1x03 Back and Back and Back to the Future

Our Deconstructing Moya piece from 2010:
http://farscape.madeoffail.net/episodes/episode-1-05-back-and-back-and-back-to-the-future/

Fresh thoughts:
Still a mixed bag of an episode for me. I like the time travel gimmick, how John is settling into his future blackshirt norms of being half crazy and half right, and going snark to keep himself sane. D'Argo's assuredness being cut down. The black hole blowup at the end. There's lot of fun interactions and character bits.

But yeah, the guest plot still doesn't fully work for me. I don't know why they're a cousin race of Luxans instead of just Luxans given that we never hear of this cousin race ever again. Was it just so they wouldn't have to go all in on the makeup? There's attempts to make the plot twisty and turny, and I do like the dark, weird sexual elements they layer in, which will become a norm for this series. I still don't like the performance of Matala, which goes all alien all the time in a way that doesn't allow one to believably get lulled in and manipulated, as she's putting far too obvious a point on every tactic she tries. In a way, I see her as a predecessor, intentional or not, for what they'll do with the performance of Chiana, but Gigi brought so much more range and nuance to her alien delivery and movements than what's being brought here. They just weren't ready for the full commitment just yet. They will be soon. It's still a fine episode regardless.

And I still need to give Lexx another try one of these days. Hell, I own the whole thing on DVD.

This is a D'Argo episode.

When Moya encounters an imploding ship, D'Argo insists they take in the two survivors once he discovers they are Ilanics --- a race of beings closely related to his own, the Luxans. From the behaviour of D'Argo, it is made clear that the Luxans are subservient to the Ilanics, or at the very least significantly admire them. Officially the Luxans have a blood alliance with the Ilanics. The Ilanics are in turn losing in a war against the Scorvians.

When the crew rescues the Ilanic escape pod, John Chrichton receives a shock. He starts experiencing the future --- a future wherein the female Ilonic kills her counterpart and several other of Moya's crew --- and a future which he is desperately trying to change. It turns out that the Ilonic woman is in fact a Scorvian spy (in disguise) trying to steal the Ilonic research. The research turns out to be military in kind: capturing a small piece of a black hole singularity to be used as a weapon. In the end John Chrichton allows the Scorvian spy to steal the research, knowing (because he has seen the future) that the dying Ilonic researcher will destroy it remotely rather than allow it to be captured by the Scorvians. The Scorvian spy and her contact ship end up swallowed up by the singularity they were trying to steal.

In one of the possible futures that John Chrichton experiences, he overhears D'Argo confessing to the Ilonic woman slash Scorvian spy that he in fact has been lying about the reason for his imprisonment. He does not tell her the actual reason for his imprisonment, but now a desire is created in the viewer to learn D'Argo's real crime. John Chrichton uses his knowledge that D'Argo has been lying to them in order to gain his --- D'Argo's --- trust and to get him to turn against the female Ilonic slash the Scorvian spy.