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crack_van2003-09-25 09:32 pm
fourteenlines.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2003-09-25 09:32 pm
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Farscape: An Overview
Dude. This is really long. I hope it makes sense. (Hey - 17 regular characters, even more pivotal minor characters, convoluted plots, explaining a universe from scratch - it's a challenge.) Also, picture-heavy, spoiler-heavy.
TERMS:
swear words
frell = "fuck." It's enormous fun to use in everyday life.
dren = "shit" or "crap." Used both figuratively and literally, as with "frell."
tralk = "slut" or "bitch." Both meanings seem to be acceptable, since it is often used in a context for which only one of those definitions would make sense.
eema = "ass." IIRC, this was only used once, by Rygel. "Ass" is also used by the characters.
yotz = well...it seems closest to "damn," but is really a kind of catch-all expletive for use when something goes wrong.
hezmana = "hell," or closest to, anyway.
mivonks = "balls," ie, testicles. Oh, this is a fun show.
The writers of Farscape have fun making up other swear words and insults as they go along, so this is by no means a comprehensive list.
units of time
microt = approximately one second (Actually, more like three quarters of a second. 4 minutes = 180 microts. Yes, my geek is showing.)
arn = approximately an hour
cycle = approximately a year
monen = approximately a month
weeken = approximately a week
solar day = a day, as measured in space
Yeah, some of these are not the most clever substitutes for standard time measurements. "Solar day" is clunky, and the "solar" is usually dropped in fanfiction, except in dialogue.
places, races, and mildly ridiculous plot devices
Uncharted Territories: the characters escape to this remote region of space in the first episode. Peacekeepers supposedly have no jurisdiction in the UTs, as they are called, but that's a joke if I've ever heard one. "Uncharted" is certainly a misnomer - people seem to find their way around just fine.
Tormented Space: for when the UTs just aren't remote enough. Tormented Space is supposedly this badscary part of town, but aside from a throwaway line about noxious gasses or space particles or something, it's really no different from the UTs.
Scarrans: a big scary lizard-like race of people. Their archenemies are the Sebaceans.
Peacekeepers: essentially Space Nazis, down to the insistence on racial purity. Think mercenaries or local rent-a-cops, with a dash of a plan for universal domination thrown in.
translator microbes: like a universal translator, only they're living parasites. Don't always work perfectly. Don't always have consistent internal logic. Whatever.
PICS & BIOS
John Crichton (Ben Browder)
John Crichton is, as the credits voiceover for the first couple of seasons will tell you, "...an astronaut lost in a distant part of the universe. I got shot through a wormhole. I'm being hunted by an insane military commander...I'm just trying to find my way home."
John is the only son of Jack Crichton, a famed astronaut and all-around national hero. Jack has walked on the moon. Meet Jack (Kent McCord):
While Jack was a plain old rocket jockey, John also happens to be a certifiable genius. He has a degree in Cosmic Theory from MIT, is a pilot as well as an astronaut, and has been on two shuttle missions prior to the testing of his "slingshot theory," which he developed with his childhood friend DK. Meet DK:
The slingshot theory is an illogical, fictitious way of using planetary gravitation to travel at very high speeds. On the initial test run of his theory, a wormhole
is created and...you guessed it, John gets sucked through it. Everyone on Earth thinks he's dead. Really, he and his Farscape module (the name of the ship he design to test this theory):
got dumped on the other side of the universe, right in the middle of a space battle between the Peacekeepers and a huge ship. The inhabitants of the ship are escaping prisoners, and they pull John in, thinking he might have something they can use. There's just one problem: he kinda got in a little accident with one of the Peacekeeper pilots when he appeared out of thin air. The guy died. The guy also happens to be the crazyass captain's brother. Eventually John gets it together and does use his slingshot theory to help them escape at the end of the episode. Blink and you'll miss it, because the theory is never mentioned again.
John is a pop-cultural freak. The pop culture references fly fast and furious on Farscape ("Close encounters, my ass."), and no one else has any idea what he's saying.
Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black)
Aeryn comes from a race called Sebaceans, who just happen to look exactly like humans. Aeryn is also a Peacekeeper, the preponderance of whom are Sebaceans. (Not all Sebaceans are Peacekeepers, however, which we find out later.) Aeryn is captured by the escaping prisoners in the first episode, gets a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome, and ends up defending John to Crais, the previously-mentioned crazyass captain with a serious hate-on for the guy he views as his brother's murderer. This leads Crais to declare Aeryn "irreversibly contaminated," the Peacekeeper equivalent of voting someone off the island. And then killing them. Aeryn is a good little drone, and is all prepared to face her demise, when John decides that's a load of crap, utters the famous line, "You can be more," and they all escape together after John distracts their captors with something shiny. Watch out for that "you can be more" line - you'll find it in bad Farscape romance fic everywhere.
When Aeryn escapes her repressive past, she steals her very cool ship, called a Prowler:
which happens to be the only ship they have with any weapons capability whatsoever.
John and Aeryn comprise the Big Apocalyptic Love Story for the series. The two of them have serious chemistry, even in the fourth season when Aeryn turns into a pod person.
Moya, Pilot, Talyn and DRDs
Meet Moya. Moya is the ship. Not just any ship - a Leviathan, a "biomechaniod" - part living, part mechanical.
Leviathans have only one natural defense: the ability to "starburst." It's essentially a slipstream in the space-time continuum, which Moya rides until it spits her back out again. However, it's physically taxing, and she needs time to recover between starbursts:
At first having a living ship means that Moya just gets scared all the time, but after a few seasons she starts to do kickass things like save the crew when Pilot starts acting wonky.
(voiced by Lani Tupu, who also plays Capt. Crais)
Meet Pilot. Pilot also happens to be the name of his race. They're not a very creative race.
Pilots and Leviathans have a symbiotic relationship. Leviathans use Pilots to navigate, maintain, and calm them the frell down. Pilots, on the other hand, are huge four-armed swamp-dwelling ground-bound creatures whose only chance to see the stars is to bond with a Leviathan. They happen to be obsessed with the stars, which is a good deal for Leviathans.
