The Worlds of Farscape (14 page)

“My name is John Crichton. I'm lost. An astronaut. Shot through a wormhole. In some distant part of the universe. I'm trying to stay alive. Aboard this ship. This living ship. Of escaped prisoners” [“Credits”].

The living ship is a Leviathan named Moya and the escaped prisoners are Ka D'Argo, Zhaan, Rygel, as well as the aptly-if-unimaginatively named Pilot and Peacekeeper fighter pilot, Aeryn Sun. Another empowered female, Chiana, soon joins the crew as well (“Durka Returns” 1.15).

Crichton's expectations about alien contact do not last long as Aeryn knocks John to the ground at first meet, taking the dominant position of power in the relationship and playing with the irony of her role as a “Peacekeeper.”
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Moya serves, not only as a space in which her crew lives, but she is an escaped prisoner of sorts, as well as a mode of transportation, a fascinating motif at play in the series. The prisoner motif seemingly prevails throughout the show as well; note that Crichton is also being held captive in another universe while most of the characters, wrongly accused in one way or another, begin as prisoners of misconception or misappropriation of the power of Peacekeeper authority, or Colonialism run amuck.

Compare how Crichton's original title credit narrative roughly parallels Campbell's paradigm, including the Crossing of the Threshold, the Belly of the Whale, and the Road of Trials. Having crossed the first threshold, in this case, shooting through the wormhole he has just accidentally created, John drifts helplessly after his ship is clipped by über-Peacekeeper Crais' brother's ship, a pivotal moment in the story. Crichton spies Moya, muttering “That's big. That's really big” (“Premiere” 1.1), before he is literally sucked into the belly of the on-the-lam, prison transport whale. He soon encounters his first aliens as they are actively engaged in escaping from Crais and the Peacekeepers and not one alien seems particularly interested in
him.
Alas, this is not the worst of it for the show's errant human hero: he soon discovers that his preconceived, perhaps romantic notions about first contact are not only tragically flawed, but that these systemic misconceptions have placed him at the bottom of the cosmic food chain, so to speak.

In fact, John Crichton may be the human protagonist of
Farscape,
but the show relies upon a unique troop of complex characters to help him out on that quest, or, as defined by Campbell's “Road of Trials” (28), he will turn to an assortment of allies, mentors, foils, and feminine figures. Though Crichton often adheres to the mythic heroic paradigm,
Farscape
quickly deconstructs audience expectations as much as it upholds them, much in the way the Western values of Crichton's expectations about alien races and culture are deconstructed from the moment he makes first contact and discovers that he is the alien and not a particularly appealing alien at that, as evidenced by D'Argo's irritated assessment of his questionable intellect: “This one [Crichton] is some sort of higher brain function deficient” (“Premiere” 1.1). Not only is John, as an academic and scientist held in high esteem on his own world, initially dismissed as worthless by the other aliens, he is targeted for death by the revenge fixated Crais, a psychopath with a lot of firepower and authority behind him. Crais, strutting about on his warship in black uniform and black boots with his slicked-back black hair, oozes menace and mean. He gives form to the familiar trope of unhinged vengeance. Aeryn, of course, is forced to throw in her lot with the prisoners aboard Moya after she is “irreversibly contaminated” through her contact with Crichton. Peacekeepers do not mingle with lesser life forms, i.e., humans, it seems, which says much about their concept of “the Other” in their universe as well as a serious misunderstanding about what the term
peacekeeping
truly means.

Like Odysseus after the Trojan War, Crichton's adventure home is thwarted at every turn by villains such as Scorpius and Crais. However, as noted before, heroes, villains, and antiheroes, function in fascinating ways in the series. Crichton is clearly the show's hero, albeit an often bemused, amused, abused, and hence, deconstructed version, but his characterization morphs into the villainous thanks to the influence of “Harvey,” Scorpius' alter-ego residing inside John's brain. In “Die Me, Dichotomy” (2.22), Scorpius, via Harvey-the-chip-persona, overwhelms Crichton, who purposefully attempts to land his Prowler on Aeryn's ship's canopy, leading to her death. Though Crichton quickly takes back control, he has done the heinous deed, killing the women he clearly loves. One might argue that Crichton is not in control of his own agency, or body, but the fact remains that he committed the crime. Later, he is an emotional wreck, suffering regret and thereby regaining audience sympathy and his own agency. Ultimately, he expunges the chip and control of his own body ... sort of. Scorpius leaves a mostly benign version of Harvey behind.

