The Worlds of Farscape (23 page)

Sikozu, of the Kalish race, happens upon Crichton at the start of Season Four (“Crichton Kicks” 4.1); her ship crashes into his, literally. After being marooned in his IASA module, Crichton is rescued by a dying Leviathan named Elack. He is accompanying Elack to the Leviathan's sacred resting space when he encounters Sikozu. She was hired to find this resting place so that aging Leviathans could be harvested; their neural cluster tissue is prized highly for its restorative properties. During the course of events, Chiana returns and together Crichton and Chiana manage to keep the secret burial space from being revealed. Bungling her first assignment, Sikozu's reputation is now blemished and she has no choice but to join up with Crichton and Chiana. She is very young and inexperienced, with a genius IQ and the ability to defy gravity, a skill that will come in handy later.
⁷
Much like Jool, Sikozu does not have any practical experience with “reality.” Most of her knowledge comes from education because she has never actually been out on her own before. Chiana will treat Sikozu the way the others treated her when she first joined the crew: constantly telling her to shut up and get out of the way.

Sikozu is actually a member of a Kalish underground resistance group dedicated to overthrowing Scarran rule on her home world and her section of the galaxy. We are led to believe that her ability to defy gravity and to regenerate limbs is either endogenous to her species or the result of genetic engineering to help in her resistance activities. What we learn at the very end of the series is that she is actually a bioloid, created specifically for helping the resistance movement destroy the Scarrans (“We're so Screwed, Parts I, II, and III” 4.19–4.21). Moya's crewmembers never accept or trust her, although there were apparently plans for Sikozu and Aeryn to develop the type of buddy relationship exhibited by Crichton and D'Argo (Simpson). However, Sikozu becomes increasingly enamored of Scorpius, becoming his ally in the quest to destroy the Scarrans. Indeed, by the end of the series she and Scorpius have become lovers.

Peacekeeper villain Commandant Mele-On Grayza was introduced in the episode “Into the Lion's Den, Part 1: Lambs to the Slaughter” (3.20). Scorpius wants Crichton to help him with his revenge on the Scarrans. As such Scorpius is willing to grant Crichton and crew amnesty and housing on his command carrier. Grayza despises Scorpius. Like most Peacekeepers she thinks he is an abomination and is enraged that Scorpius is willing to work with Crichton. Grayza is not particularly interested in Crichton at first, except that he is an escaped prisoner and that sets a bad precedent. Scorpius' crew is angered by the amnesty and seeks Grayza's help in re-capturing Moya's crew. Crichton calls her Commandant Cleavage because of her extremely low cut uniform, but he will stop ridiculing her when she uses the Heppel oil on him. This oil makes her sexually desirable and irresistible; with its use she can force anyone to bow to her will. Crichton is repulsed by her and traumatized by the repeated rapes, but Grayza will do anything to further her career, the Peacekeeper's mission, and an alliance with the Scarrans. Later, Grayza is tasked with negotiating a peace treaty with the Scarrans. Her counterpart is Ahkna, the Scarran War Minister. Ahkna makes a scathing comment about Grayza's methods, referring to the Heppel oil. Grayza replies: “If you had a powerful weapon, would you refuse to use it because of squeamishness?” (“Bringing Home the Beacon” 4.16).

These characters are different from each other in many ways; however, they are also very similar. While Sikozu and Jool appear to be naïve and inexperienced, we learn that neither are what they seem. Grayza is ruthless and will use any means necessary to achieve her goal of peace with the Scarrans. But, Noranti is also ruthless. Although she appears to be a simple old woman, she is much more than that, and quite heartless in her own way: willing also to sacrifice the few for the sake of the many. Each woman, especially the three living aboard Moya, contributed to the creation of “community” among women in science fiction as discussed by Barr. These women demonstrate that they are capable of being selfish—looking after their own interests—but moving beyond that individuality into forming an alliance with other women in order to accomplish their goals. The goals do not necessarily have to be altruistic of course and each of the four characters described here are perfectly capable of sacrificing that community if necessary. In other words these women are establishing lives on their own terms, as noted by Cornillon above, doing what is necessary—what they think is necessary—to survive and thrive in the Uncharted Territories.