Pilot is, as you may have guessed, a huge Muppet. He wasn't, however, Moya's original Pilot, who got blown away by Peacekeepers (including Aeryn) two years before the show began.
The Muppets will make you cry.
Meet Talyn. Talyn is Moya's son. Aeryn named him after her father.
No, don't adjust your monitor. The ship got pregnant and had a baby ship. IMO, it's the only time tv shows should ever be allowed to have a baby storyline. (I'm not bitter. At all.)
While Moya is always scared, Talyn is a Leviathan-Peacekeeper hybrid. He doesn't need a Pilot, and he's the only Leviathan ever to be born with weapons, which makes him a dangerous, spoiled brat. He runs away from home when he's about two days old.
I'm so not joking.
These are DRDs ("diagnostic repair drones.") They go around fixing things that Pilot and Moya tell them to. They can also become friends with crew members, as with the one on the right above. His name is 1812; John befriended him when he was stranded on another Leviathan, painted him, and taught him the 1812 Overture. While Moya's DRDs are yellow, as above, Talyn's DRDs are red. DRDs are not, fortunately, alive. But they are pretty cute, and they make these cute squeaky noises.
Ka D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe)
D'Argo is a Luxan. They are fierce warriors, loyal friends, and prone to something called "hyper-rage." (Seriously. You think road rage is bad. Dude gets so mad he can't even talk.) This is apparently a trait which they are better able to control as they get older.
D'Argo originally tells the crew he was imprisoned for killing a superior officer, but we later come to find out that the was falsely accused of killing his wife.
His wife, Lo'laan, was a Sebacean. If you refer back to Sebaceans and their love of racial purity, you'll see where this is going. She was killed by her own brother, a Peacekeeper. D'Argo's goal for the first two seasons is to find his son, whom he had to abandon when he was imprisoned by the PKs.
D has a really nifty weapon called a qualta blade. It's kind of like a Transformer - first it's a sword, and then it turns into a gun. D's qualta blade belonged to his grandfather.
Do not be alarmed by the flying tentacles. You'll get used to it. Underneath it all, D'Argo is a big old softy, and close friends with John.
Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan (Virginia Hey)
Zhaan is a Delvian. They're huge walking vegetables. (Again. So not joking.) Because she is a plant, she's subject to something called "photo-gasms" when exposed to bright sunlight. Imagine a series of orgasms so intense they incapacitate you. Now you know why it's a good idea to keep Zhaan away from the grow-light. And why it's damn hard to do so.
Delvians are highly spiritual and in touch with their Goddess, Kha'leen. Zhaan is, in fact, a priest, though she abandoned the "Delvian Seek" in order to become a political dissident and murder her lover, who was conspiring to bring Delvia under the control of the Peacekeepers. She failed to prevent that eventuality anyway, and was imprisoned by the PKs. Of all the crew of fugitives on Moya, Zhaan is the only one who actually committed the crime she was accused of.
And while she has a tremendous capacity for violence and madness, she is, at heart, a healer. Zhaan likes to meditate in the nude. She is, in fact, blue all over.
Zhaan sacrifices her life for the welfare of the crew early in the third season. Behind the scenes, the blue makeup was making Virginia Hey very ill, and she was forced to leave the series.
Dominar Rygel XVI (voiced by Jonathan Hardy)
Rygel is the deposed ruler of the Empire of Hyneria, consisting of over 16 billion subjects. The Peacekeepers aided his cousin Bishan in overthrowing his rule and tossing Rygel in the slammer.
Hynerians live a long time. For example, Rygel had been in Peacekeeper custody for over 160 years. He's short (so much so that he rides around on a hoverchair called a "throne sled"), he's devious, he can be selfish at times, and he's out for #1.
Rygel has often stated that regaining his throne is his only reason for living. And even though he's usually the first to sell out if it's to his advantage, he's also demonstrated that he does have a little sluggy heart in there somewhere. Over the course of the series, he was allowed to demonstrate his affection for his friends, his fortitude, and his political savvy.
He's a Muppet too. Sometimes there are female Hynerian guest stars. Sometimes the Muppets will have sex. This is exactly as gross as it sounds.
Captain Bialar Crais (Lani Tupu)
Crais is the captain whose brother got toasted in the first episode. He spent the first season chasing John around trying to kill him, and basically making his life miserable. A friendly round of torture essentially cured him of that. In a fabulous example of irony, Crais is then declared irreversibly contaminated; he steals Talyn and spends most of the second season flying around discovering himself. Crais wasn't born into the Peacekeepers like most of them are. He and his brother were conscripted - torn away from their parents - as small children.
Some people think Crais is the Prettiest PK in the UTs. He sometimes wears a skirt:
and wore red pumps in a hallucination once.
During the third season, Crais was a cast regular. He turns out to be an okay guy, and the amazingly hot biceps didn't hurt. At the end of the season, he sacrifices himself (and Talyn) for the good of the universe as a whole.
Chiana (Gigi Edgley)
Chiana is of the Nebari race, who are big on conformity and mental cleansing. Chiana's not so big on that - is in fact a rebel and an accomplished thief - and so is a fugitive from her people. She joined the cast near the end of the first season. She's playful, seductive, promiscuous, and frankly bisexual. She's also determined that someday she is going to join her brother Nerri as a member of the Nebari resistance.
Chiana can "kick, kiss or cry" her way out of anything. During the course of the third and fourth seasons, she developed a kind of psychic power - at first she was having premonitions, and now it manifests itself in a kind of time warp. Essentially, she's able to slow down time as she sees it, though it leaves her temporarily blind. Don't examine it too closely. Farscape isn't always so good on the logic end of things.
Scorpius (Wayne Pygram)
Scorpius is half-Scarran and half-Sebacean, the result of a horrific experiment (and rape) on the Scarrans' part. He's the main villain from the last few episodes of the first season onward.
Scorpy managed to get himself a seat pretty high up in the Peacekeepers - a real accomplishment for a half-breed. He's a ruthless scientist, and spends his time searching for ways to destroy the Scarrans. Did I say he was ruthless?
