Farscape Volume 7
featuring the episodes The Flax and Jeremiah Crichton
OK, here are two good episodes that just do not flow well from each other. The Flax ends with D’Argo sacrificing a chance to find his way home to save Aeryn and Crichton, and Aeryn and Crichton doing some significant bonding in their dying transport pod. So of course Jeremiah Crichton opens up with Crichton getting royally ticked at both of them - and everyone else for that matter - and hightailing it off the ship at a highly inopportune moment. It is true that there’s often a significant gap in story time between episodes, but the opener of Jeremiah Crichton feels too much like a contrivance to manipulate the characters into the plot of the episode.
That caveat aside, I enjoyed both of these episodes. They’re carried by the actors and the production, as there’s nothing too stellar in the writing. Some of the character moments are pretty good, however. Rygel gets to display a resourcefulness that was not much a part of his character, and it works well. The interplay between Crichton and Aeryn is good as usual, and I like the way the writers put Aeryn in situations where she has to be a problem-solver rather than a soldier. I also liked the jury-rigged design of Staanz’s ship in The Flax, although I’m a little less sure about Crichton’s castaway look in Jeremiah - he’s either too unkempt or not unkempt enough, I’m still trying to decide which.
Cue the broken record - no commentaries. Boo.