Seeing Crichton in that full beard was something I wasn’t expecting. That fake facial hair was just terrible. It more closely resembled animal hair than a human beard in my opinion.

Just cut off Crichton’s beard not his head.

A lot of this episode reminded me of some of the few episodes I’ve seen of Stargate. It focused on the main characters as they visited another planet and ended up helping them. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it just seems a little cookie cutter.

Still, I really enjoyed this episode primarily because of the backstory of the locals. They were essentially banished by Rygel’s family. We got to see a little genuine emotion out of the fat little slug this week when he showed he honestly felt sorry about what happened to the people of the planet. Of course, the threats of death also can help bring emotions out too. Hehe.

Rating: 5.7

Coincidentally, there was a pirate turned scavenger named Staanz who came aboard Moya to warn D’Argo, Zhaan and the others about The Flax, but it was too late for Aeryn and John were caught and couldn’t get out. In fact, they damaged their little ship quite a bit in their attempt to free themselves from the energy field.

Rygel is busy irritating everyone aboard Moya

D’Argo left with Staanz to help Aeryn and John but were also interested in a Luxon ship. D’Argo wanted the maps aboard the ship while Staanz wanted everything else. They nearly had a brush with one of Staanz’s enemies, Kcrackic. Thankfully, Kcrackic didn’t see them and proceeded toward Moya where Rygel played him in a game of some sort. It’s hard to compare it to other games because I didn’t quite understand all of the moves, but then again, I’m not very familiar with chess or many other classic games. It was interesting, however, and Rygel ended up losing the game on purpose, sending Kcrackic in the wrong direction. This was a clever move on the part of Rygel considering it looked as though he was giving up the location of Staanz and D’Argo.

Just when I thought there wasn’t much for sexual tension between John Crichton and Aeryn Sun, this episodes enters the picture and it’s loaded with it. There are many instances where these two are in very close quarters, including an actual make-out scene which gets interrupted by a rescuing D’Argo.

The biggest surprise of the episode was a bizarre one, which shows you that you never know who’s a man or a woman. As it turns out, Staanz is the female of her species. Yeah, that caught me completely off guard and gave Crichton an opportunity to crack a joke when he asked Aeryn if she was the female of her species.

I really liked this episode. There was action, suspense, sexual tension, the whole nine yards. This was a very solid episode of Farscape.

Rating: 9.4

Some of the Delvians tricked Moya into approaching their planet in an attempt to get Zhaan to help them. Since we met Zhaan, we haven’t seen a bad or evil side to her. She’s always been a peaceful soul, but that wasn’t always the case. We knew that, but it has never really been discussed in any depth that I can recall. Here, Zhaan is called upon to give up some of her secrets, specifically how she manages to remain calm and stave away any madness that creeps upon her. This has become a problem with the Delvians. When they are tempted by their demons, they get sick and go insane.

Darlene Vogel as Alex, Ben Browder as John Crichton

The Delvian’s leader is a power-hungry wench who nearly kills Zhaan in a trick to get as much knowledge as she can when they are locked in a mind-sharing ceremony. The event really had an affect on Zhaan. She wasn’t the same woman we have come to know and actually looked to be looking forward to exacting revenge.

The Delvians used a number of mind tricks to keep Crichton and company at bay. Crichton seemed to get a lot of screen time since one of the Delvians tricked John into thinking that the woman he loved ended up marrying him and is now one of the crew members aboard Moya. John appeared lost at times, which isn’t all that unfamiliar for him, quite frankly. He’s usually out of his element all the time.

This was a very dialogue-heavy episode. There was surprisingly very little action in the episode. Farscape doesn’t appear to be the big action-packed sci-fi show I expected it to be. It isn’t just this episode that is making me think this. Only some of the episodes have much in the way of combat and what little there is isn’t all that impressive.

I really liked the casting of Darlene Vogel to play Alex and Lorana. I’ve always found her to be sexy and was one of the few reasons I ever watched Pacific Blue in the late 1990s.

Rating: 6.5

Getting close to the worm hole created damage on the ship so John and Aeryn landed the ship on the nearest planet because the nature of the damage would have damaged either Moya or her baby. The mechanic they managed to get to work on their space craft was quite a piece of work. The always seemed to have a plan or something else going on in her mind. You can tell she was a bit of a con artist so it surprised me when she helped Aeryn defend herself later in the episode.

Magda Szubanski as Furlow

The solar flares proved to be an important piece of the black hole puzzle. They must be present and Zhaan seemed to enjoy them quite a bit. It seems that her species find solar radiation from the solar flares to be orgasmic. While I found this interesting to watch, poor Rygel couldn’t bear to think that Zhaan would strip down to take in the intense radiation.

