Froon’s Farscape Watch, s1e03

“Exodus from Genesis” (season 1, episode 3)

• Written by Ro Hume, directed by Brian Henson •

This’ll be a truly fresh rewatch, because literally the only thing I remember offhand about this ep is “Kabuki Peacekeepers.” Roll it…

Dentics! Ah, I do remember Dentics. And here we begin the Farscape tradition of Putting Yucky Things in your Mouth.

Crichton calls Aeryn “Miss Sun” here! And pronounces it “Soon!” Is this the one and only time in the series he calls her that?

Zhaan touches Rygel! Is this the first time one of our actors touches one of our animatronics? We quickly discovered that “manhandling the puppets” really helped bring the latter to life as Actual Beings, so watch to see how much more often everybody “gets physical” with Rygel and Pilot as the series goes on…

Zhaan as Flash Van Gogh. A cool notion that we never played again, as I recall. Not much plot use for superspeed painting, although maybe we could’ve used it in “I, E.T.” (“Quick, Zhaan, as soon as Moya touches down, hop out and paint her in camouflage colors!”)

Critter! Love the Draks. Love Crichton jumping up on the table just as any sensible person would do.

Crichton gets beat up by Aeryn*. Take a drink.

Crichton gets beat up by Zhaan*. Take another drink.

*Okay, it’s not the real Aeryn and Zhaan, but still. Poor guy…

Jonathan Hardy truly gets to shine with his Rygel voice work in the ep. Wonderful stuff.

Rygel has a great Face of Shock and Disgust when he sees Mama Drak churning out eggs. Kudos to our outstanding puppeteers John Eccleston, Sean Masterson, Dave Collins, Graeme Haddon, Tim Mievelle, Mario Halovvas, and Damian Bradford for all their outstanding work.

And here come the Kabuki Peacekeepers! I kept expecting them to break into a Gilbert & Sullivan tune.

And D’Argo actually wins a fight! Go, Anth! Took out the slowest PK commando.

Virginia does a nice job playing Drak Queen Possessed. Add this to the Drinking Game list: take a sip whenever any of our people plays someone other than their character; that’s gonna happen a fair bit throughout the series. (But let’s not take a drink for all the silent Drak clones in this ep, lest we die of alcohol poisoning.)

While we’re adding to the Drinking Game list, let’s add “take a sip whenever Aeryn…

…wants to die, tries to die, asks someone else to kill her, or variant thereof, and…

…forces Crichton to promise her something outrageous.”

Ah, the Terrace! Great idea: a transparent ‘bubble’ outside Moya where we can stand and get amazing views of space. Except, natch, it’s ridiculously expensive to shoot there because every shot is a visual effects shot… so don’t expect to see a lot more of the Terrace.

Aeryn smiles! Good heavens, the Crichton/Aeryn relationship is working so well already. Ben & Claude’s chemistry is pure gold.

Love Crichton’s last line (on the Terrace, eyeing the view) that “there are worse ways to end a day.” Cheryl & I quoted that line quite a bit while sipping excellent Australian wine and watching gorgeous sunsets from the balcony of our Sydney apartment. (Thank you, Farscape.)

17 thoughts on “Froon’s Farscape Watch, s1e03”

  1. If I recall correctly, this is the only time we see the Terrace until the end of PK Wars.

  2. Love love love reading this re-watch blog! So happy you are sharing it with us. Thank you!

  3. Love reading your perspective of the eps. Also love reading the comments from current wife. ?? Keep ’em coming!

    Thanks, Ricky.

    1. Apparently emojises don’t work here. (Or they probably do, but I’d have to go toggle something in WordPress and/or update this ancient theme or some such…)

  4. So now we have several drinking games for the rewatch Marie, Laura, myself etc do:
    Drink when someone plays someone other than themselves
    Drink when Anth gets beat up/loses a fight
    Drink when Aeryn asks/wants etc to die
    Drink when Aeryn asks crichton to promise her something outrageous
    Any more?

    I think every ep is going to turn into a descent into alcoholic poisoning. Best channel that inner Aussie to survive 😉
    Thanks for the explanation about the terrace. As you know it is a fan favourite, even though we only see it twice. Good to know it was just Too Darned Expensive.

    1. Yeah, at the time, a wall-to-wall-green-screen “virtual set” was just too expensive to deal with every week. Less so, these days…

      When I say “drink,” I mean “teeny sip”… elsewise, yeah, you’ll be under the table in no time flat!

    2. outstanding. I recommend we play often. As a constant beer connoisseur, I totally embrace this idea. Alcohol poisoning, phooey.

  5. Love Crichton’s last line (on the Terrace, eyeing the view) that “there are worse ways to end a day.” Cheryl & I quoted that line quite a bit while sipping excellent Australian wine and watching gorgeous sunsets from the balcony of our Sydney apartment. (Thank you, Farscape.)

    The cinematography of that last scene with Aeryn and John standing amidst the orange glow of a nebula was movie-quality that stands up to anything shown today. The heart of Farscape was there so early — along with the drinking games and Never Swallow A Dentic!

    Your enjoyment of the re-watch is so much fun to read.

  6. Great Rygel stuff in this episode. I love seeing him get his politics on. I had no idea how wildly different BBC order was from production order of season 1 until I started listening to frellcast. Since it was quite an episodic season I don’t think it suffered at all from the shuffle.

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