setsuled

Now for another story about youth versus age. Or relatively young versus somewhat older. I'm not sure how old Chiana is on Farscape (the Farscape wiki doesn't know either) but it's pretty clear she's much younger than everyone else, maybe late teens. It's enough to make for a nice episode about two generations misunderstanding each other.

Season 2, Episode 3: Taking the Stone

We learn a little bit more about Chiana's past, namely that she had a brother she looked up to. I say had because she learns in this episode, thanks to an implant in her belly, that her brother has suddenly died.

Crichton (Ben Browder) blows her off when she says she needs to talk, not catching on that it's an urgent topic from her tone. So runs away and falls in with a gang of misfit youths, apparently about the same age as her, who live on an otherwise deserted planet. They live in caves below the tombs of their dead ancestors, one of whom Rygel (Jonathan Hardy) expeditiously robs.

This leads to an amusing subplot about cursed loot, though the funniest part is when Rygel discovers a worm in the decayed face behind a jewelled mask. Instead of screaming in horror, he gasps and says, "Bonus!" and promptly puts the critter in his mouth. We'll never have another Rygel.

Meanwhile, Crichton and Aeryn (Claudia Black) play Chiana's surrogate parents. Crichton is the dad who doesn't like the dangerous games she's been playing with her friends and Aeryn is the wiser mother who continually reminds Crichton his aggressive techniques are going to backfire.

Chiana directly tells him he's not her dad or her lover or even her "tralk". We return to the series' thematic premise about lost people bonding as a new kind of family--it's not unlike Rebel Without a Cause, really. One of the main problems with a new kind of family is that it lacks the reinforcement of tradition so when trouble arises there's no device to keep anyone from splitting when they feel like it, even if staying is ultimately in their best interest. We've seen this already with Talyn.

The episode also follows on from "Vitas Mortis" in contrasting physically appealing youth with unappealing age. Here, Crichton eventually discovers the "lost people"--people older than 22--among the tribe Chiana's fallen in with are people shamed into hiding because their flesh shows signs of damage from the local radiation.

The young dislike age because it reminds them of death, it's an indication that they might not be as indestructible as they think they are. The priestess in the previous episode was almost ready to sacrifice Moya just to forget about being old. In "Taking the Stone", the kids defy death with crude extreme sports, most prominently a free fall down a chasm only to be caught by a "sonic net" created by their own carefully tuned screams.

Use the wrong intonation and you're dead. And Chiana's raring to give it a go herself--no wonder Crichton's worried about her. But is she really disgusted by age or does she really want to kill herself or is there some other issue that Crichton just can't understand? It's a good episode for her character--not her best, but good, though I think anything Chiana touches is gold on Farscape.

. . .

This entry is part of a series I'm writing on Farscape for the show's 20th anniversary. My previous reviews can be found here (episodes are in the order intended by the show's creators rather than the broadcast order):

Season One:

Episode 1: Pilot

Episode 2: I, E.T.

Episode 3: Exodus from Genesis

Episode 4: Throne for a Loss

Episode 5: Back and Back and Back to the Future

Episode 6: Thank God It's Friday Again

Episode 7: PK Tech Girl

Episode 8: That Old Black Magic

Episode 9: DNA Mad Scientist

Episode 10: They've Got a Secret

Episode 11: Till the Blood Runs Clear

Episode 12: Rhapsody in Blue

Episode 13: The Flax

Episode 14: Jeremiah Crichton

Episode 15: Durka Returns

Episode 16: A Human Reaction

Episode 17: Through the Looking Glass

Episode 18: A Bug's Life

Episode 19: Nerve

Episode 20: The Hidden Memory

Episode 21: Bone to be Wild

Episode 22: Family Ties

Season Two:

Episode 1: Mind the Baby

Episode 2: Vitas Mortis

Here's the last photo I took of Comic Con 2017. A few people were still lined up under those white tents for Hall H even though the last Hall H panel had ended already. It is a nice shaded spot, anyway. It was around 4:30pm--I don't usually leave so late on Sunday but I felt like lingering this year, I really didn't want it to end. Normally I know better than to leave so late because the trolleys that are already packed like sardines throughout the Con are packed at the end like the contents of two cans of sardines crammed into one. With the heat, it was exactly like the bus scene from the beginning of Stray Dog, and I mean exactly like that--sweating people trying to stand nonchalantly with their heads in strangers' armpits. It occurred to me I was wearing a linen sport coat almost exactly like Toshiro Mifune's and that my camera was in the same pocket as the one the pick-pocket takes his pistol from. I thought about how much it would suck to lose my camera to-day. I'd have lost this photo of me with Gigi Edgley, for example.

It was really nice to meet her. I told her how much I loved her performance in Farscape, how I liked the physical mannerisms she came up with for her character, Chiana, an alien woman belonging to a race called the Nebari. She talked to me about how she didn't want to play a human woman wearing alien makeup and so she came up with alien mannerisms.

If you haven't seen Farscape and you like fantasy or sci-fi or just good television or movies, you'd be doing yourself a big favour checking it out.

Watch on YouTube

Edgley and I talked about how much influence Farscape has had on modern television and movies, most obviously on Guardians of the Galaxy, which resembles Farscape a lot more than the comic it's based on. Chiana is one of my favourite characters in the history of television due in no small part to Edgley's performance so it was nice to meet her.

To-morrow I'll start making longer, proper entries about the Con. If I don't sleep all day. I can feel all four days catching up with me.

Entries tagged with chiana

Death and the Stone

Sunday, So the Sun Sets on Comic Con

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