A Human Reaction
Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections: Farscape: Season One: A Human Reaction
As John finds his first grey hair, Pilot discovers a wormhole outside the ship and Earth can be seen at the other end of it. John takes Farscape 1 through the wormhole and reaches Earth safely but doesn’t get the hero’s welcome he’d been hoping for, undergoing lots of tests which make the military suspicious when they find alien microbes in his brain stem (translator microbes) and the Farscape module modified with alien technology.
A transporter pod from Moya comes through the wormhole containing Aeryn, D’Argo and Rygel who came after John when he disappeared off Moya’s tracking system. Rygel is taken ill after being given a tranquilliser and shortly afterwards he dies, allegedly from an allergic reaction, though John suspects he was killed so that the military could study him. He urges his father Jack to help him get Aeryn and D’Argo out before they’re also killed for scientific research.
Aeryn breaks out of her cell after D’Argo is taken away. Aeryn and John go to a safe house provided by his father, and spend a night together. The next day Jack arrives and tells them that nobody will help and they must go into hiding.
As they walk through the town, John realises that he can recognise everyone he sees, and all magazines on sale at a stand are seven months old, dating from the time he left Earth. Running into a bar, he again recognises everyone and everything in it. The only place he hasn’t ever been before is the ladies’ toilet – he opens the door and finds a strange vortex behind it.
Returning to the base, he confronts his father who reveals that he’s an alien who recreated John’s memories of Earth to find out how his own race would be received if they went to Earth. They’re seeking a place to live and needed to know if humans would welcome them or not. Now they know that Earth isn’t safe, they’ll continue their search for a home.
Synopsis by Callie Sullivan.
By Callie Sullivan on Sunday, October 21, 2001 - 2:33 pm:

At the end of this episode we learn that – hardly surpringly – the whole return to Earth had been faked and that everything was taken from John’s mind. If the whole time on Earth was seen from John’s point of view, there are a few nits. Firstly, when Aeryn, Dargo and Rygel are in the cell with John, we get an outside point of view with the other humans not being able to understand what the aliens are saying. This was clearly put in for the benefit of us, the viewers, but is a nit within the scenario itself. Also, when Aeryn and John are about to leave the house, Aeryn speaks to John’s father. At this time John is already outside the house and so couldn’t have heard their interchange, therefore again it shouldn’t have happened.

I did wonder for a while: if all this came from within John’s head and he kept protesting that the other humans were way over-reacting in their treatment of the aliens, then why did he allow it to happen in the first place, but then I decided that he knew in his heart of hearts that this would be how they would be treated even if he didn’t agree with it.

By SpottedKitty on Monday, October 22, 2001 - 1:47 am:

>therefore again it shouldn’t have happened.
> then why did he allow it to happen in the first place,

The impression I got from this episode was that this was sorta like a giant Holodeck. They took the initial ideas from John's mind but after that, things pretty much took their own path. That would explain why Aeryn could have the conversation and the rest of the humans all act weirdly because they weren't /directly/ under the control of John or his subconscious.

By Gordon Lawyer on Wednesday, June 18, 2003 - 6:23 am:

This is one of my less favorite episodes. I've gotten to despise episodes where it's revealed at the end that none of it was real (having seen far too much of that sort of thing in the various Star Trek incarnations). The only reason why I don't lump this with I E.T. and Jeremiah Crichton as episodes to ignore is because this story has stuff relevant to the show's storyline.

By Josh M on Tuesday, July 22, 2003 - 1:04 pm:

On the DVD for the best of Season 1, there is a scene in which it is made clear that John and Aeryn slept together. The scene was cut from the rerun that the Sci-Fi channel recently showed.

By Josh M on Monday, September 29, 2003 - 9:08 pm:

Does it not rain much on the planets in Peacekeeper space? Aeryn didn't seem to recognize it when she was on Earth. I would assume that Peacekeeper soldiers would be train to fight, or at least to survive, in most possible climatic conditions.

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