Line #15 Fridge/Farscape


1	'''As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff as per policy.]] Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''
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3	[[AC:FridgeBrilliance]]
4	* For a well-disciplined military, higher ranking Peacekeeper officers have an extremely wide variety of uniforms to choose from besides the standard ones. They are mostly black, black and red, or very dark red, sometimes with brown and green, and made of leather or something like it, and they're all recognizably Peacekeeper designs, but why do they have so much diversity when they're supposed to be so conformist? Because the Peacekeepers aren't just a military, they are an entire culture of Sebaceans. They have aesthetics, so why shouldn't the higher ranking officers be allowed some degree of self expression as long as it's subtly reinforcing their uniformity? It might even be one of the Peacekeepers' psychological manipulation techniques, aimed at promoting troop moral and achievement, since ambitious soldiers are able to be promoted through the ranks to junior and senior officer status, at least.
5	** Or they're just different designs for different departments - command, operations, commandos, pilots, etc - like ''Franchise/StarTrek'''s different-coloured shirts
6	* In ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', particularly the quote at the top of that page, John Crichton rattles off a list of Sci-Fi heroes, and then says that he's not like any of them, instead likening himself to Dorothy Gale, from ''Film/TheWizardOfOz''. At face value, this makes sense, as Dorothy is an ordinary person in a crazy world like he is, but that applies to some of the other Sci-Fi heroes he lists as well. I didn't think much of it at first, but recently I realized how alike they really are: Both are regular people, doing their jobs, living in a backwater nowhere place (Kansas, Earth) who get sucked up by a swirling vortex (for Dorothy, a Tornado, and for John, a Wormhole) and deposited in a faraway place (Oz, the other side of the Galaxy). Their first act in the new land is to accidentally kill a relative of someone very important and apparently, very evil (Wicked Witch of the East, Crais' brother) and immediately make an enemy of the survivor. They both survive in this strange land by meeting up with the locals, including a deposed former ruler (Scarecrow, Rygel) and the big strong guy. Eventually, after searching for a way home, they each decide they much prefer the strange new world and choose to stay. - Terral
7	** [[FlatWhat Dorothy chose to stay in Oz?]]
8	*** [[FirstInstallmentWins The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had thirteen sequels.]] [[Literature/LandOfOz Dorothy emigrated permanently somewhere around book five.]]
9	* In "DNA Mad Scientist," Namtar offers D'Argo, Zhann and Rygel the way back home in exchange for Pilot's DNA, so they cut off his arm. Crichton is naturally appalled, but surprisingly so is Aeryn - who reasons that Pilot was not merely defenseless but an ally of the crew. Flashbacks from "The Way We Weren't," where she helped murder Moya's original pilot and later sold out our Pilot's benefactor - things she later deeply regretted, really explain why she is so appalled.
10	* In "That Old Black Magic" when Aeryn and D'Argo are confronted by the barrier that protects Maldis's compound, D'Argo says "This door is protected by an evil spell," a conclusion which makes sense because he comes from a superstitious [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Proud Warrior Race]], while Aeryn, who comes from the secular, [[OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions atheistic]] Peacekeepers replies "There's no such thing." This scenes provides a contrast between these two characters coming from opposite cultures, interpreting the same problem but coming to different conclusions.
11	* The episode "The Ugly Truth" plays heavily with the concept of perception, and how different people can see the same events different ways. Throughout the episode Crichton calls the Plokavians, the aliens interrogating them over a crime, "Plokavoids" (a RunningGag in the series is that Crichton frequently experiences difficulties pronouncing the names of various aliens and their species). When it comes time for the Plokavians to hear Chrichton's testimony, the flashback shows ''everyone'' on the crew calling them Plokavoids because their dialog is actually ''Crichton's retelling of the events''.
12	* Sikozu's initial refusal to accept evident facts at face value seems a bit strange if you only attribute it to her extensive education; after all, Jool was just as educated and much more capable of accepting and adapting to to things that run contrary to her knowledge. Then we find out that Sikozu is a bioloid; she wasn't educated at all, but ''programmed'' with the knowledge, which might explain why she insists on adhering to it even when it's contradicted by reality.
