Farscape: Meltdown Rewatch
January 19, 2016 11:35 PM - Season 3, Episode 12 - Subscribe
Talyn becomes drawn to the surface of a star, endangering the crew. Stark tries to help a woman trapped between realms in orbit around the star.[via]
This should be a worse episode than it is, and again, it really plays into ideas created in Star Trek and rebels against them, self-admittedly. When John starts complaining how much he hates entities/people with god-like powers, it seems like a straight up wink to the viewers. Likewise, the adrenaline-like gas kind of reflects the bacteria which induced crazy behavior in "The Naked Time." We see folks fight or give in to their greatest impulses with the hint that for as much as Crais is done being a PK, he may still want to be a PK.
The antagonist, at a glance, seems designed to make us want to assume he isn't bad, because he obviously resembles something of a devil-like creature...but then actually is bad, something we learn almost immediately after his appearance. Stark as Pilot....goes about as well as one expects. Throw in the dark nature of the idea that a race of beings purposefully lure the peaceful leviathans to their deaths out of a competitive nature, yowch.
The saxophone or should we call it the "sexophone" shouldn't have worked. It should have been completely cheesy, but it's send up to the late 80s and early 90s lustful romance and what not just worked well to make the incredible attraction between Aeryn and John work. It made something which might have felt a bit overdone into something more light hearted and almost comical. The chemistry, though, arrgh. Too hot for television.
posted by Atreides at 9:26 AM on January 20, 2016
The antagonist, at a glance, seems designed to make us want to assume he isn't bad, because he obviously resembles something of a devil-like creature...but then actually is bad, something we learn almost immediately after his appearance. Stark as Pilot....goes about as well as one expects. Throw in the dark nature of the idea that a race of beings purposefully lure the peaceful leviathans to their deaths out of a competitive nature, yowch.
The saxophone or should we call it the "sexophone" shouldn't have worked. It should have been completely cheesy, but it's send up to the late 80s and early 90s lustful romance and what not just worked well to make the incredible attraction between Aeryn and John work. It made something which might have felt a bit overdone into something more light hearted and almost comical. The chemistry, though, arrgh. Too hot for television.
posted by Atreides at 9:26 AM on January 20, 2016
Ugh, I'm behind on posting! I think the having a holiday on Monday threw my schedule off. Anyway..."Meltdown." I love half of this episode and kind of tolerate the other half. Can you guess which is which? : ) I think the Stark/Sierjna/Mu-Quillis plot is hokey, and the rudimentary pilot's den looks cheesy. The drexim mist making John and Aeryn act on their long-repressed feelings = awesome! From the Season 3 Companion--Ben: "We have a remarkable working relationship...Claudia: "It was very difficult to shoot, but it was funny, because Ben and I spent all our time on set kissing!" David Kemper (producer): "Ben, Claudia, and Ian Barry (director) went pretty hard at it. When we saw the rough cut, it struck all of us that they had gone so fast into that tough place that there was nowhere to get to for acts two and three. It was really intense--they'd have to be having sex atop the Empire State Building by the end of act four if they kept going! So we re-edited to make the best episode." I wonder if some of that footage is still around...
posted by cshenk at 9:09 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by cshenk at 9:09 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm more in the, "Let us never speak of this episode again" camp for this one.
posted by kyrademon at 12:11 PM on October 14, 2019
posted by kyrademon at 12:11 PM on October 14, 2019
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posted by cshenk at 11:37 PM on January 19, 2016