old images refuse to go away. Just more yotz to clutter up his brain.

The guy gets the idea; some concepts don't need microbes to translate. "I don't have any currency," Crichton repeats patiently. "You wanna see which one of us can pull a trigger faster, go ahead. Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

The blue guy throws his head back and gives a howl of despair. "Hey!" Crichton snaps, giving him a hard poke in the chest. "Shut the fuck up, okay? And get out of here." The guy's huge blue mouth snaps shut and he's gone.

"Fuck," Crichton mutters again, rolling the word around in his mouth. Still tastes good, even mixed with dust.

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:: fialka 12:21 AM [+] ::

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The World According to Fart

Spoilers for 410.
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About which, my main reaction is...fnnh.

What, you ask, means 'fnnh'? Well, it's something that should be crisp and lively, but instead sort of kind of lies there and mumbles. Limp. Indecisive. Inspiring no comment.

Of course, I have comments or I wouldn't be here, so perhaps it wasn't as fnnh as it felt. And I didn't do last week, so I get double space.

But really, boys. Fart gags? And did I REALLY need to see Noranti take a horse-caliber piss? No, my dears I. So.Did.Not.

You know, when Jool drank something for the pain and it turned out to be fellip urine, it was funny. This was just...this was 'it's the middle of the season and we're all frelling KNACKERED and we're saving the really cool and original ideas for 411 so we'll settle for fart jokes and grossing you out and now we really need to go and get some sleep seeyounextweekthankyoubye.'

Sleep, yes, I hope they did.

There was something to being on the feast or famine plan (well, actually it was more of a Rygel-caliber fill-three-stomachs-till-you-explode plan, but...you know .) Every season has its fnnh eps -- ten months bloody hard work, you really can't expect them to be deep and complex every single week. It's just not humanly possible, and fnnh eps are usually the energy preservers that presage something major. So, you know. Placeholder, filler, I can live with that.

It's just...sigh. I didn't really get my Farscape fix today, and now I have to wait another week. When you have 8 eps on a tape and you're pretty sure the next good one is less than 44 minutes away, it's a lot easier to let the filler eps blow by. Sometimes even to enjoy them for whatever morsels they bring.

Things I did enjoy, more for the actors' swan dive into the situation, rather than the uninspired situation itself: Noranti and D'Argo sharing a very public private moment. BB looking surprisingly good as a woman, even in *terrible* drag, and CB's wonderfully understated "What the FRELL?" reaction.

Things that are so trite or overdone (even on this show) I can't believe FS bothered to go there: fart jokes, especially when it's *not* Rygel. Putting the lead actor in drag. Totally recognisable redshirt woman in male drag because women can't work in that society. (Really a missed opportunity in every respect, especially as it involved sending Aeryn in to play on her gender – something I'm not sure she would quite know how to do. And may I say that I am really tired of Cyberspice getting knocked out or dying of some illness or other this year.)

The best moment: Sikozu offering up a finger in Aeryn's place. Sputnik may have just made herself an ally. Which kind of makes me wonder if that was the point of the whole ep, as the rest of the it seemed to have little point. Oh yeah, Scorpy saved them, then barfed up jello, thankless and alone in his wee little cell.

I hurt. Really. Ahem.

I don't know. It's not that the basic idea sucked simply because it's derivative. Farscape has trod the well-worn path before and delivered brilliance -- Throne for a Loss, Different Destinations, Back and Back, even The Locket all exploit threadbare SF themes and re-embroider them. Or are just jolly good fun. And like all good standalones, a newbie watcher could be thoroughly absorbed, because they're complete stories in and of themselves.

But where was the FS spin to Coup by Clam? There were too many details missing, too many interesting roads signposted, but then not taken. Self-evident possibilities that should have been explored and weren't, giving the overall impression that everyone was just too tired to see what they had and substituted well-worn bodily function jokes instead. Farscape does vulgar and outrageous all the time, but it doesn't usually settle for cheap, second-hand antics. And while I'm glad to get some distance from The Ship, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if Aeryn and Crichton had been partnered after all, rather than Aeryn and Rygel, which basically contributed nothing. At least there some sparks might have flown. That bonding might have given them a glimmer of understanding that could be used later, or allow them to get hysterically juvenile in sniping at each other, which would at least have been interesting. But no.

