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

:: Thursday, January 30, 2003 ::

Once again, blogger frells...

Here's something to chew on while I get my TS comments into html -- if TPTB have thrown out UR physics (only one John in the universe at one time) and are going with Kansas physics (you get to meet your former self) and IF Aeryn is from a future where she never came back to Moya...where's the Aeryn from this time?

Theories gratefully accepted.

Comments on 414 finally uploaded correctly, but not here. Rebuttals, snorts of derision, etc on the blog, please.

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:: fialka 4:51 AM [+] ::

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Bloody &*^% Blogger

I'm tired of fighting with the blogger software, which keeps tossing my posts into a mixmaster and sending them back chopped into rubbish. I can be incomprehensible all by myself, thanks.

Review of Terra Firma can be found here. If you'd like to comment, please come back to this page.

Sorry folks, it's all I can think of to do right now.

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:: fialka 3:02 AM [+] ::

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Kansas. The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of...

Oops. Wrong show.

I wanted to write this before I'd seen 413, but time got away and it didn't happen. I'll try not to let that colour my review of this, but it's going to be hard.

Some eps resonate and some eps don't, and it's all quite personal, I suppose. Coup by Clam, for me, went thwpt. Promises and A Prefect Murder were not perfect, but they hummed. Unrealised Reality was a heavenly choir.

It's difficult to explain exactly why Kansas doesn't quite sing to me. The best I can say is it's like trying to tune an old guitar string: it comes close enough, but it doesn't ring quite true.

Unlike most of the UK fans, I wasn't wowwed by Kansas on first viewing. After the loooong hiatus (I was on US viewing time for the first half) I wanted things it was not designed to provide. These things *are* provided by 413, however, (and that's all I'm going to say about that) so overall, I am a happy scaper right now.

I also had to bash my inner nitpicker into submission on a number of points, but having done that, it did improve on second (and third and {ahem}) viewing. I'll get to those in a minute.

My major criticism is this: Kansas, while a thoroughly enjoyable outing, is a skim across the surface of the situation. I was surprised at that -- Justin Monjo wrote The Choice (a beautifully intimate study of grief), and A Human Reaction (the original John-goes-home-and-it's-all-frelled episode, and the one that truly kicks off the 'novel' of Farscape.)

Monjo does occasionally sacrifice depth for plot (the over-long alien bug sequence at the end of AHR), and plot for character (a particular problem with The Choice.) As trade-offs go, the latter is certainly not the worst sin. Generally, the overall effect of a Monjo ep is that of peering through a magnifying glass, the center of the image coming clear while the edges remain out-of-focus.

In comparison, Kansas seems uncharacteristically flat, full of lots of set pieces and fairly obvious jokes. Revisiting much of the territory he so wonderfully explored in AHR, I was surprised to see none of this in the reactions of the three (D'Argo, Aeryn, and Rygel) who had been there before. The show has often surprised me with its ability to remember its own past, and as the same writer had written both eps, I expected more.

I was also expecting some deeper revelations about the family that made the Crichton we saw in Season One, something more complex than the obvious career-driven father, meek mother, rebellious son. (It didn't help that I'd always imagined Leslie Crichton as a much tougher woman.) I was expecting a little more exploration of what it means to look at one's tender teenage self through adult eyes, what it meant to Crichton to finally make it home long after he'd lost all hope, yet not to be able to go home at all.

Expectation is a monster, though, and to say I wanted more doesn't mean there was none. Thin Farscape is still Chunky Monkey compared to most shows and what the script doesn't provide, Ben Browder does. My deepest regret is that there was so little for Claudia or Anthony to do besides dress up in funny clothes.

I should say though -- because everything relates back to the campaign these days -- I am glad that Kansas is no more than it is. If it's a lighter ride than Unrealised Reality led me to expect, it's also very comprehensible to new viewers, who hopefully will be intrigued enough to come back for 413. (And if they do, they will see one of the best examples of what Farscape can be. I think they'll stick around after that.)

On to the nits, because I'd rather get those over with:

* The year. A lot of people are going to scream that they've de-aged John. (I know I did.) Actually, they haven't de-aged him so much as finally pinpointed his age: he's 33, as opposed to 38, which is what I'd always assumed. And no, it's not about Browder, it really is about John. He reads older than 33, even in Season One.

Hey, the more gravity, slower time passes. Can we assume the reason John seems like he should be closer to 40 is that he's been aging faster in space?

Nope? Sigh. Okay, 33.

At any rate, although I can't remember where the original ref came from, I do remember we figured his age from a statement that he watched the moonwalk at age four, and I think most of us assumed that to be the one in 1969. Of course, as R points out, IASA isn't real so it can be any year they want and considering what I was doing to the math during that conversation, I'm really not going to argue with him about it {g}.

However, for those of us who like the real-world element to John's personal history, I believe the last moonwalk was in 1972, which, depending on which month it was and which month John was born, could still have made him roughly four years old.

There. I'm happy now. And since it served the highly amusing plot device of turning Chiana into Karen Shaw, it's all good.