Make that brutal. He invented a memory-extracting machine called the Aurora Chair, which causes absolute agony for the victim. In order to save Aeryn from dying, John infiltrates a PK base and gets caught by Scorpius, who puts him in the Chair and finds out that he knows about wormholes. Whaddya know, Scorpy's pet project is wormholes.
This sets up Scorpius' obsession with John and with wormholes for the rest of the series. He spends several years chasing John around the UTs, trying to get his wormhole information. During the second season we find out that Scorpius implanted a chip in John's brain, with a "neural clone" of himself running trying to gather wormhole information and generally making John go batshit insane.
At the end of the second season the chip is removed but the clone remains. They call it a "neural bleed," and John names his new invisible friend "Harvey." They have all sorts of adventures in John's head, and are frequently in costume. Eventually Harvey does appear in a pink bunny suit.
Scorpius ends up joining Moya's crew during the fourth season, much to John's dislike.
Lt. Miklo Braca (David Franklin)
Braca is Scorpius' bottom...oh, I mean, second in command. Eventually, when Scorpy gets kicked out of the PKs for not being Aryan enough, Braca becomes a captain, and by the end of the series is well on his way to world domination. Which is funny, because most people thought he was a red shirt when he first appeared.
Braca is to Scorpius as Smithers is to Mr. Burns. This is a canon comparison. This is the look he gets on his face at the idea of heterosexual sex:
At one point, Braca has Scorpius on a leash. This is not the kinkiest the show has ever been, but comes damn close.
Stark (Paul Goddard)
Stark was John's cellmate while imprisoned by Scorpius. When John escaped, Stark came with them. At first he was all, "My side, your side, my side, your side!" and we thought he was insane. Then it turned out he was only pretending to be insane. Then it turned out he was only pretending to be pretending to be insane. This makes him, in fact, crazier than Brian Wilson on acid.
Stark belongs to a race called Baniks. Baniks are usually slaves. He also happens to be a special kind called a "stykera" which means that he "helps people to the other side" when they die, resulting in no end of John Edwards jokes. And the side of his face glows when he takes off the mask, which makes it no surprise that Zhaan dates him before she dies.
Joolushko Tunai Fenta Hovalis - "Jool" (Tammy McIntosh)
Jool is an Interon. Their biology is much closer to human biology than any other in the UT, even though Sebaceans look more like humans. Actually, Jool looks a lot more human when she's not doing her makeup like an extra from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Jool has degrees in over a dozen subjects and is really a snot about it. She has a scream that melts metal and her hair falls out a lot. She came on the scene in the third season after John rescued her from illegal cryostasis, where she'd been held captive for the last 22 cycles. She got to be a lot less stuck up over time, and I'm not entirely certain it isn't because she started sleeping with Chiana.
She leaves the show and the crew at the beginning of season four in order to pursue anthropological research, making her the only Farscape character ever to get a happy ending.
Commandant Mele-On Grayza (Rebecca Riggs)
The scary goth-lady is Grayza. She enters at the end of third season, kicks Scorpius out of the Peacekeepers, rapes John, and tries to save the world with her breasts.
Not just any breasts, mind you. Special breasts. She had some gland implanted that turns her boob sweat into a highly persuasive drug, kind of like rohypnol mixed with laughing gas. With Scorpius gone, she makes Braca her butt-monkey, which totally grosses him out.
Grayza wants to make peace with the Scarrans, and is maybe even kind of sincere about it. She completely loses it at the end of the series, though, and ends up locked away for her own safety.
Sikozu Svala Shanti Sugaysi Shanu (Raelee Hill)
Sikozu has two modes: Sputnik (or, as I like to call her, Bjork), and Corkscrew. Everyone thought she was going to be a cheap replacement for Jool, but she ended up kicking ass.
Sikozu is a Kalish. Kalish can't use translator microbes, so she has to learn English, and does so in like, half an hour. Eat your heart out, Berlitz. She crash-lands right in John's lap, and ends up having to join the crew, where she develops an insta-crush on Scorpius. Say it with me: Ew.
The Kalish, it turns out, are Scarran collaborators. Sikozu is a member of the Kalish resistance, and oh yeah - a robot. Okay, more like a partially-mechanical clone. But still.
Kalish can walk on the ceiling. She is apparently too dumb to realize that not everyone is special like her, and goes around telling everyone to walk on the ceiling with her for the first episode. Thankfully, she later comes to her senses.
She's kind of imperious, very smart but not a snot about it like Jool was. She can actually be pretty charming when she wants to be.
Utu-Noranti Pralatong (Melissa Jaffer)
Ah, the sweet smell of deux ex machina. Noranti - aka Old Woman, aka Granny - showed up out of nowhere. No one can figure out where she came from and yet no one seems concerned about this, either. Making it more confusing, she doesn't turn out to be more than vaguely sinister. She does go around making a lot of remarks that are either cryptic or inane, spits on things a lot, and gives John drugs. She can also mind-warp people into seeing whatever she wants.
We can only hope the mess made of the fourth season was all her doing.
OTHER PEOPLE YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IN ORDER TO READ FIC:
Ka Jothee: D'Argo's son. He sleeps with Chiana. She and D'Argo were dating at the time. He exits stage left before he can kill D'Argo and marry Chiana.
Lt. Xhalax Sun: Aeryn's mother. She and Talyn (the PK, not the ship) decided they really wanted to have a kid out of love for one another, which is a big no-no in the PKs. They punished her by making her kill Talyn. Years later, in order to recover Talyn (the ship, this time) she comes after Aeryn. Then she decides she wants to kill Aeryn, because Xhalax has Serious Issues. Eventually Crais shoots her and she falls 90 stories, presumably to her death. (Though with Farscape, having a body is not always a guarantee.)
Lt. Velorek: an ex-lover of Aeryn's. He's the one who recruited Pilot as we know him to run Moya. He also tried to prevent Crais from impregnating Moya. Aeryn loved him - verboten among PKs - but turned him in to secure a promotion. Presumed dead.
Furlow: Everyone hates Furlow. She's a mechanic and a mercenary; she was kind of cool and then she did a bad thing and everyone wants her to die. Don't be surprised if you run across a string of stories in which Aeryn kills Furlow horribly.
