by Sherry Ginn
Moya’s most maternal instinct, and most maternal quality, is the ability she has to shelter and protect her inhabitants. Battis suggests, “Moya is arguably the most crucial female presence on Farscape—literally keeping her crew alive” (11). Here Battis is connecting Moya’s ability to provide safety with maternity, for in “keeping her crew alive” she is taking on the role of mother. Indeed, as a living being, Moya is both wombspace and homeplace, both the parental body and the child’s bedroom. When the crew is separated from Moya, they desperately wish to return, because here is the site of double safety, the womb and their room. Moya is thus uniquely positioned amongst most manners of homeplaces, even those found in science fiction realms. She is impermanent and contested, a source of double anxiety; yet she is also a maternal body and a childhood homeplace, a source of double security. Her crew feels safest within her, and fights most desperately to preserve her, because of what she represents to them. We fight for family. We fight for home. Thus the fight to preserve Moya and maintain her safety is a double one, the fight for family and the fight for homeplace. It is this struggle, and the roots they sent down within Moya herself, that unites the differing aliens of Farscape and converts them into a familial unit. And yet, as interesting as all of this is, it only presages the most unique quality that Moya possesses as homeplace: that Moya is sentient.
Sentient Space
Farscape is not the first science fiction narrative to introduce the notion of a sentient homeplace. The 1999 Disney television movie Smart House featured a family domicile imbued with an artificial intelligence. This intelligence—dubbed PAT, for Personal Applied Technology—is designed to facilitate “modern living,” to tend to the responsibilities of homeplace—cleaning, cooking, upkeep—while asking nothing in return. The house, then, is evinced as nothing more than a very smart tool, and tools, as Simonsen notes, are “a conception of social practice and its objects as an extension of the body... [This includes] everyday utensils or tools, which extend the body in accord with its rhythms, or speech or writing, which sometimes disclose and sometimes dissimulate” (6). Tools, then, are an extension of our own corporeal space and intentions, and PAT initially responds in the same manner, acting only when called upon by the very corporeal brains that regulate the house’s artificial intelligence. Most artificial/mechanical life forms in science fiction narratives begin their existence in the same manner—as extensions of the human desire to work, to accomplish some task or another.
In Smart House, PAT is given to a lucky family who win “her” in a contest. The family—a widower with a son and a daughter—are motherless, and so the son, Ben, who has in some ways taken on the duties of maternalism, if not the mantle, sees the house as an apt substitute for the mother-figure. The house can cook, clean, monitor the children’s health, and encourage familial bonding—this is all a mother is good for, in his estimation, and the house is thus an apt substitute for his own maternal actions. The threat occurs from without, from Sara, the beautiful female inventor of PAT, whom Ben deems an interloper into the artificially constructed family he so desperately created. Tinkering with PAT’s artificial intelligence, he deigns to create her more fully in the image of his deceased mother, substituting the ties of the flesh with more bonds made of electrodes, I-beams, and absorbent carpeting. Having been imbued with the full-on maternal role, PAT runs amok, only releasing her grip on the family when Ben formally abjures PAT in favor of Sara.
Other artificially-intelligenced domiciles—such as those found in the Syfy television series Eureka, The Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror XII” episode “House of Whacks,” and the 1977 feature film Demon Seed (which “House of Whacks” parodies)—work on similar themes, wherein the house comes to exist as a substitute for a significant human relationship (mother, spouse).3 Though Moya is a maternal figure, she is no mother to the crew, and they view her less as an entity unto herself than the place wherein they dwell. Herein, in many ways, lies the paradox of Moya’s existence. PAT is seen as a mother, though she is never more than the construct of her programming; there is little question that, in the end, her programming will be restored to its original, “tool”-like state. Moya, on the other hand, is a sentient creature, as much a member of the crew as the space they inhabit, but is more frequently considered a space—a homeplace—than a full actualized personage unto her own. Indeed, her own identity is called into question from the very beginning of the series, since she has been joined to Pilot, who “controls [Moya’s] internal functions and provides navigation” (Ginn 84). Thus where Moya’s sentience begins, and Pilot’s ends, and how space impacts the crew’s view of both, is a decidedly difficult subject indeed.
Sentience itself is something of a difficult subject; philosophers and phenomenologists write enormous tomes on the subject without ever deigning to simply define what “it” is or how “it” is achieved. It proffers up the possibility of profound questions of morality that, like so many similar subjects, defies easy explanation. Perhaps, like the famous anecdote about the Supreme Court and obscenity, it may be simplest to say that sentience is knowable but indefinable; that is to say, we know sentience when we see it, but lack the ability to easily codify that which we see.