13	* At the end of the Peacekeeper Wars, John's comment that "This is your playground" to Dargo Sun-Crichton, his son, could be considered somewhat prophetic as Dargo Sun-Crichton is explicitly mentioned as having the Wormhole Knowledge within his DNA from his father (unlike John, we don't know this was removed), as well as having a small amount of Pilot DNA from his mother, which allows some command over Leviathans. These inherited traits give the potential for him to potentially revolutionize interstellar travel.
14	* The Nebari, the species who have a completely BlackAndWhiteMorality, are ''literally'' black and white.
15	* Zhaan's wardrobe choices. Her blue outfits look gorgeous to a human. But to a blue-skinned Delvian, wouldn't wearing a color so close to your own fleshtone seem kind of dull and bland? It would be like a human always wearing tans and browns. But maybe that's the point. Zhaan is a priestess. Maybe Delvian priests wear blue because it is a "dull" color to them, as a form of modesty (much like how human monks used to wear dull brown robes).
16	** Also, as we find out in Season 1, nudity isn't really an issue in Delvian society (as Zhaan clearly demonstrates while praying and in Season 1's "Throne for a Loss). But, they may wear clothing due to knowing that other societies outside of their own view nudity differently and, most likely, uncomfortably. Then wearing blue makes even more sense: Delvians wear blue as a means of being nude without being nude.
17	* Of course Stark and Zhaan become so close so quickly - putting aside everything they have in common, she's a plant and he's literally living light.
18	* FridgeBrilliance: Crichton, in one of his many flip-out moments in "Crackers Don't Matter," writes the name of the villain-of-the-week T'raltixx on a door. How does he know how to spell it, much less get it right? Then you realize: He doesn't! Nobody in the show technically speaks English except for Crichton, so he probably just made it up. Likewise when Crichton occasionally speaks in Spanish and the others have no problem understanding him (thanks to the Translator Microbes); an exception being "Crichton Kicks" where the microbes can't handle Klingon! This is explained by Sikozu not using translator microbes - her brain can't handle them, possibly because she's a bioloid. She learns languages extremely quickly but must be presented with their structure, rules, and alphabet. Because Crichton taught her English but dropped in the Klingon on a whim (actually a true-blue ThrowItIn by Ben Browder, which is why Raelee Hill had that look on her face after he said it), Sikozu wasn't able to process what he said.
19	* In "Twice Shy" Rygel mentions adding an extra digit to some currency and that it's really only a twelfth of that. This suggests that the standard number system used is a base 12 number system. Why is this important? Well there have been references to "solar days" which appear to be equal to be about 24 arns. This actually makes a lot of sense in a base 12 number system, with 12 being represented by 10 (so "10" in the morning and "10" in the afternoon). It's quite sensible why that would be accepted as the "standardised" day since it's a simple round number. Similarly, it's not unreasonable to think that a cycle might be something like 360 days. In base 12 that would be represented as 260. While this might not look that round to us, a number ending up in 50 would. That's because 5 is the midpoint in a base 10 number system, in a base 12 number system 6 would be the midpoint meaning numbers ending in 60 would be considered nice and round.
20	* In "Prayer" Sikozu-Stark is unable to cross over Noranti-Rygel because he (she? they?) has to love the soul. However, he evidently did cross over a Scarran at one point. This suggests he must have loved a Scarran and foreshadows the later revelation that Stark spent more time among Scarrans than we know.
21	* When it is first brought up, the fact that Crystherium Utilia, a plant that is incredibly rare in the Uncharted Territories, just so happens to occur abundantly on Earth comes off as a ContrivedCoincidence, as Earth is located in a particularly remote region of the galaxy. Later on, this is shown to be an early foreshadowing of the fact that Earth ''has'' had contact with the Uncharted Territories in the past, as revealed in "The Peacekeeper Wars".
