Farscape: Picture If You Will Rewatch

October 7, 2015 12:14 AM - Season 2, Episode 6

Chiana is given a picture that predicts the future. It depicts the death of Chiana, followed by the rest of the crew who appear to die one by one in self-fulfilling prophecies. Maldis from "That Old Black Magic" makes his return and the picture is a part of his plan. [via]
posted by along came the crocodile (6 comments total)

Yes, well, I want to toss a cup of water on whomever it was in the writer's room that stood up and said, "Hey now, I loved Maldis. Everyone loves Maldis. Let's bring him back!" The only other thing I can think of, "I hate Maldis, and I want to make it clear he's done for...by bringing him back to be defeated once and for all."

Like all things Maldis, it's an episode full of lots of good things, but just ruined by association. Okay, this one a little less so. A lot less so. I can count only a couple good things really, maybe a smidge more. I love Aeryn's immediate execution of Zhaan's order (which incidentally, kind of parallels her execution of Crais' order when told to kill Moya's old pilot). We also had GIANT HAND. Okay, yes, it gets points for being so incredibly ridiculous as to make one stare in disbelief that a giant leather clad hand is reaching through a portal, like a giant for a mouse, and it's defeated in part with lasers. Pew Pew!

Anytime Chiana screams in pain is a bad time for me. It's fingernails on chalkboard. I don't want her to suffer, and I don't want to suffer, it works out for everyone.

I did like that Zhaan got a nice demonstration of her power up skills.

Everything else. Well. No. Just no.
posted by Atreides at 9:32 AM on October 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

I love Aeryn's immediate execution of Zhaan's order (which incidentally, kind of parallels her execution of Crais' order when told to kill Moya's old pilot).

Which is exactly what I was going to say. Heh. The Aeryn stuff is probably the only thing I like about it. Apparently this episode was meant to be broadcast before TWWW. Which explains all the hostility with Crichton and makes Pilot ordering her to kill Kyvan foreshadowing rather than being weirdly ironic.

However Kyvan's Oirish accent and dodgy panto dame act and Maldis just being Maldis in general lead me to concur with Aeryn's 'bucket of dren' assessment. Chiana burning alive was plain nasty and what could have been quite a strong episode for Zhaan was undermined by bad pantomime villainry. Bah. The giant hand is funny but supremely WTF - they're going for the twisted Alice in Wonderland thing again but it doesn't feel like it works that well here.
posted by along came the crocodile at 11:07 AM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

The giant hand is funny but supremely WTF - they're going for the twisted Alice in Wonderland thing again but it doesn't feel like it works that well here.

Go full Q or get out.
posted by Atreides at 12:52 PM on October 7, 2015

Nope. Not a Maldis fan and I'm glad they didn't bring him back after this episode. I usually skip the Maldis episodes on re-watch.
posted by cshenk at 8:51 PM on October 7, 2015

Having said that I'm not a fan of this episode, I think it does a good job of creating an atmosphere of dread, and the first time I saw it, I thought they had really killed Chiana! Little did I know that the Season of Death was coming...
posted by cshenk at 11:06 AM on October 8, 2015

For the longest time, I absolutely hated Farscape and thought it was the worst show ever, and the reason I thought that was because every single time I tried to watch it, SciFi was just playing this episode again. Every time. I don't know how I managed that, but the result was that I didn't get into the show until just before the start of the fourth season, when my best friend sat me down through the previous three seasons. It is obviously a much better show than this episode, which is my least favorite of all of them. I can't stand Maldis. Ugh.
posted by Errant at 4:53 PM on October 26, 2015 [1 favorite]