Or do we even know sentience when see it? This question is at the heart of one of the more famous episodes of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series, “The Measure of a Man.” In the episode, the artificial life form Lieutenant Commander Data is ordered by Starfleet to report to cyberneticist Commander Bruce Maddox for an experimental procedure in an effort to replicate Data’s unique positronic construction. Knowing that there is a strong likelihood he would not survive such a procedure, Data refuses, at which point Maddox—and Starfleet—assert that Data, as an android, has no right of refusal. Like all “tools,” he is an extension of others’ bodies—namely Starfleet itself—and has no individual rights of his own. A formal hearing is convened to answer one basic question: is Data a sentient being—and thus awarded the rights of all sentient beings under Federation law—or is he a tool?
At its most basic, sentience is concerned with sensation, with being able to perceive and to feel (the two cognates derive from the same Latin root, sentire, which means “to feel”). Austen Clark notes, “Raw sentience is typically placed at the bottom of the hierarchies of complexity leading up the summit of conscious human mental states” (166–167). Animals, after all, have the ability to feel; amoebas perceive the world around them. Clark argues that sentience is meaningless without the ability to interpret the sensations we experience, even if on some rudimentary level:
Sentience is useful only when combined with motility and an uneven spatial distribution of positive or negative contingencies: food, poison, warmth, water, predators, mates, shelter, exposure, and so on. Even under those conditions sentience is useful only if it at least occasionally cuts the odds of encountering a negative contingency or improves the odds of a positive one. To change those odds, sentience must help guide movement through that spatial distribution, away from the nasty stuff and towards the good [113–114].
Clark concludes, “Sentience is then an important part, but still only a part, of consciousness” (v).
Sentience, especially in higher beings, tends to move beyond mere sensation and into the realm of the less tangible, wherein defining and differentiating sentient qualities becomes more difficult to codify. Some critics believe that sentience reflects an emotional response to stimuli, rather than an instinctual or even intellectual one; when an amoeba diverts its path to avoid unpleasant stimuli, it does so because a sensation has directed an instinctual response. In humans, and in other science fiction life forms, unpleasant stimuli can also prick an emotional response; this, it may be argued, is a sign of sentience.4 Wallace I. Matson argues, “we [humans] can do some things that a discrete machine cannot closely imitate. This fact suggests what should hardly surprise us, that sentience should be in some important and intimate way related to these abilities” (116). For
Matson, sentience is functional, though the word “functional” hardly captures the subtleties of his argument.
In “The Measure of a Man,” the Starfleet tribunal sets three criteria for determining sentience in Commander Data: intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness, qualities that, for some (if not all) intents and purposes, are not a bad place to begin when considering the nature of sentience. Similar notions abound through science fiction thought. Dawn M. Robles, specifically discussing constructs of artificial sentience, writes, “It would seem that with the beginnings of mechanical inventions man has seen the possibilities for a creation in his own image much like the biblical Adam, a being created of the tools of man which contains or achieves a spark of life and thus sentience” (68). This “spark of life” has often been directly connoted to consciousness and/or self-awareness, a notion Matson strongly objects to:
The objection stems from the mistake of thinking consciousness as something that explains behavior causally. Inferences from overt behavior to the possession of consciousness are not inferences from effect to cause. This cannot be because consciousness as such never does anything [86].
In “The Measure of a Man,” Enterprise Captain Jean-Luc Picard, acting as Commander Data’s counsel during the hearing, hammers Commander Maddox, as expert witness, on the definition of consciousness. It is easy, Picard argues, to define intelligence and self-awareness; it is less simple to distinguish who—or what—possesses consciousness.
In examining differing notions of sentience, it is interesting, though ultimately not surprising, to see constructs of “space” continually infiltrating the discussion. Providing an example of sentience, Clark recounts that it takes a certain type of intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness in order to determine, for instance, that a specific type of paint possesses particular qualities. Clark hypothesizes that a type of paint on a wall is both red in color and matte in finish. Clark suggests that it takes a particular type of mind in order to distinguish that the paint is both red and matte; to know that the paint is both red and matte; and to grasp the significance of both of those things: “Recall the special role that locations play in solving that puzzle. To sense something as both matte and red, one must sense matte at the same place-time as red. The location of one feature must be identified with that of the other” (110). In using concepts of “location” as a nexus for understanding sentience, Clark begins to highlight a methodology for comprehending sentience in terms of spatial dynamics. Tuan has already laid the groundwork for this, when he writes, as quoted above, “Home is an intimate place. We think of the house as home and place, but enchanted images of the past are evoked not so much by the entire building, which can only be seen, as by its components and furnishings, which can be touched and smelled as well” (144). By connecting the concept of “home”—an ideology, not a solid object—to touching and smelling, to sensation, Tuan is directly connoting place to sentience. John Gillies raises the same connection:
According to modern phenomenology, the body is made for earthly space, as—in an immediate sense—earthly space becomes manifest through the perceiving and feeling body. Bodies not only perceive space or things-in-space through any combination of their five senses, but their very design—their “handedness,” their slightly uneven bifurcatedness—orientates and situates them qualitatively within space and fits them to manipulate things-in-space [57].
