Incubator
Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections:
Farscape:
Season Three:
Incubator
"I don't want power. I want REVENGE!"
Scorpius to PseudoCrichton
And you thought YOUR childhood was rough!!
PLOT SUMMARY:
We open with yet another of Scorpius's failed attempts to find the secret to wormhole technology. Our rotund alien friend (Why he's a PK is beyond me) is concerned, but a new lien female is there saying that she thinks she's got the answer and she's willing to be the next pilot.
Scorpie has his doubts. He has a better plan. He takes the brain chip (that was recently in Crichton) and sticks it into his corkscrew brain freezer. Now we're in his brain. (It's amazingly empty. Hmmmm... Maybe ol' Scorps ain't so smart after all.) The researchers have come darn close to cracking the equations that the Ancients gave Crichton but they need Crichton to help solve it. Crichton sees no reason to help Scorpius. To him, PK's and Scarrans are just two different kinds of evil. Scorpie plans to show him different. Time for a stroll down memory lane.
Well, this isn't entirely in Scorpie's head. We shift back to Moya intermittently. Our alien female from the teaser shows up. Her species is familiar to Pilot and Moya. Her name is Linfer. Linfer offers Crichton the wormhole secrets in exchange for Moya. She will take Moya and Pilot on a lifetime of exploring. Just like they dream of. Moya and Pilot like the plan. John doesn't complain too much either cause he'd get to go home. But what about our other passengers. They're not so sure.
Back in Scorpie's brain, we see Scorpie's earliest memory. He's a weakling child. He struggles to sit up. He seems to have trouble breathing. He's not the Scorpie we've come to know and love to hate. A female Scarran enters. She's in charge of training Scorpie. The Scarran has been telling Scorpie that he is the product of a male Sebacean and a female Scarran hybridization. Unfortunately, our Scarran friends seem to think Sebaceans are weak and so they have been putting Scorpie through massive training in order to make him strong.
Well Scorpie's had enough of that. He bides his time and then escapes. He flies through space but eventually makes his way to PK territory. He ingratiates himself to a Captain. He gives away all kinds of Scarran secrets in exchange for the real info on his parentage. (BTW, we get to see Scorpie's first cooling suit which looks pretty silly. Looks like something a Farscape fan would wear to a convention) The Captain tells Scorpie that he's been lied to. A Leviathan crashed on a planet. Two survivors remained. A woman and a man. They're apparently in love. A Scarran shows up. He kills the man and takes the woman back with him and uses her to create a hybrid child (Scorpie). Scorpie goes to this planet to see it for himself. His torturing Scarran from earlier sets a trap and brings him back to his cell. She tortures him some more. She shows him all kinds of painful memories. She shows him what his mother looked like after giving birth and how they "graciously" put her out of her misery. This makes Scorpie angrier than I think we've ever seen him. He takes some kind of heating rod, breaks it in half, shoves it into the Scarran's eyes, and escapes again.
Back on Moya, Our defector Linfer is beginning to melt (literally). The liquification that took place in the other pilots is starting to happen to her. She decides to flee and blow herself up. This ends this segment. This whole thing was to show just how obsessed Crichton has become with wormholes.
Back in Scorpie's head again. Scorpie heads back to PK space. This time, the PKs take him back and accept his request to become a PK. He's proved his loyalty. They've decided to bend the purity requirements and allow him in.
Scorpie then goes on to explain that he developed his own task force completely devoted to finding wormhole technology so that he could one day destroy the Scarrans and take his revenge.
Scorpie tells Crichton that they have a common enemy. The Scarrans. They'll destroy the PKs, the Delvians, the Luxans, the Nebari, etc, until they destroy everyone including humans. Crichton's only chance to save Earth is to help Scorpius. Crichton's answer: "The ancients said that if you're not smart enough to find it yourself, you're not smart enough to use it wisely." In short, "NO". He walks away. Scorpie freaks out. He tries to force Crichton to give him the info. In real life, Scorpie starts to go the way of the Dodo, until he finally wakes up screaming. His right hand stooge opens his corkscrew freezer and replaces his freon. The neurochip is destroyed. This doesn't seem to bother Scorpie as much as you'd think. We end with an unusual retrospective look on Scorpie's face.
