What is the matter with the bleedin' BBC?! Normally you can't shut them up from making dumb and unnecessary announcements about forthcoming programmes all over the end of the previous one; but I have NO recollection of them deigning to inform us last week that Farscape would be back in two weeks’ time!! I raced home from work to get in in time to start the video manually, as I've done every Monday, and instead could have gone shopping!

At least, I hope it is only one week of snooker ...

Rant over (though I'll be grumbling for a long time to come yet).

Ahh, the good ol' BBC. You'd think by the way they schedule these things that they didn't know how many epsiodes they had. :P
*shrugs*

SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE SHOT for creating the biggest EVER nit in this episode that Farscape has ever had. For over three years I've come to expect great continuity and care and attention to detail from this series. This episode has me SO ANGRY that I'm almost shaking with fury as I type this!

The large part of the episode has John watching a documentary from Earth. In it, an interviewer has a long conversation with Aeryn, and the programme also shows lots of videotape taken by John's nephew Bobby. And all through this documentary the aliens speak perfect English - and there are no subtitles on the TV screen!!!!!! Now, Bobby may well have been given translator microbes. The interviewer may well have been given translator microbes so that he could speak with Aeryn. But the general American public were NOT given translator microbes - so how the heck can they understand what Aeryn and the other aliens were saying?! There is NO WAY that Aeryn and the others have learned to speak good English yet - in Unrealised Reality and Kansas even Aeryn, who's been having English lessons from John, was speaking very stilted English. The others barely speak any English at all - so WHY were there no subtitles for the viewers of the documentary? Carelessness of this sort is absolutely unacceptable. I don't mind us - the viewers - not having subtitles; it's a given that in effect we have translator microbes too but leaving them out of this documentary was taking the willing suspension of disbelief just too far.

The other reason that this episode didn't work for me is that it took place too soon after Unrealised Reality. That episode had lots of soundbites from people talking about John; this episode also had lots of soundbites. If Unrealised Reality hadn't happened, or had happened a season or so ago, this current episode would have been really interesting, but shown only half a dozen episodes later it just looked like the writers had run out of ideas.

I thought that in Terra Firma John did a voiceover saying that he and crew had effectively been hidden from the public in the house in Florida. Yet now we learn that they've been all over the place - they’ve been to South America, D'Argo appeared on the Letterman Show, John was off in Australia for a while.

When D'Argo tongues Bobby, the height seems wrong. Admittedly the camera was at a very low angle but it looked as if D'Argo's tongue went practically horizontal from his mouth. If he'd done that, his tongue would have gone straight over the top of Bobby's head.

Where was Bobby's mother while he was visiting with John and the others?

Maybe I missed something, but why did documentary footage of Sikozu singing remind John of the alternate Sikozu/Stark?

The ending was incredibly powerful, but the rest of it was a complete load of dren ' quite possibly the worst episode ever.

Kudos to the BBC for not talking over the end credits - at least, not until the documentary voiceover had finished, anyway.

And it was nice to see Alan from Space: 1999 again after all this time!

One more thing: how did the sheriff from Kansas keep the 'alien leader' pumpkin fresh all these years?! It just looks a bit grey - surely it would have disintegrated years ago.

Callie,

I wouldn't say that this is the worst episode ever, I enjoyed it. But you are right about the language nits and the fact that the aliens were kept in Florida.

The sad thing is that this episode showed what probably would happen if aliens came to Earth. Even if they were friendly, we would look for reasons to fear them. The episode reminded me of the Babylon 5 episode where Sheridan and Delenn were interviewed by ISN and their words were taken out of context.

The documentary showed Sikozu with half of her face covered. This reminded John about the alternate wornhole future where she was Stark. In that reality, she mentioned the Scarran base.

Alan Carter did an episode of Next Gen, where he, Picard, and Wesley crashed on this desert planet - Wesley's last before he went to the Academy (I don't remember the name of the episode). He also did an episode of DS9 called Honor among Thieves where he was a member of the Orion Syndicate that O'Brien was tyring to infiltrate.

Speaking of which, why doesn't the Sci Fi channel show the old Space: 1999 reruns anymore? If they are worried about budget crunches, I would think that it would be cheaper to show these instead of dren like whatever this dream analysis show is, and John Edwards.

All of these recent episodes have been great! Why are the Sci Fi idiots cancelling the show again?

Because they're idiots (the networks execs.)!

John had been teaching Aeryn English for some time
before Moya arrived in Earth orbit,so she knew enough to hold at least an halting conversation without the translator microbes.
Perhaps to increase her own profiecency Aeryn had
been teaching the others as well?
It could be a possibility.

Gross out scene of the ep.:Chianna trying to show
Bobby the acceptability of washing in the toilet.