Olivia Crichton: one of John's sisters. There's another sister, Susan, but she never appears onscreen. Olivia was only in one episode, but she was wonderful and everyone loves her.
Leslie Crichton: John's mother, who died of cancer five years before the start of the series. Appears only in flashbacks, time travel and hallucinations.
TIMELINE AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS IN A NUTSHELL
(No, really.)
Season One: John falls down the wormhole, spends a long time gaining his fellow fugitives' trust and acceptance, exchanges many longing glances and a few kisses (and a bit more) with Aeryn. Furlow takes a scan of his ship. He thinks he makes it back to Earth, but it turns out to be a ploy by this race called The Ancients to see if humans would accept them colonizing Earth. Uh, no, as it turns out. The Ancients implant wormhole info in John's head, which is really bad a few episodes later when Aeryn gets stabbed and John has to pretend to be a PK in order to get her the medicine she needs. Scorpius comes along with his Comfy Chair, Crais defects to their side, and eventually they escape by blowing up Scorpius' Gammak Base while Moya slips out the back door.
Season Two: The crew reunites, John starts to go crazy, everyone switches bodies (and then switches back), and John marries a Princess. He can't kill Scorpius even though he had the opportunity to do so. John goes crazier. He gets captured by a Scarran and his brain almost gets fried, and that's when we find out about the neural clone. The Nebari come and be all scary and try to mind cleanse everyone and John sings a Blondie song. Then Stark shows up and says he knows where Jothee is, and D'Argo freaks out and tries to rob a Shadow Depository (aka a Bank for Bad Guys) in order to try to buy him from a slave auction. Scorpius gets there first, and John trades his life for Jothee's. Then the crew rescues John, Talyn destroys the Shadow Depository, and they escape. But John's brain is totally fried by that point, so they take him to a doctor to have the chip removed. The neural clone takes over, John becomes Scorpius, kills Aeryn by forcing her to drown, and only then is restrained and the chip removed. Scorpius comes along, kills the doctor, and steals John's chip, along with part of his brain.
I am so traumatized by Aeryn's death, I can't cross bridges or shop the frozen food aisle for months.
Season Three: As is typical with Farscape, the cliffhanger is resolved in about three seconds. Zhaan brings Aeryn back to life, John gets a new brain after Scorpy eats the old one, and Crais distracts Scorpy so everyone else can escape. Zhaan dies, Stark goes craz(ier), and John gets "twinned." Basically, he gets cloned, only neither is a copy - both are "equal and original." Talyn comes back, the crew get tangled up in yet more trouble, and in order to escape the crew has to split. Talyn takes one John, Aeryn, Stark, Rygel and Crais, and Moya takes another John, D'Argo, Chiana, and Jool. Aeryn and TalynJohn hook up, her mother comes and causes much trouble and heartache, and then The Ancients show up again to reveal that Furlow is causing Trouble With Wormholes. TalynJohn dies trying to stop her. Aeryn totally loses it, and decides emotions suck and she's never going to feel them again. Stark leaves in search of dead!Zhaan. Meanwhile, on Moya, MoyaJohn continues trying to figure out wormholes and everybody gets on everybody else's nerves. Scorpius can't figure out wormholes even though he has all the info on the chip that was in John's head.
When the crews reunite, their new goal is to destroy Scorpius' wormhole research. John's miserable because Aeryn won't go near him or talk to him. Their brilliant plan is for John to act like he's going to help Scorpius but find a way to destroy all his research instead. Crais and Talyn volunteer for a suicide mission, and the Command Carrier - Scorpy's ship - explodes.
The crews' obsession with blowing stuff up is clearly escalating.
Everybody thinks everything will be okay and the crew splits up. Aeryn decides to become an assassin, after a coin toss tells her to go. After she leaves, John finds out she's pregnant. The shock! The horror! And that's just the fans who hate baby storylines.
Season Four: Turns out the PKs didn't think so much of the crew blowing up their Command Carrier, and everyone reunites, except for Aeryn. Aeryn finally comes back with Scorpius in tow, and is very, very sick. (Sebaceans can't handle heat. They get something called Heat Delirium, which eventually turns into a fun, irreversible coma called the Living Death.) John breaks up with Aeryn because she didn't tell him she was pregnant, and because she doesn't know who the daddy is - after four years he finally realizes she's cagey and emotionally closed off, and he's not gonna take it any more! So he does a bunch of drugs. Aeryn's not really pregnant, she's just sort of pregnant and has to have surgery before the fertilized egg turns into a fetus. John gets sucked into a wormhole by a really pissed-off group of Ancients, and meets a dude who looks like he should be the Narrator from Our Town in the village of the damned:
Dude tells John he's a danger to the universe, because of the knowledge the other Ancients gave him. Any time he goes down a wormhole, if he does it wrongly, he might end up in an alternate universe and change the fabric of space and time altogether. This would be very, very bad, except for fic writers, who cheerfully proclaim that all AUs are canon.
They all to go Earth, everyone finds out about aliens, and then John & company leave. Aeryn soon gets kidnapped by Scarrans. We still don't find out what happened to make Aeryn act like Betty Crocker and Doris Day all mixed into one, and the baby may or may not be John's. They go rescue Aeryn from the Scarrans, only Scorpius gets captured instead. Then Harvey forces John to rescue Scorpius, and in order to do so, they build a nuclear bomb, strap it to John, and waltz right in claiming they want to make a deal.
Eventually they blow up the meteor that the Scarran base was located on. They permanently close the wormhole to Earth so that the Scarrans won't go destroy it in retaliation, ensuring John can never ever ever go home. John and Aeryn decide to put aside their differences and get married. Then some random aliens come along and turn both of them into little itty bitty pieces.
The end. Or, if you prefer, "To Be Continued..."
Fourth season didn't always make a whole lot of sense.
And then they cancelled it. Bastards.
LINKS, BABY
Leviathan Automated Archive
Tourist's Guide to the Uncharted Territories (TGUT)
RedBeard's Farscape Fanfiction Archive
Exodus from Genesis
ScapeRoute
Also, forgive me for this one, but:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
farscapefriday Farscape Friday is a drabble/short fiction community I run. Lots of good stuff posted here by some amazing writers.
