Prepare for Starburst: A Farscape Rewatch Thread

[Bluemeany]

Incubator

A sympathy for the devil episode I agree with jel and SQ, it’s nice to get some insight into Scorpy’s motivations. No one thinks they’re the villain do they? I guess Scorpius is the hero in his own story.

Given what has happened to him, you can see how he thinks some of his actions are justified. And I can see why Scorpius thinks he can convince Pooka-Crichton: personality wise they’re a bit closer than Crichton would admit.

Both are survivors, both get obsessive, both are scientists/logic based, both are ultimately quite patient in waiting for what they want…

Although, I’ve got to say, asking pissed-off Pooka John (who still thinks Aeryn is dead) for sympathy is a bit of miscalculation. Of course he’s not going to care! From his point of view, you were responsible for the love of his life dying less than 24 hours ago…

The ending with the flower is touching. Similarly, I think we talked about this in the Crackers Don’t Matter review) one of the first things Pooka-Scorpius does is stop Crichton raping Chiana. What we find out in this episode makes me wonder if there is at least one moral code Scorpius holds?

I like Braca in this. Following on from the episode of Aeryn’s mums and her backstory, we do get a lot more shades of PK characters and life in this season. The Lieutenant is loyal and dutiful, that shows principles of a sort if not actual morality.

And I do like Jools comment about Crichton supporting others and their decisions only when it works for him. I think that’s a valid criticism of John.

From an editing pov: obviously very useful if you’re a Scorpy vidder ( and there will be some out there I’m sure, this is the internet). Otherwise, lots of nice shots of John and Scorpius in the dark of his mind with red/blue smoke and fade throughs. Plus, the ancient blue symbols for the wormhole tech look great overlaid: I’ve used them a lot.

[squirrely1]

YAY! Blue is back!! Now we just need FH to come back!

Blue nice review! And you know you got me thinking that what you refer to Pooka-Crichton and Pooka-Scorpy (ha ha do you need to copyright that?) they don't know that Aeryn is still alive. WOW ok I know I only have 3 brain cells but that didn't really register with me. But so no wonder Pooka-John (how did you arrive at that name BTW?) is so apathetic and resistant to Scorpy there.

I think the Moya John does get sort of the bad wrap and bad light cast on him in this arc, he is brooding as you would expect because he has lost Aeryn and he is sorta frustrated with things. So naturally, I think he is shown as being the more obsessive one. Now that he has lost Aeryn, he really wants nothing more than to go home. So comparing the two John's with respect to their goals, they are becoming quite different (almost polar opposites). That as we know will cause quite the clash for the whole crew for future eps.

[squirrely1]

Incubator - From the Companion Book

On the 'Ideas' pin-board in the writers' room at Homebush Bay are a number of file cards. Some simply bear one word, others might have a sentence, or a description of an image. Some of them have initials at the bottom, indicating whose idea it was. Since the start of the second season, one has sat there, bearing the initials RM: 'A Day in the Life of Scorpius'.

"Everyone has their own pet project, and this was Ricky's," David Kemper explains. "It would be a Scorpius episode -- we'd follow him around, not as if he's a guest star, but as his episode. It didn't fit in the second year, but this year it did. We had lost sight of Scorpius for a while, because we knew we were going to get to him at the end of the year. We wanted our people to get away from him, to have other adventures. Ricky suggested showing what Scorpius was doing with wormholes. The audience and Crichton needed to know how far along he had got, so Crichton could later make his decision to go to the Command Carrier."

"Ricky wrote it in a way that prescribed Scorpius as the hero of the story," Director Ian Watson adds. "If we didn't know better, this is the story of a tortured, parentless young man. He's raised under adverse conditions, where he realises that the people who protect him are actually his captors. He breaks out, and tries to find his own identity."

"You don't normally get this with a villain," Rockne S. O'Bannon comments. "It opens a door to his psyche. Usually the villains just address you with their own villainous agenda, as opposed to you really getting a sense of what they're thinking beyond that."

Although Crichton is not actually present, Kemper believes that Scorpius is telling his version of the astronaut the truth, at least as he sees it. "He isn't so weak that he needs justification from the clone," he points out. "There may be another layer beneath it, but I don't think he's actively chosen to lie to the clone, because it would not serve his purposes."

"I was vaguely resetting the clone to the Crichton at the time the chip was removed in 'Die Me, Dichotomy'," Ben Browder says. "His attitude towards Scorpius is all tinged by the fact that, to him, Aeryn has just died. Scorpy was knocking on the wrong door there!"