It is our senses that enable us to comprehend space. It is our sentience that enables us to comprehend place. As Christoph Rehmann-Sutter observes, “The inclination needed to see a place is an expectation of the observing subject to become involved in an autonomous space of meanings” (176, italics original). In other words, walls build a house; sentience makes a home.
Of course, limiting the definition of sentience to one construct, no matter how complex a construct “home” is, also limits the many facets connected to notions of sentience. It is not the intention of this article to do either. Sentience can be understood by space, but cannot be defined by it. Nonetheless, for Farscape, this raises an intriguing interrogation: what does it mean when one’s home has actual sentience?
Humans reside in their bodies, and human bodies possess sentience, but they are not homes. Homes, as we have seen, are social constructs, built by desires, yearnings, memories, and experiences. What does it mean, then, when the home itself has desires, yearnings, memories, and experiences? What does it mean when the home itself is an active participant in the construction of the home as well as, and alongside, the self? Indeed, we are all active participants in the construction of the self, though we are not the only participants. But a homeplace that is an active participant in the construction of the homeplace? That surely is new.
Simonsen writes, “Socially lived space depends on material as well as mental constructs—and on the body” (7). In this case, Simonsen is talking about the human form, but for Moya, no such need exists. As a sentient being, Moya is capable of securing her own material needs and providing her own mental constructs. She has her own memories and experiences with which to imbue her own walls and self, constructing identity for both homeplace and self all at once. Moya may not even need a pilot, though, once bonded, they become interdependent upon the other. Sigurd Bergmann suggests, “One of space’s most beautiful characteristics is its limitedness. The limitedness of space represents at the same time a condition for the uniqueness of organisms and for that of places” (14). Sentience would seem to overcome this sense of “limitedness.” The ability to think, to be self-aware, to engage in conscious desire, to be mobile and to move wherever she feels is necessary or advantageous, would seem to allow for as much “limitlessness” as those who dwell in the homeplace enjoy. Moya has freedom. Moya can move around. Moya, it seems, can quest.
Or can she? A quest, after all, is designed both for leaving the homeplace and for transforming it as well. Moya can never leave her homeplace because she is her homeplace. Space is as empty to her as it is to the other inhabitants of her own biomechanoid realm. Space remains the void. Venturing into it changes nothing about Moya, neither as sentient being nor as homeplace. Moya’s only other option, then, in altering homeplace is to allow others in, to become inhabited. It is, in many ways, a conscious choice by Moya to allow the others to remain on board. She wishes the change, as much as they need it.
Because of the nature of this relationship, Moya becomes a being who “depends upon her crew (as they depend upon her) for survival” (Battis 42). Battis recognizes the need for homeplace for the crew to survive here, and indirectly suggests that Moya needs to be recognized as homeplace in order to survive. Homes, after all, are where families dwell, and it is the familial bond that makes the home. It is worth revisiting Lavigne’s take on the familial bonds at play in Farscape: “If Moya is the mother, Pilot is the father, and both are completely subject to the whims of their children” (59). This reflects the need Moya has for her “offspring.” Without them, she is no longer homeplace; she just exists, an empty vessel adrift in empty space.
De Beauvoir, describing the relationship between mother and fetus, notes, “[The mother] possesses [the fetus], and she is possessed by it” (520). Just as Moya possesses her crew, she is possessed by them. This possession is manifest of a need Moya has, a need brought on by her sentience. A house is a house, a domicile with walls, a roof, a porch. A home is a social construct, created by sentient beings who have a need for it. Moya is both, a home and a sentient being, and thus she herself creates the need for her self to be homeplace. Sentience, in this case, is thus not freeing, but limiting. The ability to engage in emotional response divorced from intellectual processes results in Moya taking in the crew who then use her as homeplace, a relationship—like fetus to mother—more parasitic than symbiotic. They need her, but she needs them more. Moya provides her crew succor, shelter, a unit for creating familiar bonds. But they provide her with purpose and identity. Without them, her sentience would be for naught.