The Worlds of Farscape

by Sherry Ginn

  Like Odysseus after the Trojan War, Crichton’s adventure home is thwarted at every turn by villains such as Scorpius and Crais. However, as noted before, heroes, villains, and antiheroes, function in fascinating ways in the series. Crichton is clearly the show’s hero, albeit an often bemused, amused, abused, and hence, deconstructed version, but his characterization morphs into the villainous thanks to the influence of “Harvey,” Scorpius’ alter-ego residing inside John’s brain. In “Die Me, Dichotomy” (2.22), Scorpius, via Harvey-the-chip-persona, overwhelms Crichton, who purposefully attempts to land his Prowler on Aeryn’s ship’s canopy, leading to her death. Though Crichton quickly takes back control, he has done the heinous deed, killing the women he clearly loves. One might argue that Crichton is not in control of his own agency, or body, but the fact remains that he committed the crime. Later, he is an emotional wreck, suffering regret and thereby regaining audience sympathy and his own agency. Ultimately, he expunges the chip and control of his own body ... sort of. Scorpius leaves a mostly benign version of Harvey behind.

  Equally as fascinating as Crichton’s shifting from hero to villain and back again, Crichton’s title voice-over subtly shifts by the third season, as his experiences change his Westernized views about aliens and his immediate goals of the quest reflect his experiences in the Uncharted Territories:

  My name is John Crichton. I’m lost. An astronaut. Shot through a wormhole. In some distant part of the universe. Trying to stay alive. Aboard this ship. This living ship. Of escaped prisoners. My friends. If you can hear me. Beware. If I make it back. If I open the door. Are you ready? Earth is unprepared. Helpless. For nightmares I’ve seen. Or should I stay? Protect my home. My children. But then you’ll never know the wonders I’ve seen [“Season of Death” 3.1].

  Crichton’s arc demonstrates substantial awareness of humanity’s place in the universe, in contrast to his initial first contact. Wiser, he realizes that the universe is a dangerous place indeed.

  Note how Farscape deconstructs the narrative with surprisingly effective results, using binary oppositions to defy audience expectations. The show plays with oppositions when Crichton splinters into a binary set of perfect twins at one point in the series, setting up both an opposition against himself, and a literal rendering of the binary motif. In the third season episode “Eat Me,” Crichton, D’Argo, and Chiana, are “copied” by the criminally insane Kaarvok, an escaped prisoner on a Peacekeeper prison convoy ship ambushed by Scarrans and left to drift through the Uncharted Territories. Kaarvok first duplicates D’Argo, a literal murder, albeit an unproductive one given the existence of D’Argo’s twin (though which one is the original is a point to ponder). Then, he duplicates Chiana, who stares in amazement at her own duplicate. In a moment of pure cowardice, however, Chiana runs away as Kaarvok murders one of the Chianas, while the other one ignores her own doppelgänger as she begs for help. Though Chiana is often selfserving, allowing her own binary to be brutalized is a symbolically loaded action. Chiana ponders her cowardice, tearfully working it out: “Okay. Okay. Clone. Okay. Okay. Two Chianas. Um. Um. She-she. Not me. Yeah. Not me. Uh-uh. She-she. She was just a clone, a clone. So I’m the real me I’m the real me” (“Eat Me” 3.6). Of course, it is impossible to know which is which. Crichton, with his typical amusing irreverence, saves the day, but is zapped by Kaarvok while escaping with his friends. At the end of the episode, a twinned Crichton, sits starring at his own duplicate playing an endless and pointless game of rock-paper-scissors as a concerned Aeryn watches over him.

  Though post-structuralism tends to eschew these binary oppositions, the heroic paradigm lingers in the margins. In “Deconstructing the Hero,” Iain Thomson discusses the reluctance on the part of even the most ardent postmodernists to entirely expel the hero off the top of the pedestal:

  Existentialism, that philosophical tradition previously best known for radical questioning (the tradition which, with Heidegger, gave us the very concept of deconstruction), questioned, but did not overturn, the great importance Western history has always accorded to the hero. (“Always,” here that means—since we are talking about Western history—beginning with our own beginning: Our founding myths are hero stories all.) Indeed of the three greatest existential philosophers, Nietzsche and Heidegger both found it easier to give up their own devout Christianity than to stop believing in Heroes [111].