In Season One's “Durka Returns” (1.15) Moya collides with a starship carrying the Nebaris Salis and Chiana, and the Peacekeeper Captain Durka. The Nebari claim that they have “mind-cleansed” Durka and eliminated his violent tendencies. The Nebari are “a vastly powerful race... They quell all forms of rebellion and dissent among their people by placing non-conformist citizens in control collars” (Simpson and Hughes 62). Rygel attempts to kill Durka in revenge for his years of torture, but only succeeds in freeing Durka of the Nebaris' mind control, following which Durka gains control of Moya. During the struggle to regain control of the ship, Salis is found dead, and we never learn who is responsible for his death, but we suspect Chiana. Nevertheless, the crew agrees that Chiana may remain on board Moya as long as she wishes.

As time progresses we learn much of Chi's past, and it is not very pretty. She is a thief who is willing to do anything to get what she wants or needs. Her extreme selfishness has landed the crew in trouble more than once. In Season One's “A Bug's Life” (1.18), Chiana sets an intelligent virus loose on the ship, thinking that the container holding it must contain valuables (else why guard it so well?). Her exposure to Moya's crew has allowed her to discover hidden traits and talents that she never exhibited before. So, while others have viewed her as a slut, she has also been described as being wild, but with a heart of gold (“Home on the Remains” 2.7). Discussing that episode, and Chiana, in more detail, actor Gigi Edgley states:

I don't think she means to be dishonest a load of the time, but when she gets into really hard situations, I think she's trying to go about it the best way she can. When she's in dire straits, she always resorts to using her body. In the second season, you see more of her battling: she's never had anybody give a toss about her before.
⁸

Although young, selfish, and apolitical, Chiana becomes committed to preventing Crichton's wormhole knowledge from falling into Peacekeeper and Scarran hands.

Each of the women aboard Moya learned of her own strengths and limitations as the series continued and they learned about each other as well. They realized that they complemented each other in many ways, which served more than once to help the entire crew. Indeed there were several episodes that served to showcase the women's actions. One of the best is “Bringing Home the Beacon” (4.16) in which all of the female crew land on a commerce planet looking for the means to protect Moya from long-range scans. While there, they discover that Scarran War Minister Ahkna and Grayza are working on a secret peace treaty between the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers, although the Scarrans are really not serious. It is up to the women to learn all they can about the negotiations while obtaining the sensor detector and escaping detection themselves. They learn that they can rely upon one another and that they do not need the men along after all. The women of Moya have, as Barr would say, created a community of women, one that will partner with men, if necessary, but on their terms.

Zhaan is a 10th level Pa'u, or priest,
⁹
a member of the peace-loving, spiritual Delvian race. Prior to events occurring on
Farscape
, Zhaan had murdered her lover because he planned to turn over control of their planet to the Peacekeepers. She had murdered him during a process called Unity, in which two people bind souls and minds, an extremely personal encounter, one beyond sexual. Zhaan's mind and soul were almost destroyed because of that murder; however, she used her many cycles of incarceration in a Peacekeeper prison to heal herself. Nevertheless she could be ruthless if necessary, realizing that the darkness in her soul that allowed her to murder her lover would never be expunged. And, there were times when she had to use that darkness to help others (see my essay on relationships in this collection). Yet, she was not ruled by her darkness, rather Zhaan was a beautiful, caring, and spiritual being, as her Unity with Crichton reinforced (“Rhapsody in Blue” 1.12). Furthermore, in a subplot of the three-part story arc “Look at the Princess” in Season Two, Zhaan meets the Creators, the builders of the Leviathans. They test her in order to determine if she is worthy of being entrusted with Moya. This test leaves Zhaan more determined than ever to continue the Delvian Seek, “a search for perfect understanding and unity with all life” (“Rhapsody”).

Zhaan will eventually make the ultimate sacrifice for the crew, because she loves them all. Aeryn has a very difficult time dealing with Zhaan's sacrifice given that Zhaan's revival of Aeryn ultimately contributes to Zhaan's death. Her companion Stark goes mad, later attempting revenge on Crichton (see Carty's essay on Ben Browder as a writer in this collection). But even if Zhaan's corporeal body is dead, her soul is alive in Unity and she stops Stark from harming Crichton (“John Quixote” 4.7). Zhaan belonged to the community of women created by those living aboard Moya; in certain respects she continues to watch over and guide them from the spiritual realm.