Wayne Pygram worked extensively with Evan Sheaves to ensure a continuity of Scorpius's mannerisms. "We had to believe that this boy was the young Scorpius," Watson points out. "We re-voiced the boy with Wayne doing a younger version of himself, but it's a fantastic performance from Evan."

Watson deliberately gave 'Incubator' an unusual visual style. "The challenge was to do an episode which didn't feature the usual characters as much, and make it visually interesting," he explains. "I didn't dolly or put the camera on wheels once -- the camera is either fixed, or it pans. I wanted it to be much more static and create a sense of snapshots from Scorpius's past."

The rape that led to Scorpius's conceptions caused some concern. "There was a lot of discussion about that scene," Watson recalls. "We were concerned about the level of implied violence. I told Sam Healey that I wanted the emotional intensity of what was happening to read on her face, and that when the scene was finished, I wanted every male in the room to feel guilty."

"We knew that Ian had a handle on the material from way back," Kemper says, "and all the pieces looked really good going in. There was a special feel when it was done -- it turned into one of our really startling episodes, but it was still Farscape."

[Bluemeany]

Meltdown

Not that big on plot this one.

Talyn hears a siren song and sets collision course for nearest star. Crais gets angry, Stark freaks out and Aeryn & Crichton enter full ‘Carry On… Farscape’ territory.

The set-up is sort of like Losing Time from a few episodes back: two aliens on a ship – one looks evil, the others look nice: both say they are trying to help.

Meltdown isn’t particularly deep, so I don’t have much to say…. I think Aeryn is awesome in this one again. Makes most of the decisions, just laughs at Crais when he points a gun at her and demands she follow his orders, lies to Stark by saying Zhaan is speaking through her.

Oop, and there are two Aeryn/Crichton ‘ I love yous’. I think that brings our entire series total up to a grand total of three. Moya-John only had the one in three years still…

But yeah, as I say, I just don’t know what the point of the episode is?

Editing-wise: there are nice shots, mainly due to the ‘hot’ yellow and red colours they’ve got going on everywhere. Plus, obviously, a lot of Aeryn/Crichton kissing and doing *cough* other things. The closing shot that tracks around them is particularly useful.

Oh, and I do think they are trying to set up the shot so the two actors make a sort of heart shape with the red background… could be coincidental though, but given the lack of actual substantial content in this episode, it’s what I’m focusing on.
heart shape.jpg

[jelgate]

Meltdown

I'm with blue on this one. This will be my shortest review yet as I don't love it or hate it. I just don't care. After 5 seconds, I could see that the sun heightens our characters most prominent emotions. Rygel is usually gluttonous and Crais is often angry. It should come to no surprise that I needed my barf bucket for the John/Aeryn arousal scenes. It was interesting that these two entities live in the sun but felt the writers dropped the ball. Instead of exploring this weird phenomen, we get Crias yelling and Talyn resisting the urge. The one shinning beacon I think was Stark. I really enjoyed seeing him going more crazy be becoming Pilot. Despite the torture, I think this episode shows his dedication to helping others cross over. He really wants to help people find peace. Besides, that kind of a dull episode.

[squirrely1]

Meltdown

Not that big on plot this one.

Talyn hears a siren song and sets collision course for nearest star. Crais gets angry, Stark freaks out and Aeryn & Crichton enter full ‘Carry On… Farscape’ territory.

The set-up is sort of like Losing Time from a few episodes back: two aliens on a ship – one looks evil, the others look nice: both say they are trying to help.

Meltdown isn’t particularly deep, so I don’t have much to say…. I think Aeryn is awesome in this one again. Makes most of the decisions, just laughs at Crais when he points a gun at her and demands she follow his orders, lies to Stark by saying Zhaan is speaking through her.

Oop, and there are two Aeryn/Crichton ‘ I love yous’. I think that brings our entire series total up to a grand total of three. Moya-John only had the one in three years still…

But yeah, as I say, I just don’t know what the point of the episode is?

Editing-wise: there are nice shots, mainly due to the ‘hot’ yellow and red colours they’ve got going on everywhere. Plus, obviously, a lot of Aeryn/Crichton kissing and doing *cough* other things. The closing shot that tracks around them is particularly useful.

Oh, and I do think they are trying to set up the shot so the two actors make a sort of heart shape with the red background… could be coincidental though, but given the lack of actual substantial content in this episode, it’s what I’m focusing on.
[ATTA=CONFIG]41985[/ATTACH]

oh geeze I have to get on the ball here. I think the heart is intentional. I don't think anything they do art wise is coincidental. I haven't watched this yet because my day was crazy busy. I will try to get to it though later tonight or tomorrow. I'm sure I'll find lots of stuff to ramble on about.