22	* D'Argo's shift from the serious, ruthless warrior figure in the early episodes to a more light-hearted character in the later episodes may seem like just an example of the writers changing his character to make him more relatable, but there is actually a likely wider reason for it. As revealed in "Vitas Mortis", D'Argo has the markings of a general because he assumed the identity of his commanding officer during a past military campaign to protect his superior from being tortured, but never told the others what those marks even meant until they had been together on Moya for almost a year. With this detail in mind, it may be that D'Argo spent some of his early time on Moya trying to 'overcompensate' and live up to what he believed a general should be like to hide the fact that he had false markings, but as time went on and he became more friendly with his shipmates, he allowed himself to relax and show more of his true self instead of exaggerating his military attitude.
23	* In Season 4's "We're So Screwed" trilogy, John carries a nuke with the words "Hi There!" on it. In the final episode of the series, "Bad Timing", John places a nuke with "Dear John" written on it on Scorpius as a precaution to make sure Scorpy doesn't come after them after sending him and Sikozu off the ship. These nukes are both in reference to the film ''[[Film/DoctorStrangelove Doctor Stranglove]]''. And not only that, but there's also a similarity between the nukes. "Hi There!" get's set off in the third episode of the trilogy (just as "Hi There!" is dropped with Major Kong riding it). "Dear John" in both the show and the film are never seen going off.
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25	[[AC:FridgeHorror]]
26	* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' had a character experience this in-canon about their experiences. At the end of the episode "The Locket", Zhaan is congratulating herself on helping the crew escape from a time anomaly, which led to [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong time being rewound so that they never actually entered it]]. Then she realises that this might have led to the children and grandchildren that Aeryn had during two hundred years of subjective time trapped on [[VanishingVillage a planet within the anomaly]] being erased from history. Stark speculates that they might still exist in some alternate timeline.
27	* 1812, the DRD that Crichton recruits from Elack at the beginning of Season 4, seems to be fully sentient. Kinda puts all those scenes from previous seasons of the [=DRD=]s being mowed down like grass by the MonsterOfTheWeek (or being sacrificed by Crichton and Co. themselves) in an unsettling light.
28	** Of course, it may be that 1812 was just a unique case given its unconventional circumstances of being trapped as one of the last surviving DRDs of a dying Leviathan.
29	* It's established after Talyn is born that Peacekeepers experimented on other Leviathans to try and make hybrid babies of Leviathan and Peacekeeper technology. However, these experiments failed due to the effects of the control collar, and wound up killing both the baby and the mother. At first this seems just sad until you consider: every Leviathan mother in that experiment was effectively raped while being able to do nothing but sit back and watch, and then unable to do anything to help themselves and their babies. Yeah, it's starting to make sense why guys like Crais and Scorpius are high figures in the military.
30	* One-shot alien character M'Lee from the second-last episode of season one; M'Lee's "deal" is that she belongs to an unnamed species of calcivores, feeding primarily by killing animals and eating their bones. When she gets very hungry, she'll turn on sentients as well. Now, at the end of her episode, she gets "adopted" by Scorpius, and it's mentioned she was shipped away back to base in the next episode -- but her assigned security guard has gone missing. No, that's not the FridgeHorror. The real FridgeHorror is, just what is Scorpius going to ''do'' when he learns his "adopted daughter" is a rapacious bone-eating predator? The most likely conclusions are that either he'll kill her, or, as speculated elsewhere on this wiki, he'll start feeding his subordinates to her if he deems them disloyal or incompetent...
31	** [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse Or she will get killed when Crichton and D'Argo destroy the Gammeck base in the very next episode.]]
32	* In "Twice Shy" the main characters allow Talikaa on board ''Moya'' after the crew of the ship she was previously on make it clear that they view her as a sex slave. Subsequently, they're all found dead from the delayed effects of Talikaa feeding from them. Maybe they weren't really {{Asshole Victim}}s, but compassionate, non-sexist guys before they met her, and that was the emotion that she ate from them.
33	** I always thought they're acting, under her orders, and wanting to get rid of her before she kills them - but it was too late and they're were too drained.
34	* In "Coup by Clam", the protagonists eat mollusks which, when divided amongst others, slowly poison them while synchronizing their sensations. Rygel and Aeryn, Sikozu and John, and D'argo and Noranti are linked in this way, and it's explicitly shown that gastrointestinal issues are linked - Aeryn feels Rygel's four stomachs and passes gas when he does. What would have happened to Aeryn if Rygel had a bowel movement?
