WHAT HAPPENED
Moya drifts in a cloud of
"stellar mist." In the command center, Crichton
waits for Aeryn
to return from a reconnaissance mission in the transport pod. She’s overdue.
Zhaan
emerges from several days of meditation to a surprise: Stark, an alien
who spent some time with the crew last year, is back on board. His absence
and return are off-handedly explained with a line about his borrowing a
transport pod.
As the others tell Zhaan
what she’s missed -- the big news is that Pilot has discovered a planet
nearby -- they receive a call from Aeryn. When her pod docks, it is almost
worn out. She does not emerge.
Crichton and Zhaan go in
to look for her, only to find her lying on the deck, transformed into an
old woman. She warns Crichton to "get out, and get out now." (spoilers)
ANALYSIS
Just once, I’d like to see
a "characters get old" time travel episode that leaves its characters old.
It’ll never happen, of course,
if only because the actors would rebel at having their faces covered with
old-age makeup every week -- instead, once the makeup goes on, we can rest
assured that some kind of time loop is going to get it off again.
This usually means the character
forgets everything they may learn. There are occasional exceptions – ST:TNG’s
bravura episode "The Inner Light", for instance, which compressed a lifetime
of experience for Picard into a few "real" minutes – but lasting impact
is a rare thing.
"The Locket" is no "Inner
Light". Ben Browder and Claudia Black turn in excellent performances, but
we don’t learn anything new about their characters, and the simple "reverse
the engines" solution doesn’t offer much in the way of plot excitement.
Are they Stark raving
mad?
And then there’s Stark, who
reappears out of the blue after half a season’s absence with a Very Important
Message for D’Argo,
of all people.
Stark was introduced in late
in season one, and he seemed like an interesting fellow then. But then
he simply vanished after "Hidden
Memory", without even a line in passing about where he had gone.
His sudden reappearance doesn’t
redeem his disappearance, especially since his only purpose here is to
give Zhaan someone to meld with and to present D’Argo with the news about
his son. He’s a plot device here, not a character.
Maybe Justin Monjo and the
rest of the Farscape crew were trying to create a sense of continuity,
but it doesn’t work – the arbitrary combination of an "it never happened"
plot and an unrelated last-minute setup for a future episode does nothing
but jerk the viewer around.
WHAT WE LEARN
Stark borrowed a transport
pod and left after Moya’s crew rescued him from the Peacekeepers. He has
now returned with it.
Delvians pursue the ability
to sense time as part of their spiritual awareness.
Chiana’s
free spirit and D’Argo’s controlling nature are combining to put their
relationship on the rocks.
Crichton was about 4 when
the 1969 moon landings inspired him to become an astronaut.
FAMILY MATTERS
Due to the wacky nature of
this week’s plot device, Aeryn’s granddaughter Ennixx might still exist
in her pocket dimension.
D’Argo’s son Jothee has been
enslaved, and is scheduled to be auctioned in a few days.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
How did Stark find Moya again?
Does he have an agenda we don’t know about yet?
Since Aeryn apparently didn’t
know about the picture in the locket – and therefore must have put it in
after she was lost in the pocket dimension – where did the photograph of
Crichton come from?
TUNE IN TWO WEEKS
FROM NOW
Crais needs help getting
Talyn under control in "The Ugly Truth".
advertisement