I'd have said it was a good choice to go against the expected J/A, but actually none of the bondings contributed anything except...THAT scene. Kudos to Simcoe and Jaffer for holding nothing back, but man-oh-man. And I thought my eyeballs needed washing after seeing Rygel in bondage gear.

What surprised me most was the absolute disconnection from the events of A Prefect Murder, but then metatext reminds me that these one-offs are originally broken to fit in anywhere. While the actors are able to add a layer of subtext once they know the shooting order, there's nothing *written* for exactly that reason. The standalones aren't supposed to move the uberstory anywhere, they're just supposed to be...there. That doesn't mean they can't be terrific, and have been. But this one wasn't.

And how can an episode with a obvious feminist point to make be written with utter dullness -- by a woman? It's not that a man couldn't have written the same thing, or that a man couldn't have tackled the story better but...I don't know. I don't expect less from a man writing a planet-of-subjugated-women story simply because he's a man but somehow I do expect a woman who is writing for television to have an actual real insight or two to share about being female in a world where women are woefully under-represented.

Actually, I take that back. I expect *any* writer who's managing to get paid for it to write well and this story is so poorly conceived that the bodily-function jokes appear even cheaper than they should. I mean, what, where, why??? Who *were* these people anyway? Thanks for Sharing (this week's inspiration, apparently) essentially exists to get one Crichton onto Talyn with Aeryn but that world and the political struggle the other John winds up caught in are far more vividly and cleanly drawn. This is just...nothing. And by the way, that nose looked like it was made from the insulation in my attic.

Clams could have been a PC soapbox but wasn't, and for that I'm grateful. But good lord, woman, you brought up the subject of subjugation. *Do* something with it or leave it out.

All in all, the combination of empty feminism and pushing-the-envelope-of-even-cable-tv leads me to believe this was an essentially didactic story hastily doctored -- so to speak -- to fit into the FS universe. I don't know if Emily Skopov is part of the usual team, but if this is her level of insight into life, the universe and everything I hope she's not slated to write anything important. Actually, anything *else* in this season or any other.

Expectation may be rearing its ugly head, however. I do admit that possibility. I spent the evening finally watching The Phantom Menace, and after hearing from everyone whose opinion I respect that it wasn't very good, I found I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. Lower expectations, you see. Oh, and making a Lego Mos Eisley spaceport with my kid (mixing the Harry Potter and space station sets) while watching probably helped .

Farscape Lego. Now wouldn't that a cool idea?

Last, is anyone else freaked by the idea that SciFi.com is advertising 411 as the *season finale*? What the frell? Does that mean the bundle of eps starting in January are going to be Season 5 and that much-vaunted two-year contract is really only one full season?

Or are they all on crack?

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:: fialka 2:51 AM [+] ::

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My city is drowning.

For those of you who don't know me, I lived in Prague for five years. The beauty of Starometske Namesti -- which will be waist deep in water by the time most of you read this -- is something I cannot describe. Beautiful baroque buildings, slowly restored. Grace, elegance, and a thousand tourists drinking coffee and beer in the long summer nights.

There is a Christmas market where the children are given gifts on Niklaus, stands with live carp breaking the surface of the tubs with their little pursing mouths. The statue of Jan Hus, a meeting place before we went dancing at the Roxy or to drink beer in the dissident writers' pub where Charter 77 was born. The astronomical clock strikes and the plaster musicians make their circle; a raspberry blown last by the builder's marionette. His legacy to the town fathers, because they weren't happy with the design.

The Slavia sits on the bank of the river, the hundred-year-old cafe where Havel hung out. Closed when the old regime fell, taken back by the city's youth in a dawn raid just after I arrived. The drinks were free for days, because Havel refused to call in the police to shut it down.

