Backed into a corner, John must trust Crais to destroy Scorpius' wormhole ambitions.
Written by Rockne S O’Bannon
Directed by Rowan Woods
The wheels have come off everything: all the plots, all the counterplots, and everyone’s schemes from Crichton’s to Scorpius’s have been thwarted.
Now there is no alternative: to stop the Peacekeepers getting wormhole technology – if they should be stopped at all – Crichton is going to destroy the Peacekeeper Command Carrier. And Crais is finally going to show his true colours.
Perhaps any other show would have ended the season right here: there could not have been an inch more action, jeopardy and plot but somehow Farscape’s got another episode to go.
This wasn’t a perfect eye-widening, jaw-dropping adventure, but it was exceptionally close: only the far too quick and easy persuasion of the PK wormhole scientist to the right cause stopped it from being flawless.
That aside, this was one of the best conclusions to a multi-part Farscape tale. The first episode called for an extraordinarily dangerous situation for the characters and this second episode delivered all the danger and more.
Curiously, after last week’s introduction of a Blake’s 7 Servalan style new PK enemy – whom Crichton this week calls ‘Commandant Cleavage’ – it was hard not to compare the destruction of the Command Carrier to that of Blake’s Liberator. Farscape wins.
And notice the hand of the creator back on the tiller: this episode was written by the show’s creator and original writer, Rockne S O’Bannon. Consequently Crichton was back making pop culture references whenever he could. After a spell without him doing that, it was comfortingly effective.
Review by William Gallagher