As promised, I’m going to go over some of my favorite episodes from Farscape – we know it was great show, but there are some episodes in particular where the writing really shines.
Season Three’s “The Choice” is one of my top five. Written by Justin Monjo, this story revolves around Aeryn dealing with two sudden deaths: her mother Xhalax, killed by Aeryn’s shipmate Crais; and her lover John Crichton, who died from radiation poisoning (don’t worry, there’s a spare John – it’s weird, but just go along with it).
The show opens with Aeryn’s surviving shipmates, Crais, Stark, and Rygel, arguing about whether they should go and rescue their friend. Aeryn has gone down from the living gunship Talyn to a planet of seers and mystics, locking herself in a shady hotel so she can mourn in privacy. Crais is hoping that with Crichton gone, Aeryn will join him permanently on Talyn, and Stark, mourning the loss of his lover Zhaan, has formed a creepy obsession with Aeryn. Aeryn herself is shattered; pale and sleep-deprived, she sees flashbacks and a ghostly version of Crichton. At first she ignores it, but as the emotional memories become more insistent, she breaks down and acknowledges them. When a mystic comes to speak to her, she reveals that she wishes to speak to her dead father Talyn (for the sake of simplicity I’ll just call him Father from here on). The mystic reveals that he is Aeryn’s father, in hiding after his love affair with Xhalax, and after a brief reunion Aeryn admits she wanted to speak to Crichton.
Meanwhile, Rygel and Stark have discovered that Xhalax is very much alive and still hunting Aeryn, having been released by Crais as part of some underhanded deal. Rygel and Stark capture Crais and bring him to Aeryn, but what follows is a tense, uncomfortable scene where Aeryn makes it clear that she will never have any interest in Stark, then tries to use Crais as a body double to remember the warmth of Crichton’s touch. After making it clear that they both revolt her, Aeryn sends them away and goes back to her memories of Crichton, growing more distraught as she realizes she is alone. Rygel risks flying up in his chair to speak to her, a solitary voice of reason as he shares his own experience of love and loss. After Aeryn brushes off Rygel, the Father returns and brings the Seer: a squat, malformed alien. The Seer attempts to contact Crichton’s soul – but the vision presented is Crichton in pain, calling out for Aeryn’s help. The Father declares that there is a creature on the planet capable of bringing Crichton back from the dead, and Aeryn, now quietly desperate, agrees, diving into her most passionate memories of Crichton as she waits. Just as Aeryn is at her lowest point, Xhalax bursts in, holding Aeryn at gunpoint.
The Father returns, and Xhalax executes him in front of Aeryn, declaring that she wants Aeryn to suffer as she suffered, to have someone she loves within her reach and then snatched away. On the ground floor of the hotel, Stark, Rygel and Crais face off against Xhalax’s hired goons and Crais escapes into a service elevator to go save Aeryn. In the hotel room, Aeryn points out that she knew the “Father” was a fake, but as she breaks down she admits that she was happy to go along with the deception because she wanted to hope that it might be true. Alone with Xhalax, Aeryn finally bares her feelings, pointing out that their Peacekeeper culture does nothing for love. This shakes Xhalax, who admits that she was forced to kill Aeryn’s father, years ago, as punishment for conceiving Aeryn in love. Afterwards, she was consigned to life as an assassin, the pain of what she had lost gnawing at her until her only way out was to kill the last remaining link to her past. With Aeryn and Xhalax now standing on the edge of the hotel window, the mother and daughter share a moment of understanding, and Xhalax drops her gun – just as Crais bursts in and shoots her. Aeryn tries to save Xhalax as she falls, but the grizzled old assassin asks for Aeryn to let her go from a painful existence. Aeryn lets Xhalax slip from her fingers, and the old woman falls to her death.
In the aftermath, Rygel waits for Aeryn to return to the ship. Crais admits that perhaps he should give up control of Tayln, so that the ship can be led by someone worthy. Stark leaves entirely, declaring he has had a message from Zhaan that he must pursue. And Aeryn? She has once last vision of Crichton, whom she sends away, regressing in attitude and attire back into the Peacekeeper solider. The Seer, who has watched the exchange, offers one last time to make her dreams real, but Aeryn turns away as the screen fades to black.
Ok, so why does this episode really stand out for me? The answer is the big three C’s of Farscape: Character, Consistency, Continuity. The story structure is tight and surprisingly fast paced, with the opening setting up all the relationships without any unnecessary words. Xhalax and the crew of Talyn all clash in a way that is logical to the story and internally consistent with their characters. It’s a simple story, but one told with economy and precision. What I really enjoyed was the change from the hero being the active mover of the story to our hero being instead the object that others sought; even then, Aeryn is more than just a Maguffin, directing the plot from her hotel room in the way she interacts with both friend and foe.
This places all the crucial plot interactions squarely on the central character – and in this case, it paid off. This is without a doubt one of Claudia Black’s finest performances in the Farscape series. Black captures the emotional tone of the episode, her body language, voice and delivery perfectly depicting a woman who is quietly falling to pieces as she goes through the stages of grief. The theme of loss is woven beautifully into the character arcs: Rygel speaks from his experience in overcoming loss. Crais considers losing Tayln willingly, realizing that he deserves it. Stark pines for Zhaan, and ends up losing Aeryn after his emotions become creepy – in the end he runs off in search of Zhaan again.
Xhalax is the most complex. She is a woman who can only feel pain from what she has lost, to the point where she seeks to kill the living reminder of her past. The fact that she wants Aeryn to suffer is a strangely honest connection: a conversation from a pained killer trying to be understood.
Finally, there’s Aeryn, who comes out of the episode by dealing with pain and loss in a very Aeryn way – by acknowledging John is lost and burying her pain beneath the mask of the disciplined solider. As a result, this story ends not through character resolution but by ratcheting up the tension for when she is reunited with the “other” John Crichton. More importantly, Aeryn’s reactions show her grow and overcome this situation while still being completely consistent with her character, and her scenes are peppered with references and memories from previous episodes.
Character, Consistency, Continuity.
As a side note, there’s some great use of puppetry and practical effects in this episode, and I was impressed by how much the achieved with a limited budget. Seriously, there’s only three sets in this show, and most of the action takes place in the hotel room. This is classic Doctor Who style suspension of disbelief; the sets and costumes are basic, but you don’t notice because you’re drawn into the story.
That’s all for today, I’m looking at some X-Files episodes next week, but in the meantime if you enjoyed this article please consider sharing it – I went from a few hundred views to several thousand after 3 people shared my last Farscape article, so please help me out if you can!
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