We’re So Confused
Episodes 19-21
Feb 28 – March 14, 2003
“We’re So Screwed, Pts 1-3”
We’re So ConfusedWhen I started this Farscape column at the beginning of this season, my big question was: Is it possible for somebody who’s only watched a handful of Farscape episodes to start watching the show in the fourth season and still make heads or tails of it?
The answer, apparently, is no. I just finished watching the three-part “We’re So Screwed” story, and, well, it beats the heck out of me. By the end of the third episode, everybody’s bluffing and double crossing so much that it’s honestly a relief when Crichton drops a nuclear bomb and blows most of the characters to bits. I kind of wish that I’d known he was going to do that from the start, because then I wouldn’t have bothered even trying to keep track of what was going on. (Just like the writers. Bada bing!)
So I’m going to write up all of this in one big lump, because I need to catch up before next week, when they cancel the show — or, as the Sci Fi Channel tactfully puts it, when the “series finale” airs. Anyway, it’s supposed to be a three-part story, so why not.
Not that it actually is a three-part story. If you want to get technical about it, Part 2 and Part 3 are a two-part story, and Part 1 is clearly just a repeat of the episode before it.
In fact, as far as Part 1 goes, I could just put a big “ditto” up, and that would about cover it. In most respects, this episode is very, very similar to the Puppy episode. There’s more torture, there’s more needles, there’s more shouting. The big difference is that in this episode, a major character gets infected with a horrific fatal skin condition.
By the way, why doesn’t that kind of thing ever happen to, let’s say, the cast of Everyone Loves Raymond, so I could really sit back and enjoy it? I can’t stand the characters on that show. If you ask me, the Everyone Loves Raymond family could use two or three contagious skin conditions, just to shake them up a bit. Let me know when they get around to that.
So anyway, Part 1. John is still chasing after Aeryn, who’s still being tortured on camera by the mean Scarrans. Moya catches up with the Scarran transport ship on the outskirts of Scarran space, at a Scarran border station. Scarrans, Scarrans, Scarrans. We haven’t seen a single Scarran until like three episodes ago, and now the place is lousy with Scarrans.
The Scarran border station is yet another dirty enclosed claustrophobic set with lots of little dark rooms to run in and out of. Is that a cost-cutting thing, putting every episode on some kind of space station or secret underground outpost? All of these episodes happen indoors. Last week’s was on the transport ship, the week before that they sat around and watched TV for the whole episode, and before that I think they spent the entire episode at the mall. I can’t remember the last time they went outside, I guess because outside always looks like New Zealand. No wonder the characters look so upset all the time. The last half of this season is one long rainy Sunday afternoon.
Anyway, the border station is run by Dr Trayso, an entirely incompetent Medical Officer who apparently knows nothing about medicine and very little about offices. He spends the entire episode standing around in a big leather coat and saying that nobody can leave the station unless he signs their hall pass. It’s supposed to be his job to check out all the ships going into Scarran space to make sure that nobody is bringing in any contagions, but when he’s faced with an actual contagious illness, he has no idea what to do with himself. He just stands around and moans, like Mr Mooney from The Lucy Show.
And y’know what? It just occurred to me how weird it is that they have a border station in space in the first place. I mean, how do you regulate a border around “Scarran space”? It’s not like Scarran space is a suburban gated community with only one entrance. Space is three-dimensional, you could be coming from any angle. This is the least of my problems at this point, but still. A border station. I don’t get that part.
Anyway, they come up with the brilliant plan of giving Rygel a contagious fatal skin condition, which forces Mr Mooney to lock down the station and run around shouting, “LUCIIIIILLE!” (No, he doesn’t really, but I wish he did.)
The more I think about it, though, the more this seems like an episode of The Lucy Show. John and Scorpius cook up a wacky scheme where they pretend to be spies, and Noranti poses as a doctor. Mr Mooney, the so-called Medical Officer, accepts these obvious lies without checking anyone’s credentials or even asking for a social security number. All the schemers run around and whisper, and they keep changing their stories. After a while, John and Scorpius get frustrated, and they just start clonking people over the head and knocking them unconscious. This is The Lucy Show: 1999. I bet if The Lucy Show was being made today, they would’ve had abdomen-piercing needles and projectile vomiting too.
The big wacky sitcom conclusion is that at the end of the episode, John manages to rescue Aeryn and get her back home… but then they realize they left Scorpius behind! Now they have to go and rescue him! Luuuuuucyyyyyy!
Boy, it’s a good thing this is only a three-part story, cause the way this is going, we could just keep swapping hostages around forever. This episode is basically like the “take a penny – leave a penny” dish of hostage taking. And that’s the end of Part 1.
Part 2 takes place on Katratsi, which is — surprise! — another big dark space station. It’s the Scarran’s secret base, which they’ve apparently built in the middle of a chewed-up Milk Dud. There is some reason for this that they might have mentioned while I was distracted by the Scarran Emperor.