There are ghosts just up the road in Josefov, where the fancy shops now live. This used to be the Jewish ghetto, back to the middle ages, where the Golem walked. It still has one of the oldest synagogues in Europe. Outside, where the cemetery is about 50 by 100ft, there was no room to expand until the 1800's so the people had to stamp down the old graves to bury their dead. The headstones were never taken down and stand just inches behind one another, canted and sinking with the ground. The water will eclipse them now.

I acted in a theatre down Celetna, busked in front of a fountain where the acoustics threw my voice out over the square and made people come looking for the source of all that noise. I sat in a tree behind the clock tower with my lover, eating ice cream. The first time I left, I walked across the Charles Bridge at 5am, snow falling silently all around. Put my hands on the wishing cross and wished to come back, and I did. I always have. I busked there too, third statue on the left, staring up at the castle on its hill. At night, when the lights are on and the moon is low it appears to float in the sky.

Summer nights the crowd was so big no one could get through. The backpackers shared their wine, borrowed my guitar and shared their songs. How many languages can sing Yesterday at once?

And yes, some nights it was winter and the pick fell from my frozen fingers. Too cold for anyone to stop for long so I would sing to my magic city, to my castle floating on the hill and I loved it beyond measure, though it was never truly mine.

Sybila, Honza, where are you tonight?

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:: fialka 12:35 AM [+] ::

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Comments on 409 forthcoming. Until then, there's this:

She's full of memories these days, things she's not suppose to know.

A woman, holding herself in a shadowed room; a man beside her, incorporeal.

The man is tall, robust. The kind of man that's made to love.

She dreamt of the woman before she saw her, but then she's often dreamt of people she didn't know. Bones grow brittle and the teeth rot, but the mind reaches further as she gets along. Sleep is a nexus, grief a particle wave. Light takes longer to reach her.

The dark woman reeks of the man. Striding down the prison corridors, face sharp, intent on getting somewhere. To someone, voices down the hall, sharp babble and deep rumble echoing in the emptiness.

So few left. So many empty cells.

Prison is an illusion of bars. Her mind goes where she likes, as it always has, as her people do. Some herbs would help, but if she concentrates hard enough she can release the Now herself. There's hasn't been much else to do, not much here she needs to pay attention to, till this.

A kiss, an empty ship. Bodies rough with hunger, moving out-of-sync. Pulsing with the same need, but far, oh so far. Hers and not. This man is heavy, full of worlds.

A child in the woman, the woman in the man.

It's an act of kindness.

When the bars break, she follows him.

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:: fialka 2:34 AM [+] ::

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I had too much time today while waiting for videos to compile.

Some spoilers for 408 follow, but no formal comments this time around.
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I kept trying to figure out what John was seeing in the flashes, but I couldn't slow my avi down and no one seemed to have done caps for the net. May I now recommend Cinematograph, which allows you to advance a DivX avi frame by frame (and doesn't come bundled with all the spyware of DivX). Also SnagIt, which allows multiple captures of overlays. Works to cap from DVDs too. Both are available at Download.com .

Anyway, the result of compiling, recompiling and playing with new software is that I still haven't managed to get my own vid into some format that preserves quality at less than 35k, but I did manage to answer the question of whether there were images in those flashes we'd never seen before. Enquiring minds, go here if you want to know.

After seeing clearly what they are, I have a pet theory that the extract isn't meant to make him think about Aeryn at all. What we see in these flashes is meant to show us what's generally going on all the time in John's head. We get there just in time to watch the extract take effect and fade them out.

Second response to other speculation: I don't think the extract made John's microbes fail. I think D'Argo and Aeryn deliberately started cursing in their own languages to confound La Cucaracha's microbes when he seemed to be hearing something they couldn't (and Rygel joined in as soon as he clued up). Microbes can't translate those words, remember? And there were a couple of other moments of that kind of tacit agreement between the two of them -- as warriors, they always have understood each other well.