* The *clothes*. Ack! How long had that box been in the house? Since 1975? I thought CB looked terribly uncomfortable in that outfit, but I know I'll be in a minority there, so whatever {eyeroll}. Forgive me for snorting at the 'Cher' comment as well, but I'd been thinking exactly the same thing. All she needed was a tan and a center parting.

In the not-a-nit-but category, I'm not sure if Gigi meant to flash Chiana's knickers, but I did find that pretty funny as well. They go under the tights, my dear.

* The comms. I want to be on that cellular network. Works across space *and* time. Gives new meaning to 'can you hear me now?'

* The English. I was disappointed, since Monjo also wrote AHR, that they didn't let us hear the alien languages when we were in the humans' POV. I really adored the versimilitude of that in the first ep -- it was one of those wake-up calls that said "this is a show unlike any other." However, kudos to CB, who made Aeryn's English at least sound like it wasn't her native tongue, and even contributed a new untranslatable Sebacean curse to the lexicon. I could also swallow Chiana having learned some English over Aeryn's shoulder all these months, as the vocabulary she used was limited. But Granny? She either spoke in full, perfectly grammatical sentences, or she does not need to be understood when she says 'forget everything.'

On the plus side, however, another long-standing question appears to have been answered. The microbes apparently do allow you to hear the original language, and simply make sense of it, otherwise no one could have learned English at all. Which is contrary to the way the actors once said they imagined it -- everyone appearing to be badly dubbed -- but *is* much more logical. There's a long post surmising exactly how that might work neurologically, but I won't inflict that on you now.

It does reopen the question of the Granny-induced visions in 403/404, however. We now know that she can alter memory, so it's not a far step to imagine she can suggest particular visions as well. Really makes me wonder what agenda she has with Crichton. And if it hadn't been for Aeryn talking about it herself, I'd seriously be wondering if she were pregnant at all.

* The Time. Remember all that mass speculation that went on after Unrealised Reality aired? Well, we now know something about that episode in retrospect -- it seems John was not literally being pulled in and out of wormholes. The effect was as much created by Einstein as the iceberg construct on which they met. In 411 his consciousness kept landing in his own body, in the middle of a life already unrolling. If that was how going into his own past worked, he'd have arrived in his own body at 16 years old.

I'm open to either theory, and this one is more logical, so again, we're good.

However, if you don't want to frell the timeline, if you want the ripples to be as small as possible, you don't go down to the planet. And if you do, you don't bring something that looks as alien as Rygel with you. You don't bring Granny and Chiana, who are destined to create trouble wherever they go. In fact, you don't bring anyone except possibly Aeryn, who at least looks human, can communicate passably, and will back you up if becomes necessary to shoot someone. But then you don't have an episode, so...(waves hands).

*Aeryn, wormholes. She can fly them, she can predict them, and I think everyone wil agree, that's going to be important. I've heard a lot of wild theories all year about this Aeryn having come back from the future to change something in the past. I'll throw a bet into that hat, as something that explains Promises to me: in her original timeline, she never came back to Moya at all.

But...what she came to fix may not have been directly related to John. I rather hope, if this is the answer to the riddle of this year's Aeryn, that it's not. Finding him seems to have been in her mind, but her assignment (or her plan) may have been as simple as what Promises describes -- she came back to kill the Hokothian, because in her timeline the virus had been sold to the Scarrans and used to annihilate the Sebacean race. Getting the heat delirium was definitely not something she'd planned on. And everything else since then seems new to her, so I don't think she's repeating anything she's already done.

That's idle speculation though. And brings me to Aeryn and John, but I'm going to leave it here as this is long enough. I've gotten the reservations out of the way, and the good stuff...well, there's plenty of that to talk about before Terra Firma. Despite my reservations, Kansas still holds plenty of good.

Till then, and happy FS to the west coast.

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:: fialka 4:13 AM [+] ::

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--part three of the great unbeta'd. while the US waits for Kansas--

One guy, two guy, big guy, blue guy.

"D. What's up, mah man?"

He puts his hand up for the high five, deliberately misses and walks on past. He can practically hear D'Argo's look over the noise of the station, a rebuking silence that grates in his ears.

John stops before a refreshment kiosk, reaches into his pocket. The dark crystalised extract slides into his palm, and for a moment he's tempted. One sniff more or less, what the hell. A movement beside him changes his mind, and he shoves his hand deeper, grabs a couple of brandar tiles.

It shouldn't matter, he thinks, and Chiana turns her head.

"What?"

Damn. He can't remember if he just said that out loud. If Chiana's learning to read minds now, they're all in some serious frelling dren.

"What shouldn't matter?" she repeats, leaning a little closer, tilting her head to look up him.

Ah, Pip. Little grey girl no more, lines under her eyes and tight brackets around her mouth. She strokes his cheek with one half-gloved hand and he has the strangest desire to put her fingers in his mouth, see if she tastes like ash.

"It's gonna be okay, Crichton."

He nods. Sure it is. Click three times, no place like home. Open your eyes and there's Auntie Em, waiting with a plate of brownies.

Brownies, damn. He shouldn't think of things like that.

"Just talk to her."

"Chi."