[squirrely1]

Meltdown

You know why did I not notice how horrible this ep was the first couple of times I watched it? Probably I was too busy squeeing over the Aeryn/John bits. But honestly even those bits this time around were almost gag worthy. Yes I said it. I think I am almost apathetic over this union of Aeryn/John because I know what's headed for them and I absolutely feel for Moya John. But to be fair we know it's the mist talking here as John pointed out so many times, so meh.... I'm gonna let this pass. But yeah Blue you're right, the I Love you's are mounting up now and if taken out of context they could be used for vidding purposes. Although they are almost said in jest at least one time it is. I just have issue with this because the main plot seems so weak that the only entertaining bits is the John/Aeryn love fest and watching Stark float around like he's the latest edition to the Betty Spaghetti line.
This was a rather important and large plot line for Stark and too bad it's just horrible IMO. I seriously want what those writers were smokin' this ep. I think it would've been better if he weren't floating. I think that made it too hokey and distracting. I don't even think they needed the comic relief of Rygel this ep either because to me the whole thing seemed trite it's like you forgot just how serious their danger was... and you're reminded .....oh yeah they're flying into the sun...gee better get serious now! Even Crais' parts were downright cringe worthy as he basically spent the whole ep on a tirade stomping around demanding like a two year old. (jel on a good day)

I did however enjoy Rygel's humor even though it wasn't needed. I even think they must have recolored him and actually made him fatter and it looked like he had a few extra neck folds if I'm not mistaken. I'll be interested to see what the companion book says about their "fat Rygel" for this ep.

I was sad that so much time was spent on Crais threatening Rygel to make him go into the ducts and then that was never shown. Crais actually just sort of disappears from the ep which was weird. Oh that reminds me...the opening was interesting with how he was recounting his memory about Xhlax and how John was saying it went down. I think it was important that we heard it from Crais there that he indeed did kill her. As he said he couldn't leave her alive and he has no desire to go back to being a PK. That was at least one little nugget of something out of this ep.

You'd think as a shipper I'd really like this ep with all the Aeryn/John scenes. Don't get me wrong it was nice to see them so physical, but I think because it seemed so contrived and almost forced and over the top I just prefer the more subtly genuine scenes, like the naming the stars scene. That was special and sweet!

[squirrely1]

Meltdown from the Companion Book

"There's a method to our madness," David Kemper points out. "not much on our show is done haphazardly. I knew that the Talyn side of the split Crichton story was laid out linearly: we had an overall storyline written, and we had to follow it. I wanted to make the Moya crew's side much more one-by-one episodic television. 'Meltdown' was the one episode for the Talyn crew when we could step away from it being all about Mom, and Crichton and Aeryn. The villian was a guy who stood alone. He came in and left in one episode, yet it still played to advance the Crichton and Aeryn love story, under another guise."

Ian Barry returned for his second episode in the director's chair, and found he enjoyed the experience even more. "'Meltdown' went through an extraordinarily eleventh hour process, but it all came together because they've got a very strong team on the show," he says. "It set up a straightforward premise, then it had a lot of character drive. "Thanks for Sharing' had a very intricate, convoluted plot, and sometimes the intensity of a story can make the characters slaves to the plot, but 'Meltdown' gave some room to play, particularly for Ben and Claudia."

"I'm glad it was Claudia I was doing that episode with," Ben Browder admits. "We have a remarkable working relationship, in that we're really good friends, and he boundaries of our working relationship are very clear and well drawn. We don't get into that uneasy space that you often get into working with someone that closely. It's proof that we work really well together that we could do that episode without getting stressed about it."

Black agrees, "It was very difficult to shoot, but it was funny, because Ben and I spent all our time on set kissing! Normally in rehearsals we'll mark the point to 'insert kiss here' on the day, and sometimes the crew will ask us in a very perfunctory way to get into kissing positions. On this episode, we had to do it in rehearsals, and the crew were standing around going. 'Oh God, they're going to kiss again. Let's go and make a cup of coffee!"

The pacing of the episode was adapted in the editing room. "Ben, Claudia and Ian Barry went pretty hard at it," David Kemper explains. "When we saw the rough cut, it struck all of us that they had gone so fast into that tough glace that there was nowhere to get to for acts two and three. It was really intense -- they'd have to be having sex atop the Empire State Building by the end of act four if they kept going! So we re-edited to make the best episode."

One of the more unusual concepts to surface in this story had started off as one of Kemper's file card ideas: 'D'Argo gets plugged into Pilots den, and D'Argo becomes Pilot'. "We were sitting there working out the part we wanted Stark to play, and I suggested giving that idea to Stark," Kemper recalls.