John and Chi, Aeryn and D'Argo. The balance shifts. I like it. Not a stellar episode, but I asked for more of the crew, I asked to see the larger picture and I got that. I even got a teensy clue, because my money is well on Aeryn having taken her summer holiday in Tormented Space. (Bad moniker though, really, DK. I mean, haven't they *been* in tormented space all season long? Did we really need to cap that up?)

And this week we might even get a real big juicy clue to what Aeryn did at Camp Renegade PK. Or even -- gasp -- a tiny piece of the answer. I don't expect the whole picture to emerge until late in the second half of the season, but a few more crumbs along the path wouldn't hurt. I got some in 408, so I'm a happy Fi this week. I'll leave the metaphysical speculation about the memories to more philosophical/scientific minds than mine.

(Well, I won't, actually, but no need to show my ignorance of basic physics in public. Yet. {g} )

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:: fialka 12:31 AM [+] ::

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407 spoilers abound.
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Aeryn is unintelligible, Crais is a beast, D'Argo a child, and Rygel not much more than a bump in the road.

John Quixote is about much more than tilting at windmills, it's a quixotic look into the mind of Stark and his perceptions, not just John's. JQ is undoubtedly a brilliant piece of work, so dense with symbolism, back-referencing and inside jokes that I can't begin to pick it apart even after three viewings (and it's been thoroughly done by better minds already). Like WGFA, this is one I won't get sick of watching. Ever. But at this point in the season -- much as I'm enjoying the scenery -- it feels like we're turning in place, going in no direction whatsoever. I'm ready to *go* somewhere, to see what's really happening on Moya and beyond her. Isn't there a war brewing out there somewhere? Wouldn't heading in the opposite direction be a good idea?

Ah well, maybe that's what happened this week. Sorry I've gotten so behind -- these comments have been sitting on my hard drive since Thursday but I wasn't able to get them posted since I was on the road again this weekend. Indigo Girls in London. Mmm.

Anyway. I got to watch again on the bus down, so pardon me if these are very stream-of-consciousness. Bail now if that's not your sort of thing.

I have to wonder about Chiana's relative stupidity in dragging Crichton into the virtual world right as there's a crisis on Moya. She's normally much more canny than that.

But away. Back references abound, much to my delight. We begin with echoes of the Flax, two in the pod, drifiting in space. It's good to see the Aeryn in Crichton's head is at least the real one now. One small step forward, even if he is still obsessed with thinking about her. But it's Chiana in the pod this time, not Aeryn. Chiana beside John throughout.

Veddy innn-teresting.

Chiana may be John's Sancho Panza these days, but Stark evidently did not envision her so. In fact, he seems to have little idea what to do with either Chiana or Jool. But where is Stark? Would a spirit being not leave some portion of his real self in his avatar in a virtual world? It would seem so, as the game has enough intelligence to learn from its players. Perhaps Stark programmed a jumpdoor, one keyed to a phrase only Crichton, or someone in close contact with him, could know?

So many lines that are going to come back to smack us in the face. "You're completely vulnerable." "This is not right." "I want out."

That may be John's overriding sentiment right now, and nowhere is it more evident than his refusal to even speak to Aeryn at the end. I have to say that as much I hate the fans whining about the meanness of one character to another, I'm guilty of it myself here. I did find that behaviour roundly uncalled for, and extremely painful to watch. Not just because John hurt my darling Aeryn's wee widdle feelings, but because it was a small act of cruelty on his part and while John has become many things he never was, cruel has not been one of them. It hurts to watch him become that, but maybe it's necessary. John needs some distance from Aeryn, metatextually and for his own mental health, and maybe the short sharp shock is the only way to manage that now. He's tried everything else. So, ouch.