  Farscape utilizes the mythic paradigm, recognizing the need for Crichton’s heroic loci, but the series is at its most fascinating when it deconstructs icons, allowing these characters the freedom to explore the uncharted realms of arc, fostering self-serving natures, or revealing very unsympathetic behaviors, and other lapses in character as past misdeeds are discovered.

  Take the disenfranchised Peacekeeper pilot Aeryn Sun, a stunningly complex character, John’s romantic fixation and deconstructed feminist role model. Aeryn functions in the series as a fully empowered model of righteous female agency, a conflicted, evolving antihero and a redeemed villain as a representative of the authoritative Empire (those ironically named Peacekeepers), transitioning and changing as she moves through the plot. In the pivotal episode “The Way We Weren’t” (2.5), the nefarious deeds of two characters are revealed. Three, if you count Crais before his own transition from nightmarish vision of Empire-gone-astray poster boy to self-sacrificing hero.

  Aeryn’s unsavory past as a Peacekeeper is explored in the episode “The Way We Weren’t” (2.5), including her participation in the slaughter of Moya’s first pilot, a horrendous, brutal act which has been secretly recorded by the Peacekeepers and the tape discovered by Chiana. Chiana shows the tape to Crichton in private:

  CHIANA: “Did you see what I see? This is Aeryn. It shows she’s been aboard Moya—“

  CRICHTON: “Peacekeepers must have kept these things running twenty-four-seven to spy on their own people.”

  CHIANA: “Crichton, that is Aeryn. She’s been aboard Moya before. She killed a pilot.”

  John evidences concern, even shock, but it is clear that he is going to wait to hear Aeryn’s side of the story before he comes to any conclusions. Here, he is either compromised by his feelings for her or proves endearingly hopeful; either way, he is sympathetic by way of empathy, made more engaging through this emotional resonance than the expected bombast of the Western heroic prototype. His heroic sensibility works in binary opposition to Aeryn’s presumptive, possible villainy, though Peacekeeper Velorek is by far the most heroic, uncompromised character in the episode. Aeryn’s shipmates are, in fact, horrified by the revelation and the implications of Aeryn’s brutal past when they are shown the recording:

  AERYN: “Yes, it’s me. Are you happy now?”

  ZHAAN: “It shows you have been aboard Moya before.”

  D’ARGO: “Why didn’t you ever tell us?”

  RYGEL: “It’s criminally obviously, isn’t it? She helped murder a defenseless pilot.”

  AERYN: “Must have been about three cycles ago. Now, I’ve been aboard hundreds of Leviathans and I had no idea it was Moya.”

  CHIANA: “So all non–Sebaceans look alike, is that it?”

  AERYN: “I didn’t know, Chiana.”

  CRICHTON:“Look, the Aeryn on that tape is not the Aeryn we know. That was a long time ago.”

  RYGEL: “Three cycles isn’t that long! Ha! I was aboard Moya by then.

  ZHAAN: “As was I.”

  RYGEL: “Maybe you were one of the ones who took a turn torturing me. Ever torture a Hynerian?”

  D’ARGO: “Perhaps you helped torture me, too—“

  AERYN: “No!”

  The scene continues on until Crichton steps in, forcing everyone to “chill out for a microt,” which allows the weight of her crime to simmer without actual violence ensuing. Until this point, Aeryn has been an accepted member of the crew (albeit somewhat grudgingly on both sides), a woman in control of her own agency as well as a heroic feminine figure. The reveal shatters the character’s hierarchi
cal place amongst the crew, reminding the other characters and the audience about the conflict between Aeryn’s past and present. Even more interesting, the scene shatters the character’s agency (though she regains it by the episode’s finale). She was just following orders, a Peacekeeper drone without any independent will. Overtly, through Aeryn, Farscape metaphorically references the hints of Hitler’s Germany with Aeryn in the role of soldier merely following orders, compromising her “ethical” center.2

  D’Argo, Zhaan, and Rygel accuse her of “murdering a pilot,” which is obviously true, and they suggest she may have taken part in torturing them while they were prisoners aboard Moya, which she vehemently denies. Chiana defends her, perhaps empathizing with unjust feminine character assassination more than the rest, “What have you guys been thinking all this time? What, she was out picking baskets of Raulis buds while all the other mean Peacekeepers did all the really nasty stuff? She was a Peacekeeper” (“The Way We Weren’t” 2.5). Chiana’s point is well taken. No matter how sympathetic Aeryn may seem, nor how reasonable her past involvement with the oppressive Peacekeeper agenda, her actions skirt reasonable ethical considerations.