Equally as fascinating as Crichton's shifting from hero to villain and back again, Crichton's title voice-over subtly shifts by the third season, as his experiences change his Westernized views about aliens and his immediate goals of the quest reflect his experiences in the Uncharted Territories:

My name is John Crichton. I'm lost. An astronaut. Shot through a wormhole. In some distant part of the universe. Trying to stay alive. Aboard this ship. This living ship. Of escaped prisoners. My friends. If you can hear me. Beware. If I make it back. If I open the door. Are you ready? Earth is unprepared. Helpless. For nightmares I've seen. Or should I stay? Protect my home. My children. But then you'll never know the wonders I've seen [“Season of Death” 3.1].

Crichton's arc demonstrates substantial awareness of humanity's place in the universe, in contrast to his initial first contact. Wiser, he realizes that the universe is a dangerous place indeed.

Note how
Farscape
deconstructs the narrative with surprisingly effective results, using binary oppositions to defy audience expectations. The show plays with oppositions when Crichton splinters into a binary set of perfect twins at one point in the series, setting up both an opposition against himself, and a literal rendering of the binary motif. In the third season episode “Eat Me,” Crichton, D'Argo, and Chiana, are “copied” by the criminally insane Kaarvok, an escaped prisoner on a Peacekeeper prison convoy ship ambushed by Scarrans and left to drift through the Uncharted Territories. Kaarvok first duplicates D'Argo, a literal murder, albeit an unproductive one given the existence of D'Argo's twin (though which one is the original is a point to ponder). Then, he duplicates Chiana, who stares in amazement at her own duplicate. In a moment of pure cowardice, however, Chiana runs away as Kaarvok murders one of the Chianas, while the other one ignores her own doppelgänger as she begs for help. Though Chiana is often selfserving, allowing her own binary to be brutalized is a symbolically loaded action. Chiana ponders her cowardice, tearfully working it out: “Okay. Okay. Clone. Okay. Okay. Two Chianas. Um. Um. She-she. Not me. Yeah. Not me. Uh-uh. She-she. She was just a clone, a clone. So I'm the real me I'm the real me” (“Eat Me” 3.6). Of course, it is impossible to know which is which. Crichton, with his typical amusing irreverence, saves the day, but is zapped by Kaarvok while escaping with his friends. At the end of the episode, a twinned Crichton, sits starring at his own duplicate playing an endless and pointless game of rock-paper-scissors as a concerned Aeryn watches over him.

Though post-structuralism tends to eschew these binary oppositions, the heroic paradigm lingers in the margins. In “Deconstructing the Hero,” Iain Thomson discusses the reluctance on the part of even the most ardent postmodernists to entirely expel the hero off the top of the pedestal:

Existentialism, that philosophical tradition previously best known for radical questioning (the tradition which, with Heidegger, gave us the very concept of
deconstruction
), questioned, but did not overturn, the great importance Western history has
always
accorded to the hero. (“Always,” here that means—since we are talking about Western history—beginning with our own beginning: Our founding myths are hero stories all.) Indeed of the three greatest existential philosophers, Nietzsche and Heidegger both found it easier to give up their own devout Christianity than to stop believing in Heroes [111].

Farscape
utilizes the mythic paradigm, recognizing the need for Crichton's heroic loci, but the series is at its most fascinating when it deconstructs icons, allowing these characters the freedom to explore the uncharted realms of arc, fostering self-serving natures, or revealing very unsympathetic behaviors, and other lapses in character as past misdeeds are discovered.

Take the disenfranchised Peacekeeper pilot Aeryn Sun, a stunningly complex character, John's romantic fixation and deconstructed feminist role model. Aeryn functions in the series as a fully empowered model of righteous female agency, a conflicted, evolving antihero and a redeemed villain as a representative of the authoritative Empire (those ironically named Peacekeepers), transitioning and changing as she moves through the plot. In the pivotal episode “The Way We Weren't” (2.5), the nefarious deeds of two characters are revealed. Three, if you count Crais before his own transition from nightmarish vision of Empire-gone-astray poster boy to self-sacrificing hero.