All photos courtesy Farscape TV.
TERMS:
swear words
frell = "fuck." It's enormous fun to use in everyday life.
dren = "shit" or "crap." Used both figuratively and literally, as with "frell."
tralk = "slut" or "bitch." Both meanings seem to be acceptable, since it is often used in a context for which only one of those definitions would make sense.
eema = "ass." IIRC, this was only used once, by Rygel. "Ass" is also used by the characters.
yotz = well...it seems closest to "damn," but is really a kind of catch-all expletive for use when something goes wrong.
hezmana = "hell," or closest to, anyway.
mivonks = "balls," ie, testicles. Oh, this is a fun show.
The writers of Farscape have fun making up other swear words and insults as they go along, so this is by no means a comprehensive list.
units of time
microt = approximately one second (Actually, more like three quarters of a second. 4 minutes = 180 microts. Yes, my geek is showing.)
arn = approximately an hour
cycle = approximately a year
monen = approximately a month
weeken = approximately a week
solar day = a day, as measured in space
Yeah, some of these are not the most clever substitutes for standard time measurements. "Solar day" is clunky, and the "solar" is usually dropped in fanfiction, except in dialogue.
places, races, and mildly ridiculous plot devices
Uncharted Territories: the characters escape to this remote region of space in the first episode. Peacekeepers supposedly have no jurisdiction in the UTs, as they are called, but that's a joke if I've ever heard one. "Uncharted" is certainly a misnomer - people seem to find their way around just fine.
Tormented Space: for when the UTs just aren't remote enough. Tormented Space is supposedly this badscary part of town, but aside from a throwaway line about noxious gasses or space particles or something, it's really no different from the UTs.
Scarrans: a big scary lizard-like race of people. Their archenemies are the Sebaceans.
Peacekeepers: essentially Space Nazis, down to the insistence on racial purity. Think mercenaries or local rent-a-cops, with a dash of a plan for universal domination thrown in.
translator microbes: like a universal translator, only they're living parasites. Don't always work perfectly. Don't always have consistent internal logic. Whatever.
PICS & BIOS
John Crichton (Ben Browder)
John Crichton is, as the credits voiceover for the first couple of seasons will tell you, "...an astronaut lost in a distant part of the universe. I got shot through a wormhole. I'm being hunted by an insane military commander...I'm just trying to find my way home."
John is the only son of Jack Crichton, a famed astronaut and all-around national hero. Jack has walked on the moon. Meet Jack (Kent McCord):
While Jack was a plain old rocket jockey, John also happens to be a certifiable genius. He has a degree in Cosmic Theory from MIT, is a pilot as well as an astronaut, and has been on two shuttle missions prior to the testing of his "slingshot theory," which he developed with his childhood friend DK. Meet DK:
The slingshot theory is an illogical, fictitious way of using planetary gravitation to travel at very high speeds. On the initial test run of his theory, a wormhole
is created and...you guessed it, John gets sucked through it. Everyone on Earth thinks he's dead. Really, he and his Farscape module (the name of the ship he design to test this theory):
got dumped on the other side of the universe, right in the middle of a space battle between the Peacekeepers and a huge ship. The inhabitants of the ship are escaping prisoners, and they pull John in, thinking he might have something they can use. There's just one problem: he kinda got in a little accident with one of the Peacekeeper pilots when he appeared out of thin air. The guy died. The guy also happens to be the crazyass captain's brother. Eventually John gets it together and does use his slingshot theory to help them escape at the end of the episode. Blink and you'll miss it, because the theory is never mentioned again.
John is a pop-cultural freak. The pop culture references fly fast and furious on Farscape ("Close encounters, my ass."), and no one else has any idea what he's saying.
Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black)
Aeryn comes from a race called Sebaceans, who just happen to look exactly like humans. Aeryn is also a Peacekeeper, the preponderance of whom are Sebaceans. (Not all Sebaceans are Peacekeepers, however, which we find out later.) Aeryn is captured by the escaping prisoners in the first episode, gets a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome, and ends up defending John to Crais, the previously-mentioned crazyass captain with a serious hate-on for the guy he views as his brother's murderer. This leads Crais to declare Aeryn "irreversibly contaminated," the Peacekeeper equivalent of voting someone off the island. And then killing them. Aeryn is a good little drone, and is all prepared to face her demise, when John decides that's a load of crap, utters the famous line, "You can be more," and they all escape together after John distracts their captors with something shiny. Watch out for that "you can be more" line - you'll find it in bad Farscape romance fic everywhere.
When Aeryn escapes her repressive past, she steals her very cool ship, called a Prowler:
which happens to be the only ship they have with any weapons capability whatsoever.
John and Aeryn comprise the Big Apocalyptic Love Story for the series. The two of them have serious chemistry, even in the fourth season when Aeryn turns into a pod person.
Moya, Pilot, Talyn and DRDs
Meet Moya. Moya is the ship. Not just any ship - a Leviathan, a "biomechaniod" - part living, part mechanical.
Leviathans have only one natural defense: the ability to "starburst." It's essentially a slipstream in the space-time continuum, which Moya rides until it spits her back out again. However, it's physically taxing, and she needs time to recover between starbursts:
At first having a living ship means that Moya just gets scared all the time, but after a few seasons she starts to do kickass things like save the crew when Pilot starts acting wonky.
(voiced by Lani Tupu, who also plays Capt. Crais)
Meet Pilot. Pilot also happens to be the name of his race. They're not a very creative race.
Pilots and Leviathans have a symbiotic relationship. Leviathans use Pilots to navigate, maintain, and calm them the frell down. Pilots, on the other hand, are huge four-armed swamp-dwelling ground-bound creatures whose only chance to see the stars is to bond with a Leviathan. They happen to be obsessed with the stars, which is a good deal for Leviathans.
Pilot is, as you may have guessed, a huge Muppet. He wasn't, however, Moya's original Pilot, who got blown away by Peacekeepers (including Aeryn) two years before the show began.
The Muppets will make you cry.
Meet Talyn. Talyn is Moya's son. Aeryn named him after her father.
