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Farscape - Season 4 - Episode 04

My Rating - 2

Fan Rating Average - 4.52

Rate episode?

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# Votes: 29 8 10 19 12 16 33 8 12 8 12

Synopsis
After a forced landing, the crew is divided by an elaborate trap that leaves Crichton, D'Argo, Noranti and Rygel underground in a lava-filled system of caves. Chiana and Sikozu are left outside, trying to re-activate D'Argo's ship. Inside, Crichton and the others are hunted down by mercenaries who are not only protected by energy shield belts, but are led by a monster impervious to the fiery lava. [DVD]

Filler Quotient: 1, partial filler, but has important continuity. I recommend against skipping this one.
- This episode is mostly filler. Making contact with Moya at the end of the episode is trivial continuity that can be understood in context later. But a couple small details are referenced later in extremely minor ways. The body armor acquired in this episode is referenced later, but knowing where they got it isn't super important. Also, clips from this episode are shown briefly in an episode in the middle of the season. None of these references are essential, but it is still pretty neat if you've seen this episode when those references are made.

Problems
- When D'Argo wrapped his tongue around Noranti for leverage, why didn't it just drag both of them into the lava?

Factoids
- Sikozu can go for days without eating.
- John Adam, the actor who played the lead bad guy in this episode also played Bekhesh from Throne for a Loss and Liars, Guns and Money.

Remarkable Scenes
- John, regarding Noranti's food: "That stuff's not gonna turn anybody into a newt is it?" A reference to Voy: Threshold perhaps? 😉
- D'Argo: "They're shielded!" John: "They have body armor? That's a hell of an invention. How come we don't have that?"
- Noranti: "Let me mediate!" D'Argo: "You don't think we should let her try?" John: "No, she's gonna get shot!" D'Argo: "And that would be bad?"
- D'Argo throwing Noranti and John over the lava.
- D'Argo jumping over the lava, slipping, then wrapping his tongue around Noranti's neck for leverage.
- John and D'Argo debating whether or not hitting the guys with the shields with a rock would work.
- Chiana and Sikozu covering D'Argo's ship in his vomit so they can activate the controls sensitive to his DNA.
- John's conversation with Harvey.
- John attempting to rescue Rygel by using the shield to go into the lava.

My Review
Noranti feeds the tired and hungry crew of Lo'La poison, so they all have to land on hostile planet of the week to go throw up, getting themselves into trouble with some bad guys in the process. There's some very effective humor in some scenes, but aside from that this episode is largely just a waste of time.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From Lennier on 2010-07-18 at 8:45pm:
    This episode contains one of the very few moments in the series when I was slightly distracted by Rygel's status as a puppet.

    It's when he's reacting to a figure that turns out to be John Adam's character; Rygel's ears are moving independently of each other and for some reason that looks too "animatronic-like" for me.
  • From Margaret J on 2019-07-27 at 7:47pm:
    Bad Filler except for the very last scene. I rated this one a two (2)
  • From Braaainz on 2019-11-18 at 1:38am:
    Some of the humor falls flat (really, really horrible flat), but there are some definite gems too.
    One of my favorite parts is Dargo and Crighton talking about what to do about Granny.
    Dargo says, "burn her" in dry humor... Crighton asks (out of what sounded like genuine curiosity), if Dargo's people do that to their elderly. It's a much needed break in a stale, predictably piece of dialogue; but it also shows that Crighton is still learning about his teammates' cultures without immediately passing some kind of moral judgement and I found that really appealing.
  • From Mirakindar on 2020-11-13 at 7:37pm:
    Un des plus drôles épisodes que j'ai vus à ce jour. Les dialogues rebondissent de manière inattendue, insérant l'humour à toutes les scènes. Qui plus est, contrairement à plusieurs épisodes précédents, la trame en est claire et se suit avec plaisir jusqu'à son dénouement. Note maximale pour celui-là.

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