The Scarran Emperor — and we might as well jump right into this, because I can’t stop thinking about him — is a huge scary lizard guy with a really deep voice and enormous full-figured breasts. I’m serious. The guy’s a plus-size model. He’s like a slightly more feminine Roseanne. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to make of this — it’s obvious that I’m supposed to be scared of him — but every time he’s on screen, I keep thinking, that emperor guy is a whole lot of lovely lady to look at. Is that weird?
It doesn’t help that he’s wearing some kind of armor-plated muu-muu with spikes shooting out at the shoulders and cuffs. Again, not sure what I’m supposed to make of that, except maybe it was a bridesmaid’s dress and he thought he could still get some use out of it.
Hey, quick joke: How do Scarran emperors hug? Very carefully. Thank you.
So then we get to the part of the story where they start revealing secrets that a) I don’t understand and b) I wouldn’t care about even if I did understand them. For example: SIKOZU is a BILOID! I think I’ve already covered in previous entries that I am pretty much immune to any big revelation that involves a character turning out to be one thing instead of another thing, especially if I didn’t know what they were supposed to be in the first place. Sikozu was introduced as a snippy red-headed alien chick who could run up walls. I never knew what her species was called, and it never occurred to me to wonder about it. The fact that I now know that she is not a Kalish — which is apparently Farscape for “red-headed and snippy” — but is in fact a Biloid who’s involved in an anti-Scarran resistance movement… well, it means nothing to me.
And also ditto on SCORPIUS is a SCARRAN SPY WORKING FOR THE BIG-BREASTED EMPEROR! Which may or may not be true depending on which scene you’re watching. Ditto also on STARK is a BILOID! and then, Oh, no, there he is, he’s over there! which is another confusing thing that happens. Now, I don’t really know Stark — he was before my time — but the one thing I thought I knew about Stark was that he was dead. Now, apparently, not dead. And that about wraps it up for Part 2.
Part 3 begins with another series of random revelations that I don’t really get, the major one being SCORPIUS WANTS TO DESTROY THE SCARRANS’ FLOWERS! That one is entirely beyond me. I wish I understood that, actually, even a little bit, because I bet there’s a ton of really hilarious jokes I could make about it, if only I knew what it meant. The Scarrans have some big ol’ greenhouse in the basement of their secret base that grows special flowers that they need to eat or else they devolve or something. And Scorpius — who I thought was a Scarran spy last week, but now maybe not — really wants to destroy the flowers. In fact, all of a sudden, that is literally the main motivation of his entire life. He actually says that he would lay down his life if he could destroy the flowers. The fact that no one has ever mentioned these flowers before in any episode that I can recall makes the situation even more baffling for me.
I mean, is it fair for them to suddenly say, oh, hey, you know how we’ve been going on and on about wormholes all season? Well, actually, surprise, the big threat is flowers. Boy, scary flowers, though, huh?
The other major motif of the episode is that all of a sudden everybody wants to use the Willy Wonka elevator, which looks and acts just like a normal elevator except that it has a drill on the end of it that can tunnel through the whole planet. The magic elevator is called, for some reason, a “Rabrokator.”
I’m serious. This is the moment that broke me, that drove me to despair. At the top of the hour, they start saying that Scorpius’ plan is all about the elevator. Then, thirty minutes in, they suddenly start calling it a Rabrokator. “Sikozu has managed to summon the Rabrokator,” says Scorpius. Crichton, naturally, says what the hell is that. “It’s a drilling elevator,” says Sikozu, as if that explains everything. After that, they talk about the Rabrokator pretty much non-stop. “They’re in the Rabrokator, we’re trying to over-ride,” says Maleficent. “The Rabrokator is stopped at the crystherium cavern,” says a Kalish tech. Rabrokator, Rabrokator. Every time they say it, it’s like a little piece of my soul dies.
Then there’s one more big meaningless revelation, which is that Sikozu tells everyone that she’s a biloid who’s been genetically engineered with the power to kill Scarrans by making their heat-producing glands explode. The translation for those of you who don’t speak technobabble is that Sikozu is a magic fairy who can turn herself into one of those plasma globes from Spencer’s Gifts, and that makes the mean lizards go boom.
At that point, it’s back to the Rabrokator, which digs through the whole planet, finally smashing up through the floor of the conference room and upsetting everybody. They all seem very surprised, although I’m not sure what they installed a Rabrokator for, if not for this very thing. I mean, why even have a drilling elevator if you’re not going to drill anywhere? Why not just put in stairs?
Then everybody starts double-crossing everybody. Grayza tries to attack the Scarrans, so Bracca takes command away from Grayza. The Emperor tries to take power away from Maleficent. The Kalish resistance fights against the Scarrans. All kinds of mess happens.
Finally, Crichton ends the whole deal by dropping his nuclear bomb and blowing up the entire Milk Dud of a planet, apparently killing everybody, except for the main characters. Which wraps everything up pretty nicely, I suppose.
And then next week the whole show ends.
by Danny Horn
