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Farscape - Season 3 - Episode 14

My Rating - 9

Fan Rating Average - 5.49

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Rating: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
# Votes: 34 2 6 0 3 33 6 9 35 12 20

Synopsis
An Ancient - again taking the form of Crichton's father Jack - appears on Talyn and accuses Crichton of sharing wormhole stabilizing technology with the Charrids, a vicious race who have formed an alliance with the Scarrans. Crichton realizes that Furlow, the mechanic from Dam-Ba-Da depot who once repaired Crichton's module and had a mercenary interest in wormhole technology, is the real guilty party. With a Scarran Dreadnought heading towards Dam-Ba-Da to collect Furlow's data, Jack must unlock the wormhole technology in Crichton's brain in order to build the ultimate weapon - but must first confront the evil Scorpius Clone in Crichton's mind. [DVD]

Filler Quotient: 0, not filler, do not skip this episode.
- Numerous major long term plot threads are serviced here.

Problems
- It's sort of dumb that Crais wasn't wearing the goggles anymore after he had been blinded. By not wearing the goggles anymore he only does further damage to his eyes.

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- The "Jack" ancient showing up and threatening to kill John for misuse of his hidden wormhole knowledge.
- Harvey stealing John's attention for a brief moment in a memory of bumper cars.
- The crew getting pinned down by gunfire on the planet and Talyn swooping in to rescue them, getting burned by the stelar flare in the process.
- John and Aeryn encountering a captured Furlow.
- Rygel interrogating the Charrid, murdering him in the process, but managing to obtain vital intelligence that a Scarran dreadnought is due to arrive shortly.
- Stark and Crais surveying the damaged Talyn.
- Aeryn recruiting Rygel into manning the gun turret by appealing to his sense of patriotism.
- Jack proposing to attempt to remove Harvey from John.
- Rygel taking out Charrids and complaining of running out of ammo.
- Jack and John attempting to remove Harvey.
- Rygel's position being overrun and Rygel being struck with shrapnel.
- Harvey surviving the procedure to remove him and taking over John's body.

My Review
An exciting ride with amazing stakes and bold heroism from all our characters, even Rygel. This episode brilliantly ties together a number of plot threads by bringing back ancient-Jack and Furlow and combining their interests into a story about Scarran attempts to steal wormhole technology topped off with Harvey's struggle for survival. This plays out in an action packed story complete with even a Talyn strafing run.

The one weakness in the story is that it never makes clear why this John and not the other was summoned by Jack. It's easy to rationalize though. Perhaps Talyn just happened to be closer to the signal Jack was broadcasting. Whatever the reason, it's certainly nice to know the ancients found a new home after all and it's nice to catch up with Furlow again too as she was a lot of fun in her first appearance in season one.

The most remarkable story point though is the idea that Jack is both driving Harvey from John's mind and fully unlocking the secrets of wormholes from his mind so they can together build a wormhole weapon to destroy the Scarran dreadnought in order to prevent the Scarrans from acquiring wormhole technology. The impending arrival of the Scarrans, Jack's and John's apparent failure to eliminate Harvey, Rygel's wound, and Harvey taking over John's body again all make for a very exciting cliffhanger indeed.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From Margaret J on 2019-07-16 at 6:37pm:
    I liked the continuity with past episodes and progression of the main plot. Do not really see why they needed to bring in a new set of aliens just to have them working with the Scarrans - why not just leave it at the Scarrans?
    Unlike Kethinov I do not feel that they needed to explain why this John was called. I just figured that the alien put out a call to John (he would have had no idea that there were now two) and this John was within range and answered. Maybe the other John was out of range or too preoccupied with something to understand what he was hearing or heard it but just had not come across the wormhole like Taylon did.
    The cliffhanger did not really work for me. I knew Rigel would be fun and I knew Aeryn would not shot John But even so I liked the episode and gave it a nine (9)
  • From Brian on 2019-11-15 at 11:42am:
    When they're trying to enter the bunker, the Charrids' armor look like Predators. I wonder if there was a production reason for this? Homage, shared special effect professionals, discounted sits after Predator 2 movie?
  • From Margaret J on 2019-11-18 at 9:21am:
    Nice to know someone else is watching these episodes in 2019! Do the rate them as well Brian? If so maybe you could post what you rated (not that you have to I just like seeing what others have rated) Cheers and enjoy the episodes!

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