Crichton seems to have had that football tape memorized as he tells D'Argo the outcome to the
game.

It appears that Moya's crew were on Earth a bit longer than what Terra Firma implies.

Evidently the documentary was intercepted by Pilot, and recorded for Crichton. When D'Argo enters Crichton's quarters and decides to turn off the documentary, he pulls the videotape of the documentary from a VCR, and puts in the football tape. Soooo, why were they carrying blank videotapes? Did they think they would continue to receive Earth TV signals when they went through the wormhole? And why did Pilot record the transmission onto videotape? Why not just record the transmission onto their usual recording discs and tap it into the TV, or play it on one of Moya's monitors?

Why was Chianna eating the lipstick? Did Bobby tell her it was food, or does she eat everything she can't identify? Same with the toilet, was she told it held fresh water?

Rygel's people use sugar as a poison, yet he pounds it down with no ill effect.

I wouldn't agree with your theory about Aeryn teaching the others English, Scott. Even if she had, there's no way they’d all be fluent in the way they were in this episode. Only a few episodes ago she was still stumbling over single words, yet here she has a long and technical conversation with the interviewer.

Thanks, Harvey, for pointing out why the documentary footage of Sikozu reminded John of where he'd heard about Katratzi before.

No problem, Callie

Since you are the moderator, have you heard anything new about the efforts to fight cancellation?

Anon: Chiana ate the lipstick because Bobby implied 'it goes on your lips'. Chiana could easily reason anything you put on your lips (taste recepticles) is edible. She also washed in the toilet because when you have to wash your clothes in leviathan bodily excretions, a toilet full of clean water seems perfectly acceptable.

Harvey – just cos I’m the moderator here doesn’t (unfortunately) make me privy to any information that others don’t! I get most of my information from Farscape World like all other fans, and there doesn’t appear to be any positive news as yet.

Perhaps the documentary had a voiceover for the aliens, but since that would have been irritating to Crichton (since he would understand both the voiceover and the actual words, it would sound like an annoying echo or something) he may have used something to get rid of the voiceover. (It's not hard for today's technology to remove certain sounds from tapes. They do it all the time on CSI.)

Or it could be a goof. Either way, I thought it was an excellent episode. It's probably one of the best examples I've seen of how people would really react to alien first contact.

Katratzi sounds like something you'd order at the Olive Garden.

Aeryn tells the interviewer that the Peacekeepers have no interest in Earth. From what we've seen of the Peacekeepers, this is most likely true. The only time the Peacekeepers even mention blowing up Earth is when using it as a threat to Crichton.
So I have to wonder if giving the wormhole technology to Scorpius is really such a bad idea. I know Scorpy always has a hidden agenda, but being ruler of the universe does not seem to be one of his goals. I think he means it when he says that he only wants to use it to give the Scarrans a good spanking. And from what we've seen of the Scarrans, I don't think anyone would mind that.
And as Aeryn mentioned in the last episode, if the Scarrans ever find out that the Peacekeepers don't have wormhole weapons and go to war, "then everyone's frelled."

Just some food for thought.

TUE

I notice that the presenter of Alien Visitations is played by Nick Tate, also famous in sci-fi for his portrayal of Astronaut Alan Carter in Space:1999.

The TNG episode Nick Tate was in was "Final Mission".

According to the DVD, due to the way the season was filmed, this was the last episode to be completed, and the bathroom scene was Gigi Edegly's last as Chianna - she's said that she wanted to do everything possible with Chianna in that one scene.

Someone earlier compared this to the Babylon 5 The Illusion of Truth. While the premise is similar, the way they're executed couldn't be more different. The documentary in The Illusion of Truth was an expert weasal job. Even when you know the reality, it still comes across as fairly convincing. Of course, their discovery of the cryotubes with the unregistered telepaths combined with Franklin's denial about any cryotubes in use helped things along. In A Constellation of Doubt, the presentation is clumsy and inept. You'd have to be a total moron to buy it.

How did they pick up the broadcast? Unless it came through a wormhole, the signal would take tens of thousands of years to reach them, if it could even make it that far.

As I finish off my DVD collection of Farscape, I'm going to go against popular opinion and conclude that it was a good thing that Sci-Fi cancelled Farscape. There is a definite decline in the quality of the stories. There appear to be more stinkers in this season than any other. I think we can agree that it's preferable for Farscape to go out with a bang rather than a whimper.

That's interesting. Most Scapers I hear from love this episode. I never got it though.

Not so unusual. Other episodes that appear to be fan favorites that I can't stand are A Human Reaction (I despise the "none of it was real" variety of deus ex machina), The Way We Weren't, and The Choice.