There's a tiny moment, literally blink-and-you'll-miss-it, right before the end credits cards come up, where Crichton is sitting alone at a table, having finished a bit of (diegetic) narration. And then Ben Browder puts a lovely little button on the line he's just delivered; you can see Crichton taking on the immensity of the situation he's landed himself in, a little hint of despair seeping out from behind the deadpan, and it's beautiful. I've tried to start this series a couple of times before, but I think that grace note means I'll have to stick it out this time.
While conducting a super-speed experiment on Earth's orbit (involving the use of Earth's gravity to propel him), astronaut John Chrichton accidentally gets thrown into a wormhole that takes him far from home. He arrives in the middle of a battle, and manages to survive a collision with a space fighter, but the space fighter that clips him ends up crashing against a nearby asteroid. John's space module is captured by one of the battling ships, where he encounters a group of aliens who are struggling to escape the battle. John is injected with a virus that allows him to understand their language, whereupon he learns that the aliens are escaped prisoners who have somehow managed to take control of the transport they were on; the ship and pilot of the transport appear very amenable to helping these escaped convicts, if it means escaping from the opposing faction ("The Peacekeepers") that is trying to shoot them out of existence. The ex-prisoners manage to remove the "control collar" from their ship and manage to "starburst" out of danger. John is rendered unconscious by the gigantic tongue of one of the aliens and then taken to a cell.
Throughout the episode, interspersed with the action, we learn about the aliens that will be the protagonists of the show with John:
1) Dominar Rygel XVI: a sentient, ancient, slug-like creature that travels in a hovering chair. He was once the ruler of the Hynerian Empire, with over 600 billion subjects at his beck and call, until his treacherous cousin deposed him, stole his throne, and handed him over to the Peacekeepers more than 100 "cycles" ago. He farts helium when he is nervous or afraid --- and he is often nervous and afraid. On the other hand, he is portrayed as devious --- and therefore clever---: after all he is the one who managed to get the access codes that allowed the convicts to escape. He seems to be particularly self-interested, to the point of being selfish, and quite obsessed with his possessions and with the acquisition of other people's possessions and of food.
2) Ka D'Argo: A warrior with long tentacle-like appendages coming out of his head --- like an octopus. He possesses a long tongue that he can project well outside his personal range --- like a frog --- with which he can incapacitate enemies. He is short in temper. He was imprisoned for killing a superior officer. He has been in prison for 8 cycles, and does not intend to be in chains ever again.
3) Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan: A Delbian priestess. Bald; blue; and biologically descendant from plants. She seems to function as the calming voice of reason and wisdom in the group. She displays compassion and understanding toward her crewmates. I don't think it is revealed why she was a prisoner in this first episode, other than with a vague reference to her being a radical even in her planet full of radicals.
4) Pilot: a giant crab-like being with many arms. He flies the ship; he is often frustrated and groans at the requests and impatience of the other passengers, as well as to their apparent disregard for the integrity of the ship. It is not clear in this first episode why he is so amenable to following the orders of these escaped prisoners, and pilot the ship according to their wishes.
5) Moya: She is a ship --- a living ship. Moya has the ability to "starburst" --- which is like a jump into hyperspace allowing her to escape from one place to another. However, she must recuperate after every starburst jump.
After Moya starbursts her escape, it is revealed that a peacekeeper ship was caught in the starburst wake. Thus we get the other alien and main protagonist of the series:
6) Aeryn Sun: A Peacekeeper female soldier. She appears human, but apparently there are anatomical differences below the surface, given that the alien crew started questioning John Crichton about who he is and where he came from once they discovered he was not a Peacekeeper. Aeryn is a very beautiful, very tough, and extremely hostile towards the crew that has taken her hostage and who hates her, as a member of the species that had them in prison. She forms a tenuous but fragile alliance with John, who is temporarily imprisoned with her.