As with everything this season, I'm taking the snub as deliberate on the part of TPTB, as a clue dropped. They're not telling us things, but I think they're showing us what happened to the characters in subtle ways, perhaps in ways we won't be able to put together until much later on. Rygel drowns in paroxysms of self-doubt, Chi is suddenly claustrophobic, Aeryn has taken to sitting on the floor in middle of the corridor hugging herself. Things Have Happened and it's getting time to throw us a clue or two, time to tell us a story that isn't about Aeryn and Crichton. They've gone as far as they can with that one for now, set John at the furthest corner of the room with his back to her. And I suspect that this is exactly what TPTB meant to do.

John is set on his ear, stuttering, uncertain who he is. "Up is down." Yes, and so it seems this season. And speculation on the meaning of that one phrase would be an entire post in itself. I surround it with bright red stars.

"I have some questions." Mmm. What I wouldn't do for three vouchers myself.

John follows the Chanukkah geld. Isn't that cute? And John gets to die again. Again. And again. Cute goes cold, and I wonder: this is *Stark*? So much contempt for the man. It wasn't evident on Talyn, not at the end. What I get from Stark here is wild demented grief, a storm of emotion, a thirst for revenge. Stark was always mad as the hatter, but there was a core of sanity in him. It's not here.

Blood kin to the pisar who defeated Scorpy's ass? The one line I didn't understand. If it's John, he has no blood kin, if it's not...well, Scorpy's still around anyhow.

"Up down, up down." The last cycle, certainly. Maybe all of it. "Sideways." Peace. John is trapped in an elevator with himself, slaying each of his enemies in turn. "What is it with women and change?" Sometimes though it's men and change. How does John get from "Good to have you back" and "I should never have let you go", to stepping over Aeryn and walking on? The Aeryn on Moya is straight out of this John's fears and I can't help thinking he's amalgamated the two, punishing the real one for the acts of her game-proxy. Also, the Moya scenes do cheat a bit -- there are things we see that John could not because he isn't there.

Love the echoes of TWWW in the scene in Pilot's den, but I do stop to wonder what kind of wonderbra Aeryn is wearing beneath that skimpy little shirt and where I can get one. Because if *I* ran in that thing...well, no need to go there. John writing the wormhole equations in his own blood is a brilliant metaphor, but the poor boy would have lost a pint doing it. And the only thing that keeps Aeryn alive is her secret? Perhaps, but is it really the baby? I think not.

Kisses -- right back to the princess in LATP. Make her pregnant without making love. John kissing Aeryn on Moya - the kiss isn't right. Aeryn isn't Aeryn, and it's by her kiss he knows it. John kissing Aeryn-the-Princess -- means to an end, not an end in itself. Kissing Aeryn won't fix anything, won't end the game. He knows that now, probably always did.

But suddenly Stark is everywhere, everyone. "You took so much." John's aching conscience twisted through Stark's rage, thrown back in his face as acid. Gilina dissolving into wormholes, the first to die for love of John. Aeryn died, Zhaan gave her life to Aeryn, John died and -- the last time Stark saw her -- Aeryn was throwing that life, Zhaan's sacrifice, away. All for the love of John Crichton.

Game death resets the level, but it still has to be mastered. Reset doesn't wipe memory and the player comes back to the game harder, wiser. Different. Kissing the wrong princess won't end the game, but Stark forgot kissing the right one won't bring her back either.

"You really are John Crichton." Yes, but now that 'John Crichton' is a concept, an amalgam of both men's lives -- what does that mean? This John isn't the hero who gave his life, he's just the poor schmuck that got left behind. Yet the heroism lies within -- everything Talyn John was or did or had exists in this John, at least as potential. Integrating the other John and the legacy he left is part of the journey this one needs to make in order to move sideways instead of up and down. This John *is* 'John Crichton', the man who loved hard and died well (even if he doesn't have those memories himself), whether he wants to be or not, because that is how others perceive him and we're back to Schroedinger -- the act of observation changes the object observed, breaks the temporal barrier between that John and this. Aeryn, and to some extent Rygel, will always see both Johns in this one and though 'no distinction' is too far to go, it's not entirely wrong.