Dave Elsey was particularly impressed with Mark Mitchell as Mu-Quillus. "He was one of the most amazing guys we ever had in the make-up seat," the Creature Shop supervisor recalls. "He would sit in the chair and say, 'Good morning', and then fall asleep instantly, and not wake up until we'd finished the make-up. Then he'd go off and do his acting, come back, and fall asleep to the point of literally snoring while we took the make-up off!"

"Dave whipped up something for Mu-Quillus to wear on his hands, like glowing embers, that Mark absolutely fell in love with," Ian Barry adds. "Mu-Quillus suddenly developed a Shakespearean fondness for gesturing!"

[jelgate]

Scratch N' Sniff

I don't want to know what the writers were smoking when they created this episode. It was probably SQ's rubber cement. SQ does make a good point. In her posting of those companion guides she mentions how the writers had a clear picture with Talyn. I actually said as much in a previous review of how the writers were lost with Moya John. I kind of see where the writers were going with this. They wanted to go with the classic of John and D'Argo getting drunk and they having to piece together what happened. I just think it was too weird and made no sense to explain. The random scene of other instances just made if confusing and hard to follow what was going on. In the end we discover what is going on and John outtricking everyone is clever. I just think it was too little too late. The randomness of them running around and Browder's annoying wife really makes me hate this episode. I just wanted to punch the character every 2 minutes. Its quite sad really. The concept of Chiana and Jool being "milked after being drugged is actually not a bad concept. And I quite find the auction scene funny. John would make a great high roller. The vision alien is interesting and John's story with an angry Pilot is funny. I can understand him being ticked off with all the bickering with all these people. Ultimately like I said, this episode fails because its just too weird of a concept and the story structure doesn't make a lot of sense.

Because we are behind and because part 1 is a little slow, I am going to combine Infinite Possibilities into one review tomorrow. It will also get me back on schedule

[squirrely1]

But I need to get back on track too!! I will watch and review Scratch and Sniff today.

As for the Moya John vs Talyn John story lines. I'm going to spoiler this in case anyone is watching the series for the first time.

Spoiler:

As mentioned in the Companion Book I think honestly the writers had a clear vision for where Moya John is going and now having seen the series a few times I think it's also clear the Moya John is the original John and it's like the writers knew that when they wrote this twinning arc and they treat the Talyn John as sort of the "Throw Away John" so they really take liberties with this John as a result. Let him get in deep with Aeryn literally and they tried not to advance the overall main story line too much during this arc so that each crew Talyn and Moya could sort of have a vacation from that. I think they wanted all the crew back together again before they advanced the main story line which means they will have to kill off one of the Johns, so in the meantime they were actually enjoying just goofing around with the one off silly plot lines for each crew. That is how I took it anyway. Once they kill off Talyn John it will be back to very serious nose to the grind stone advancing the main story plot. Except for maybe 'Revenging Angel'.

[jelgate]

I love Revenging Angel

[squirrely1]

I love Revenging Angel

I like it too, but what I mean is it's not exactly nose to the grind stone ep that advances the main story line.

[Bluemeany]

Scratch & Sniff

Ah, here we go - ‘Fear & Loathing in the Uncharted Territories’.

As Jel mentioned, this one has a weird structure. Lots of intercuts of images and scenes going on. I can’t believe that was all in the original script. I think it must have been written more straightforward and then the whole episode has been heavily switched around/spliced and changed in the edit…

… I think probably because the story wasn’t working well as it was. The whole thing has a “Distract the audience! Maybe they won’t notice” vibe. I could have actually done with it being weirder. Their drug-haze weekend isn’t that much different than a normal day on Moya (I mean Revenging Angel’s coming up).

Still, it’s kinda fun just for an episode.

That planet has more than a passing resemblance to nightlife in London, particularly south of the river where I live: Raxil even sounds like she’s got a Bexleyheath accent.

D’Argo and Cricton’s bickering is fun. And I like that Harvey gets to meet someone else for a change. Chiana epically murders the bad-guy Get Carter style and the idea that Raxil thinks the Moyan’s are much more competent than they actually are is neat.

I loved Pilot in this one. He’s fun when he’s grouchy. Returning “inebriated and broke” seems to be the average British man’s definition of a good night out, so I empathise with his point of view.

Editing wise: most of the nice shots are either in the auction room at the end ( lots of colours, spins etc.) or when they are dancing in the nightclub at the beginning. Chiana fire juggling looks cool (not something you get with most shows, I’m pretty sure it’s Gigi Edgley actually doing that)

[squirrely1]

Scratch N' Sniff

As you have both already mentioned this is a weird one. But unlike jel I liked it. I mean come on....the boys who are bickering so much, driving poor Pilot crazy need a night on the town not to mention Chi and Jool need some R&R as well. I think it's a nice little vacation for our uptight Moyans. Yes jel I used it. Bill me!