No, don't adjust your monitor. The ship got pregnant and had a baby ship. IMO, it's the only time tv shows should ever be allowed to have a baby storyline. (I'm not bitter. At all.)
While Moya is always scared, Talyn is a Leviathan-Peacekeeper hybrid. He doesn't need a Pilot, and he's the only Leviathan ever to be born with weapons, which makes him a dangerous, spoiled brat. He runs away from home when he's about two days old.
I'm so not joking.
These are DRDs ("diagnostic repair drones.") They go around fixing things that Pilot and Moya tell them to. They can also become friends with crew members, as with the one on the right above. His name is 1812; John befriended him when he was stranded on another Leviathan, painted him, and taught him the 1812 Overture. While Moya's DRDs are yellow, as above, Talyn's DRDs are red. DRDs are not, fortunately, alive. But they are pretty cute, and they make these cute squeaky noises.
Ka D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe)
D'Argo is a Luxan. They are fierce warriors, loyal friends, and prone to something called "hyper-rage." (Seriously. You think road rage is bad. Dude gets so mad he can't even talk.) This is apparently a trait which they are better able to control as they get older.
D'Argo originally tells the crew he was imprisoned for killing a superior officer, but we later come to find out that the was falsely accused of killing his wife.
His wife, Lo'laan, was a Sebacean. If you refer back to Sebaceans and their love of racial purity, you'll see where this is going. She was killed by her own brother, a Peacekeeper. D'Argo's goal for the first two seasons is to find his son, whom he had to abandon when he was imprisoned by the PKs.
D has a really nifty weapon called a qualta blade. It's kind of like a Transformer - first it's a sword, and then it turns into a gun. D's qualta blade belonged to his grandfather.
Do not be alarmed by the flying tentacles. You'll get used to it. Underneath it all, D'Argo is a big old softy, and close friends with John.
Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan (Virginia Hey)
Zhaan is a Delvian. They're huge walking vegetables. (Again. So not joking.) Because she is a plant, she's subject to something called "photo-gasms" when exposed to bright sunlight. Imagine a series of orgasms so intense they incapacitate you. Now you know why it's a good idea to keep Zhaan away from the grow-light. And why it's damn hard to do so.
Delvians are highly spiritual and in touch with their Goddess, Kha'leen. Zhaan is, in fact, a priest, though she abandoned the "Delvian Seek" in order to become a political dissident and murder her lover, who was conspiring to bring Delvia under the control of the Peacekeepers. She failed to prevent that eventuality anyway, and was imprisoned by the PKs. Of all the crew of fugitives on Moya, Zhaan is the only one who actually committed the crime she was accused of.
And while she has a tremendous capacity for violence and madness, she is, at heart, a healer. Zhaan likes to meditate in the nude. She is, in fact, blue all over.
Zhaan sacrifices her life for the welfare of the crew early in the third season. Behind the scenes, the blue makeup was making Virginia Hey very ill, and she was forced to leave the series.
Dominar Rygel XVI (voiced by Jonathan Hardy)
Rygel is the deposed ruler of the Empire of Hyneria, consisting of over 16 billion subjects. The Peacekeepers aided his cousin Bishan in overthrowing his rule and tossing Rygel in the slammer.
Hynerians live a long time. For example, Rygel had been in Peacekeeper custody for over 160 years. He's short (so much so that he rides around on a hoverchair called a "throne sled"), he's devious, he can be selfish at times, and he's out for #1.
Rygel has often stated that regaining his throne is his only reason for living. And even though he's usually the first to sell out if it's to his advantage, he's also demonstrated that he does have a little sluggy heart in there somewhere. Over the course of the series, he was allowed to demonstrate his affection for his friends, his fortitude, and his political savvy.
He's a Muppet too. Sometimes there are female Hynerian guest stars. Sometimes the Muppets will have sex. This is exactly as gross as it sounds.
Captain Bialar Crais (Lani Tupu)
Crais is the captain whose brother got toasted in the first episode. He spent the first season chasing John around trying to kill him, and basically making his life miserable. A friendly round of torture essentially cured him of that. In a fabulous example of irony, Crais is then declared irreversibly contaminated; he steals Talyn and spends most of the second season flying around discovering himself. Crais wasn't born into the Peacekeepers like most of them are. He and his brother were conscripted - torn away from their parents - as small children.
Some people think Crais is the Prettiest PK in the UTs. He sometimes wears a skirt:
and wore red pumps in a hallucination once.
During the third season, Crais was a cast regular. He turns out to be an okay guy, and the amazingly hot biceps didn't hurt. At the end of the season, he sacrifices himself (and Talyn) for the good of the universe as a whole.
Chiana (Gigi Edgley)
Chiana is of the Nebari race, who are big on conformity and mental cleansing. Chiana's not so big on that - is in fact a rebel and an accomplished thief - and so is a fugitive from her people. She joined the cast near the end of the first season. She's playful, seductive, promiscuous, and frankly bisexual. She's also determined that someday she is going to join her brother Nerri as a member of the Nebari resistance.
Chiana can "kick, kiss or cry" her way out of anything. During the course of the third and fourth seasons, she developed a kind of psychic power - at first she was having premonitions, and now it manifests itself in a kind of time warp. Essentially, she's able to slow down time as she sees it, though it leaves her temporarily blind. Don't examine it too closely. Farscape isn't always so good on the logic end of things.
Scorpius (Wayne Pygram)
Scorpius is half-Scarran and half-Sebacean, the result of a horrific experiment (and rape) on the Scarrans' part. He's the main villain from the last few episodes of the first season onward.
Scorpy managed to get himself a seat pretty high up in the Peacekeepers - a real accomplishment for a half-breed. He's a ruthless scientist, and spends his time searching for ways to destroy the Scarrans. Did I say he was ruthless?
Make that brutal. He invented a memory-extracting machine called the Aurora Chair, which causes absolute agony for the victim. In order to save Aeryn from dying, John infiltrates a PK base and gets caught by Scorpius, who puts him in the Chair and finds out that he knows about wormholes. Whaddya know, Scorpy's pet project is wormholes.