Officer Aeryn Sun is a Sebacean by species and a Peacekeeper by birth and training. Unlike her fellow Peacekeepers Aeryn is the product of a mating based on love between her parents rather than the usual planned conception and birth. She learned the truth about her birth when she was a young girl, but never really knew whether a late-night visit by her mother, Xhalax Sun, was a dream. As punishment for the visit to her daughter and mating for love, Xhalax was given the choice of killing either her lover or her child. She obviously chose Aeryn's father; however, the deed drove her into madness and she became an assassin. After Aeryn joins Moya's crew, Xhalax is sent to re-capture her daughter and Aeryn is almost forced to kill her mother but is spared that ordeal by Crichton and Crais (“Relativity” 310). As Xhalax and Aeryn talk, at only their second meeting, Xhalax accuses Aeryn of being corrupted and a traitor to the Peacekeepers as well as an aberration. Aeryn replies:

My corruption began the moment I was conceived.... Don't you see my independence comes from you anyway? I grew up wanting to be just like a woman I'd only seen once.... I am a part of you that wanted to be a rebel.... I am your child.

The scene is poignant because the two can never be anything to each other, but Aeryn is determined that things will be different for her child.

In the Season Four episode “Terra Firma” (4.13), when the crew travels to Earth, Crichton's nephew Bobby interviews Aeryn. Later Crichton watches the tape of the interview after Aeryn's capture by the Scarrans. In the interview Bobby asks Aeryn about her family and she tells him that Peacekeeper soldiers do not have families; they are expected to bond with their unit. When he asks her if she missed having a family, she replies, “only when I was exposed to it” (“A Constellation of Doubt” 4.17). During her captivity, Aeryn is tortured by the Scarrans; they want to know the identity of her child's father. If Crichton is the father, then they can extract wormhole knowledge from the fetus' DNA. Aeryn manages to survive the torture for some time, denying that the child is Crichton's, but eventually she admits that she does not know the identity of the father—it could be Crichton. The Scarrans place her with a woman named Morrock whom they believe will extract the information from Aeryn as they bond as fellow prisoners. Morrock asks Aeryn if she has ever had a child. Aeryn replies no, Peacekeeper “soldiers seldom do [have children] unless they're placed on a breeding roster and, in any case, it's not the same as being a mother. That's why I vowed I'd never have one that way.” Aeryn, of course, realizes that Morrock is actually a “plant,” but her reply is an honest reflection of her feeling about motherhood. When she gets a little stronger, Aeryn asks Morrock if she has any children. When Morrock says no, Aeryn kills her, saying, “Good, then I orphan no one” (“Prayer” 4.18).

Until Aeryn met Crichton and the others she planned to die in space, just as she had been born. In the “Premiere” episode (1.1), when Crichton tells the crew that they have to take Aeryn with them as they escape from the Commerce Planet, Aeryn refuses to go.

Aeryn is intensely proud of the fact that she can hold her own among any of her fellow soldiers, male or female. Being trapped aboard Moya and having to count on a crew of non–Peacekeepers for her survival at first was anathema to her instincts and training, but it forced her to grow as a person, to think in broader terms and to be better than she was before.
¹⁰

Crichton has to remind her that, according to Peacekeeper High Command, she has now been irreversibly contaminated. Contact with unclassified life forms, of which Crichton is one, means death. When she still balks and tells Crichton, “It's my duty, my breeding. Since birth, it's what I am.” Crichton tells her, “You can be more.” She is slowly learning how much more she can be, but she is increasingly being forced to confront her past, as painful as it may be, and to negotiate her way through her past and her present to arrive at her future.
¹¹

Producer David Kemper has gone on record to exclaim, “On this show, I want to be afraid. I need to be unsettled.”
¹²
Hence the fact that sometimes the characters do what you expect them to do, and other times they completely surprise you. For example, in the second season episode “Taking the Stone” (2.3), Chiana believes that her brother has died. No one appears to care or appreciate how she is feeling, so she steals Aeryn's prowler and takes off to a planet nearby, the Royal Cemetery Planet. Aeryn, Crichton, and Rygel follow her only to find that Chiana had taken up with a local people calling themselves the Clansmen. Chiana, ever the amoralist, is attracted to the young Clansmen's lifestyle of drugs and danger. They participate in a ritual called “taking the stone,” in which they jump into a subterranean pit lined with rocks. Surviving requires the use of a voice-activated sonic net, which catches the jumper prior to smashing into the bottom of the pit. Not every Clansman or woman survives the jump. In her extreme grief Chiana decides to take the stone. Crichton wants to talk Chi out of this dangerous act and take her back to Moya. Aeryn, on the other hand, tells Crichton to leave Chi alone and let her work it out by herself. In other words, in this episode Aeryn gets to be the insightful one, rather than the “pin-up girl for frontal assault,” says Crichton.