I agree with Blue that the editing crew had fun with this one. The freeze, jittering, slow mo effects were all added I'm sure to try to really give this a home movie vacation vibe. I loved the window bit with John and D and them licking their wounds trying to reconstruct the night. The weird Hangi creature with the whole tentacle eye thing. I loved the creativity of that creature and how it can be some really creepy/odd surveillance thing. That was such an interesting concept. Speaking of tentacle...the writing team was surely obsessed with that concept this ep as like jel mentioned that "milking machine" was another very creepy/twisted device shown that had a very creative interesting idea but yeah....these writers sometimes concern me on what they may do on their off hours.

I loved the Crichton/Chi scenes when he was trying to talk with her and buy her at "auction" and then later D'Argo was like "Did you have to caress her entire body?" Oh and speaking of D I loved his changed appearance, just because it was neat to see more of Anthony Simcoe's face and I enjoyed that change.

Back to what Blue mentioned with Chi doing the fire routine. I did hear it said I think somewhere in one of the companion books that Gigi was a circus performer and so I totally think she was doing the fire scenes. I'll be interested to see if there is anything about that in this segment of the Companion Book.

All in all I thought it was a fun ep and I actually enjoyed the colors and editing which was very unique and even though it did seem a tad choppy and disorienting at times, I thought it was refreshing and creative.

BTW there was an alternate ending for this ep. If you look on your DVD's bonus features you'll find it as a deleted scene. So glad they didn't go with that ending because it involved that annoying Raxil character which jel mentioned in his review. It was Ben's wife protraying that character and yeah I agree with jel, I wanted to punch her in the face!

[squirrely1]

Scratch 'N' Sniff - From the Companion Book

"The script for 'Scratch 'n' Sniff' went through a lot of permutations trying to get the right tone," recalls David Kemper. "It's really hard to write that kind of whimsical fun, and have it make sense and be serious, all at the same time. Tony Tilse got Austin Powers in his head, and we realised that we had this intense piece about something very serious that also had a lot of comedy to it."

"It was a challenge as a director," Tilse admits. "There are a lot of times when you work on a show and everything goes right, and there are a whole lot of times when things don't quite click into place. While we were shooting it, it was a real struggle to find out what this beast was, and then David pointed out that it was being told from Crichton's point of view."

"There were so many characters involved that you wanted to freeze frame when you first met them, and put a caption saying 'Bimbo' or 'Bad Guy'," Kemper explains. "When we saw the rough cut, we realised it needed something extra."

"The face of that episode changed completely in post-production," Post supervisor Deb Pearl says. "Tony and the editor Wayne Le Clos locked themselves away for a couple of weeks and produced a little bit of editing magic." Ben Browder points out that he and Tilse had some inkling of the eventual solution during filming. "It was always in the back of our head," He says. "We had to meld the two elements of the dark and light together. We were thinking of a Pulp Fiction motif, or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. You're looking at a way to tell a story in a fragmented but cohesive style, that embraces two themes that don't necessarily tie together well."

"We basically went out and stole the time to film the wraparound sequence we ended up using -- it was like guerrilla film-making," Kemper adds. "The production company was saying that we couldn't have another minute on it, but we walked into Pilot's den, the puppeteers were game, and we shot the scenes."

'Scratch 'n' Sniff' allowed Francesca Buller to create another memorable alien. "We knew it was a Joe Pesci kind of character, and it's a part that's very difficult to play," Kemper says. "But we knew that Fran could pull it off effortlessly -- she's got a really advanced sense of humour." Kemper offered the actress the role on her birthday, and she jumped at it. "I love working with Anthony and Ben, and together they're just fabulous," Buller says. "I loved it when Anthony had to 'hit' me -- he's hysterical and just lovely."

Although Buller based her accent on the cockney tones heard in Guy Ritchie's films, some of her actual dialogue came from closer to home. "They gave everything that I say in the writers' room to Raxil," David Kemper complains jokingly. "When the pages came through, I thought the words looked really familiar!"

Anthony Simcoe loved the opportunity to get away from the studio. "It was just so nice to get out and cruise on Marubra Beach and then hit a nightclub," he laughs. he also got a chance to demonstrate another side to D'Argo with his drug-induced 'Dandy D'Argo' persona. "When we shot it, I did a different voice," he recalls, "but we really needed to keep reminding people that it was D'Argo, so unfortunately we had to go and put the normal voice back in ADR."