Season 1, Episode 3: “Exodus from Genesis”
*** out of *****
“Rygel is NOT my sovereign!”
“He is today.”
I’ll start with something I keep meaning to mention in each of the last 2 episodes so far but keep putting off: I have a love-hate relationship with the theme music. It’s obviously linked to a show I love, so I like it by association, but that cat-yodeling or whatever at the end really drives me up a wall. Thankfully they tune it down in later seasons, but it’ll be a while before we get there.
This episode starts out with a bit of everyday Moya life. Rygel paints, while D’Argo teaches Crichton some Uncharted Territories dental care.[1] But things kick in soon after as Moya hides in a debris field to escape Peacekeeper detection and picks up a bunch of big-ass space bugs (who call themselves the Drak, and remind me a little of the Rachni from Mass Effect) that crank Moya’s temperature in order to breed. Tempers flare (no pun really intended) as the crew tries to figure out how to bring the heat down before Aeryn succumbs to Sebacean heat delirium. Complicating matters are the facts that the bugs can turn into replicants of the crew (complete with identical clothing) and a quintet of Peacekeeper commandos [2] decide to join the party.
This is the episode gives us our first look at Sebacean heat delirium. It’s curious how this particular weakness got into a race that we find out way down the road was actually bred to be a soldier class. I figure either it was an intentional Eidalon attempt to make sure they wouldn’t get out of hand, or it was something that developed later because the original genetic tampering decayed without maintenance over the centuries. But it makes for an interesting aspect of Scorpy’s character later on, too, so I’ll forgive.
This is a decent first season episode. It’s something of a standard sci-fi plot, but what makes this episode good—as seems to be the case with most Farscape episodes, so I’m going to have to watch that I don’t continually repeat myself here—are the character moments. Zhaan’s all over this episode, getting good moments with Crichton and Rygel especially. This is also the second episode in a row in which Rygel’s forced into a confined space to take care of something. But he also gets to play the regal diplomat. [3] Meanwhile, John chafes under not being cut any slack by the others as he adjusts to this new word. He also works on cracking Aeryn’s shell, and D’Argo begins to admit some concern for Aeryn’s welfare. As for Aeryn, she actually smiles for a moment! I can remember Claudia Black at some point mentioning how they’d decided that she wouldn’t smile too often for a while so that when she does, it really makes an impression.
Last Line:
“You know, all things considered, there are worse ways to end a day.”
Other Comments:
I like that John’s reaction to first seeing the Drak bug is to jump off the floor and get as far away as possible in rather non-heroic fashion. (Though he does capture one afterward.)
The Drak look pretty decent. The CGI is apparent when they’re up and walking on their legs, but not distractingly so. The moment when Rygel walks, however, is…less convincing.
Crichton tries to use the replicants as an excuse to get the commandos to tell Crais he can’t be killed and scare him off. Judging by the upcoming episodes, this has absolutely zero effect.
[1] “Never. Swallow. The dentic!”
[2] All of whom wear weird eye make-up–the only time we see this in the series. Either this is an idea they dropped (thankfully), or this particular squad of commandos just decided, “What the hell. Mascara.”
[3] Of course, he has to walk into a Drak birthing sac to do so, but diplomacy can be a slimy business sometimes.
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