But, as it happens, the pilot that crashed into the asteroid when it hit John Chrichton's space module was the brother of
7) Bialar Crais, the Peacekeeper captain that was pursuing the prisoners. Against procedures, he orders his Command Carrier to pursue Moya, in order to kill John Chrichton in revenge for his brother's death (while leaving the rest of the armada behind).
When Rygel and D'Argo stop at a commerce planet to obtain supplies to repair Moya, Aeryn and John escape. Aeryn reports to Captain Crais the location of the escaped prisoners. When Captain Crais arrives, he arrests John, D'Argo, and Aeryn --- as she has had too much personal contact with an unknown alien species and has been therefore irreversibly contaminated and thus must be exterminated. John manages to trick and subdue the guards that were guarding them, and offers to free D'Argo and Aeryn, provided that they make peace with each other and she be permitted to join the crew of escapees.
After they all manage to escape back to Moya, with Captain Crais on their tail and about to obliterate them, John Chrichton proves that he is not as much of a dummy as everyone has been telling him he is when he uses his super-speed theory to sling-shot Moya out of the range of Captain Crais's guns. Soon thereafter Moya is finally able to starburst once again, and the crew escapes to the uncharted territories, where the Peacekeepers have no jurisdiction.
Watching this first episode this time around, I re-thought my opinion of Rygel. Yes, he is a selfish, self-centered, devious, greedy, gluttonous, coward. But, what else would be expected? He has been in prison for more than 100 years, deprived of most creature comforts, with nothing to call his own, most likely having to hoard food --- because, likely, in this cruel society food for prisoners would be an afterthought and not a rule ---, dreaming of his long-ago glory days when he was an absolute ruler and had plenty of everything. Would he not develop a self-centered personality over the long and hard decades he endured? Would not his cowardice and seemingly weak nature help him survive as his fellow prisoners died over the years? Would not he develop a deviousness that would help him deal with the guards --- and the other inmates who might also not have his best interests in mind? Yes, nurture builds on nature --- so he must not have been a very virtuous person to begin with... But we must remember that there have been over a hundred years of hard, cruel nurture that Rygel had to survive somehow. No wonder what came out at the other side of that is not so pretty.
Overall, a very fast-paced, action-packed, but nevertheless understandable introduction to a complex intersectional web of characters, plot, and universe.
Review by noelctBlockedParent2022-03-18T03:59:57Z
Our Deconstructing Moya post on this episode from 2010
http://farscape.madeoffail.net/episodes/episode-1-01-premiere/
Fresh viewing: Still have some of the same issues. The characters are generic, the exposition is clunky, the music is inconsistent. But again, it's very much in line with typical tv pilots where they probably had studio notes and audience consideration to deal with, so kept things simple to ease the sell. And sell they do, as it's already a strikingly designed series, that gets its spin on Flash Gordon off and rolling, already sets up quite a varied and gorgeously realized world. In just one episode, we get Earth, the space battle, Moya, the Peacekeeprs, the alien planet. Entire arcs of allegiances play out and evolve. Even at the extended running time of 50m, it packs a lot in. While it hasn't fully played its hand at what this series will be - and how could they since from what I hear, they were often playing by ear and constantly re-inventing themselves along the way - the core of the story is there in the form of John and Aeryn. He's the hunky but lunky guy who defies tropes by always fumbling his cool, and instead of saving the day through action, as he doesn't even know how to hold these guns very well, he's going to do it with his brains and math. And Aeryn is the dedicated soldier suddenly faced with the harsh reality that the petty government she serves is ready and able to flip on her in an instant, who has no choice but to suddenly take up with the very escaped cons she was just going toe to toe with. Really, Ben Browder and Claudia Black continue to be amazing, they're instantly iconic right from the start, and why they didn't carry on to massive stardom is still something that boggles me.
Rygel is also his gloriously Rygel self. Zhaan, D'Argo, and Crais are well played, but still pretty by-the-numbers characters, and it's interesting seeing them set up angles which won't actually come to define them very much once the writers actually start digging in.