"Coming back for ya." Aeryn's not forgotten, but she's not the point. Something John should remember, and maybe that's why he walks away at the end. Chi does half the slayage and I love her evolution, love John and Chiana as allies, Chi in Aeryn's warrior place at his side. It hurts to see Aeryn not there, but I love it, though I hope never to see Chi in Aeryn's place in John's heart. That would seem too incestuous after all these years.

Maayan makes a brilliant point about John and Aeryn evolving towards each other and missing the proper moment; I'm wondering if this is not happening on some more successful level with Aeryn and Chiana. Chi's starting to think and act like a warrior; Aeryn's starting to act like a friend. There's a meeting place they didn't have before. All to the good. I'm all for giving Gigi more to do this season, all for CB and GE getting to work together. They've always had a nice chemistry, distrust and admiration in equal parts. Friction occasionally
overcome by a kind of rough tenderness on both sides. I'd like to see some more of that, see both their evolution progressing in the presence of someone besides Crichton.

Hmm. And squicky as it was to hear Stark say it, I could watch Chiana kissing Aeryn too {g}.

"We're not dead. How drad is that?" Seems to be Chiana's basic philosophy on life these days. Any further complication is too much to ask.

"Have you wasted my death?" "I don't know." "Then I suggest you find out before anyone else dies for the love of you." Almost an anvil, but so painfully true, and so worrying as a portent. Kissing Aeryn won't stop a war and it won't set Moya's little world to rights. The truth is deeper. "You have to do more than just kiss her." John and Aeryn have been completely turned towards each other pretty much since Aeryn's return from the dead, even when the other isn't around. Aeryn on Valldon is the sum of all the John-on-Moya eps pressed into one. It's not that they don't function without each other, it's that they don't function lost in the *memory* of each other. And that's just the problem now.

And even I'm tired of everything in John's head always being about Aeryn. It's bordering on obsessive, and quickly becoming aggressive now that she's actually there. John has scripts, a head full of scripts, and he won't let Aeryn back till she says the right lines. And she keeps trying, but the problem is she doesn't have a copy of the script, she doesn't know what lines to say. I'm not saying TPTB are wrong with that scenario, just that -- for admittedly personal reasons -- I find it excruciating to watch.

Was it cruel, what Crichton did at the end? Yes, perhaps. Maybe it takes an act of cruelty to reset the level, go back, get it right this time.

Or stop playing entirely. "I.Want.Out." Take the lakka extract. Did he or didn't he? I'm feeling contrary, so I'll say he did. A moment's rest, a moment to look through the clouds in his head and try to see a clear way out. It was too late for Aeryn once, now it seems it might be too late for John. Without her, what is left? Plenty. Wormholes, Scarrens, his other friends. It's time John pulled his head out of Aeryn's ass and began to look at the bigger picture. Time the show did as well, I think, and maybe sending Crichton and Aeryn into opposite corners for a while so that the stories of the other crewmembers can be told is the best metatextual idea they've had in a while. Because there's so much else I still want to know.

The old woman continues to mystify: I envy how you love so deeply but here's something to forget about it? Heh? I don't get it. Maybe Grandma's One True Love didn't work out either.

But the forgetting I do understand. Both of them need to forget the other for a while, be themselves in each other's presence without trying to be together. Maybe then they can look past all the memories, the fantasies, the misconceptions, the kisses, and *see* each other. And then they can begin to talk again.

"I hear I was a princess." Princesses should never be kissed. They cause trouble, act with hidden agendas, carry children John will never know. Perhaps that's the answer to John walking past Aeryn (though not the answer to her sitting there, lost in thought, apparently waiting for him). What John has finally realised -- there is no reset. There's no going back, only ahead.

Or maybe...sideways.

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:: fialka 12:23 AM [+] ::

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I was just playing about a bit...

And the next thing I knew, I'd stayed up all night redesigning my Farfic site. 'Bout time those poor kids had a decent place of their own.

Visitors welcome. Comments may be left in the box by the door. {g}

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:: fialka 4:27 AM [+] ::

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