We're So Screwed Part 1: Fetal Attraction

Hi everyone!

Forgive the late review, but I’m up to my eyebrows in the Ballet; two performances Friday, two performances Saturday, and a performance today leaves little time for reviewing. However I figured late is better then never! So finally now that I have a break from Coppelia it’s time for some Fetal Attraction! As always this review contains HUGE HONKIN’ spoilers for that eppy, and all ideas are my own. Come on, I’ve been living in a pit for 3 days, I haven’t had time to talk with anyone about the eppy!

Overall:

• We all knew Scorpius had another agenda. Apparently it’s been to wait for Harvey 2.0 to feed him all the information he needs to create wormholes. Also apparently Harvey can’t be finished yet, since Scorpius has gone along with Crichton this whole time. I figure if Scorpius had everything he needed then he would have ditched Crichton and crew and gone off to make himself useful to PK command again.

• What I liked about this eppy was the semi-surprise ending. It stands to reason that a three part eppy that starts with the crew forging out to rescue Aeryn would end by the end of the three parter with Aeryn’s rescue. It’s a neat twist to have Aeryn safe on Moya by eppy one and yet now Crichton is committed to saving his hated enemy from the fate he dreaded Aeryn fell to. Plus for part one of three it moved along fairly quickly with not too much in the way of exposition and set up.

And Crichton:

• Granted Aeryn and Chiana probably have just as much to complain about this eppy, but Crichton (as always) takes his lumps. This WACKer eppy finds Crichton getting knocked out by a Charrid and heat probed by a Scarran. This eppy gets a Tell The Truth But Not The Whole Truth rating.

At least he didn’t die.

The Good:

• The Number One Reason to Watch Farscape, as told by John Crichton: "I love waiting to see how things go south."

• Probably the first good news in a long time comes in the form of Aeryn not being at Katrazi yet but on the station they are docked at. It’s also the only good news they’ll get this week.

• Check out the different handprints for getting food on the station; one for Kalish, one for Scarran, one for...uh...something with a lot of fingers...

• Only Rygel could come up with a plan that involves projectile vomiting like he’s possessed.

• Claudia is absolutely gutwrenching to watch when playing tortured Aeryn. She spent much of the first season showing Aeryn completely in control, and it’s always a shock to see her fall apart emotionally.

• "Luxans make fine pilots, exceptional bodyguards, and superlative lovers."

• Rygel gives such a sad look when telling how four of his wives didn’t survive the plague. Sparky may always come first in his eyes, but he does have feelings for others.

• Great Scene 1: D’Argo silently stews as he watches Chiana flirt around with a Kalish. Then a few gruff words later he has her all to himself, ostensibly to relay information on the plan. But underneath necessity is still that desire to be with each other again. Perhaps D’Argo has learned enough patience and forgiveness watching John and Aeryn, and he is now ready to give it a try with Chiana.  Some nice underplayed acting from Anthony and Gigi.

• How wonderfully ironic that Crichton seduces the Nurse who’s helped torture Aeryn in order to get his true love.

• After all the torture and pain Crichton has suffered, he knows just what to say and how to react to a drugged and scared Aeryn.

• I liked how it wasn’t some forced heat training that saved John when being heat probed, but his own intelligence that fooled the Scarran. Tell the truth, just not the whole truth, and not only does the Scarran believe he’s not lying but he gets himself out of danger.

• Gotta love how Crichton says, "She’s still learning." when overruling Sikozu’s comment that they abandon Aeryn. Moya is the demented version of the Three Musketeers, all for one and one for all. If you climb on board and prove your loyalty then you won’t be left behind.

• We sometimes forget that Chiana doesn’t just kiss or cry, but can kick her way out of any dangerous situation. Watch Chiana go completely Rambo and take down four Charrids and almost escape when attacked on Moya. You go girl!

• I do feel bad for the Kalish that Sikozu seduced so she could get the info she needed. He’s probably the only one from the station just trying to do his job and the right thing, and for his troubles he gets stun-tongued.

• I love how, when the power goes out and the lights go off, there is no background music. Simply the silent, creepy noises of various people moving and the frantic sounding alarm.

• Gotta love Chiana’s "I’m fine, you can put me down...at least for now." to D’Argo. I wonder when she’ll ask to be picked up again. :-)

• Smartest Reaction Of The Eppy goes to Chiana, for knocking out Sikozu when she wanted to storm off and rescue Scorpius. It doesn’t matter that they’re gonna do it anyway, at that moment it was the right thing to do!

• Great Scene 2: Crichton carries Aeryn back to her quarters on Moya and comforts her as she fights through pain and drugs to realize she is finally safe. It’s a warm and happy relief kind of moment, tempered with gutwrenching sympathy for Aeryn’s desperate "Is this real?" and her plea to Crichton to stay. Wonderfully acted by both Ben and Claudia!

• "By my actions, I have taken innocent lives."
  "Welcome to Moya."

• Rygel shows a quiet moment of compassion for (of all people) Noranti as he comforts her guilt by extending his forgiveness over her actions.

• YES!! HARVEY LIVES!!!

• Gotta love Wayne as Harvey doing Nosferatu, complete with Transylvanian accent and extra long fingernails!

• "Scorpius...he upgraded me to Harvey 2.0."

The Bad:

• Why have they not spaced Noranti yet? If she hasn’t proven by now that her cures sometimes can be worse then the problem I don’t know what will. And an extra Why...why does she complain to Crichton that he should have killed the Kalish doctor, yet bemoaned her killing of other Kalish to Rygel?

• Why do we get a frantic, oh my God Rygel might be dead pre-commercial cliffhanger only to come back and not even address his collapse except to find out later he’s fine? It’s like they forgot to show us a resolution to that little plot line!

• John is SURPRISED to find out Scorpius lied and didn’t kill Harvey?!

• How the heck is Harvey transmitting all John’s knowledge? Harvey can’t be a full chip again, or else he’d just have forced John to go after Scorpius in the first place. And how could all this be going on without John knowing, especially now that John knows what it’s like to have neural clones and chips and all that.

The Nitpicky:

• I really miss the long-faced, puppeted Scarrans. They look so much more alien then the more human faced one’s were seeing now. It’s a shame they cut back on those.

• Why is Noranti shaking hands like a human?

• Missing Dialogue: Crichton, after Noranti explains that she re-infected Rygel and possibly everyone on the station, "Sometimes Granny, I don’t like the way you do things!"

• Why does the Scarran freighter have Evil DRD’s? And why didn’t we see them in Prayer?

• How friggin frelled up yet totally cool would it have been to see Chiana carrying Aeryn and John’s child?

• So just how did Sikozu suddenly have a head probe to jam the docking controls with? And why is she lying to D’Argo about it?

• When Wayne, as Scorpius, spit up all over the camera while getting heat probed, did none of the camera crew feel it necessary to clean off the dren on the lens? Must we view the scene through puke covered cameras? Eeewww...

"You should have killed him."
"My body count is already too high." -Noranti and Crichton

Lauren (OboeCrazy)
SACCer #1: The Most Vocal Defender