When Crichton and Aeryn don’t return, a search party is formed. One by one, D’Argo and Zhaan both head out. D’Argo manages to get captured by a bounty hunting team. The Peacekeepers have put a price on the heads of D’Argo, Zhaan, and Rygel while Aeryn and John aren’t mentioned at all.

Crichton does a good job of trying to be the alpha male, but there was only so much he could do to protect D’Argo. There was a limit to how far he could go and still let the other bounty hunters trust him. I didn’t envy John this week.

I didn’t envy him one bit. He had to give away an important piece of information regarding his home. He made a deal with the mechanic for the black hole info in exchange for the fixed ship. They both got what they wanted, but John really wants to go home and it’s about time the writers included this sort of thing in the show.

Rating: 7.6

We’ve seen Moya and its crew members in rough shape before, but it’s never quite gotten to this extreme. Pilot was no longer in control of Moya. Over time, the crew realized that Moya had essentially relieved Pilot of his duties, nearly killing him. Moya also disabled most of the unnecessary systems. These systems aren’t required to keep Moya alive, but rather the crew members.

John Crichton is confused by why D’Argo is calling him by the wrong name.

I liked how the DRDs were made to be the enemy. These little seemingly helpless bots proved to be quite a threat with their super glue and guns.

The episode had two big revelations. One was that Moya is pregnant. I know it sounds bizarre for a ship to give birth, but it’s possible here since Moya is a living ship, a Leviathan. Moya disconnected all non-essential systems to harbor resources for Moya’s baby. Some quick thinking by John Crichton saved the entire crew.

The other revelation came from D’Argo. He was seriously injured this week and had unusual head trauma, which made him think of his wife and child. There were many confusing moments here due to the sketchy memory, but essentially D’Argo’s wife’s brother killed D’Argo’s wife so that D’Argo wouldn’t be able to have her. D’Argo ended up being blamed for the murder and was the reason for his incarceration. I’m glad this storyline was brought up now since it was just brought up rather recently in an episode. I’m glad that the writers are taking care of some of the mysteries. There aren’t a whole lot of them, quite frankly.

“They’ve Got a Secret” proved to be a very solid episode. The threat of the DRDs is interesting, although I have a tough time finding those little Roombas to be very threatening. They just aren’t big enough to look menacing. But the secrets uncovered this week made it all worth it.

Rating: 8.8

One couldn’t help but feel some sorrow for Pilot for losing one of his arms in this week’s episode. I know he dismissed the whole thing as simply being part of his duty to serve Moya and the crew, but he didn’t initially like the idea of D’Argo cutting off one of his arms.

Claudia Black as Aeryn Sun

I have to hand it to the production crew in this episode for their work with NamTar and Aeryn. Aeryn went through an extensive number of physical changes and while not every bit of makeup and prosthetics looked great, I thought they did a very good job with it. NamTar looked to be a lot of work to pull off, especially with the stilts and awkward movement. He couldn’t just stand still; there was quite a bit of movement required in the several scenes his character was prominently featured in.

The crew can be frequently described as selfish and this episode showed this quite well as all of them wanted the maps to their home world, though of all of them, John Crichton was the least enthusiastic. I haven’t quite figured out his lack of interest in getting home. Rygel seemed more interested in returning to his home than John and Rygel wouldn’t exactly have an easy go of regaining power once back home.

I liked the scene at the close of the episode when D’Argo played some music for Pilot, as a way to apologize for his cutting off his arm. I not only liked D’Argo’s actions here, but I liked the camera pullout shot of Pilot’s work area. I don’t believe they’ve shown where he works quite like that before. The Farscape camera operators tend to keep pretty tight shots, showing just Pilot. I liked the pullback shot very much.

Rating: 8.7

It’s been a little while since we’ve seen Crais, the Peacekeeper captain whose brother John accidentally killed when he found himself transported into the battle in the pilot episode. Crais’ character was explored much more deeply in this episode than in previous ones. He was instructed to look after his younger brother by his father when the Peacekeepers took the boys from the family at a very young age.

Maldis (played by Chris Haywood) is an interesting fellow. He’s more or less a vampire, as Crichton aptly put it, feeding on the life force of others. Maldis pit John and Crais in a fight to the death, which sadly went on and on and on to a point where I was really looking forward to a resolution. I’m surprised this was dragged on as long as it was.

I understand why John would want to talk Crais into backing off, but Crais only has one thing on his mind: revenge. No amount of pleading would get avenging his brother’s death off Crais’ mind, even though Crais understood what John was saying.

Virginia Hey as Zhaan

I’m really intrigued about what’s going on on Crais’ ship after seeing all of what went on. I am interested in seeing more insight as to Crais’ thinking and more importantly, how he’s going to keep the counsel off his back, especially after disobeying their orders and killing his second in command.