35	* When they try to bury Talyn's remains in the sacred space, a crazed Leviathan objects on the grounds that he's part Peacekeeper. When he was destroyed, Crais was in the same place. Any of Crais that remained would have been mixed in with Talyn. Either Moya's crew manually sifted through them and tried to separate them out, or his remains really would be part Peacekeeper.
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37	[[AC: FridgeLogic]]
38	* If the Interions have screams that can melt solid ''metal'', how the frell did they ever manage to become a spacefaring species? Seriously, can you imagine what their space-program was like? Their version of Neil Armstrong would be paranoid the entire time.
39	--> ''That's one small stubbed-toe for an Interion, one big explosive-decomp-''
40	** Likewise, how did they ever ''build'' anything? You just know instead of letting the tires down on a car, the children would melt them off!
41	** Well, maybe their building materials were non-metallic; maybe their screams only affect materials or metals alien to their home planet. It's worth noting that Jool and her relatives didn't have a spaceship of their own- they were hitchhiking.
42	* Another thing to note: just how many Interon's ''have'' this sonic scream? In "Season of Death," Stark performs a MercyKill on one, and he screams before dying; it's not a sonic scream, though. Furthermore, the other two male Interons met in the series never demonstrate it when in pain. Now, does that mean that the sonic scream is an ability confined to Interon females, or is Jool an extremely rare mutation?
43	** Or else it's something they can choose to do and not do, so they can scream normally.
44	** ... how can one "choose" how to scream in pain? Jool doesn't have much of a gauge on it, considering it switches on the moment Aeryn twists her thumb. And in the case of the MercyKill-ed Interon: how - having just been awoken from cryosleep only to find yourself being stabbed with a syringe by a masked lunatic - are you supposed to ''choose'' to scream "normally"?
45	** Possibly you can stop yourself doing the full on sonic scream if you're prepared for it (something different people will be better at depending on their pain threshold). As the original line mentioned the idea, it could be like stubbing your toe. You can choose whether to let yourself cry out in agony or stifle the scream and channel your pain into a lot of swearing. The tough guy keeps his cool when he gets hurt or something scary happens but the guy only pretending to be tough ScreamsLikeALittleGirl. Jool could be basically just the Interon equivalent of the ScreamingWoman, screaming with an unusually high frequency and at an unusually high pitch.
46	** Another possibility that many are overlooking is the Occam's razor: maybe only female Interons have the sonic scream ability while males don't.
47	* Peacekeepers are crippled by amounts of heat humans find barely uncomfortable. So why do they all wear black leather all the time?
48	** More to the point, is it really leather at all? After all, Scorpius doesn't seem to be bothered by it when he's out of coolant rods. That said, when the temperature starts rising, you'll notice how quickly Sebaceans start ditching the leather-like clothes.
49	** Maybe they just have a lower metabolic temperature than humans do? Produce less body heat, perhaps, so the leather-ish gear doesn't cause them to heat up as fast as it would for humans. But once excess heat starts getting poured on them, they ditch it so they can cool off faster?
50	* The example cited for {{Translator Microbes}} poses the question of why the {{Trope Namer}} is able to translate English (a language that no one else speaks), when an ancient form of the ''native language'' of one of the main characters needs a new batch of microbes to be programmed and injected. A possible (unintentional) explanation for this is that untranslated Sebacean language sounds like English looped backwards (or from the microbes' perspective, English sounds like Sebacean looped backwards). The microbes should theoretically be able to recognize that "coincidence" and compensate from there.
51	** Translator microbes probably aren't bred to need to work with dead languages, hence when a dead language needs to be translated, they need an upgrade patch.
52	** It's been suggested elsewhere that translator microbes are telepathic in nature. This would allow them to interpret a language from any species they encounter. They could then translate recordings once they learnt the language. If it was a language they hadn't encountered before and it was only a recording, they'd have no way to translate.

Context Fridge / Farscape