Aeryn's unsavory past as a Peacekeeper is explored in the episode “The Way We Weren't” (2.5), including her participation in the slaughter of Moya's first pilot, a horrendous, brutal act which has been secretly recorded by the Peacekeepers and the tape discovered by Chiana. Chiana shows the tape to Crichton in private:

CHIANA: “Did you see what I see? This is Aeryn. It shows she's been aboard Moya—“

CRICHTON: “Peacekeepers must have kept these things running twenty-four-seven to spy on their own people.”

CHIANA: “Crichton, that is Aeryn. She's been aboard Moya before. She killed a pilot.”

John evidences concern, even shock, but it is clear that he is going to wait to hear Aeryn's side of the story before he comes to any conclusions. Here, he is either compromised by his feelings for her or proves endearingly hopeful; either way, he is sympathetic by way of empathy, made more engaging through this emotional resonance than the expected bombast of the Western heroic prototype. His heroic sensibility works in binary opposition to Aeryn's presumptive, possible villainy, though Peacekeeper Velorek is by far the most heroic, uncompromised character in the episode. Aeryn's shipmates are, in fact, horrified by the revelation and the implications of Aeryn's brutal past when they are shown the recording:

AERYN: “Yes, it's me. Are you happy now?”

ZHAAN: “It shows you have been aboard Moya before.”

D'ARGO: “Why didn't you ever tell us?”

RYGEL: “It's criminally obviously, isn't it? She helped murder a defenseless pilot.”

AERYN: “Must have been about three cycles ago. Now, I've been aboard hundreds of Leviathans and I had no idea it was Moya.”

CHIANA: “So all non–Sebaceans look alike, is that it?”

AERYN: “I didn't know, Chiana.”

CRICHTON:“Look, the Aeryn on that tape is not the Aeryn we know. That was a long time ago.”

RYGEL: “Three cycles isn't that long! Ha! I was aboard Moya by then.

ZHAAN: “As was I.”

RYGEL: “Maybe you were one of the ones who took a turn torturing me. Ever torture a Hynerian?”

D'ARGO: “Perhaps you helped torture me, too—“

AERYN: “No!”

The scene continues on until Crichton steps in, forcing everyone to “chill out for a microt,” which allows the weight of her crime to simmer without actual violence ensuing. Until this point, Aeryn has been an accepted member of the crew (albeit somewhat grudgingly on both sides), a woman in control of her own agency as well as a heroic feminine figure. The reveal shatters the character's hierarchical place amongst the crew, reminding the other characters and the audience about the conflict between Aeryn's past and present. Even more interesting, the scene shatters the character's agency (though she regains it by the episode's finale). She was just following orders, a Peacekeeper drone without any independent will. Overtly, through Aeryn,
Farscape
metaphorically references the hints of Hitler's Germany with Aeryn in the role of soldier merely following orders, compromising her “ethical” center.
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D'Argo, Zhaan, and Rygel accuse her of “murdering a pilot,” which is obviously true, and they suggest she may have taken part in torturing them while they were prisoners aboard Moya, which she vehemently denies. Chiana defends her, perhaps empathizing with unjust feminine character assassination more than the rest, “What have you guys been thinking all this time? What, she was out picking baskets of Raulis buds while all the other mean Peacekeepers did all the really nasty stuff? She was a Peacekeeper” (“The Way We Weren't” 2.5). Chiana's point is well taken. No matter how sympathetic Aeryn may seem, nor how reasonable her past involvement with the oppressive Peacekeeper agenda, her actions skirt reasonable ethical considerations.

Though deeply tortured by her participation in state-sanctioned murder of Moya's previous pilot, Aeryn's misdeeds run deeper than simply following Crais' orders. John eventually learns that Aeryn was sexually, and emotionally, involved with Velorek, the officer charged with installing the new pilot on Moya. Velorek believes that Crais is a “madman” and he plots to thwart Crais's nefarious plan to breed Leviathans. In the episode, Velorek functions as the protagonist, supplying narrative opposition to Crais as well as Aeryn. The character displays uncustomary perception, kindness and courage, subverting the Peacekeeper agenda and his immediate commander's objectives, engendered with a humanist, emotional approach to relationships and interspecies relations. In addition, he tasks Aeryn and Pilot with higher goals, functioning as a catalyst for their later actions, though ironically both make poor decisions and Aeryn's actions result in his death. This is no reflection on Velorek, one of the most enlightened, sympathetic characters in the series. Aeryn suffers the most in comparison, since she betrays him to Crais in order to return to her assignment flying Prowlers.