ANALYSIS:
>> Fascinating. Very nice episode.
>> The death of Scorpie's mama was painful to watch.
>> Why are all the nice Sebaceans blonde?
>> Crichton seems a lot more obsessed with wormholes than usual this time around.
>> Jool looks a lot better now. And she's not as irritating anymore.
>> It's funny how they all can't wait to get off Moya. It's also funny how Moya and Pilot wouldn't be too broken up about getting rid of them.
>> Scorpie is still just as bad as ever. Now we just know his motives. Although, he may (just maybe) have a soft spot.
NITS:
>>When the blind Scarran pounds at the cell door, the one panel starts shaking. Some cell. Talk about your Scarran hubris.
>>Why did Scorpie go to see the pod? Was he sight seeing?
>>Why is it that this PseudoCrichton would have the answers? I was under the impression that he was just the personification of Crichton's personality.
NEXT WEEK (Which is tomorrow on the Scifi Channel): Talyn's headin' for a sun. The crew starts goin' freaky. (Okay, I've seen it already. Funny stuff)
By cstadulis on Monday, July 16, 2001 - 11:34 am: Whoa, disturbing episode.
I think the creators did Scorpie a favor by showing his tortured childhood, 'cause it actually made me, ever so slightly, feel bad for Scorpius. I mean, I still want to see him dead, but I understand a little better why he is the way he is. And he does have that flower in his chambers to remind him of his mom. That shows he does have some soft spots, microscopic as they might be.
I think Scorpy went back to the abandoned transport to check if the story the PK's told him was true, since the Scarrans lied to him. And he did admit that it was a mistake to John.
I have another nit/question: Why are the female Scarrans so different looking from the male Scarrans? Their heads are markedly different, with the females having those ridges and no real snout while the males have no ridges and a pronounced snout. Why the difference?
By Matt Nelson on Saturday, August 04, 2001 - 12:42 am: cstadulis, on the male/female thing: Why not? Yeah, we humans are all pretty much the same-looking, but for example, the black widow spider has a marked difference between the sexes (the female is much, much larger, and the males tend to actually be BROWN, not black, if I recall correctly).
M@
By cstadulis on Monday, August 06, 2001 - 3:12 pm: Ok, I can agree on insects having differences between the sexes, but would a creature as advanced as a Scarran still have such differences? It seems that evolution, on Earth at least, makes the males and females of the more advanced species almost the same, i.e. humans, dolphins, chimps, etc.
Is there some advantage to having a difference between the sexes (Yes, I know in birds the males are usually more colorful, to attract mates, but why are female black widows so different from the males? Do male black widows dig a bigger female?)? And if so, why aren't humans the same way?
By Callie Sullivan on Tuesday, November 13, 2001 - 2:23 am:I couldn’t quite see the point of the Linfer part of the episode – she turns up, she dies, the end (and “Takka hey, takka ho” as a solemn set of last words just made me giggle!). I felt that the Linfer story could have been padded out to form an entire episode in its own right with everyone making plans to get home and John and Linfer working on modifying Farscape 1 before she started to get ill. Instead, it seemed to be just tacked on to fill in the gaps.
In the previous episode wasn’t it implied that they had to send Sebacean pilots on these tests? Most of the pilots in the Sebacean/Scarran war will be Sebacean, so Linfer going on a test may not have been helpful to Scorpius’ final requirements, especially when they have already wondered whether humans may have something different in their make-up to help them survive wormholes.
Linfer implied that John was lucky to have survived his trip through the wormhole and only did so because it was stable. He’s been in more than one wormhole – was the one in Self-Inflicted Wounds stable? Yet he was popping in and out of that one for ages.
Mind you, I have to say it makes a change for someone to turn up on Moya who actually means what they say and doesn’t have some secret agenda!
By Merat on Sunday, October 07, 2007 - 11:25 am:I never noticed before, but at the end Scorpious is playing with the same type of ball that John was playing with near the end of last season.