Farscape: The Locket Rewatch

November 10, 2015 11:04 PM - Season 2, Episode 16

While travelling through a mist Aeryn scouts ahead for several hours, but when she emerges, she has aged 165 cycles. She informs Moya's crew that they have to leave lest they be trapped there forever. When she departs again, Crichton follows her only to get trapped on the planet with her, where he's forced to stay for several decades. Stark returns in this episode.[via]
posted by cshenk (5 comments total)

"Thanks for the shuttle I borrowed and left on episodes ago and now have returned, somehow finding Moya without any problem, to explain why the writers forgot to include my character in anything since I was introduced." - Stark.

This was an okay episode. The real gem lay in the establishment that John is/was the love of Aeryn's life, and I suppose, John as the crusty old Southerner. The handwaving of resetting everything at the end wasn't the best solution, but it apparently was the best one the writers could figure out. Aging primary characters and then de-aging them has been a sci-fi trope for many years, but usually it's science, not magical reverse starbursts out of time canceling clouds of dust. Not to mention, it also erased Aeryn's knowledge that John was seeing Scorpy all the time. That predicament must have driven brain Scorpy crazy.

This episode is what it is. A little fun, but for reintroducing Stark and the stuff already mentioned, just not much to it.
posted by Atreides at 11:32 AM on November 11, 2015

This episode is like Brigadoon in reverse: Brigadoon is a village that rises out of the mists every hundred years for only a day. So, the outside world continues on, but not the village in the mist.

Interestingly, it's often mentioned as a favorite of Scapers, probably because of the John/Aeryn love story. That part is sweet and romantic, especially because (I'm assuming) there is not a physical relationship between them, but companionship and the meeting of minds and hearts (after all, that hotness between them could mask major relationship problems--I've been there!). They both profess their love, even if they don't remember it after the reset button. However, this episode does have its flaws, including Ben's weird acting choices! I think Ben is a terrific actor, but I don't buy his corn-pone accent and idioms. I'm pretty sure that when I get older I'm not going to use a completely different syntax when I talk, dagnabit!

The commentary for this episode is pretty funny, though, because Ben basically became an old lech once they put the old-age make-up on him and no one called him out on it, because he looked old!

Love this line from Aeryn: Look at you... I'd forgotten how beautiful you were. You're so young. I'd also forgotten how wrong you could be!
posted by cshenk at 9:29 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I can definitely understand why this episode has its fans, because, as you mentioned, it is a lovely romantic story about our two favorite couple. That romance in general is one of the things that make the show great (a lot of tv shows, for the most part, are defined by the relationships of the characters within them - Diane/Sam, Ross/Rachel, Mulder/Scully).

I think it could have been a much better episode and perhaps that hang up leads me to downgrade my enjoyment of it.
posted by Atreides at 7:16 AM on November 13, 2015

If the last episode is one of my favorites, this is one of my least favorite. I just don't really get it. I guess it never occurred to me that there was any reason to doubt that John would be the picture in the locket, so all the cryptic "you'll see the person I've always loved" stuff just seems really roundabout. I very much enjoy the romance between John and Aeryn, but this episode doesn't do it for me.
posted by Errant at 8:24 PM on November 16, 2015

I really like this episode, but I've become weepy and sentimental in my old age.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:48 PM on November 18, 2015