This sets up Scorpius' obsession with John and with wormholes for the rest of the series. He spends several years chasing John around the UTs, trying to get his wormhole information. During the second season we find out that Scorpius implanted a chip in John's brain, with a "neural clone" of himself running trying to gather wormhole information and generally making John go batshit insane.
At the end of the second season the chip is removed but the clone remains. They call it a "neural bleed," and John names his new invisible friend "Harvey." They have all sorts of adventures in John's head, and are frequently in costume. Eventually Harvey does appear in a pink bunny suit.
Scorpius ends up joining Moya's crew during the fourth season, much to John's dislike.
Lt. Miklo Braca (David Franklin)
Braca is Scorpius' bottom...oh, I mean, second in command. Eventually, when Scorpy gets kicked out of the PKs for not being Aryan enough, Braca becomes a captain, and by the end of the series is well on his way to world domination. Which is funny, because most people thought he was a red shirt when he first appeared.
Braca is to Scorpius as Smithers is to Mr. Burns. This is a canon comparison. This is the look he gets on his face at the idea of heterosexual sex:
At one point, Braca has Scorpius on a leash. This is not the kinkiest the show has ever been, but comes damn close.
Stark (Paul Goddard)
Stark was John's cellmate while imprisoned by Scorpius. When John escaped, Stark came with them. At first he was all, "My side, your side, my side, your side!" and we thought he was insane. Then it turned out he was only pretending to be insane. Then it turned out he was only pretending to be pretending to be insane. This makes him, in fact, crazier than Brian Wilson on acid.
Stark belongs to a race called Baniks. Baniks are usually slaves. He also happens to be a special kind called a "stykera" which means that he "helps people to the other side" when they die, resulting in no end of John Edwards jokes. And the side of his face glows when he takes off the mask, which makes it no surprise that Zhaan dates him before she dies.
Joolushko Tunai Fenta Hovalis - "Jool" (Tammy McIntosh)
Jool is an Interon. Their biology is much closer to human biology than any other in the UT, even though Sebaceans look more like humans. Actually, Jool looks a lot more human when she's not doing her makeup like an extra from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Jool has degrees in over a dozen subjects and is really a snot about it. She has a scream that melts metal and her hair falls out a lot. She came on the scene in the third season after John rescued her from illegal cryostasis, where she'd been held captive for the last 22 cycles. She got to be a lot less stuck up over time, and I'm not entirely certain it isn't because she started sleeping with Chiana.
She leaves the show and the crew at the beginning of season four in order to pursue anthropological research, making her the only Farscape character ever to get a happy ending.
Commandant Mele-On Grayza (Rebecca Riggs)
The scary goth-lady is Grayza. She enters at the end of third season, kicks Scorpius out of the Peacekeepers, rapes John, and tries to save the world with her breasts.
Not just any breasts, mind you. Special breasts. She had some gland implanted that turns her boob sweat into a highly persuasive drug, kind of like rohypnol mixed with laughing gas. With Scorpius gone, she makes Braca her butt-monkey, which totally grosses him out.
Grayza wants to make peace with the Scarrans, and is maybe even kind of sincere about it. She completely loses it at the end of the series, though, and ends up locked away for her own safety.
Sikozu Svala Shanti Sugaysi Shanu (Raelee Hill)
Sikozu has two modes: Sputnik (or, as I like to call her, Bjork), and Corkscrew. Everyone thought she was going to be a cheap replacement for Jool, but she ended up kicking ass.
Sikozu is a Kalish. Kalish can't use translator microbes, so she has to learn English, and does so in like, half an hour. Eat your heart out, Berlitz. She crash-lands right in John's lap, and ends up having to join the crew, where she develops an insta-crush on Scorpius. Say it with me: Ew.
The Kalish, it turns out, are Scarran collaborators. Sikozu is a member of the Kalish resistance, and oh yeah - a robot. Okay, more like a partially-mechanical clone. But still.
Kalish can walk on the ceiling. She is apparently too dumb to realize that not everyone is special like her, and goes around telling everyone to walk on the ceiling with her for the first episode. Thankfully, she later comes to her senses.
She's kind of imperious, very smart but not a snot about it like Jool was. She can actually be pretty charming when she wants to be.
Utu-Noranti Pralatong (Melissa Jaffer)
Ah, the sweet smell of deux ex machina. Noranti - aka Old Woman, aka Granny - showed up out of nowhere. No one can figure out where she came from and yet no one seems concerned about this, either. Making it more confusing, she doesn't turn out to be more than vaguely sinister. She does go around making a lot of remarks that are either cryptic or inane, spits on things a lot, and gives John drugs. She can also mind-warp people into seeing whatever she wants.
We can only hope the mess made of the fourth season was all her doing.
OTHER PEOPLE YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IN ORDER TO READ FIC:
Ka Jothee: D'Argo's son. He sleeps with Chiana. She and D'Argo were dating at the time. He exits stage left before he can kill D'Argo and marry Chiana. Lt. Xhalax Sun: Aeryn's mother. She and Talyn (the PK, not the ship) decided they really wanted to have a kid out of love for one another, which is a big no-no in the PKs. They punished her by making her kill Talyn. Years later, in order to recover Talyn (the ship, this time) she comes after Aeryn. Then she decides she wants to kill Aeryn, because Xhalax has Serious Issues. Eventually Crais shoots her and she falls 90 stories, presumably to her death. (Though with Farscape, having a body is not always a guarantee.) Lt. Velorek: an ex-lover of Aeryn's. He's the one who recruited Pilot as we know him to run Moya. He also tried to prevent Crais from impregnating Moya. Aeryn loved him - verboten among PKs - but turned him in to secure a promotion. Presumed dead. Furlow: Everyone hates Furlow. She's a mechanic and a mercenary; she was kind of cool and then she did a bad thing and everyone wants her to die. Don't be surprised if you run across a string of stories in which Aeryn kills Furlow horribly. Olivia Crichton: one of John's sisters. There's another sister, Susan, but she never appears onscreen. Olivia was only in one episode, but she was wonderful and everyone loves her. Leslie Crichton: John's mother, who died of cancer five years before the start of the series. Appears only in flashbacks, time travel and hallucinations.TIMELINE AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS IN A NUTSHELL
(No, really.)