I really like the peaceful Zhaan. Virginia Hey, who plays Zhaan, is a very attractive woman, even with all that makeup on, and plays the character exceptionally well. There’s a certain gracefulness to her which I really like.

Crichton, for the first time, was shown making a diary entry of sorts at the end of the episode. He was recording his thoughts into a voice recorder which appeared to be part of what he has left of his supplies from the space ship from Earth. I’m rather surprised to see Crichton doing this now. He should have been shown doing this since day one.

I enjoyed “That Old Black Magic,” but I didn’t think the action scenes had quite enough action. There was much more dialogue than action in many of those scenes. I didn’t think the tone was set very well. Considering the life and death stakes at hand, I didn’t come away feeling as though something like that was likely to happen.

There also wasn’t a whole lot of humor in this episode. I know that much of this tends to be reserved for Rygel, but he was largely absent from the episode, sick aboard the ship. I thought the writers could have done a better job of injecting some humor into the episode to help make the episode more entertaining.

Rating: 6.5

In “PK Tech Girl,” the Moya crew came upon an old Peacekeeper ship which had apparently been lost in battle some 100 cycles ago. It has been thoroughly salvaged by crews who came upon it over the years, so the Moya crew wasn’t able to find much of interest there. The sole exception was a Peacekeeper tech person who managed to hide from the dangerous salvagers.

There was plenty of tension during the introduction of the “tech girl,” Gilina. She doesn’t have a whole lot of admiration for Aeryn Sun due to her turning on the Peacekeepers, but John Crichton managed to play mediator quite well. The fact that Gilina (played by Alyssa-Jane Cook) was quite attractive may have encouraged this behavior from John, but he’s usually a peaceful guy anyway, often trying to keep Aeryn calm.

Rygel had nightmares of the ship the crew came upon. It was where he was questioned and tortured some time ago. I liked Rygel’s subplot as it changed things up a bit from what was a rather tense episode. He had the last laugh when he found the captain of the ship who treated him so poorly, dead of a self-inflicted wound.

Alyssa-Jane Cook as Gilina Renaez

The Moya crew came under fire when a salvage crew came near. They were an odd-looking race to be certain. John joked about them looking a little “froggy”. John, Gilina, and Aeryn had to work fast to get the old ship’s protection shield up and running and managed to do so just in the nick of time.

John Crichton seems to be coping quite well since finding himself in space, surrounded by odd-looking beings. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but he doesn’t seem to be showing a whole lot of interest in getting back home. I know if it were me, getting home would be my number one priority.

Aeryn seemed a little upset about John kissing Gilina. Aeryn and John don’t really seem to have much of a thing going so it was surprising to see her reaction. Alyssa-Jane Cook looked fantastic in her debut on the series. I know she returns for a few more episodes during the series’ run, but it’s nice to see an attractive woman on the show once in a while. I don’t blame Crichton one bit for falling for her a bit, though I found a few of those moments to be rather cheesy and conveniently set up for them to fall into one another.

Rating: 7.7

It seems the Peacekeepers have enslaved the people of the planet. They grow a certain plant which can be turned into power for their weapons. The planet’s leader claimed not to know the plant was being used for weapons and was reluctant to stand up to the Peacekeepers.

She could use a little more beauty sleep.

Poor Rygel took sick this week when he ate some of the local cuisine. It didn’t sit too well with his biological makeup. Every time he would pass gas or have any natural bodily movements, there would be an explosion. I found this hysterical initially because Rygel and his friends thought he was being attacked by someone.

Still, I didn’t think this episode was particularly strong. It’s hard not to feel for people who were enslaved, but the way they were enslaved wasn’t very compelling. The humor surrounding Rygel was the most entertaining portion of the episode, though I did find the interactions between D’Argo and Zhaan to be interesting.

Rating: 7.2

D’Argo became very close to them due to their similar species. This species is essentially a cousin to his. A war which began when D’Argo was imprisoned broke out and the two species have been working together to defeat their common enemy, the Scorvions.

Can D’Argo really trust her?

John Crichton, while investigating the emergency vessel, ended up getting exposed to a bizarre substance aboard the ship, giving him a number of unusual visions, including sexual fantasies and finally visions of the future. John’s premonitions were very interesting because they all showed betrayal and death aboard the Moya.

After struggling with his visions, he told Zhaan about them and with her help, he managed to save the Moya from being destroyed, but did break D’Argo’s heart by revealing a secret. We don’t know the real reason D’Argo was imprisoned but we know D’Argo wasn’t entirely truthful to his crew members. It was tough for D’Argo and John to go through what they did, but that pain is lessened by the fact that they both now know how a woman’s presence can cloud their judgement.

Rating: 7.5