I Hate to Say "I Told You So," But... (WARNING: Spoilers for Farscape Episode 4.19: "We're So Screwed, Pt. 1: Fetal Attraction")

Interesting reaction I had to this episode. I was watching along, and I was certainly enjoying it, but lurking in the back of my brain was this slight feeling of dissatisfaction, a vague sense of disappointment that the episode wasn't quite delivering what I really wanted of it... whatever that might be, exactly. More tension, I suppose. More suspense. More emotion. More... weight. It's a totally unfair expectation, I know, but I just can't silence the little voice in the back of my mind that cries out "But there's only three episodes left, probably forever!" and wants every moment of Farscape remaining to be as packed full as it possibly can be of absolutely everything I've ever loved about the show. My rational side was saying, "Wait, it's Farscape. Nothing is ever as easy as this seems to be. Just wait, there's gonna be a payoff." But the whiny irrational side didn't want to wait. After all, it'd been waiting a whole week since the last episode already!

Yeah, well, that whiny irrational side should just learn to shut up, because damn but those last five minutes completely turned the entire episode around. They immediately metamorphosed the whole thing into something tense and suspenseful and signficant and really exciting. Oh, yeah, what a payoff! In retrospect, the oddly dampened feel of the rest of the episode suddenly seems like the calm before the storm, the silence while waiting for the other shoe to drop, and probably a whole host of other cliches that I'm too brain-fried to come up with right now. The result is that as a whole (or rather, as the first part of a three-parter), it becomes very satisfying indeed.

OK, the usual spew of random thoughts (and they're likely to be even more random and rambling than usual, as it's now very late, and my brain is seriously starting to shut down):

Man, is "We're So Screwed" as a title just quintessentially Farscape, or what? Mind you, it takes on a little bit of a new (and highly unpleasant) association given the current situation... Yep, Farscape's been screwed, all right...

I never know quite how to react to Noranti (something that I suspect is highly intentional). One moment, I'm thinking "Wow, she's really being on the ball this episode!" and the next I'm quite literally smacking myself on the forehead and going "She did what?!" Yes, Noranti, you did something egregiously dangerous (some might even say stupid), and while ultimately it worked, in the process people died. That often tends to happen when you go spreading lethal, contagious diseases, oddly enough. You know, you might want to stop and think about that sort of thing once in a while, preferably before you act. Sheesh, she's just really not good with that whole grasping the consequences of her actions thing, isn't she? Rygel's reaction to her was cool, though. Once in a while (OK, once in a great while), he can be quite unexpectedly noble. Occasionally, you even realize that this guy did make difficult moral decisions involving the direction of an entire empire, and may not actually have done too bad a job at it. Then again, maybe he just really likes Noranti because she cooks for him and he wants to keep her buttered up.

I'm still not remotely sure how or why the Scarrans think they can get wormhole technology from Crichton's baby's DNA. I mean, OK, I can concoct a theory about how Crichton's DNA might somehow contain information about wormholes, if I wave my hands a lot and invoke large quantities of suspension-of-disbelief and speculate up a storm about what the Ancients might have actually done when they stuck the info in his head in the first place. But even so, how would the Scarrans know about it?

While it doesn't surprise me that they'd all (well except for Sikozu) be willing to starburst away and quite happily leave Scorpius twisting in the wind, I must admit that I was muttering something along the lines of "ungrateful bastards" in their general direction at that point. But, you know, he'd certainly do the same to them, so I really can't hold it against them.

OK, what is up with Sikozu?! I've never subscibed to the theory that she was a Scarran spy, but now I'm starting to wonder. Whatever the case, there is clearly something very strange going on with her. There've been a lot of little things about her that have seemed odd, but all of them, I think, could easily be dismissed as having perfectly innocent explanations. But whatever it is that she did with that control panel... just didn't look very dismissible.

Words cannot say how delighted I was to see Harvey again! (Even if his Dracula impression really is kind of annoying.) My delight softened a bit, though, when he talked about how Scorpius had tampered with him. Oh, poor Harvey, he frelled with your mind, too? Doesn't seem to have changed his personality much, though, so that at least makes me happy. I liked Harvey. A lot. But, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny... I'll say it once again: I told ya so! It was a bad move to agree to have Harvey removed, and it was a really stupid move to allow Scorpy to stick another spike into your head. Come on, don't you know the guy better than that by now? Silly boy, trusting him on the big, dangerous things and then getting all paranoid about the small stuff he's got no reason to screw you on.... Tsk, tsk, tsk.

It does occur to me to wonder if Harvey was actually telling the truth about having uploaded big chunks of John's mind to the Scorpster, but I'm willing to bet that he was, just because, well, that kind of thoroughness is completely typical of Scorpius. Oh, yeah, that's the Scorpy I know and love! Not to mention respect and fear. Then again, Harvey may well have been fibbing just a tad, because if he's not, then Scorpius already has the wormwhole knowledge, so what's he been hanging around for? Hmm. In any case, Harvey's reappearance and revelation make for one hell of a plot twist, one that fulfills all my expections while somehow simultaneously being totally unexpected. And it leaves the characters in a situation that... well, let's just say that the epsiode title suddenly seems entirely justified. Heh.

Hey, speaking of Scorpius, is anybody but me wondering how he got Scarran spy codes? OK, I don't have any trouble believing that he has them, I'm just kind of curious as to how he got them.

As has often been pointed out, this season has had a lot of resonances with various things from back in Season Two. And I think we've finally discovered more or less what they were all pointing towards. Once again, John is being driven by a neural clone in his head... Oh, yeah, we were here this time season-before-last, too. Even the story structure is the same: three-parter followed by a season finale. I'm almost positive that this is not coincidental, and now I'm really afraid to see what other parallels are going to crop up. In case it's not clear, by the way, this is praise not criticism. They're definitely not simply re-hashing the second season, here, rather they're building on what has gone before and playing with the associations they've already created in the audience's mind in really interesting ways. There's probably some kind of literary term for this, and if there's not, there should be. Whatever you call it, I do very much like it.

So, how 'bout those Scenes from Next Week, huh? Stark! My man! I've missed you so much! Welcome back! Looks like it's really him this time, too, rather than a VR simulation or a freaky alternate-universe version or whatever the hell that talking head in "Unrealized Reality" was supposed to be. It also looks like he's going to get to do the brutal-interrogation deal on Scorpius, and I find that I really just can't begrudge him the opportunity. Turnabout is fair play, and all that. (You know, come to think of it, there've been a lot of these kinds of symmetries and "turnabouts" lately. I don't think that's accidental, either.) I can't for the life of me imagine what he's doing with the Scarrans, though.

Oh, wait. Several things just clicked into place. Oh, wow. If the Scenes from Next Week are to be believed... Suddenly I think I can understand how the Scarrans would know about Crichton and about the wormholes and about any funkiness there might be in his DNA... Oh, Stark, Stark... What have you been telling them? And just how much of Talyn-John's memories have you got in that frelled-up little brain of yours? And... Well, why? Man, I am really looking forward to finding out the answers.