Season One: John falls down the wormhole, spends a long time gaining his fellow fugitives' trust and acceptance, exchanges many longing glances and a few kisses (and a bit more) with Aeryn. Furlow takes a scan of his ship. He thinks he makes it back to Earth, but it turns out to be a ploy by this race called The Ancients to see if humans would accept them colonizing Earth. Uh, no, as it turns out. The Ancients implant wormhole info in John's head, which is really bad a few episodes later when Aeryn gets stabbed and John has to pretend to be a PK in order to get her the medicine she needs. Scorpius comes along with his Comfy Chair, Crais defects to their side, and eventually they escape by blowing up Scorpius' Gammak Base while Moya slips out the back door.
Season Two: The crew reunites, John starts to go crazy, everyone switches bodies (and then switches back), and John marries a Princess. He can't kill Scorpius even though he had the opportunity to do so. John goes crazier. He gets captured by a Scarran and his brain almost gets fried, and that's when we find out about the neural clone. The Nebari come and be all scary and try to mind cleanse everyone and John sings a Blondie song. Then Stark shows up and says he knows where Jothee is, and D'Argo freaks out and tries to rob a Shadow Depository (aka a Bank for Bad Guys) in order to try to buy him from a slave auction. Scorpius gets there first, and John trades his life for Jothee's. Then the crew rescues John, Talyn destroys the Shadow Depository, and they escape. But John's brain is totally fried by that point, so they take him to a doctor to have the chip removed. The neural clone takes over, John becomes Scorpius, kills Aeryn by forcing her to drown, and only then is restrained and the chip removed. Scorpius comes along, kills the doctor, and steals John's chip, along with part of his brain.
I am so traumatized by Aeryn's death, I can't cross bridges or shop the frozen food aisle for months.
Season Three: As is typical with Farscape, the cliffhanger is resolved in about three seconds. Zhaan brings Aeryn back to life, John gets a new brain after Scorpy eats the old one, and Crais distracts Scorpy so everyone else can escape. Zhaan dies, Stark goes craz(ier), and John gets "twinned." Basically, he gets cloned, only neither is a copy - both are "equal and original." Talyn comes back, the crew get tangled up in yet more trouble, and in order to escape the crew has to split. Talyn takes one John, Aeryn, Stark, Rygel and Crais, and Moya takes another John, D'Argo, Chiana, and Jool. Aeryn and TalynJohn hook up, her mother comes and causes much trouble and heartache, and then The Ancients show up again to reveal that Furlow is causing Trouble With Wormholes. TalynJohn dies trying to stop her. Aeryn totally loses it, and decides emotions suck and she's never going to feel them again. Stark leaves in search of dead!Zhaan. Meanwhile, on Moya, MoyaJohn continues trying to figure out wormholes and everybody gets on everybody else's nerves. Scorpius can't figure out wormholes even though he has all the info on the chip that was in John's head.
When the crews reunite, their new goal is to destroy Scorpius' wormhole research. John's miserable because Aeryn won't go near him or talk to him. Their brilliant plan is for John to act like he's going to help Scorpius but find a way to destroy all his research instead. Crais and Talyn volunteer for a suicide mission, and the Command Carrier - Scorpy's ship - explodes.
The crews' obsession with blowing stuff up is clearly escalating.
Everybody thinks everything will be okay and the crew splits up. Aeryn decides to become an assassin, after a coin toss tells her to go. After she leaves, John finds out she's pregnant. The shock! The horror! And that's just the fans who hate baby storylines.
Season Four: Turns out the PKs didn't think so much of the crew blowing up their Command Carrier, and everyone reunites, except for Aeryn. Aeryn finally comes back with Scorpius in tow, and is very, very sick. (Sebaceans can't handle heat. They get something called Heat Delirium, which eventually turns into a fun, irreversible coma called the Living Death.) John breaks up with Aeryn because she didn't tell him she was pregnant, and because she doesn't know who the daddy is - after four years he finally realizes she's cagey and emotionally closed off, and he's not gonna take it any more! So he does a bunch of drugs. Aeryn's not really pregnant, she's just sort of pregnant and has to have surgery before the fertilized egg turns into a fetus. John gets sucked into a wormhole by a really pissed-off group of Ancients, and meets a dude who looks like he should be the Narrator from Our Town in the village of the damned:
Dude tells John he's a danger to the universe, because of the knowledge the other Ancients gave him. Any time he goes down a wormhole, if he does it wrongly, he might end up in an alternate universe and change the fabric of space and time altogether. This would be very, very bad, except for fic writers, who cheerfully proclaim that all AUs are canon.
They all to go Earth, everyone finds out about aliens, and then John & company leave. Aeryn soon gets kidnapped by Scarrans. We still don't find out what happened to make Aeryn act like Betty Crocker and Doris Day all mixed into one, and the baby may or may not be John's. They go rescue Aeryn from the Scarrans, only Scorpius gets captured instead. Then Harvey forces John to rescue Scorpius, and in order to do so, they build a nuclear bomb, strap it to John, and waltz right in claiming they want to make a deal.
Eventually they blow up the meteor that the Scarran base was located on. They permanently close the wormhole to Earth so that the Scarrans won't go destroy it in retaliation, ensuring John can never ever ever go home. John and Aeryn decide to put aside their differences and get married. Then some random aliens come along and turn both of them into little itty bitty pieces.
The end. Or, if you prefer, "To Be Continued..."
Fourth season didn't always make a whole lot of sense.
And then they cancelled it. Bastards.
LINKS, BABY
Leviathan Automated Archive
Tourist's Guide to the Uncharted Territories (TGUT)
RedBeard's Farscape Fanfiction Archive
Exodus from Genesis
ScapeRoute
Also, forgive me for this one, but:
farscapefriday Farscape Friday is a drabble/short fiction community I run. Lots of good stuff posted here by some amazing writers.All photos courtesy Farscape TV.
no subject
The muppets will make you cry and they will have sex, and there will be bawling and laughing and you neglected to mention the serious emphasis on bodily fluids, but the little slip of the tongue over Braca more than made up for it.
Hee hee. We couldn't have asked for better representation:)