  Though deeply tortured by her participation in state-sanctioned murder of Moya’s previous pilot, Aeryn’s misdeeds run deeper than simply following Crais’ orders. John eventually learns that Aeryn was sexually, and emotionally, involved with Velorek, the officer charged with installing the new pilot on Moya. Velorek believes that Crais is a “madman” and he plots to thwart Crais’s nefarious plan to breed Leviathans. In the episode, Velorek functions as the protagonist, supplying narrative opposition to Crais as well as Aeryn. The character displays uncustomary perception, kindness and courage, subverting the Peacekeeper agenda and his immediate commander’s objectives, engendered with a humanist, emotional approach to relationships and interspecies relations. In addition, he tasks Aeryn and Pilot with higher goals, functioning as a catalyst for their later actions, though ironically both make poor decisions and Aeryn’s actions result in his death. This is no reflection on Velorek, one of the most enlightened, sympathetic characters in the series. Aeryn suffers the most in comparison, since she betrays him to Crais in order to return to her assignment flying Prowlers.

  Nor is Aeryn alone in her duplicity and dark past, as Pilot shares partial blame for the murder of Moya’s first pilot. Though he did not pull the trigger, his desperate, selfish desires resulted in her death as evidenced by this flashback between Velorek and Pilot on the latter’s homeworld, as confessed to Aeryn and Crichton by Pilot:

  VELOREK: That’s what I offer you. Stars.

  PILOT: I dream of nothing else.

  VELOREK: I offer you a Leviathan. All you have to do is agree to help me.

  PILOT: But you said that for me to be joined, the old one would have to die.

  VELOREK: That pilot will die no matter what you do.

  PILOT: Ah.

  VELOREK: If you don’t come with me, I’ll find someone else who will. Someone else who isn’t afraid to take their place amongst the stars.

  [end flashback]

  PILOT: The fate of Moya’s pilot was sealed at that moment.

  Pilot’s desire to see the stars was the inciting incident behind the murder of the first pilot, since Velorek would not have found another pilot so easily manipulated or self-serving.

  Not only do Aeryn and Pilot share DNA (established in “DNA Mad Scientist” 1.9), but also guilt over their actions. Ultimately, their emotional arc and evolution through the plot allow them to move forward, or as Aeryn notes, “We’ve come a long way since then, Pilot. And we’ve still got a long way to go. Take the journey with me” (“The Way We Weren’t” 2.5). While Crais remains the primary villainous force polarizing the episode, both Aeryn and Pilot work in opposition to Velorek’s heroism, functioning as antagonists in comparison, yet ultimately managing to endear themselves to the audience through their character arcs, dramatized through their emotional epiphanies, obvious regret and eventual growth.

  This complexity of expected character paradigms is one of the many deconstructive elements of Farscape. D’Argo and Zhaan demonstrate outright craven self-interest in “DNA Mad Scientist” when they cut off one of Pilot’s arms in exchange for a map home (1.9). When confronted by Aeryn, neither evidences much genuine regret:

  D’ARGO: Do you have something to say to us?

  ZHAAN: The decision was a hard one, Aeryn. Our actions, even harder. But it is done—“

  AERYN: How could you? Pilot is defenseless.

  D’ARGO: Compassion. From a Peacekeeper.

  AERYN: For a comrade. You attacked one of your own. Would you do the same to the rest of us?

  D’ARGO: Of course.

  Here, D’Argo and Zhaan are compromised in comparison to Crichton and Aeryn, with evil scientist Namtar as the apex of villainy.

  Ironically, Aeryn will reverse roles with Zhaan and D’Argo in the next season when her involvement in the murder of Moya’s previous pilot is revealed. Though the audience will have ample reasons to regain empathy for both D’Argo and Zhaan, at this moment, they shift from mentors and allies to Crichton, devolving into minor antagonists and/or erstwhile minions of Namtar. They have been misled by their own desires, true enough, but stalwart hero Crichton would never consciously yield to such base motives nor commit such a heinous act, even if Earth were served up on a platter. In fact, no mythic hero would promote such an agenda.