She twitches at him, annoyed, but there's something in his voice that makes her back away two steps. He's not sure what it is, but if it makes people leave him alone he's not too sure he cares.

John steps up to the bar, places a tile on the counter. Reading the menu is out of the question, so he points to one of the glowing green bottles the natives seem to like.

"That we don't know," says the barkeep, pushing the pledge tile back at him. Maybe it looks like stale chocolate to her, too.

He shrugs and says, "It's currency everywhere else." He wonders if they've got chocolate in tormented space. That might make it worth the pointless journey they've been on so far.

The barkeep shrugs back. An intergalactic language.

"Take this." An irridescent hand comes into John's line of vision, places a flat tinnish teardrop on the counter by his hand. Good old Sputnik, ever rushing to be useful. John has no idea where she hides her stash in that little orange suit, but her supply of krindar seems endless.

He looks at the symbol. Red. Small change, probably worth no more than a couple of six-packs on Earth, apart from the alien artifact element. Rates good on the market though, even out here. The blue and green ones, he's noticed, inspire looks of greedy panic. No one's sure what they're really worth, but everybody wants them. Bad sign when even backwater planets start hoarding the currency of a race on the warpath. If only PK pledge tiles really were stale chocolate. At least then he could eat them.

Crichton grabs his drink and walks away from the inevitable negotiation for change. He eyes the planetary natives leaning on their heavy tails, ageless men stroking wispy beards. They look like a crossbreed between Confucious and a kangaroo and he's intrigued in spite of himself.

"So what are they like?" he asks Sikozu, as she sidles up to stand beside him again. He knows a suck-up when he sees one, but if it buys him a couple of glasses of happy juice to take the bitter dust taste out of his mouth, he's willing to overlook the hidden agenda.

"Which they?" She gestures over the edge of their balcony with both hands, framing the loading area of the docking station. It's too cavernous to be the bar at Mos Eisley, but the cornucopia of body shapes looks pretty much the same.

John gestures back over his shoulder, to a nearby table of natives. "The Fu Mancharoos."

Sikozu spares them a sidelong glance from her pale green eyes. "The Faldi are a peaceable race of traders, speaking an obscure dialect of --"

"Good, good. Thanks." Peaceable, right. That's all he needs to know. He lifts the bottle to his mouth, tastes the glow. Lime Kool-aid mixed with battery acid. Ah, well.

"...were slaves in the nearby Halan system, whose inhabitants are not."

"Huh?"

"Peaceful."

"Whatever." Down the hatch. Yum.

Crichton takes a step back as the full force of the drink hits him. The world disappears and for a moment everything is blazing hot, everything is blood rushing down and Aeryn riding him hard, fingers digging into his biceps.

"Crichton?"

Holy mother of whatever passes for a saviour out here.

"Crichton, are you all right?"

He opens his eyes, breathless, closes them again. Sputnik's doing her anti-gravity thing, sticking out sideways from a wall somewhere.

"Crichton!"

"Yeah." He licks his lips, taste lime and nothing else. The feeling has already receded into something warm and cosy, a faint tingling at the edge of his limbs. John looks up and realises Sputnik's still on her feet, he's the one who's gone all horizontal. Manages to get to his elbows for a quick anatomy check. No erection, no wet spot.

Come not as you are, but as you'd like to be. He lets himself fall back flat again.

"What the hell is in those things?"

"I wouldn't know," Sikozu sniffs, stepping back.

John takes a deep breath and rolls to his feet. His muscles flex smoothly beneath the skin, bones light, body full of grace.

He feels good. He even closes his eyes and he still feels good. Soft breeze in his hair, a golden sun warm on his face. Taste of autumn in the air, windfall apples and the faintest tang of burning leaves.

"I bet they're in bed in New York," he murmurs. "I bet they're in bed all over America..."

"What?"

Crichton keeps his eyes closed, catches the last rays of sun. "A movie. Humphrey Bogart. Can't go home because he's done something wrong, never tell you what. Not important."

He opens his eyes and it's the UT stare. Even Sikozu's got it now. Frelling human, what *are* you talking about?

He suddenly sees the universe laid out before him, the dark between the stars. Running to the edge, to the thing the universe expands into, it'll never be far enough. And always too far. Sixty light-years. Might as well be a billion.

Crichton lifts the bottle to his lips, upends it before Sikozu's disapproving glare, tongue searching for the last crystalline drops.

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:: fialka 11:01 AM [+] ::

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and this is all I'm going to say

I haven't posted about 412, partly because I was waiting for it to air in the US, and partly because I had some reservations that kind of got in the way. It's a fun ep, the kind of thing I'm sure I'll enjoy more later.

413, however, is all that and a bag of chips. More than 'classic' Farscape, whatever your top ten is, I doubt it will fail to include this. It's everything you expect, in a different way than you expected it. Ricky Manning eschews the easy jokes of last week and cuts right to the heart of the matter. And you bleed. That's not to say 413 does not have its funny moments as well, but they flow seamlessly from the situation at hand.

Honesty, blood and a couple of laughs. Yup, that's my Farscape. And that's all I'm going to say for now.

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:: fialka 8:11 PM [+] ::

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