Farscape - Season 4 - Episode 14
Farscape - 4x14 - Twice Shy - Originally Aired: 2003-1-13
Synopsis
Chiana purchases Talikaa, an abused slave girl from a passing Trading Ship. When the crew starts acting strangely and Talikaa goes missing, they realize she may not be as innocent as she first seemed. The crew tracks down the Trading Ship only to find its occupants have succumbed to a painful death, the result of neural harvesting by an alien arachnid. When it is revealed that the arachnid is Talikaa's true form, Moya's crew must hunt down Talikaa before they suffer the same fate.
[DVD]
Filler Quotient:
3, bad filler, totally skippable.
- No significant exposition, events, or consequences. And a lame episode on top of that. The stuff about Scorpius allegedly monitoring the comms is not followed up on later in any significant way and the relationship progress (or lack thereof?) is not terribly relevant to future episodes either.
Problems
- The intro sequence's opening monologue doesn't make a whole lot of sense from this point forward, as John's no longer trying to find a way home.
Factoids
None
Remarkable Scenes
- Sikozu tending to Scorpius' cooling rods.
- Talikaa suddenly becoming a giant spider.
- Chiana trying to make D'Argo angry by repeatedly assaulting him and D'Argo just taking it, calmly.
- John: "My plans suck. People die. It's always a mess."
- John blowing up the spider girl.
- Noranti cooking up the spider's corpse for food.
- John telling Aeryn that what he's afraid of is Scorpius discovering the true nature of John's and Aeryn's relationship and that he'll use that to get the wormhole knowledge he seeks.
My Review
Alien monster of the week boards Moya and causes a ruckus. The crew bickers. John and Aeryn have relationship problems. And nothing significant actually happens. Typical formulaic Farscape filler and all this right after the most epic and amazing story arc so far. They go from that to this. On top of that the notion that John is denying his relationship with Aeryn to protect her from Scorpius is vaguely ridiculous. Scorpius couldn't possibly not know about that relationship by now. If he wanted to exploit it he would have by now. So I'm really not sure just what John is on about.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
This ep was so dull and stupid it makes my head hurt! Follows the Farscape template a), but it doesn't implement it very well. Weird alien loose aboard Moya, personality changes, some mumbo-jumbo and reset button at the end. I find the whole set up of traits enhanced, then stolen and put into glowing orbs very stupid and it is soo convenient that they can get their personality back in the end. I liked the traders though.
Oh, and was it only me that found first scene with Talikaa and Chiana (the sexy/seduction scene) disturbing? T is presented as a (former) sex-slave, and all China wants to do is sexy talk with her?
John and Areyn finally working through their stuff and ultimately coming together was good to see.
The slave girl arachnid story started off interesting but quickly devolved into a standard monster of the week tale.
And I am not sure I like the revelation that Scorpius is still the bad guy and just using a different tactic to get John's cooperation/knowledge I think I would like it better if it is shown that John is just paranoid and Scorpius is not their enemy
I rated the episode a four (4)