  Zhaan and D’Argo, after all, evidence dark pasts as well as heroic moments throughout the series, their characterizations informed by a deconstructed paradigm which eschews rigidity and embraces flux. Even Moya, Farscape’s embodied, literal space (the crew actually lives on her) and nurturing female character, occasionally threatens the lives of her passengers. However, Crais most eloquently expresses this poststructuralist agenda, evolving from snarling, almost melodramatic heavy, to antihero, to cathartic, tragic hero by the climax of his own hero’s journey. Crais is not only the most unhinged of the Farscape antagonists in that he is a man truly obsessed, but he could be described as a melodramatic trope taken too far, a symbolic figure of unmitigated vengeance. And yet, he also offers the most extreme example of the deconstruction of character, a character that shifts from the villainous to the heroic, since it is Crais that changes the most over the course of the series. He evidences truly heroic traits as the character evolves through the plot: stalker to uneasy ally to savior. Though his anger is motivated by love for his brother, and we soon learn, a whole-lotta-guilt, his actions are initially over-the-top and obsessive-compulsive. Crais is not John’s first obstacle after clearing the wormhole; his “new” friends present him with difficulty, but it is Crais who drives the story’s engine. In fact, Farscape’s resident villains are wonderfully capable in this regard. Crais, however difficult, complicated and self-serving, has been victimized by Scorpius, a fact which supplies the character with his initial sympathetic moments. His obsession with Crichton results in the loss of his command and everything he “thinks” he values; who does not relate to a man suffering from undeserved misfortune, no matter how much he has brought it upon himself through his own internal flaws and failings. In fact, this only makes him more “human,” albeit with deep anger control issues (a problem shared by many characters in the Farscape universe), ironic given the oft-posed question of “what is human” asked by the show. Later in the series, Crais steals Moya’s offspring Talyn without permission, morphing into the antihero in binary opposition to Crichton’s post-modern, almost metrosexual version of the hero, a binary, defrocked Peacekeeper-in-contrast to Scorpius’ more literally pointy-toothed villain. Antiheroes, of course, are not the antithesis of the hero. As defined by Christopher Vogler:

  Anti-hero is a slippery term that can cause a lot of confusion. Simply stated, an Anti-hero is not the opposite of a Hero, but a specialized kind of Hero, one who may be an outlaw or a villain from the point of view of society, but with whom the audience i
s basically in sympathy. We identify with these outsiders because we have all felt like outsiders at one time or another [41].

  Of course, the society defined here is not Peacekeeper society (though that could also be one argument), but Western society, hence John’s placement at the pinnacle of the hero cycle and thus explaining the logic of Crais’ function as antihero, particularly in comparison to Scorpius, the greater enemy of both Crais and John.

  Crais’ evolution does not happen immediately, but over several episodes, as he and Moya’s offspring Talyn repeatedly offer aid, often reluctantly on Crais’ part, to Moya’s crew. Vogler’s antihero definition fits Crais during this part of his evolution:

  Anti-Heroes may be of two types: (1) characters who behave much like conventional Heroes, but are given a strong touch of cynicism or have a wounded quality..., or (2) tragic Heroes, central figures of a story who may not be likeable or admirable, whose actions we may even deplore... [41].

  Crais and Crichton share an uneasy partnership; neither likes nor trusts the other, but mutual hatred of Scorpius binds them throughout the second and third seasons, until Crais’ self-revelations lead him to a heroic mutation, which surpasses his prior role in the story.

  By the end of Season Three, new threats glimmer on the horizon as Crichton grapples with Scorpius over wormhole technology and the specter of the Scarrans looms large, as well as new villains, such as Grayza (“Into the Lion’s Den, Part II: Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” 3.21). Crais’ evolution through the series eventually leads him to the surprising act of self-sacrifice. By this point, Crais has pushed past antihero and lapsed into the heroic, despite his claim that he is only motivated by selfish concerns as evidenced by this sequence between Crais, John, and Aeryn as they plot to destroy Scorpius’ command carrier and thwart his acquisition of the wormhole technology. Crichton believes that Crais has betrayed them. In fact, he is offering to sacrifice his own life: