Characters / Farscape Main Characters

Moya's Crew

As A Group

• Dark and Troubled Past: Pretty much everyone other than Crichton has some kind of sordid history prior to the events of the series.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Initially three escaped prisoners, an astronaut from a distant galaxy and unwilling military deserter, along with a living ship and its conjoined pilot, each with their own goals and motivations, through shared struggle and a heap of trauma, they become dependable allies to one another. Well, except maybe Rygel. Though even he has his moments.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: In the course of the series, their lineup includes two warriors, a deposed monarch, a sexually promiscuous thief, religious figures of various mental stability, an entity permanently confined to the ship, and a man who knows literally nothing about the civilisation he finds himself in. The crew survive their various challenges, but most of the time their victories are due to luck and desperation rather than true skill.
• True Companions: By season 2, the bond between the crew is so strong that Aeryn doesn't even question Zhaan's command to murder someone in cold blood.
• World of Jerkass: While they may be our protagonists, they are also a bundle of selfish, violent, desperate, mentally unstable, deeply flawed individuals which causes a lot of personality clashes and incredible callousness towards one another at times.

Crichton

Commander John Crichton

"Boy, was Spielberg ever wrong. Close Encounters my ass."

Played By: Ben Browder

"Once upon a time, there was a boy named John, and John was an astronaut. He lived in a far away place called Earth, which is so far away you've never heard of it. One day, when John was out doing astronaut things, a big, blue wormhole gobbled him up and spat him out at the far end of the Universe."

A human astronaut testing a new theory created by himself and his friend about using a planet's gravity to accelerate a space vessel's speed, John Crichton accidentally opens a wormhole leading to a distant part of the galaxy, stranding himself amongst alien lifeforms. Rescued by the escaped prisoners of Moya, and discovering that the Sebacean Peacekeeper Captain Crais wants to kill him because his brother died after crashing into Crichton's ship, Crichton finds himself wandering the galaxy aboard Moya in pursuit of a way home. Crichton's mantra could well have been "Death Is Cheap", to the extent that he died no less than seven times—not counting numerous deaths in parallel worlds.

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In general

• Ace Pilot: Crichton is a talented pilot, particularly at the controls of his module. Crichton is also the first member of the crew we see flying Aeryn's Prowler other than Aeryn herself. In fact he's shown to be second only to Aeryn in raw flying ability, and when he's flying in atmosphere he can nearly beat her.
• Action Survivor: Crichton was just an ordinary scientist/pilot before he got shot through a wormhole and was forced to become a badass.
• Always Save the Girl: Aeryn is more important than everything else in the damn galaxy.
• Audience Surrogate: Like the audience, Crichton knows nothing about the distant part of the universe he gets sent to. Most exposition delivered to Crichton is for the audience's benefit as well.
• Badass Bookworm: He started out pretty helpless, but trained by Aeryn and with his level of sanity consistently gently curving down into a plummet, he became the kind of guy who would threaten to suicide bomb with a nuke.
• Badass Longcoat: One of his many costumes.
• Badass Normal: Despite being an ordinary human, Crichton can hold his own against some of the biggest badasses and deadliest monsters in the universe.
  • As Scorpius puts it, as a human he has a 'brutal elegance' to him. Basically his fighting style and way of surviving in the unfamiliar universe is simple, experience-based, and means he will achieve his goals at any expense.
• Bash Brothers: Crichton and D'Argo eventually grow to have this type of relationship — at least when the two of them are getting along.
• Battle Couple: Crichton and Aeryn continue to fight alongside one another after they finally get together.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Crichton is a fairly easy-going kind of guy, especially in the first season; in later seasons, this crosses over with Beware the Silly Ones as Crichton's behavior takes a turn for the eccentric. One particular example of this occurs in "Suns and Lovers," when, upon encountering a suicide bomber who's magnetised herself to Moya's hull, he goes so far as to wearily congratulate her... before informing her that the door she's magnetised herself to is detachable.
  Crichton: Pilot, I'm clear. Detach the door. And suck this bitch out!
• Big Brother Instinct: He especially doesn't like it when people try to hurt Chiana and Jool.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Downplayed, but after having Harvey implanted into his brain, Crichton becomes far more ruthless and pragmatic than he was before. Harvey also slowly causes his mental state to decline, as part of a way to make it easier for him to pull a Grand Theft Me on him.
• Break the Comedian: Provides most of the humor in the series, making up for being completely adrift in an unfamiliar galaxy by constantly spouting pop-culture references, coming up with crazy plans, and occasionally going full-blown Cloud Cuckoo Lander. However, as time goes on, the comedy begins to bleed away as the stress of being hunted, tortured, assaulted, experimented on and generally abused wears on him; the hallucinations of his greatest enemy haunting him do not help. This finally comes to a head in "Die Me Dichotomy," when the Scorpius neural clone in his brain takes over his body and kills Aeryn; the incident destroys Crichton's sense of humour, and the finale breaks his spirit seemingly for good. In the next episode, he's all but suicidal, even encouraging Zhaan to kill him once it becomes clear that his situation isn't going to improve. Thankfully, his defeat of the neural clone and Aeryn's return from the dead sets him on the path to recovery, and while he has a few major breakdowns in the future, none of them are anywhere near as brutal as this.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: By season 3, most of the powers that be (including John himself) realize that the biggest bargaining chip in the universe is nestled snugly in John's brain. That John is too valuable to kill or harm is invoked on several occasions and used by John to get out of quite a few scrapes, including one memorable occasion where he quite literally paraded his untouchability in front of the assembled Scarran and Peacekeeper leadership.
• Chick Magnet: Aeryn, Chiana, Gilina, and Jenavian Charto all have a thing for him.
• Clone Angst: Crichton gets "twinned" into two — each copy is completely identical to the other and there is no original. Both Crichtons remain worried that the original Crichton is dead and that they are merely a clone.
• Commanding Coolness: Crichton was a commander back in IASA.
• Confusion Fu: Paired with Crazy Is Cool — Crichton is so inexplicable (and eventually insane) that many of the show's villains simply don't know how to deal with him, and his most successful plans are often the ones he makes up as he goes along.
• Cunning Linguist: Often peppers his speech with phrases and expressions from several Earth languages, (and even some fictional ones), implying that he had a gift with languages even before he was injected with translator microbes.
• Deadpan Snarker: Loves making fun of the absurd crap Moya keeps getting faced with.
• Determinator: Crichton never gives up. No matter how many times you knock him down, Crichton will get back up and find a way to win. Notably in "Twice Shy," this is the trait that Talika takes from him.
• Ditzy Genius: From the way he acts, you'd often forget he's actually a brilliant astrophysicist, Ace Pilot, and talented engineer and was an astronaut, a career which requires considerable intellect just to be considered for such duty.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: Why Aeryn is hesitant to enter a relationship with Moya!Crichton, after having fallen for Talyn!Crichton, who died of massive radiation exposure while performing an Heroic Sacrifice.
• Duplicate Divergence: After initially getting split Moya!Crichton and Talyn!Crichton start to slowly become different, though by the time of Talyn!Crichton's death the most notable distinctions were picking different Rock-Paper-Scissors signs and knocking up Aeryn, though Moya!Crichton eventually convinces her to pick up that relationship with him.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Once the wormhole knowledge is unlocked in John's head, he becomes the universes' utmost expert on wormhole physics and applications, to the point where he can predict when wormholes will open.
• The Engineer: He built his own module, does most of the repairs, and subsequently upgrades it with alien technology which he largely figures out on his own.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With D'Argo. D'Argo considers Crichton to be a useless, whiny moron until the two of them work together to fend off the Vorcarian bloodtrackers in "Till the Blood Runs Clear".
• Fish out of Water: Crichton is initially overwhelmed all the strange things he sees. While he's still frequently overwhelmed, by the end of the series he's seemingly realized that the strangeness is never going to go away, and he can make his own alienness and growing insanity a strength in its own right.
• Forgot to Mind Their Head: In the episode "Taking the Stone". He hits his head on a stone archway acting as if he's drunk, which makes it even more funny.
• Godzilla Threshold: The war between the Peacekeepers and Scarrans in Peacekeeper War is his incentive to finally construct a fully functional wormhole weapon and give a demonstration.
• Guile Hero: Crichton's insane plans are practically the reason why he's still alive.
• Guns Akimbo: Along with Leap and Fire — diving sideways in slow motion with a pulse pistol in his hand becomes one of Crichton's signature moves.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Wears leather from time to time. He also mentally dons his own version of Scorpius's gimp/coolant suit whenever Harvey takes control of him.
• The Hero: The main character and generally speaking, the most heroic and idealistic of the Moya crew (although the idealism gradually fades away as time goes on).
• He Who Fights Monsters: Crichton becomes more ruthless and willing to kill throughout the series. Compare the beginning of Season 1, where he almost always tried to Take a Third Option rather than harm anyone, to the end of Season 4, where he blows up an entire Scarran base, killing loads of people.
• I Call It "Vera": Crichton's pulse pistol, "Winona". He actually picked it up in the videogame, which is otherwise never mentioned in the show.
• I Choose to Stay: Jon starts out as a Fish out of Water, but by the time he gets back to earth for real he’s pretty much a citizen of the galaxy and less of earth.
• Indy Ploy: Crichton's plans are most successful when he makes them up as he goes.
• Interspecies Romance: With Aeryn. Revealed in The Peacekeeper Wars to be not so different species after all.
• It Gets Easier: For the first seventeen episodes he goes considerably out of his way to kill anyone even when his allies have no compunction about it and are killing people to protect him. Then he's forced to kill one person while mind controlled and another out of necessity in A Bug's Life, and after that he rapidly loses any remaining compunction against it.
• The Kirk: He started out as The McCoy, and then becomes this: Crichton is still somewhat idealistic, but its been tempered by pragmatism.
• Large Ham: Anytime Crichton has to go undercover. His Peacekeeper cover is just an exaggerated and louder version of Crais, for example.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Most episodes form Season 2 onward. John tries the Chamberlain approach, which fails, so then he tries Churchill-style — scorched earth.
• Malaproper: One of the earliest signs of Crichton's Sanity Slippage — Crichton is constantly getting the names of various alien species wrong, to the point where it occasionally becomes clear that he just doesn't care anymore and is doing it on purpose.
• Missing Mom: Crichton's mom died of cancer some time before the series began.
• Mr. Fanservice: Ben Browder gets a lot of Shirtless Scene. And wears an improbable amount of leather pants.
• Nice Guy: (Aside from Zhaan), he is the nicest person on the crew.
• The Nicknamer: He comes up with nicknames for most of the recurring cast, as well as the various place names, objects, and alien species he can't remember. Conspicuous by its absence in the case of Aeryn and Crais.
  • Sparky, Spanky, Buckwheat, Fluffy, Guido, and many more for Rygel, who is probably the most frequently on the receiving end.
  • Blue for Zhaan.
  • D, sometimes "Big" D for D'Argo.
  • Pip for Chiana.
  • Nosferatu and Leatherface for Scorpius, then Grasshopper after he joins Moya in Season 4.
  • Princess for Jool.
  • Grandma and Wrinkles for Noranti.
  • Sputnik for Sikozu.
  • Harvey starts out as his nickname for the neural clone (after the invisible rabbit from Harvey), but as the clone develops into its own entity and realizes it doesn't have a name of its own, Harvey gradually adopts the name for himself.
  • Einstein for the Ancient from "Unrealized Reality".
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Does this so often that even his friends forget that he's actually a brilliant engineer and astrophysist. Also Obfuscating Insanity, though to a lesser extent, because Crichton's Sanity Slippage is often shown to be all too real.
• Only Sane Man: Note that even when he's going crazy, John is usually the voice of sanity. This should give you an indication of how messed-up the world he lives in is.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: Crichton constantly pops pop culture references. By the end of the series, Crichton's one of the biggest badasses in the universe. It's one of the main reasons that his crewmates become convinced early on that he's nuts, since they obviosly never know what he's referencing so it sounds like random gibberish.
• Power Limiter: Even after the wormhole knolwedge is unlocked in his head, he is only allowed access to certain parts of it for his own safety and the safety of the universe. Unlocking the higher functions of this knowledge plays a crucial role during The Peacekeeper Wars.
• Properly Paranoid: In "Twice Shy," it's revealed the reason he's so distant to Aeryn for half of Season 4 is because Scorpius is on Moya and could use her (plus the baby) as leverage against him if he were to ever discover his true feelings for her. Aeryn calls him on being paranoid and then we all learn Scorpius has been secretly listening in on the comms — proving Crichton right.
  • All for Nothing: Scorpius wasn't fooled by Crichton's attempt at covering up the relationship. Worse still, he manages to engineer a situation in which Crichton offers him wormhole weapons in return for Aeryn.
• Sanity Slippage: With occasional bouts of Laughing Mad. Being lost in a distant part of the universe and hunted across space was bad enough, but add horrific torture, an implanted voice in his head designed to drive him crazy, the wormhole knowledge also implanted in his head being implied to be more than the human mind can comprehend, and ever-rising stakes even as ever-greater numbers of enemies pursue him and kills his friends and kidnap the woman he loves, and it's not all that surprising.
• Science Hero: He might not act like it most of the time, but he's a pretty good astrophysicist and occasionally gets to use his theories to save the day.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: While he never fought in a war, he’s clearly traumatized by the numerous horrific experiences he’s gone through and when he gets back to Earth, he’s diagnosed with PTSD.
• Smarter Than You Look: Everyone seems to forget that John started out as a scientist, and that he is very good at Obfuscating Stupidity. Even Einstein is surprised that John managed to figure out wormholes, even with the help the Ancients gave him.
• Southern-Fried Genius: Born and raised in Florida and quite smart for a human. The hyper-intelligent version of him from "My Three Crichtons" takes the trope up to eleven and speaks in a much heavier Texan drawl.
• Southern Gentleman: He's quite chivalrous even in a crisis.
• Spider-Sense: In Season 4, thanks to his extensive wormhole research and the knowledge in his brain, he's able to accurately predict when and where a wormhole will open. As he says, he can smell them.
  • Even before this he gains the wormhole knowledge, Crichton is shown in "Till the Blood Runs Clear" to have a great sense of where and when the conditions that can cause a wormhole to form.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: When they finally do get back to Earth near the end of season 4, Crichton finds himself disgusted and disillusioned with the post-9/11 paranoia and lack of understanding he and the crew encounter, clashes with his father over it, and decides to leave again on Moya. He still saves his home planet, but decides once and for all that it's no longer his home.
• Success Through Insanity: In-universe. Crichton freely admits the reason his plans tend to work, is because they are so insane, no-one could possibly prepare for what he does.
• Token Human: Justified because no human has ever reached the part of the galaxy where the series takes place before Crichton, and his doing so was an accident. Thanks to a Human Alien being the most populous in the region pretty much nobody notices.
• Took a Level in Badass: He takes multiple levels of badass over all four seasons: he starts out as a clueless nerd, and by series end is so badass he manages to intimidate two entire galactic empires into leaving him the frell alone by threatening to wipe out the universe. THE ENTIRE FREAKING UNIVERSE! And what makes it badass is he can absolutely pull it off.
• Tuneless Song of Madness: Crichton has a habit of singing compulsively when shipboard sanity drops to new lows, either in an attempt to hang onto his sense of self or simply as a sign of embracing the madness.
• Underestimating Badassery: Crichton gets dumped on a lot for being a member of a "primitive" species, but it's easy to overlook that John is actually a genius inventor and engineer as well as a peak physical specimen for his species. Whereas others have a familiarity with the technology due to a lifetime of experience, John is smart enough to pick up the basics on the fly pretty quickly and understands the basic sciences of the universe and how they apply everywhere. John is basically single handidly saves the crew practically every episode in the first season due to his wits and inginuity.
• Uniqueness Value: Scorpius summarizes his reason for hunting Crichton as this: the wormhole knowledge locked away in Crichton's mind makes him the single most valuable being in the universe.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Aeryn, for a long, long time.
• The Watson: He's completely ignorant about the greater universe. Much of the exposition is the rest of the crew explaining stuff to him.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Given how much his father gushes over Crichton becoming a bonafide American hero, it's implied he continued with the launch of Farscape One, despite his own misgivings that something would happen, so not to let him down.
  Crichton: I'm not your kind of hero, dad.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: His Evil Brit accent, adopted while impersonating a Peacekeeper. Any time Crichton tries to assume a different accent to his natural Southern one, the results will be hilarious. Given the way Translator Microbes work it's not clear if this is even necessary, but as usual nobody bothers to tell Crichton that.
• You Fight Like a Cow: Crichton loves to make fun of his opponents — even if they don't know enough about Earthling pop culture to understand how they're being insulted.

Talyn's Crichton

• Badass Minds Think Alike: With Moya's Crichton whenever they're not butting heads on who the original is.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Doesn't take Talyn's attempts to hook Aeryn up with Crais too well.
• Decoy Protagonist: He retains the original Crichton's outfit and pulse pistol, hooks up with Aeryn first, and his episodes are more serialized and dramatic than Moya's, leading the audience to assume that even if he's no more the original than Moya's Crichton, he's still the more important one. Which makes his death hit just as hard as it would if the original Crichton died.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: While he isn't completely forgotten since he's the biological father of Aeryn's child, after his death and the subsequent reunion everyone but Aeryn talks about him as if he were the clone when he and Moya's Crichton had an equal claim to being the original.
• Headbutting Heroes: At first with Moya's Crichton except when the chips were down, and then with Crais sometimes even then. Given that he never reached an understanding with his Harvey like Moya's Crichton did, Talyn's Crichton might just be more confrontational overall.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He sacrifices himself to prevent the Scarrans from escaping with wormhole technology.
• Only Sane Man: Amongst Talyn's crew, relatively speaking in the face of Rygel's greed, Stark's general insanity and Crais's Control Freak nature.
• Properly Paranoid: Not exactly. While he correctly figured Crais spared Xhalax, it wasn't for the reason he thought it was.
• Take Up My Sword: Posthumously tells Moya's Crichton not to trust Scorpius.

Aeryn

Officer Aeryn Sun

"No offense, human, but what could I possibly need from you?"

Played By: Claudia Black

"You and the others are trying to get home avoiding Peacekeeper territories. My home is Peacekeeper territories; it's just that I can't ever go back there. Ever."

A Sebacean Peacekeeper involved during the initial attempt to recapture Moya when she first escaped, Aeryn dared to speak up on Crichton's behalf when Crais captured them and was condemned as a criminal herself, forcing her to abandon the Peacekeepers and throw herself in with the escaped convicts.

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• Ace Pilot: When Aeryn first appears in the series it's as the pilot of a Prowler, the Peacekeepers' front-line Space Fighter. And she's good, if not the best pilot we see in the entire series, even capable of manually flying Moya with astonishing agility and precision. The only character in the series who has come close to matching her is Crichton himself, and only because of his more extensive experience flying in an atmosphere. But even then, in an earnest dogfight Aeryn's overall skill would win out.
• Action Girl: One of the most badass characters in the series. Even by the end of the series, she's still the toughest character on the show. While D'Argo's technically stronger, it's a still toss who would win in a straight fight...heavily leaning towards Aeryn.
• Action Girlfriend: In the early phase of the series. By Season 3, she and Crichton are a bona fide Battle Couple.
• Arc Words: Crichton's declaration to her in the pilot.
  Crichton: You can be more.
• The Atoner: for parts of seasons 1 and 2, most notably "The Way We Weren't."
• Bizarre Alien Biology: As a Sebacean, Aeryn can't regulate her internal body temperature and suffers from Sebacean Heat Delirium, a degenerative condition that results in memory damage and eventually brain death, if it gets too hot.
• Book Dumb: Has an intense dislike for "scientific dren," which is apparently due to her training; apparently, Peacekeeper soldiers and pilots are taught to look down on technicians and scientists. Inverted in later episodes, when it's revealed Aeryn has an eidetic memory and can memorize whole languages just by watching TV.
• Braids of Action: One of her hairstyles.
• Broken Bird: Not only does Aeryn have everything she's ever known taken away from her in the very first episode, she eventually starts to realize how terrible being a Peacekeeper was. Various other terrible crap keeps happening to her as the series goes on.
• Break the Haughty: She starts out the series as a Peacekeeper soldier part of an elitist and militaristic empire. Through the series, once she is abandoned by her people and sees the horrors that they have inflicted on other planets, she begins to learn how to be compassionate and empathetic towards others.
• Deadpan Snarker: She likes mocking the stupidity of others, especially Crichton.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Although even once the process is complete, it's hard to tell unless you're a close friend. Or a small, cute child.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Her hair is a good indicator of her character arc. If things are going well for her she'll leave her hair loose, but during times of trauma she'll revert to the Peacekeepers' traditional slicked-back ponytail or braid.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Chiana and Sikozu.
• Friend to All Children: Has a soft spot for children. Her storyline in "Suns and Lovers" is about her rescuing children trapped on a damaged space station.
• Hates Being Alone: While it may seem surprising at first given her hostile exterior, she points out in "DNA Mad Scientist" that she spent her entire life growing up amongst the Peacekeepers surrounded by people like her at all times. This leaves her with a desire to find a place she can fit in.
• Human Aliens: It's suggested here and there throughout the series that Sebaceans may be humans who were taken from Earth millennia ago. Eventually confirmed in The Peacekeeper Wars.
• Instant Birth: Just Add Labor!: Played with. Her son's birth is very long and drawn out by Sebacean standards, but very quick by human ones; she barely stops shooting.
• Interspecies Romance: With Crichton.
• The Lancer: Aside from being the second lead character, Aeryn is usually Crichton's most trusted confidant.
• Like Mother, Like Daughter: Both Aeryn and her mother fell in love with a fellow Peacekeeper, but ultimately betrayed them. However, while Aeryn betrayed her lover to return to duty as a Prowler pilot, Xhalax was given a Sadistic Choice.^note When her superiors learned she violated Peacekeeper policy by choosing to have a child with a fellow soldier out of love — and more importantly, telling her child the truth of her origins — she was ordered to kill either her child or her lover. She chose to save her daughter's life.
• Literal Transformative Experience: Her mutation in "DNA Mad Scientist" shapes her character development away from being a lonely Peacekeeper exile to a well-rounded member of the crew, and strengthens her bond of friendship with Crichton and Pilot.
• Love at First Punch: Ever tried introducing yourself to a woman whose thighs are clamped around your skull?
• Love Interest: To Crichton.
• Master of the Mixed Message: She keeps flirting with Crichton only to claim that she's not interested in him. Part of this is her own emotional confusion, and part is the Culture Clash from how casually Peacekeeper culture treats recreational sex but forbids actual relationships.
• Mook–Face Turn: She's forced out of the Peacekeepers by Crais in the first episode and helps the heroes fight against them.
• Pregnant Badass: Technically this for the last few episodes of season three and all of season four, but the pregnancy was in stasis during that time. By the last half of Peacekeepr Wars she's heavily pregnant and shooting bad guys right up to the delivery. She'd probably have continued the shooting if John hadn't forced her to put the gun down.
• Proud Warrior Race Girl: At first, she's very proud of Peacekeeper military achievements and her role as a Peacekeeper Officer. This changes when she realizes how horrible the Peacekeepers actually are.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Aeryn has long black hair and fair skin. She has no shortage of suitors, from her main love interest and eventual husband John Crichton to Crais (though he leans more towards Abhorrent Admirer), former lovers from her time as a Peacekeeper, and even members of the nobility of a Sebacean empire powerful enough that even the Peacekeepers accepted their neutrality and independence after they broke away centuries ago.
• Single Tear: This is a talent of Claudia Black's, who trained herself to drop tears on cue so as not to ruin her water-based makeup. Averted, however, when she is completely and utterly grief-stricken.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: With Crichton. It's not uncommon for the two of them to start coming on to one another in the middle of an argument.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: That pulse rifle is almost bigger than she is.
• The Spock: She was raised to see emotions as a weakness.
• The Stoic: She very rarely shows her emotions.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Can go from being really warm to a ruthless Peacekeepr in a heartbeat.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Officer Aeryn Sun, Special Peacekeeper Commando, Icarion Company, Pleisar Regiment.
• Tsundere: She keeps claiming that she's not interested in Crichton despite the fact that both of them are obviously in love with one another.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Crichton, for a long time.
• Unscrupulous Hero: Shot down a woman in cold blood even before finding out she was a projection created by Maldis, shocking even Rygel of all people. Not to mention subjecting an already subdued Crais to the Aurora chair.
• Vapor Wear: Full-blown in the first-season episode "Back and Back and Back to the Future" and when dressed as a hippie in "Kansas", but her season two look where she rarely wears anything under her jerkin also bares a lot of skin.
• Who's Your Daddy?: When she discovers she's pregnant towards the end of season three it's not immediately clear who the father is. Peacekeepr genetic modifications mean the embryo could have been in stasis since before the series began and she met Crichton. She's eventually able to find a surgeon who can release the baby from stasis and genetically test it which confirms Crichton is in fact the father.

Zhaan

Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan

"Am I the only species in creation that doesn't thrive on conflict?"

Played By: Virginia Hey

A Delvian criminal-turned-priestess, she was imprisoned aboard Moya for the murder of her lover, a Sebacean sympathiser.

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• All-Loving Hero: As long as you don't do something stupid... like threaten her adoptive family.
• The Atoner: Once a savage, she has sought to purge her sins from her soul.
• Badass Preacher: Zhaan is a peace-loving Delvian priestess when we meet her. However, she was imprisoned on Moya for a reason (for killing her lover) and, as she says to Chiana, "My dear, I've kicked more ass than you've sat on."
• Bald Mystic: One would think this is due to the Delvians being descended from plants. It turns out there are Delvians who do have hair (it's blue if you're wondering), though baldness isn't uncommon. It's unclear if Zhaan is naturally hairless or shaves it off, but it does fit with her priestess background.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She is very nice, sometimes bordering on Technical Pacifist levels. She could also break you in half if she wanted to. Be thankful she doesn't. Most of the time.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Zhaan is a Delvian. Delvians are a species of hyper-evolved, sentient plants, who look like blue, scaly-skinned humanoids. And their females have breasts, for some reason. They also absorb ionic radiation (such as solar flares) and orgasm as a result of doing so, and have Psychic Powers.
• Chrome Dome Psi: She has psychic powers and is completely bald, which is not universal among Delvians.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Zhaan was held by the Peacekeepers because of a murder charge and unlike other captives, she actually did do it. It was her time in captivity that saw her become a priest.
• Deathly Unmasking: Zhaan spends the first few episodes of season 3 wearing a shawl over her head to hide the lesions that have begun to appear as her terminal illness worsens and the crew struggle to find a planet where she can recuperate. In the finale of "Self-Inflicted Wounds Part 2," she opts to be the one to disconnect the Pathfinder ship from Moya, an act that will end with her being flung into the wormhole to her death. The others protest, but Zhaan explains she's past all hope of being cured by now, removing her shawl to show the horribly infected sores on her skull. As such, Zhaan experiences her Obi-Wan Moment bare-head.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: When the show started, the production crew had trouble with the lightning and as a result, the makeup for Zhaan looked much grayer than it was supposed to be, as opposed to the eye-popping blue she would later become.
• Empathic Healer: Usually by literally absorbing the pain of others into herself. Note that this is just for pain, actual healing needs to be done by conventional methods.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Being a priestess either trained or enhanced her psionic powers. She explicitly leveled up in her first focus episode.
• Fantastic Arousal: She gets "photogasms" when exposed to solar flares or other suitably bright light.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: She's blue, and the show's main source of fanservice early on.
• Happy Place: Zhaan has a habit of going into trance-like prayer whenever she's even the least perturbed. (Rygel lampshades this at one point.)
  Chiana: (as Moya is targeted by lots of defensive satellites) We need to do something!
  Zhaan: Tia nia maya coza, tia nia maya coza
  Chiana: Something useful!
• The Heart: Zhaan has pacifistic inclinations and is not always helpful during combat situations. She does subvert this fairly often though, as she will fight to protect the crew.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In "Dream A Better Dream," she attempts to plead guilty to save Chiana and Rygel from the consequences of defending her in court — key word being attempts: the two have her gagged and go on to win the day despite the odds stacked against them.
  • Early in Season 3, she gives most of her remaining life span to revive Aeryn from near death.
  • A few episodes into Season 3, she gives her life to save Moya.
• Hypocrite: She makes several snide remarks toward Aeryn in "The Way We Weren't" after learning of her murder of Moya's previous pilot. This is despite the fact that she once cut off Pilot's arm and, unlike the other former prisoners, was arrested by Peacekeepers for murder.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl:
  • Zhaan belongs to a species with no nudity taboo. She does wear clothes most of the time, though her nude scenes are often quite abrupt.
  • A Tavlek prisoner flashes her once, clearly trying to shock her. Instead she merely remarks "quite respectable for your age," queries him on whether nudity is taboo in his culture, then loses her robe, baring everything.
• Ms. Fanservice: Her species has no nudity taboo, she tends to dress in revealing clothing and has a couple of partial nude scenes. However, she is more of the "sensual" kind of Fanservice, elegant and graceful. Chiana has the hyper-sexualized part.
• Obi-Wan Moment: She spends her last moments reassuring the crew that they'll do fine without her.
• The Only Believer: She's the only main character who actually has an principled ideological commitment to fighting the Peacekeepers.
• Plant Aliens: Despite looking like reptilian humanoids, thanks to their scaly skin, Delvians officially evolved from plants.
• The Professor: She's a skilled biologist and chemist, and is often relied upon to provide scientific solutions to the problem at hand — when she's not conjuring mystical solutions, of course.
• Prison Changes People: Zhaan eventually reveals that she is a positive example of this: having been reduced to "a savage" by the assassination of her lover and mentor Bitaal, she was imprisoned by the Peacekeepers and — because of her violent behavior — spent most of her sentence in solitary. However, after seventeen years alone, she was gradually able to submerge her darker impulses, resume her study of the Delvian Seek, and eventually emerge from captivity as the All-Loving Hero we first encounter in the pilot episode.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Apparently no one bothered to test that blue pigment before smearing it all over Virginia Hey; her departure was due to health problems caused by the makeup.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes turn red when she is upset. And when Zhaan snaps, people get hurt.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The peace-loving blue priest to D'Argo's hotheaded red warrior. Literally — Zhaan wears blue robes and has blue skin, while D'Argo's armor and hair are shades of red. Zigzagged as their backgrounds are revealed: when Zhaan was first sentenced to life in prison some eighty years ago, she was a psychotic terrorist, while before D'Argo came aboard Moya he was settling down to life as a farmer with the woman he loved — before being framed for her murder. Prison changed them both.
• The Smart Girl: The smartest member of the crew during the first half of the show.
• Statuesque Stunner: Virginia Hey is quite tall.
• Team Mom: Actually refers to the crew as her children as she is dying.
• Violence Really Is the Answer: The universe really likes forcing her to breach her pacifism and then rewarding her for it, especially in "Look at the Princess" and all her encounters with Maldis.
• You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: When she gets pissed off, she gets pissed off.
• Your Worst Memory: Murdering her lover as vengeance for becoming a dictator and selling out Delvia to the Peacekeepers — a memory she reluctantly shares with Crichton in "Rhapsody In Blue."

D'Argo

Ka D'Argo

"I will not be taken prisoner again!"

Played By: Anthony Simcoe

A male Luxan warrior who was sentenced to imprisonment for the crime of killing his Sebacean wife, a crime actually committed by his brother-in-law and the truth of which was ignored for his having dared to marry a Sebacean and have a half-breed child.

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• Ancestral Weapon: D'Argo's Qualta Blade was passed down to him by his great-grandfather.
• Beard of Barbarism: Luxans are the setting's resident Proud Warrior Race, and one of the male Luxans' most distinctive features is a beard made up of a mixture of braided hair and tattooed tentacles.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: His Overly-Long Tongue can inject a neurotoxin which causes Instant Sedation. Mostly used for laughs, usually on Crichton.
• BFG: The Qualta Blade. Its gun form is three times the size of a pulse rifle.
• BFS: The Qualta Blade again. It has two wide blades and is meant to be wielded two-handed by a Luxan, who are typically several heads taller than the average Sebacean.
• The Big Guy: Taller than the rest of the crew and the one most likely to use violence to solve problems, but loyal to a fault.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: As a Luxan, D'Argo has an extendable tongue that can inject a neural toxin, he can survive in space unprotected for fifteen minutes, and if he starts bleeding, the wound requires Percussive Maintenance until the blood runs clear. He also has more than one heart.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: After he lets the bravado fade and starts acting like his real self, he's actually a pretty soft-hearted guy. This is mostly due to the fact that in early episodes, he expected imminent recapture, which he vowed he would never suffer again. In the early episodes of the first series, he often showed willingness to betray John and Aeryn to the Peacekeepers if it ensured his continued freedom. As his relationships grew with his shipmates and they continued to elude capture, he began to show he'd gladly put himself in great danger to protect his friends and rescue them.
• Call to Agriculture: D'Argo managed it for a while with Lo'Laan and Jothee, and spends the entire series trying to get back to it.
• The Captain: Of Lo'Lah. In addition, the crew elect him captain of Moya during Season 4.
• Characterization Marches On: He began the series as basically a Worf Expy: a gruff, no-nonsense, violent, honor-bound Proud Warrior Race Guy. It isn't until "Through The Looking Glass," when the post-victory celebration features him cracking jokes over past romantic indiscretions and cheekily taking the cup out of Crichton's hand during a toast, that he first becomes recognizably D'Argo: the sarcastic, fun-loving, abrasive Bruiser with a Soft Center fans know and love. By the end of the season, he's charging into battle with remarks like "if you can be an idiot, I can be an idiot!" and responding to dense jungle with "Even my allergies have allergies!" To the writers' credit, they worked hard at the Character Development to bridge the two characterizations. And it makes total sense: at the start he's fearful of being recaptured and doesn't trust any of his shipmates, and he's very young for his race and wearing false rank tattoos. He's playing up the proud, angry, dangerous Luxan warrior everyone expects to see to keep people at a distance. As the crew bonds and grow closer, he drops the act and starts showing his softer, more vulnerable sides.
• Cool Starship: Lo'Lah, a voice-activated Luxan ship which can turn invisible.
• The Comically Serious: While D'Argo is Not So Above It All once he loosens up, he still has perhaps the most serious demeanor of the crew. Which also makes him one of the funniest members of the cast. Especially with Simcoe's talent for performing some quite ridiculous scenes in D'Argo's very straight deadpan.
• Deadpan Snarker: He loves making fun of how stupid Crichton's plans can be.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Male version, towards Crichton. Initially D'Argo despised Crichton due to the fact that John looked exactly like the Peacekeepers that kept him prisoner for years. Eventually Crichton was able to get through to him by rationalizating that while they may not be friends, they could at least be allies. This softened D'Argo enough so that he was able to drop his guard and eventually warm up to Crichton. By the second season they are practically inseparable, and Crichton eventually declares D'Argo as the best friend he's ever had.
• Domestic Abuse: He may have beaten his wife in the midst of his Luxan Hyper-rages — but because Luxans black out during their the rages, he's unsure whether or not it actually happened. Lo'Laan may have never told him because he had vowed that he would leave immediately should he ever hurt her, while her brother Macton, with all the usual Peacekeeper prejudices, was hardly a reliable source.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: When the show started, the production crew had trouble with the lighting and as a result, the makeup for D'Argo looked much paler, fleshier, and blander than it was supposed to. During the first season, he looks almost Twinkie-colored at times. The prosthetics were extensively redesigned for the second season giving him darker, more weathered skin and a subtly revised facial structure. He also had green eyes for the first few episodes until Anthony Simcoe injured his eye. The crew decided to drop the contact lenses and just use Simcoe's natural eye color.
• Fantastic Racism: Towards Sebaceans and Peacekeepers after his imprisonment. This forms a large part of his hostility towards John, as he despised John early on due to his resemblance to the species that imprisoned him for so long.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Crichton. D'Argo thinks of Crichton as a huge liability until John saves him from the Vorcarian bloodtrackers in "Till the Blood Runs Clear".
• Frame-Up: As his backstory is revealed, it turns out he was framed for the murder of his wife... by her own brother, who was also the one who actually killed her.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: A given due to his Luxan Hyper-rage. That he's still susceptible to them in the beginning of the show is a sign of just how young he is by Luxan standards; adults learn to control it, which he accomplishes over the course of the show.
• Heartbroken Badass: His wife was murdered by his brother-in-law. And again when Chiana responds to his marriage proposal by cheating on D'Argo with his son Jothee.
• Heroic Sacrifice: After being severely injured in the miniseries, he stays behind to delay approaching Scarran forces.
• Hidden Depths: On the surface, he's The Big Guy and a no-nonsense Proud Warrior Race Guy. Many characters automatically assume he and all Luxans are primitive, backwards savages, and intellectually inferior. As the series goes on, we learn that despite his tough guy exterior, D'Argo is really a Bruiser with a Soft Center. He can be incredibly empathic and sensitive, he wants nothing more than to hang up his weapon and retire to a quiet farm, he's deeply spiritual, and a skilled craftsman capable of building a musical instrument with nothing but the scraps he finds on Moya (and can actually play the thing with considerable skill). He has a good head for tactics, has demonstrated an astute political accumen after some tutoring from Rygel, and while he may not be up to the level of Crichton and Jool (both of whom are exceptional even among species for whom being The Smart Guy is essentially their Hat) he's nonetheless quite intelligent. He also has a superb sense of humor once he begins to open up to the others.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: D'Argo is much larger than Chiana.
• I Have No Son!: When Jothee and Chiana have an affair, an enraged and heartbroken D'Argo disowns him. The two eventually begin to reconcile before D'Argo's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: His Qualta Blade. It's a sword and a gun in one.
• Interspecies Romance: His long-deceased wife Lo'Laan was Sebacean. In the series proper he has a tumultuous relationship with Chiana, a Nebari. Space Pirate Staanz tries to put the moves on him when she meets him, but fails, in part because she's rather annoying and in part because, well, she looks a lot like a male Human Alien.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For most of the first season, D'Argo has a habit of letting his temper make everyone around him miserable; he begins to grow out of it towards the season finale, but it's not until the second season that he really loosens up.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: With Lo'Laan, a Sebacean. Her own brother killed her to put a stop to it, framing D'Argo for the murder, and selling their half-Luxan son Jothee into slavery.
• Mangst: The Peacekeepers framed him for the murder of his wife and sold his son into slavery, and D'Argo spends the first few seasons brooding on his inability to avenge Lo'Laan and get his son back. Deconstructed when he finally does manage to reunite with Jothee, as D'Argo's angst then shifts to the fact that neither Jothee nor Chiana actually want the peaceful farming life D'Argo pines for.
• Meaningful Name: By proxy. Moya isn't the Argo, but the parallels, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits on a ship-bound voyage, are there. In Season 3, D'Argo acquires a ship that ultimately saves his life more than once and greatly calms anger brought on by other events. In Season 4, he has given it a very appropriate name:
  D'Argo: Lo'Lah... It's short for Lo'Laan. In memory of my wife.
• Miscarriage of Justice: D'Argo was framed for the murder of his Sebacean wife by brother-in-law Macton, a Peacekeeper and the actual murderer. To make it even worse, Crais (his de-facto jailer) knew this was the case and kept him in chains anyway.
• Morph Weapon: A purely mechanical example: D'Argo's Qualta Blade is a broadsword which can be converted into a pulse rifle, with the blade splitting down the middle.
• The Nose Knows: His sense of smell is both very strong and able to distinguish between individuals.
• Once an Episode: D'Argo stomping onto the bridge and bellowing, "Why have we stopped moving?"
• Overly-Long Tongue: With a stinger in it! That causes Instant Sedation!
• Papa Wolf: D'Argo will go to any lengths to save his long-lost son Jothee.
• Phony Veteran: While D'Argo did serve in the military he has the rank of General tattooed on his face tentacles, despite not earning the rank. He tells Crichton he only had them applied to deceive an enemy force that had captured him and his superior, as he was injured and likely wouldn't have survived interrogation if D'Argo hadn't taken his place.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Though it gets subverted at every opportunity. D'Argo is a teenager by Luxan standards, trying to live up to the idealized image of the Luxan warrior even though all he really wants to do is start a farm and raise a family. As the series progresses, a lot of his stereotypical Proud Warrior Race Guy attitudes mellow out, allowing him to be more of a Team Dad.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The impetuous, violent red to Zhaan's tranquil, meditative blue, both visually and in terms of personality. Zigzagged, however, once their backgrounds are revealed: D'Argo just wanted to settle down to a life of farming with his wife and may have been framed for his supposed crime, while Zhaan found her peace in prison after murdering her spiritual mentor and being arrested as Delvia's "leading anarchist".
• Shipped in Shackles: For the first three seasons he has prominent rings attached to his collarbones that are the result of this. The Peacekeepers kept him chained to the walls of his cell, evidentally out of fear that he'd enter Hyper-rage and attack them. He eventually has the rings surgically removed during the "Into the Lion's Den" two-parter.
• Team Dad: D'Argo eventually takes on this role, to the point where he is elected Captain of Moya.
• Tentacle Hair: Being a Luxan, he has both hair and tentacles on his head. He also has tentacles on his chin like other males, which are apparently some kind of sex organ and very sensitive.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Early D'Argo was pretty much an expy of Worf- a gruff, serious member of a Proud Warrior race. As time went on he became more easy going and laid back, with his main characterization being how his silly antics and personality clashed with his imposing frame and stature.
• Trigger-Happy: D'Argo loves shooting things.
• Unstoppable Rage: The aptly-named Luxan Hyper-rage, although doesn't experience this often in the series. Deconstructed in that while it makes Luxans incredibly dangerous in battle, it's not viewed as a point of pride so much as something to be overcome and fallen back upon only as a last resort.
• Warrior Poet: D'Argo's surprisingly sensitive and philosophical for a character who initially appears to be a straightforward Proud Warrior Race Guy. He's a hell of a musician and wants more than anything to return to the family and farm life the Peacekeepers took from him.
• The Worf Effect: As The Big Guy, this job often falls to D'Argo in the early episodes. Not as often as the Trope Namer as the series continues, and he usually creams the bad guys in a brawl. Near the end, Scarrans give him significant trouble, but then again, Scarrans give everyone trouble.
• Your Worst Memory: D'Argo does not treasure the memory of his early days on Moya, given that he was chained to the ceiling via his collar bones, and the sense of loss and injustice only made things worse. Macton tries to imprison him in a memory of the cell in "Mental As Anything".

Pilot

Pilot

"When one of my species is bonded to a Leviathan, we give our lives to the service of others. Ship first, then those who travel aboard her."

Voiced By: Lani Tupu

A member of an alien species that can only travel by being physically and mentally bonded to the biomechanoid ships known as Leviathans. As Moya's Pilot, he directs her in their travels through the stars.

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• All of the Other Reindeer: The Elders told him he was not ready to become a Pilot, forcing him to take matters into his own hands.
• And I Must Scream: After Moya's first Pilot was disposed of, our Pilot was implanted to replace her, but because the Peacekeeper techs didn't have time for him to bond with Moya naturally, they connected him through artificial means. Until "The Way We Weren't," he was in constant pain, which he once described as "unbearable." The crew was understandably stunned that he had spent years like this without telling anyone.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Shy, retiring, and subservient... at least until you push him too far; not only does Pilot have control over Moya's life-support systems, but his claws are more than capable of crushing a Sebacean throat at close range. There are quite a few episodes in the series that show just how dangerous he can be when angered: in "The Way We Weren't," he almost strangles Aeryn to death and disconnects the life-support systems in a fit of rage; in "Suns And Lovers," he flushes a terrorist out an airlock while laughing psychotically. And in "The Peacekeeper Wars", he consents to building a Weapon of Mass Destruction for Crichton.
• Butt-Monkey: The crisis of the week usually results in Pilot suffering something extremely painful at the hands of the Monster of the Week, and ”The Way We Weren’t” reveals that, until that episode, he was in constant pain already. Early episodes also had most of the crew yell at him, and on one occasion cut off his arm.
• Deadpan Snarker: He doesn't always put up with the bull the crew try to feed him.
• Driven to Suicide: Attempts this in The Way We Weren't, when the reason he became Moya's Pilot catches up to him.
• Everyone Calls Him Pilot: His species's language is too complex for translator microbes to understand. As such, everyone calls him (and other Pilots) by his profession.
• Freak Out: In “Natural Election” after a space plant starts growing inside him and “The Way We Weren’t” after learning Aeryn killed Moya’s previous Pilot.
• Happiness in Slavery: Given that he's being allowed to explore the universe, Pilot is willing to accept a lot of abuse from his passengers over the course of his duties; it doesn't mean he's happy with poor treatment as such, but he can live with it. That said, there are some things which Pilot isn't willing to tolerate... He's also a literal slave to Moya, since as he is bonded with her, it means he literally cannot leave his chambers without dying himself. In fact, its mentioned that his species lifespan is several times that of Leviathans, but Pilot sees himself losing entire centuries to wander the stars as a totally acceptable trade. On top of that, the crew do come to appreciate him more over time, to the extent that when they learn the circumstances of Pilot's original bonding with Moya left him with considerable pain, they help him form a more natural link to her even knowing this will give Pilot more limited control for a time because they conclude that he deserves a proper bond with Moya.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Pilot desperately wanted to be bonded to a Leviathan and explore the stars, something which is a rare honor among his species. To do this, Pilot made a deal with the Peacekeepers to replace Moya's current (uncooperative) Pilot- even though he knew it would result in her execution.
• Insistent Terminology: Often refers to Aeryn and Crichton by their rank, being "Officer Sun" and "Commander" respectively, even though Aeryn is a traitor to the Peacekeepers and Crichton is presumed dead by IASA.
• I Thought Everyone Could Do That: Casually mentions to John that he can see the "bubble" surrounding an emerging wormhole and is surprised to learn that nobody else can.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Happens occasionally when Moya has been compromised in some way, like in “They’ve Got a Secret”.
• Mr. Exposition: Lampshaded by Crichton resignedly answering to one of Pilot's alerts. "Yes, Mr. Bad News?"
• Multi-Armed Multitasking: His multiple arms allow him to use Moya's complex pilot interface. And play the drums.
• Odd Friendship: With Aeryn. She's the first member of the crew to really bond with him, even though their personalities are quite different. It helps that a mad scientist infuses her with Pilot's DNA in an early episode. The editing in "Natural Election" implies that Pilot was the one person that voted for Aeryn to become captain of Moya.
• Only Sane Man: Can sometimes take this role when on-board sanity takes a dive; becomes a frequent role in season three, when he has to end up trying to keep the crew from killing each other due to Cabin Fever and frustration over Crichton's wormhole hunt.
• Servile Snarker: Pilot's sworn to obey any order from the crew that doesn't endanger Moya. It doesn't mean that he can't make fun of the stupid ones. He gets a particularly good jab in after the crew trade one of his arms for coordinates that turn out to be unusable.
  Pilot: It appears your crystal is useless. Lucky for you, you didn't trade anything of real value to get it.
• The Smart Guy: Though the episode "Thank God It's Friday... Again" shows that Pilot, knowing that he can't contribute much else to the crew, works his ass off in order to be the team's Smart Guy.
  Pilot: I don't get out much, so I read.
• Starfish Aliens: Has one of the more alien designs in the series. The Henson Company's skill with creating animatronic puppets really helps.
• Starfish Language: His species' native language is so dense that translator microbes cannot properly convey the amount of meaning being communicated. He has to make a deliberate effort to speak slowly enough for those around him to understand.
• Wetware CPU: He regulates most of Moya's functions.
• You Sound Familiar: Pilot is voiced by Lani Tupu, who also plays Captain Crais.

Rygel

Dominar Rygel XVI

"If you must address me, do so as Your Supreme Eminence. Which you should be doing anyway."

Played By: John Eccleston, Sean Masterson, Tim Mieville, Matt McCoy, Mario Halouvas & Fiona Gentle

Voiced By: Jonathan Hardy

Once the Dominar of the Hynerian Empire, ruler of over six hundred billion subjects, Rygel was deposed by a cousin of his and sent into Peacekeeper custody over a hundred cycles before the start of the series.

---

• Aborted Arc: At the start of the series, the plan was that we would one day see him take back his throne from his traitorous cousin. However, after an episode with just one other Hynerian puppet caused endless problems, the crew realized they'd never be able to handle a whole planet of them. Luckily, this plot thread does get wrapped up in the comics, which had no such restrictions.
• Alien Catnip: He gets high on sugar.
  Rygel: Crichton, how illegal is this dren? You have to get me more. I don't care what it costs!
• Anti-Hero: At first, Rygel only cares about himself and flat out betrays the crew to Scorpius at the end of Season 1, and only returns when he learns that Scorpius plans on killing him anyway. Rygel eventually becomes less selfish and starts to care for the crew, though he would never admit it.
• Beware the Silly Ones: While normally overlooked due to his cowardice, greed, and short stature, Rygel can be incredibly vicious (moreso than usual) and frighteningly violent when under pressure:
  • He shows some very nasty teeth and a temper to match when he bites a chunk out of Aeryn's arm and messily swallows it.
  • After killing Durka, he spends the rest of an episode parading around with the dead man's head on a stick.
  • He also messily tortures a Charrid to death and spends an entire episode fending off a small army of them with a turret emplacement.
  • He allows Orrhn to be sucked out into the vacuum of space, despite her pleadings for mercy after attempting to abduct him.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: At just under two feet high, Rygel is broadly humanoid, but he has three stomachs, can breathe water, and farts helium when nervous or angry (which, being a noble gas, basically means he has a nuclear reactor in his guts). Also, his bodily fluids turn explosive if he eats tanna root, the main ingredient of the chakan oil which powers Peacekeeper pulse weapons. In "A Clockwork Nebari", his higher metabolism means he burns through the "Mental Cleansing" drugs almost immediately.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: He comments in one first season episode that his people aren't "body breeders" while Zhaan is trying to seduce him. A couple of episodes later, he comments on his belief in keeping his wives pregnant. So, however Hynerians reproduce, it evidently isn't quite as simple as "females lay eggs, males spray semen on eggs", despite his frog-like nature.
• Big Eater: He has three stomachs and the appetite to go with them.
  Crichton: Dude eats and craps twice his body weight every day.
• Break the Haughty: Often subjected to this sort of thing, especially in the first season, which could feature anything from hostage situations to literally peeing fire; ultimately, it forces him to start cooperating with the others and actually become a better person — not that he'd ever admit it.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The main reason the rest of the crew didn't space the selfish little git in the first month? He's an extremely skilled negotiator, often making sure the crew gets the supplies they need on their shoestring budget.
• The Caligula: Heavily implied to be the very reason he was deposed in the first place... not that his cousin was much of an improvement.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Though he eventually shows some loyalty, for a few seasons his tendency to stab the rest of the cast in the back is so reliable it borders on being a Just Eat Gilligan scenario.
• Compact Infiltrator: Rygel is only twenty-six inches tall, and frequently exploits his diminutive stature to sneak through Moya's ventilation system, hence how he managed to break D'Argo and Zhaan out of their cells in the first place. Other episodes feature him being press-ganged into helping the larger members of the crew with infiltration: in "I, ET," he's the only member of Moya's crew who can fit through an extremely small hatch to disable the Peacekeeper beacon; in "Exodus From Genesis," D'Argo literally throws him into a vent so he can covertly investigate the Drak infestation of Moya; and in "Liars, Guns, And Money Part 1," Rygel is smuggled into the Shadow Depository vault while disguised as a statuette, allowing him to sneak through the hatchways in the containers and swap the dud deposit with a more valuable account.
• Cool Chair: His "Throne Sled", a gilded chair that floats.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Some episodes play up his cowardliness, greed and fart jokes, but then he does something like knife a Charrid to death as painfully as possible.
• Demoted to Extra: Ultimately downplayed since he is still around for the most of it, but other than having to carry John's and Aeryn's baby for a while (which ultimately didn't add anything in the context of the mini series and could easily have been skipped), he doesn't really do anything during The Pacekeeper Wars beyond being in the background.
• Dirty Old Man: Apparently several centuries old, more-than-middled aged by Hynerian standards, and more than willing to spy on Chiana having sex with Jothee. He objects to seeing Zhaan naked, though.
• Do You Want to Haggle?: Rygel is the crew's go-to for procuring supplies.
• Ear Ache: Rygel's shipmates routinely pull on his ear brows when displeased with him; given how sensitive these are, this qualifies as his species' equivalent of a Groin Attack.
• Everyone Has Standards: When he discovers a primitive world that his ancestor set up to create people who would slavishly worship his lineage as gods, he's quite perturbed and insists on telling them the truth. This despite his usually arrogant and self-serving nature. He's perfectly fine with the idea that they'll serve him as his subjects but worshipping him as a god offends him (even before he figures out that his lack of actual godly power makes this personally dangerous for him).
• The Face: For all that he can be an abrasive Jerkass, Rygel is a former monarch, and thus quite skilled at the arts of diplomacy, negotiation, and intrigue. Best shown in the "Look At The Princess" trilogy, where Rygel quickly moves to become a valued advisor to the Queen, working to the advantge of himself and the rest of the crew. On the aptly-named Royal Planet, Rygel is in his element for possibly the first time in the series.
• Fantastic Arousal: His "ear brows" are very... sensitive.
• Friend in the Black Market: Let's just say, he knows how to get things that aren't exactly legal.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: The only reason that the rest of the crew bother keeping him on Moya is because he's incredibly good negotiator for the things they need and because he was the mastermind of their escape. Suffice it to say that it takes a long time before anyone on the ship warms to him, and even then their friendship often ends up strained by Rygel's selfish tendencies.
• Gasshole: He farts helium as a running gag. ^note How does that even work? Does his metabolism work by cold fusion?
• Goal in Life: Depose his cousin and reclaim the throne. He even states that single goal is what keeps him going.
  • After discovering Durka is still alive, he engages in a stream of murder attempts, one of which breaks the neural conditioning that changed him from a monster into a complacent assistant. After finally getting his revenge in Liars, Guns and Money, he spends some time carrying Durka's severed head around with him.
• Graceful in Their Element: Peacekeeper Wars reveals that he's actually a startlingly agile swimmer, a trait made all the more obvious by how clumsy he is on land.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Its implied that he eventually comes to care for the rest of the crew. He'd never admit it though.
• Hidden Depths:
  • One early episode revealed he's well aware of how he can be The Millstone, and is deeply insecure about it.
  • He's also surprisingly badass at times, such as when he spent a whole episode fending of a horde of Charrids with a turret.
• If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: Whenever it looks like his crewmates are dying Rygel will attempt to claim their belongings for himself. Averted after Zhaan's death when neither he nor Chiana can bring themselves to take anything from her room.
• Immune to Mind Control: His higher metabolism means that Nebari Mental Cleansing drugs don't stay in his system for very long. He acts as if he's still under to avoid them readministering the drugs, and so he has an excuse to keep eating during the crisis.
• In-Series Nickname: "Sparky," "Spanky," "Froggy," "Buckwheat," "Guido," "Your Lowness," "Your Flatulence."
• Indispensable Scoundrel: Rygel is a greedy, selfish Jerkass who frequently betrays Moya's crew for his own gain and is almost always running various illegal schemes that get the crew into trouble. The crew keeps him around because, unlike everyone else, Rygel is an incredibly good negotiator who is able to mostly keep the crew out of trouble and organize jobs for them, making him too valuable to lose.
• Jabba Table Manners: On top of being a Big Eater, he's also a very messy one.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • He is a flat out Jerk, but shows more than a few moments of genuine caring and compassion to his crew mates and Moya throughout the series. Though he rarely admits it (if ever), his being on Moya longer than anyone else makes him partial to her well-being.
  • It says a lot about him that when Aeryn was temporarily killed during the series 2 finale, he not only relinquished his medallion of office into her casket, stating his belief that she was far more worthy, but also is revealed to have been the one who swam down in freezing cold water to retrieve her body. Dammit, Rygel!
  • In one episode, it's shown that while he's insistent on being called Dominar and enjoys being in power, he is equally insistent that he not be deified by subjects that his ancestors conditioned for that purpose.
  • He is firmly a Jerk with a Heart of Gold by the time of Season 4. While he is still a selfish, greedy asshole, he repeatedly and consistently shows himself to have a soft spot for his friends, to the point of caring about their mental well-being.
• King Bob the Nth: He's (presumably) the sixteenth Dominar named Rygel.
• Little Green Men: He more or less fits this trope. In the same way that Yoda does.
• The Load: He's completely useless when he's not using his diplomatic skills for the crew. Often times he makes things worse.
• Mad Doctor: When disguised as "Doctor Rygel".
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: "I am a Dominar of [insert noun]!"
• Man Bites Man: Rygel is decidedly not above using his teeth as a weapon, which leads to a rather impressive moment in "Coup By Clam" in which he manages to bite off a psychotic doctor's nose.
• Manipulative Bastard: One of the show's best (heroic) examples. He's even complemented as such during the "Look at the Princess" trilogy, and later takes Scorpius to a master-class in "I-Yensch, You-Yensch."
• Mister Seahorse: Through a fluke in the miniseries, he winds up carrying Crichton and Aeryn's baby after they're reconstructed.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Rygel usually has a plan in mind that helps further his friends' cause whenever it looks like he's doing something really dumb.
• Pragmatic Villainy: While he'll sell the crew in half a heartbeat if he has something to gain, he can be surprisingly cunning at protecting them if betraying them would gain him nothing. A great example from early in the series is when bluffs the Zenetian Pirates. The moment they came aboard, looking for the deserter Stanz (who was off with D'Argo rescuing Crichton and Aeryn), he has Pilot falsify a comms frequency. Drawing the pirate captain into a gambling game, Rygel uses a move he learned from Stanz, "accidentlly" revealing that Stanz had been aboard, then plays for the comm frequency that will let the pirates track them — the fake one he told Pilot to establish earlier. When he explains all this to Zhaan (including losing deliberately, which he claims wasn't easy since the captain sucks at the game), she's stunned he did something sheerly for the benefit of everyone else. Rygel goes on to explain that the pirates would never have left peacefully without something they percieved to be of value. The only thing Moya has of value is herself and her crew of escaped prisoners, which includes Rygel, thus he had nothing to gain by trying to bargain with them.
• Revenge: Desires it against Bishan, the cousin who deposed him, and against Selto Durka, who took great pleasure in torturing him for cycles.
• Sanity Ball: He has a way of suddenly managing to be the rational one while everybody else, even John, is freaking out. It may or may not come from his emotional removal from the suffering of others.

Chiana

Chiana

"I say we just go get the guns and go steal the stuff."

Played By: Gigi Edgley

If your hand is still there in one microt, I'll snap it off and use it as a good luck charm.

A female Nebari who tried to flee her highly conformist, oppressive culture and escape, only to be recaptured. When Moya accidentally crashed into the prison ship carrying her, she and her two captors were forced to stay aboard. When events left her the sole survivor, she gladly fled with the crew of Moya to avoid the neural reprogramming awaiting her if she returned to the Nebari.

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• Ambiguously Bi: She flirts with almost everyone at some point, including female characters. It finally stops being ambiguous in one fourth-season episode, where the crew encounters an evil shape-changing Emotion Eater alien that provokes emotions in people and then consumes their capacity for them. It eats Chiana's libido... while disguised as a humanoid woman.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Chiana is mostly a comic relief character who prefers to talk and/or seduce her way out of trouble. However, she's also a brutal Combat Pragmatist who has no qualms about burning her attackers alive with improvised flamethrowers or dousing them in acid and leaving them to die in agony.
• Blind Seer: In Season 3, Chiana gains the ability to see visions of the future, though she can't control it. In Season 4, she gains a degree of control which amounts to Bullet Time, but goes blind. It's temporary, but lasts longer with each time. When it looks like it's permanent, she replaces her eyes.
• Broken Bird: Her tough and carefree persona isn't a pure façade, but it does cover up a lot of damage.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: Sneaky, hot, and thieving, although she may not count as "classy" by some definitions.
• Combat Pragmatist: Don't be fooled by the sunny personality. If she believes she is genuinely in danger, she has a knack for scanning her environment and instantly lighting on the most effective way of inflicting lethal or crippling damage on an enemy, no matter how gruesome or dishonorable it is.
• Commitment Issues: When she comes close to marrying D'Argo, she panics and torpedoes the relationship by sleeping with his son.
• Defector from Decadence: Inverted — the Nebari are a highly conformist culture who preach peace and tranquillity, and gladly Mind Rape any other being whose personality they consider undesirable in order to make them conform. Chiana considers this appalling and simply wishes to roam the galaxy and live her life as she wishes, which mostly involves stealing and sex. Downplayed at first, however, as Chiana simply wants a life of her own, and isn't interested in joining the Resistance proper. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Nebari government has been using Chiana and other such defectors in order to spread dormant viruses around the galaxy, allowing them an easy takeover when they finally invade.
• Delivery Guy: She assists in Moya's delivery of Talyn despite having no idea how Leviathan biology works. John also asks her to help turn Aeryn's baby around when they realise the baby is breeched just before delivery.
• Ethical Slut: The "ethical" part took a serious dent when she had an affair with Jothee, but for the most part, she tries not to edge in on previously established relationships.
• Exotic Eye Designs: A species trait, at first — Nebari have black irids, often much larger than those of other species. She later goes blind and gains Prophet Eyes, before replacing the offending orbs with slit-pupiled transplants.
• Extreme Omnisexual: She is the focus of most of the series' Les Yayinvoked moments. She also has no sexual boundaries when it comes to gender, age, and even species. In fact, her tendencies in this regard were so well-known that the Nebari secretly infected her with a dormant STI so she could unknowingly further their plans for galactic domination; she was able to cure herself some time prior to the start of the series, but the revelation does leave Crichton more than a little disturbed.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Aeryn and Jool.
• Girly Girl: Doesn't do a great deal of on-screen fighting. According to Gigi Edgley, the writers wanted to give her more action scenes but they kept getting cut because directors were worried that the make-up would come off. To compensate for this, when she does get violent the violence tends to be really, really vicious.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Pale grey skin and a white Sci-Fi Bob Haircut, and the subject of most of the series' fanservice. However unlike other examples of this trope, her Extreme Libido is all her own and not a result of her culture.
• Hellish Pupils: In "Peacekeeper Wars", she replaces her failing eyes with rather creepy-looking ones with slitted pupils and the ability to see through walls.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: D'Argo is considerably taller and bulkier than she is. They eventually get together.
• In-Series Nickname: "Pip." It originates from the nickname Ben Browder gave to Gigi Edgley.
• Interspecies Romance: With D'Argo. She's a Nebari and he's a Luxan. While not unusual in the Uncharted Territories, Chiana's own people most definitely would not approve.
• The Lad-ette: Unashamedly highly sexed, and loves other kinds of exciting physical action as well.
• Likes Older Men: And possibly Likes Older Women as well. May be a bisexual example. She has heavy invokedLes Yay with the much older Noranti in "Bringing Home the Beacon" and Altana in "Home on the Remains", and towards the end of "A Prefect Murder" she starts hitting on the incredibly wizened Paroos. Her main Love Interest in the series is Ka D'Argo, a widower with a son around Chiana's age (although by his race's standards he's barely an adult).
• Limited Wardrobe: Aside from one-off, episode-specific outfits she only had two regular outfits for the entire series while everyone else had multiple options to switch between. She wore her original outfit with the fur-trimmed shoulders until "A Clockwork Nebari" when she switched to a leather outfit she wore for the rest of the series.
• Looks Like Cesare: It's a Nebari thing. She has grey skin, dark circles around her eyes, white hair (but dark roots — all other Nebari we see have black hair) in a shaggy sci-fi bob, and dresses in grey and black. Subverted in terms of her later personality — while initially a Wild Card escaped prisoner whom nobody quite trusts, she quickly grows into a slightly more Lovable Rogue than Rygel and comes to love and trust the crew in her own way.
• Loveable Rogue: She's a good-hearted person, and loyal to her friends and family, but isn't overly concerned with the laws of the galaxy at large.
• Ms. Fanservice: Did we mention the "highly sexed" part? She's involved in most of the on-screen sex scenes that aren't off-puttingly alien in nature. She basically grabs the Fanservice ball from Zhaan once she arrives, being MUCH more openly sexual and naughty.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: The Nebari have Individuality Is Illegal as their hat, and are uncannily emotionless and stoic — Chiana, meanwhile, is a thrill-seeking, pleasure-loving, self-serving career thief who even Crichton finds erratic.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Throughout Season One, Chiana randomly slips between an Australian (genuine) and an American (faux) accent. This is due to disagreements between directors over which accent Gigi Edgley should stick with. Eventually she settled into the latter.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: The opening titles are modified to include Gigi Edgley just in time for the Season 1 finale.
• Prophet Eyes: Her eyes eventually start gaining cataracts when she uses her precognitive powers.
• Psychic Powers: Develops them in Season 3, following her possession by an Energy Rider.
• Quizzical Tilt: Her Character Tic of moving her head (really her whole upper body) from side to side. Distinctive enough that it outs her once while Dressing as the Enemy. This is due to the restricted vision from the contacts used to give Gigi Edgley her alien eyes.
• Really Gets Around: More than almost any other character, Chiana likes sex and has lots of it, though being stuck on Moya does limit her options (and opportunities) somewhat.
• Sci-Fi Bob Haircut: A messy one, wispy and sticking out at the sides, as befits her being both a Lovable Rogue and a Green-Skinned Space Babe.
• Screaming Warrior: Has a very distinctive war cry that can best be described as "BRRRRRRUUUUGHHHH-YI-YI-YI-YAAAAAAH!"
• Skin-Tone Disguise: In the season one finale, Crichton has been captured and is being held in a Peacekeeper base. To help sneak in to save him, Chiana uses a lot of makeup to cover her Nebari appearance. It's not an entirely convincing disguise because she overtly looks like she's wearing a lot of makeup, but it's enough to fool guards at a distance who aren't paying attention.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: To an extent — in Season 4, she has become a lot angrier than usual, because of her terrible experiences in between Seasons 3 and 4, in which she was tortured and raped by gangsters who caught her using her abilities to cheat at gambling.
• Toplessness from the Back: She always has sex in the reverse cowgirl position facing away from the camera; this has the added benefit of avoiding the need for a Modesty Bedsheet during her sex scenes.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: There's a subtext that she has an minor attraction to Crichton during Series 1. Since he treats her like a sister and only has eyes for Aeryn, it doesn't go anywhere. Though due to time-travel, it's revealed she was the one to take his virginity.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: At first, she and Jool despise each other, but they gradually come to develop a love-hate friendship. She also has this going on with Rygel, to a certain extent (mostly because of their conniving, materialistic natures, with Rygel once mentioning she would have made a superb Hynerian). Mostly averted with Sikozu — although they have a few friendly moments together, they deeply dislike one another for the most part.
• X-Ray Vision: Her replacement eyes in "The Peacekeeper Wars" allow her to see through walls.

Moya

Moya

Crichton: That's big. That's really big.

—Crichton's first impression of Moya

A massive biomechanical lifeform that takes the form of a spaceship, Moya is a Leviathan that has been designated as a prison transport. When her latest cargo rebelled and escaped, she happily switched her loyalties to them.

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• Actual Pacifist: More a species trait. She really hates hurting any living creature; more often than not, this skirts Messiah territory. Of course, when it comes to her son, all bets are off.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Especially note, she doesn't have weapons. External ones anyway; her DRDs can be a formidable fighting force when doing things like fending off Peacekeeper Commandos and protecting her baby. And like Pilot, she consented to building and using a Weapon of Mass Destruction during "The Peacekeeper Wars".
• Living Ship: She's a massive lifeform capable of traveling between stars at high speeds and carrying passengers.
• Mama Bear: She does NOT like it when people try to hurt Talyn. She actually goes so far as to ask the crew to kill an insane Leviathan who is trying to prevent her from giving Talyn a proper funeral. Normally, Leviathans are complete pacifists.
• Prison Ship: She was used to house criminals by the Peacekeepers.
• Team Mom: To the crew living inside her. While she occasionally gets frustrated with their choices, Pilot notes that transporting them brings her satisfaction and she gets distressed when they consider leaving during her pregnancy.
  Jool: Why is this ship so important?
  Crichton: Still worried about your parents after 22 cycles?
  Jool: Yes.
  Crichton: That's how we feel about Moya. She raised us.
• Thinking Up Portals: An extreme version of this trope; the ships' FTL system, Starburst, is basically "sling a big portal and dive in".
• The Voiceless: Moya cannot generally speak, though Pilot is aware of what she wants. The crew can also communicate with her through Pilot or the DRDs. In "Look at the Princess, Part 3", this is subverted, as her builders allow her to briefly speak directly to Zhaan.

Stark

Stark

"This is my side! That's your side. You stay on your side. My side, your side! My side, your side! My side, your side!"

Played By: Paul Goddard

A Bannick who is part humanoid and part Energy Being, he has the power to heal mental torment and to comfort the dying as they pass over to wherever they go. Unfortunately, use of his powers always leads to some degree of Mental Fusion, resulting in gradual corrosion of his sanity.

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• Ax-Crazy: Every so often, Stark will get very violent — and not in a funny way, either. In fact, when one particularly trying day ended with Jool whining at him, he actually went berserk and threatened to Mind Rape her.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Stark is an energy being who built his current body from raw matter.
• Blessed with Suck: That empathic/telepathic ability to interact with the dying? Not fun. In fact, he actually mentions that every time he helps someone cross over, he absorbs a tiny piece of their soul. And since a good deal of his early work was helping Scarrans cross over...
• Break the Cutie: Oh god, poor Stark. He was broken when Crichton met him in Season 1 where he had been mind raped continuously for 2 years!! and it just went downhill from there. It's even worse than that. Turns out that Stark grew up among the Scarrans and assisted in their death rituals. As a slave, you can imagine how that part of his life went. Considering his opinion (not to mention panic) of Scarrans, being Scorpius' prisoner was arguably an improvement for the poor guy.
• Butt-Monkey: Nothing good will happen to Stark. Ever.
• Came Back Wrong: Implied to have suffered this after returning from being dispersed. Beforehand, he was mainly faking insanity, interspersed with the very occasional moment of genuine instability; afterwards, he's barely able to get through a conversation without gibbering like a lunatic, and often lapses into fits of madness that only serve to endanger his own plans. The death of Zhaan only makes things worse in the long run.
• Care-Bear Stare: The light beneath his mask can calm the distressed, transmit memories, and even help the dead cross over.
• The Chew Toy: He was tortured for years, and upon escaping in short order proceeds to get executed by disintegration (he gets better), experiences the agonising deaths of ten thousand of his own species being executed by Natira, gets puked on by Pilot, and finally is forced to listen as the woman he loves dies. Cannot catch a break.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Initially only as an act, but dramatically enhanced following his resurrection.
• Commuting on a Bus: He appears in all four seasons and The Peacekeeper Wars, but keeps joining and then leaving the main crew. His longest period as a regular cast member lasts from towards the end of the second season until towards the end of the third.
• Cool Mask: Wears a haunting-looking metal half-mask that serves to keep his energies from being exhausted; for good measure, it's his means of communicating with Zhaan after he's dispersed.
• Deathly Unmasking: In the final seconds before his execution by "dispersal", he removes his half-mask — revealing that the energy behind it has turned black and lifeless — and gives it to Zhaan, opting to die unmasked. However, this later proves to be his means of returning from the dead...
• Dogged Nice Guy: A very creepy one towards Aeryn at times in the third season, eventually driving her to a memorable and deserved "The Reason You Suck" Speech. However, the reason he acts this way turns out not to be so much due to any kind of attraction to her, but that all the evil chaotic thoughts that he's absorbed over the years latch onto her as the latest object of his fragmented attention, because Zhaan isn't around anymore to help him control it. Let's face it, by the time season 3 and 4 come around, he flips between psychosis and neurotic breakdown like a light switch with a loose wire.
• Flanderization: His Sanity Slippage from Obfuscating Insanity (in his introductory episodes) to total, pathetic psychosis (in the third season) looks like this to some fans.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Stark needs a lot of these moments, and he gets 'em.
• Interspecies Romance: With Zhaan.
• I See Dead People: In "The Choice," or more accurately, I Hear Dead People.
• Large Ham:
  My side! Your side! My side! YOUR side! MY SIDE!.
• The Load: On a good day, he's almost catatonic. On a bad day, he puts everyone on the ship in danger with his psychotic freak-outs.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Midway through "Liars, Guns and Money: Part 2" he breaks down screaming because he can sense that Scorpius has just executed the 10,000 slaves they were hoping to rescue from him.
• Negate Your Own Sacrifice: As an energy being, he is capable of regenerating himself if disintegrated — which comes in handy when aliens put him, Crichton, D'Argo, and Zhaan on trial and decide to execute them via that very method.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Stark has an at best tenuous grip on his sanity, but he admitted to pretending to be far crazier while Scorpius' prisoner. Doing so got people to leave him alone more often than they would've otherwise. Sadly, as the traumas pile up, Stark ends up becoming a lot crazier than he was originally pretending to be.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: In Season 3.
• Psychopomp: He helps dying souls reach the afterlife, absorbing their negative traits, making him basically a Sin-Eater.
• Spanner in the Works: Whenever there's a highly delicate or critical situation, you can generally depend on Stark to completely lose his marbles and wig the hell out at the worst possible moment.
• Talkative Loon: Stark tends to get progressively chattier as his sanity plunges, to the point that his real insanity actually eclipses his original Obfuscating Insanity in sheer hamminess.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Stark's been given the Aurora Chair treatment over 100 times, and he clearly enjoys it a little too much.
• Tranquil Fury: Occasionally lapses into this, usually as a sign that he's in a dangerous mood. For example, in "Nerve," after Crichton attempts to steal his encoding device from him, Stark drops all his usual quirks and very calmly informs Crichton that if he doesn't stop playing around, he'll have to kill him.
• Trauma Conga Line: No one has gone through more pain and suffering throughout the span of their life than Stark. No one. Think what happened to Aeryn in Scarran captivity was bad? Stark's got her beat: he absorbed some of the Scarran's souls. Think John's purview in the Aurora Chair was horrific? Stark got 2 years. Emphasized when Jool makes the mistake of complaining in front of him.
  (to Jool) Your list is short and unworthy of entry to this ship of horror. Tortured by demons you could never know, mocked by a love that will never be. Oh, you want to cry, young creature? I will show you something that will make you cry forever.
• Two-Faced: The side of his face covered by the mask is Pure Energy until he becomes completely corporeal at the end of The Peacekeeper Wars.

Jool

Joolushko "Jool" Tunai Fenta Hovalis

"I always wait. You know, see both sides — be reasonable. But now... I have nothing to lose."

Played By: Tammy MacIntosh

An alien gap-yah student who got into a very bad situation and ended up being rescued by the Moya crew, initially to the displeasure of both sides.

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• Back for the Dead: Returns in The Peacekeeper Wars just in time for the Eidolon temple to get destroyed with her inside.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Jool is an Interon, so her hair changes color depending on her mood, and her screams can melt metal. Which is good, because she screams. A lot.
• Blessed with Suck: Her metal-melting scream, which is often induced by others for their own reasons.
• Break the Cutie: See Break The Haughty.
• Break the Haughty: She starts off as a spoiled brat, convinced (not unreasonably) that she's smarter than everyone else, and takes every setback and difficulty thrown at the crew personally. Through all this adversity, the crew his little empathy thanks to her grating personality. After enough bad stuff happens, she eventually starts toughening up and learning to accept the extreme wrong turn her life has taken. She never quite loses the haughtiness, but learns to bond with the crew on their level.
• Deadpan Snarker: As one of the smartest and meanest characters on the show, she frequently has a witty and scathing retort.
• Dropped a Bridge on Her: Abruptly killed off, along with most of the Eidolons, by a Scarran Orbital Bombardment in The Peacekeeper Wars.
• Eyepatch of Power: When she is temporarily blinded in one eye due to a bit of Boolite flying into it (It Makes Sense in Context), she sports a rather cool eyepatch for a few episodes.
• Fantastic Racism: She offhandedly explains that a fellow Interion's dismissive attitude to D'Argo is because Interions are taught that Luxans are an inferior race. D'Argo retorts with an Armor-Piercing Question of what she thinks of Luxans, and Jool nervously mutters that "I think you're an unusual Luxan."
• Fiery Redhead: She is usually blonde, except for when she is nervous or angry, during which it turns bright red. It stays permanently red during the infiltration of Scorpius' Command Carrier — possibly due to the stress of the mission.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Chiana.
• Fish out of Water: Being from a peaceful star system that seriously frowns upon violence, she is initially completely out of her depth when she becomes part of Moya's crew. (She learns quickly.) Being cryonically frozen for 22 cycles didn't help, either.
• Forgot About Her Powers: Her sound powers are rarely used in emergencies where they might actually be useful.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: At first, it's kind of obvious that everyone deeply wishes she'd never awoken from the cryogenic pod. This changes as her Character Development kicks in.
• Human Popsicle: Wound up cryogenically frozen for spare parts at the Diagnosan's research facility. While all such donors were supposed to be unsalvageable cases, it appears the Diagnosan's assistant was less than ethical on this point.
• Humiliation Conga: Most of what transpires to her, such as being frozen for 22 cycles, accidentally drinking piss, being thrown through a time portal straight into a pile of mud, the Universe really seems to love to give her grief.
• Insufferable Genius: She has some traits of this, although not to the same extent as Sikozu.
• Jerkass: Starts off as one, before Character Development kicks in. Emerging from a long cryogenic slumber on board a ship of a type she'd never seen and learning that her two cousins — with whom she was very close — are dead does not help.
• Kaleidoscope Hair: A downplayed example as it only switches between two colours, but it still counts.
• Locked into Strangeness: A possible reason for her hair staying red after Season 3.
• The Medic: To an extent.
• Multiple-Choice Past: There are conflicting reports as to whether she and her cousins were innocent tourists or Evil Colonialists trying to rip off the cultures they met. Her past remains Multiple Choice because none of the regulars actually care enough to investigate.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Her original outfit. She eventually switches to one that also manages to show off her midriff via strategic cutouts.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Discussed. She gives her full name to Crichton, and when he asks what people call her for short, icily replies "My full name." The crew quickly give up and call her "Jool," though Pilot at least once addresses her as "Joolushko."
• Overly Long Name: And she claims that everyone addresses her by her full name prior to being cryonically frozen (this could presumably be an Interon cultural aspect), although she makes an exception for her cousins, who called her by her nickname. She resents being called "Jool" by her crewmates at first (in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that her cousins also used it), but it eventually grows on her.
• Red Hair Take Warning: Her hair turns bright red when she's either a) scared or nervous, or b) really, really pissed off.
• Screaming Woman: A whole lot. A previous page image depicted it all too clearly. (Handcuffs don't work on her for this reason.)
• Ship Tease: The writers teased a relationship between Jool and D'Argo — especially in season 4's "What Was Lost" two-parter — but Jool left the show and nothing came of it.
  • And then when the crew catches up with Jool again in "The Peacekeeper Wars", she oddly and inexplicably goes for Crichton and seems to have completely forgotten D'Argo.
  • There also seemed to be something of a Ship Tease between her and Naj Gil (the only neutral/non-antagonistic Scarren to appear on the show) — they connect very quickly, and he offers her a place aboard the hospital ship with him. Unfortunately, he is killed before anything comes of it, and Jool is deeply upset at his death.
• The Smart Girl
• Super-Scream: Melts metal, which is weaponized whenever anyone scares or injures her. Aeryn takes advantage of this when she can't find a welding torch and breaks Jool's finger to make her scream and melt the metal she's working on.
• Technical Pacifist: Sometimes bordering on Actual Pacifist levels. She frowns upon violence due to her upbringing and abhors killing, but, as the series goes on, she becomes more willing to engage in violence when it is required.
• Took a Level in Badass: This trait starts to emerge towards the end of Season 3 — especially notable is the fact that she aids the rest of the crew in their infiltration of Scorpius' Command Carrier despite her nervousness, and that she's more than willing to put herself in danger to help D'Argo against a huge Peacekeeper wielding a circular saw. This trait is also especially evident in the "What Was Lost" two-parter: Not only does she kick Peacekeeper ass alongside Chiana and Sikozu, she also came very close to throttling Sikozu prior to this.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: At first, she and Chiana despise each other, but they gradually come to develop a love-hate friendship.
• Written-In Infirmity: The eyepatch was because Tammy MacIntosh really did get hit in the eye by a piece of debris and injured during the relevant action sequence.

Utu-Noranti Pralatong

Utu-Noranti Pralatong

"Never bathe, never bathe. It washes off the juice."

Played by Melissa Jaffer

An enigmatic old woman with powerful spiritual abilities who took advantage of an attack on a Peacekeeper ship to escape captivity and join the crew. Nobody's quite sure whether her mercurial switches between apparent senile dementia and ruthless plotting are real or an act.

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• Cloud Cuckoolander: Whatever reality Noranti exists it, it only occasionally overlaps with the one everyone else exists in.
• Cool Old Lady: Despite her weird eccentricities, she is a valuable member of the crew who can help out in a crisis, frequently in completely unexpected ways.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Shifts between this and straight Lethal Chef depending on the episode.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: When she has an idea, it's either completely useless, or absolutely critical to solving the problem.
• Dirty Old Woman: Sometimes innocently, sometimes less so. She and D'Argo need to make prolonged skin-to-skin contact to cure a problem, hands are fine. Noranti thinks its best if they get naked and cuddle for maximum surface area, D'Argo rather forcibly disagrees. Then there's the time she dosed some guards with a hallucinogen and did a strip tease to distract them. She certainly didn't need to get completely naked. . . but she did anyway.
• Dr. Feelgood: Among her skills is a breathtaking knowledge of pharmacology, specifically how to make and use a staggering array of Fantastic Drugs. She keeps Crichton in a drug that suppresses his feelings for Aeryn.
• Fake Shemp: When the makeup started to affect Melissa Jaffer's health, she had to be replaced for some scenes in The Peacekeeper Wars.
• Fan Disservice: In "Lava's a Many Splendored Thing" and "Coup By Clam."
• In-Series Nickname: "Granny," "Wrinkles," "Old Woman."
• Master Poisoner: With her skill in drugs, it's a short step to a skill with poisons.
• The Medic: Similar to Zhaan, she has a vast knowledge of homemade medicines and remedies. Unlike Zhaan, she doesn't feel the need to explain exactly what she's giving the crew beforehand. . .
• The Millstone: Quite often, and the other characters are aware of it, too.
  Crichton: Burning's too good for her.
• Remember the New Guy?: She's just... there as a member of Moya's crew at the start of Season 4. She claims that they rescued her from Scorpius's Command Carrier. No-one can remember how she got there, and given her ability to affect memory with her potions, it may never have happened at all.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Takes Zhaan's place as the ship's resident medic and mystic, though a significantly less reliable one. This got meta by The Peacekeeper Wars, as Melissa Jaffer got health problems from her makeup just like Virginia Hey did.
• Third Eye: Has a third eye that changes color and intermittently opens when she uses her powers.
• Trickster Mentor: Frequently gives Crichton advice. Whether this advice is genuinely good, her perception of genuinely good, or deliberately misleading to manipulate him into doing something else changes almost completely at random.
• Wicked Witch: Repeatedly invoked by the other characters, but she insists she isn't one.

Sikozu

Sikozu Svala Shanti Sugaysi Shanu

"Everything lives and everything dies, whether you wish it to or not, and you have to deal with it."

Played By: Raelee Hill

A highly-educated, cold-blooded, but over-confident space hustler who attached herself to Moya after one of her proposed deals fell through and left her stranded. Never really trusted by anyone, she forms a perverted but sincere attachment to Scorpius.

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• Alliterative Name: All five of her names start with "S".
• Because You Were Nice to Me: One of the reasons for her attraction to Scorpius was the fact that he managed to save her life in "What Was Lost."
• Bizarre Alien Biology: As a Kalish, Sikozu can walk up walls and across ceilings, can't tolerate Translator Microbes (meaning she has to learn every language she ever encounters), can reattach severed limbs and can go for months without eating. She also has the ability to project radiation, but that's a result of also being a bioloid. It's not entirely clear which traits are racial and which aren't; for instance, we see other Kalish understand new languages without the problems she had.
• Brains and Bondage: She's highly intelligent, and is implied to be completely happy with Scorpius's highly non-mainstream sexual tastes.
• Changing Yourself for Love: Her black-leather-and-tattoos makeover for "The Peacekeeper Wars" looks an awful lot like her playing to Scorpius's fetishes (though on the bright side, it distinguishes her visually from Jool). She explicitly considers herself in a submissive relationship with him; when she and Aeryn are discussing their relationships the idea of not having explicit "superior" and "inferior" partners confuses her.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: She had a tendency to betray or at least undermine Crichton very early on. Then she met Scorpius. She colluded with him almost immediately, which still puts this trope in effect because his agenda was hardly in line with Crichton's or anyone else's. The only times she willingly cooperated with the rest of the crew was when their goals weren't mutually exclusive, though to her credit, she didn't decide to up and screw everyone like most examples of this trope. And then she blew it by betraying the crew to the Scarrans, much to Scorpius' rage.
• Co-Dragons: Her and Braca, for Scorpius.
• Combo Platter Powers: See above.
• Deadpan Snarker: Of a drier variety, but she'll fire back at people's insults or just stupidity (from her perspective) quite readily.
• Ditzy Genius: As Rygel noted, "You've learned, but you haven't experienced." For example, though book smart when it comes to Leviathans, she had never been on one before meeting Crichton, and he knew things she didn't thanks to living on Moya. There are some fairly inexplicable gaps in her knowledge as well; for instance, she didn't know that Leviathans aren't all arranged on a standard plan despite that being one of their most iconic features.
• Fiery Redhead: Redheaded with a snarky and somewhat aggressive personality.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Aeryn.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: 'Cause she sure does seem to get her arms ripped off a lot.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the comics, she finally picks a side. And then dies.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the comic books.
• In-Series Nickname: John calls her "Sputnik", after the look of the braided hairstyle that she had when they first met. Chiana, who never warms to her, calls her "Psycho-Zoo."
• Insufferable Genius: She really is brilliant (in an inexperienced, "book smart" way), but so insufferable that she manages to instantaneously alienate Pilot, the guy who otherwise feels respect and affection for every other character on the ship, including Rygel.
• Jerkass: Most of the time acts very unpleasantly towards Moya's crew, save for Scorpius.
• The Mole: In "The Peacekeeper Wars", she feeds Crichton and Scorpius' movements to the Scarrans. When Scorpius confronts her over this she said that the Scarrans had promised to free the Kalish from servitude; surprisingly enough, the Scarrans actually made good on this promise in the comics.
• Omniglot: Since she can't use Translator Microbes she has to learn everyone's languages, fortunately it takes her only a few minutes.
• Organic Technology: Comes with being a Bioloid.
• Overly Long Name: And an alliterative one, at that!
• Robot Girl: She's eventually revealed to be a Bioloid.
• The Spock: More rude and abrasive about it, but in Sikozou's view, there are two ways to do things: her way, and the wrong way. She starts to realize she doesn't know as much as she thinks she does, but never entirely grows out of it.
• Stripperiffic: Her costume in episodes set aboard Moya, which consists above the waist of what is basically a bra with some cloth straps extending from it. She puts a jacket on when leaving the ship.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For Jool to a degree. She takes over Jool's techie role and abrasive nature, but she's much more experienced in life and much more calculatingly ruthless.
• Wall Crawl: She has the ability to alter her centre of gravity, enabling her to walk across vertical surfaces. This is the one aspect of her Bizarre Alien Biology real Kalish are confirmed to possess.
• Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: Well-educated, but very wet behind the ears. Among other things, she's quickly startled when Elack's layout doesn't match her study material, doesn't know that non-Kalish can't shift their centre of gravity, and ends up getting so bewildered by some of the phenomena Moya encounters that Rygel loses his temper over her inability to accept basic facts. There's another reason why she's so easily flustered: she's a bioloid, and has been programmed with the knowledge rather than actually learning it.

1812

Beep beep beep!

Played by Itself

A DRD who becomes Crichton's personal mascot.

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• Chekhov's Skill: In "I Shrink Therefore I Am," it's the only DRD on Moya not disabled by the bounty hunters, because it originates on a different Leviathan.
• Do-Anything Robot: As with all DRDs, it has a wide variety of skills that show up when the plot demands.
• Doomed Hometown: The last surviving DRD of Elack, a dying Leviathan that sacrificed himself to save the crew of Moya in the third episode of Season 4.
• Leitmotif: Beeps a section of the 1812 Overture, which is how it got its name.
• Mauve Shirt: Both figuratively and literally, in the sense that Crichton has repainted it to look different than the rest of the Red Shirt Army.
• Mundane Utility: When not performing repairs or defence duties, 1812 is either operating Crichton's distillery or singing the 1812 Overture.
• Robot Buddy: It serves as one to Crichton when he's stranded aboard Elack.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For DRD Pike as a DRD Crichton built up a rapport with.
• The Unintelligible: It "speaks" in R2-D2-style beeps, but Crichton seems to understand it just fine.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Crichton has painted 1812 with the colours of the French flag.
• You Are Number 6: However, this is because Crichton named it after a year, rather than de-person-ised it by assigning a number.

Peacekeepers

Crais

Captain Bialar Crais

"A human? It will require some study. I will personally enjoy pulling you apart to see what you're made of."

Played By: Lani Tupu

"Tauvo is dead — struck down by a weak... pathetic... inferior being. It must be avenged! I swear in Tauvo's name, Crichton, you will die in my hands."

Leader of the Sebacean Peacekeepers who are attempting to retake Moya when John Crichton arrives, he is determined to capture them again; the prisoners for the stain on his record, Crichton for being involved in his brother's death.

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• Arch-Enemy: Until Scorpius takes over, Crais was the greatest threat to the crew and Crichton's greatest personal enemy.
• Beard of Evil: Like many fiction goatee wearers, he's pretty evil. However, he does keep the beard after he becomes a good guy.
• Big Brother Worship: The recreation by Maldis in "That Old Black Magic" suggests that Tauvo deeply respected Crais and considered it an honor to end up assigned to his Command Carrier.
• The Captain: First of his Carrier, and then of Talyn.
• Character Development: He starts out as a deranged, unpleasant The Neidermeyer who treats his men poorly and refuses to believe Tauvo's death was an accident no matter how much evidence John provides. After being stuck in the Aurora Chair, he comes to realize his mistakes and mellows out and comes to terms with his brother’s death. However, he also becomes a Wild Card and hijacks Talyn to escape from Moya and her crew and the Peacekeepers. However, he comes to care for Talyn and eventually becomes a staunch ally of the Moya crew.
• Dead Guy on Display / Taxidermy Is Creepy: While still captain of his ship, Crais kept the stuffed heads of numerous Hynerians on the walls of his cabin, much to Rygel's horror. Scorpius, on the other hand, wasn't all that impressed, and suggested that the only reason why Crais kept them around was as a reminder of times when he still had power.
• Demoted to Dragon: By Scorpius at the end of the first season, which contributes to his decision to leave the Peacekeepers and become a Wild Card.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In the first season, Crais is pursuing Moya to avenge the death of his brother, but he gets replaced by Scorpius.
• Ex-Big Bad: The main villain of the first season, but after events at the end of it make him give up his revenge quest, he becomes a Wild Card for the second season and a member of the team in the third.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: The state of his hair is a pretty good barometer of his mental state — if it starts getting straggly, it's definitely a sign that he's starting to lose it.
• Expy: Less extreme than the Grayza-Servalan resemblance, but in season one he has major similarities to Travis from Blake's 7.
• Fantastic Racism: Like all Peacekeepers, he was taught to distrust non-Sebaceans and uphold the group's purity regulations. He brands Aeryn as "irreversibly contaminated" just for being among the escaping prisoners for too long. As he starts to undergo his Hazy-Feel Turn, he acknowledges how he has to re-examine the attitudes he was taught growing up.
• Freudian Excuse: As children, Crais and his brother were forcefully taken from their parents by the Peacekeepers, and the last thing Crais Sr. did before his children were taken was to make Bialar promise to take care of his brother. Which makes his deranged homicidal quest across the Uncharted Territories a little bit easier to understand.
• Guns Akimbo: He will occasionally use two guns.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: After he gives up his quest for vengeance on John, he spends most of his time seeking a purpose for his existence, and makes it quite clear that until he finds it his main priority is his own freedom and survival.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He and Talyn kill themselves to destroy Scorpius's Command Carrier.
• Hero of Another Story: In Season 2, he’s clearly having his own adventures alongside Talyn that we only ever get to see fragments of. This ends in Season 3, when he becomes part of the main cast.
• Hopeless Suitor: To Aeryn, later on. Even though she has more or less forgiven him for ordering her execution, she's too hung up on Crichton and distrusts Crais too much to actually consider his affections.
• Ignored Epiphany: In "That Old Black Magic", after Crichton makes it clear in no uncertain terms that his brother's death was a freak accident. Far from weakening his resolve, Crais' reexamination of scenes from his past (courtesy of Maldis) only renews his desire to kill Crichton.
• Insane Admiral: At first. He becomes a lot more laid-back after his defection from the Peacekeepers and comes to terms with Tauvo's death.
• Insistent Terminology: Despite all evidence to the contrary that his brother was responsible for the accidental collision that lead to his own death, Crais still insists that Crichton is a murderer who intentionally charged into his brother's prowler in his flying death-pod.
• It's Personal:
  • He barely even tries to hide the fact that he's pursuing Moya in order to have his revenge on Crichton.
  • Later, Crais invokes this to Scorpius before his Heroic Sacrifice.
• Lima Syndrome: He initially steals Talyn just as a means of getting away from both the Peacekeepers and the Moya gang, but it soon becomes clear that he's genuinely come to love the boy.
• Madness Makeover: Over the course of his pursuit of Crichton, Crais' immaculate hair becomes scraggly and his face unshaven.
• Manipulative Bastard: Occasionally, especially in his dealings with Xhalax.
• Moral Myopia: Convinced initially that his vengeance is justified...
• Motive Decay: But later admits that it ended up being more about his desperate attempts to shore up his failing career.
• The Neidermeyer: And not just because of Sanity Slippage over his brother's death, either. "The Way We Weren't" makes it clear that he was always like this. When Scorpius overthrows him as commanding officer of his command carrier, it's as much because Crais's men simply like him better as because of the blackmail. He gradually begins to mellow out after being overthrown, however.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He admits he can relate to D'Argo's Call to Agriculture, due to having lived in a farming community before he was conscripted by the Peacekeepers.
• Papa Wolf: Towards Talyn.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Lani Tupu starts appearing in the opening titles at the beginning of Season 3.
• Revenge Myopia: His pursuit of Crichton, though he eventually realizes it.
  Crais: I thought it was about my brother. It...should have been about my brother.
• Samurai Ponytail: How neat or straggly it is tends to act as a barometer of his mood or sanity level in any particular episode.
• Sanity Slippage: After being forced to fight Crichton by Maldis in a duel to the death, Crais just completely loses his mind.
• Shirtless Scene: In Season 3, although it isn't played for Fanservice, as his body is covered in intensely painful blisters due to Talyn's unstable neural feedback.
• Starter Villain: The main villain in the first season, but later becomes first neutral and then an ally.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Not even Peacekeeper captains can misuse their rank and resources to carry out a personal vendetta without someone noticing. As soon as they find out, Peacekeeper Command sends Scorpius to either rein Crais in or depose him, which Scorpius does with alacrity.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Being put in the Aurora Chair wound up mellowing him out. He’s still dangerous and a Wild Card, but he’s far less of a deranged The Neidermeyer.
• Wild Card: Especially in the second season, when his actions are very unpredictable but solely motivated by helping himself and Talyn.
• Your Worst Memory: The moment he was conscripted for Peacekeeper service, with his father telling him to look after Tauvo as they were taken away. In both "That Old Black Magic" and "The Hidden Memory," he's made to witness these memories play out again, and his responses are nothing short of agonized.

Scorpius

Scorpius

"I long ago learned the advantages of patience."

Played By: Wayne Pygram

A deformed, ruthless and surprisingly combat-hardened Peacekeeper scientist, obsessed with gaining knowledge of wormholes as a means to power.

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• Achilles' Heel: His need for cooling rods to keep his internal temperature in balance. And like any good Achilles' Heel, savvy opponents will exploit it: Crichton once coated a rod in heat-reacting paste, hoping it would explode in Scorpius' head, and if anyone worth their salt manages to capture Scorpius, the first thing they do is deny him cooling rods or destroy the apparatus.
• Affably Evil: He's evil, no doubt, but he's unfailingly polite about it. At one point, he scares the living crap out of D'Argo by turning up at the same bar and offering to buy him a drink.
• Anti-Villain: Even during his most villainous periods, he has a fairly sympathetic motivation, and is entirely decent to his allies and minions.
• Arch-Enemy: To Crichton, with periodic Enemy Mine events.
• Badass Bookworm: Scorpius is a supreme badass, able to take down multiple opponents and maintaining his calm under the most terrifying situations. He's also remarkably well-read.
• Benevolent Boss: Actually shows a good deal of loyalty to his minions, particularly Braca, which pays dividends by the series' end. He's benevolent to Braca and his nurses. Not so much to Peacekeeper pilots who display critical overconfidence, or to his lackeys researching wormhole technology, whom he orders on suicide missions. The general rule of thumb is that he won't waste his crew's lives, but will sacrifice them for his objectives and will always give someone demanding rope enough to hang themselves.
• Berserk Button: It isn't a good idea to get between him and his plans, to say the least; repeated annoyances during the latter stages of his campaigns have been known to leave him all but exploding with rage — especially in the case of Natira's lackeys.
• Big Bad: He removes Crais from this position as of the end of Season 1, then he takes over this role for Seasons 2 and 3.
• Brains and Bondage: He wears what looks like a gimp suit, and his intimate scenes have unusual tastes. He also is one of the shows best planners.
• Breakout Character: Originally intended as just a one-shot villain, but such a fan favorite that he was promoted to Big Bad and, eventually, one of the protagonists.
• Break the Cutie: His first 12 years of life consisted of torture. It's really not surprising that he got so good at preparing contingency plans — not to mention resisting interrogation.
• Bulletproof Vest: Being half-Scarran makes him resilient against most weapons fire to begin with, but he also wears body armor under his cooling suit for extra protection. During one firefight, Crichton takes advantage of this to use him as a Bulletproof Human Shield.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: It isn't often he's capable of a benign smile. Then again, it is hard to grin infectiously when you have small, sharp, jagged teeth. He does, however, manage a much more heartwarming smile when he strokes the flower he remembers his mother by at the end of "Incubator".
• The Chessmaster: Scorpius has plans within plans within plans within plans, able to pull strings and maneuver everyone around him exactly where he needs them with aplomb. Even when defeated he's seldom inconvenienced for long, and that's assuming his defeat isn't part of some master plan to begin with.
• Child by Rape: Natira briefly mentions Scorpius' parentage in Season 2, but it isn't until Season 3's "Incubator" that the full story becomes clear: Scorpius' mother was abducted and raped as part of a Scarran breeding program, resulting in Scorpius' conception. Not only that, but Scorpius is forced to watch a recording of the rape itself, and then learns that his mother died giving birth to him. He does not take this revelation well.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Zigzagged and deconstructed. It's one of his defining traits, but a deeply complex and nuanced case. Crichton using the i-Yench bracelet as a failsafe against treachery while on Scorpius' carrier was entirely necessitated by this.
  • He has no qualms about betraying his allies and killing anyone the moment the outlive their usefulness, but he will honor his word if he believes there's still more to be gained in doing so, and while certainly not above petty personal revenge, he isn't solely motivated by his own gain. Instead, Scorpius is as loyal to the Peacekeepers as the xenophobic Sebaceans will allow him to be, believing that they are the only ones capable of preventing Scarran dominance, the latter being a goal which must be achieved by any and all means necessary. He does take great pleasure in betraying others and making them suffer, making their deaths painful and poetic where he can, but he does seem to try to separate his sadism from his greater goals.
  • He's particularly prone to betraying others when he believes they'll betray him first, given the chance: his self-serving former lover Natira, the greedy and opportunistic Grunchlk, the fickle and unstable Crais, and of course Moya's whole crew, since the latter have good reason to hate him. His attempt to kill the Diagnosan who built his cooling suit, for example, came about because the latter could not only no longer help Scorpius, but could also potentially undo his revenge on Crichton, as well as potentially providing others with information regarding Scorpius's condition and the suit itself.
  • This backfires whenever he's trying to reason with people who are aware of this tendency. Even when he's arguably sincere and making good arguments, his prior betrayals make it impossible for people like Crichton to trust him.
• Clingy Costume: Not physically impossible to remove, but since it's necessary to keep him alive, he naturally makes sure it's extremely hard to take it off.
• Crazy-Prepared: He's insanely paranoid — and justifiably so, considering how often people have tried to kill him. Crazy-Prepared is probably the only reason no one has managed it.
• Deadpan Snarker: He definitely has his moments.
• Determinator: No matter the torture, no matter the assassination attempts, and no matter how many times someone tries to blow his plans up right in his face, Scorpius will never, ever stop pursuing his goal.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: Scorpius is ultimately loyal to one person alone — himself. To this end, he will use and betray anyone to achieve what he wants.
• The Dreaded: Crichton and the rest of the crew live in fear of him throughout the second season, and even his fellow Peacekeepers are clearly very nervous around him; his merest presence alongside Crichton in Peacekeeper Wars is enough to make hardened commandos hesitate before challenging the crew.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: While his overall look remained the same his facial prosthetics in the first season are more opaque and lack shading details that were added in the second season. His leather mask also started out with a smoother matte texture which was eventually switched to a shinier and grittier version.
• Erotic Asphyxiation: This is evidently one of his kinks, judging by his sex scene with Natira and his only on-screen sexual scene with Sikozu.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Scorpius' xenocidal hatred of the Scarran stems from both what they did to him and what they did to his mother.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He loves his mother, in spite of the fact that he never got to meet her, and he clearly cares a great deal for Sikozu. Doesn't stop him from beating Sikozu to within an inch of her life when he discovers that she's a double agent for the Scarrans.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Subverted heavily; at one point in the fourth season, Crichton insists that Scorpius doesn't understand him, hence the reason why Scorpius had to use the Aurora Chair and the Neural Clone to unearth his secrets. Less than a few episodes later, after Aeryn is kidnapped by the Scarrans, Crichton realises that Scorpius arranged the whole thing, knowing that he'd trade anything for Aeryn's safety.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Double-subverted. You would expect someone so otherwise stereotypically evil-looking to have a deep, growling voice, but his voice actually isn't low. Then it turns out that that's just an affectation he adopts to put other Peacekeepers at ease. His real voice (which is only heard when he's either really, really angry or in extreme pain) actually does sound like it rumbles up from the pits of Hell. HOWEVER, it isn't his "real" voice or an affectation. When we see Young Scorpius he still spoke with his normal voice. The growling voice only seems to come out when he is angry or exerting himself.
• Ex-Big Bad: After being the Big Bad for the second and third seasons, his dethroning by Grayza forces him to become the heroes' Token Evil Team Mate in the fourth season and The Peacekeeper Wars.
• Expy: Averted. He's actually the only Peacekeeper Arc Villain (unless you count Xhalax Sun) who's not directly based on an antagonist from Blake's 7. Played Straight in that he has very noticeable shades of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Scorpius is a contrast to previous, more unhinged villain Crais, Thrawn was a contrast to both Darth Vader and the Emperor. Thrawn and Scorpius are both smooth and sometimes charming Chessmasters. Scorpius is a hybrid in a service that prizes blood purity but rose through the ranks purely on sheer skill and force of will, Thrawn is an alien in a notoriously pro-Human Empire, but achieved high rank within that service simply by being too valuable to not promote to ever-higher responsibility. And both Thrawn and Scorpius are frequently at least a step ahead of anyone plotting against them, even if they sometimes get too far ahead and get blindsided.
• The Extremist Was Right: In The Peacekeeper Wars, Crichton weaponises the Wormhole Technology, leading to a lasting peace. Zig-Zagged in that even Scorpius was horrified by what destruction the wormhole weapons he'd sought were capable of. John's point isn't that one side or the other having wormhole weapons is a tactical advantage that makes aggression against them suicidal, it's that wormhole weapons are universe-class Weapons of Mass Destruction.
• Faking the Dead: He fakes his own death in the Season 3 premiere by pretending to be aboard Officer Kobrin's marauder when Talyn blows it to pieces.
• Fantastic Racism: Towards Scarrans, which stems from both his horrendous upbringing and what the Scarrans did to his mother.
• First-Name Basis: While everyone from shipmates to enemies call John "Crichton", Scorpius usually just calls him "John".
• Freudian Excuse: And a pretty damn good one, too: born of rape, tortured and experimented upon for his entire childhood as part of a plot to take over the galaxy. Little wonder he went on to join the Scarrans' greatest enemies and devoted his entire life to avenging himself and his mother upon their entire species.
• Friendly Enemy: In-between all the torture, Mind Rape, threats and machinations you get a sense Scorpius does honestly like Crichton.
• Half-Breed Angst: Scorpius was conceived as part of a Scarran breeding program conducted on Sebacean prisoners and born with several chronic health disorders due to the species incompatibilities; Sebaceans can't stand high temperatures, while Scarrans thrive in it. As a result, Scorpius spent his youth being horribly abused for his "Sebacean weakness" before finally breaking out of captivity, fitting himself with an internal coolant system to control his condition, and seeking information on his parents out of a desperate need to find out "who I should be." As an adult, he deliberately conceals as much of his Scarran nature as possible — keeping his voice high-pitched, suppressing his temper, avoiding the use of his Super-Strength — and often appears embarrassed whenever he loses control.
• Half-Human Hybrid: A half-Sebacean hybrid; the other half is Scarran.
• Handicapped Badass: He's in constant pain and almost always on the point of death from heatstroke, but he's a seriously dangerous physical opponent if driven to it.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: He joins the crew of Moya in Season 4, but he's very upfront about the fact that his goals and motivations haven't changed one bit, only his circumstances.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Scorpy's default state of dress. Partially justified in that he needs very specific conditions to live, which the suit provides. Of course it's still basically a gimp suit, which does stand out even among the bizarre fashions of the Uncharted Territories.
• Hybrids Are a Crapshoot: Scorpius is an experimentally produced hybrid of Sebacean and Scarrans. He is a Genius Bruiser, but suffers from assorted painful health problems from the conflicts between his ancestral species - the worst is that he is unable to control his own body temperature and is in danger of dying from heatstroke whenever he exerts himself. As a result he has to wear a scary-looking coolant suit, which includes a heat sink that is driven through the side of his skull and into his cranial cavity.
• I Have Your Wife: I Have Your Homeworld — Scorpius threatens Crichton at the end of Series 3 with the fact that he's learnt the location of Earth.
  Scorpius: Even without wormholes, Earth is reachable. At top speed, just over 60 cycles.
• Implacable Man: As a Scarran hybrid, Scorpius can take a great deal of punishment, and the body armor he wears only enhances his implacability.
• In-Series Nickname: "Scorpy," "Grasshopper," "Nosferatu," "Bob."
• Joker Immunity: Scorpius always gets out of things that should rightfully be his end.
• Kavorka Man: He's extremely ugly — even the parts of him that we're shown consist of lizard-like skin and serrated fangs — but at the same time weirdly sexual, and definitely enjoys an amount of in-universe luck with beautiful women.
• Knight of Cerebus: Once Scorpius emerges as the Big Bad of the series, the crew of Moya really have their work cut out for them; as if torturing Crichton so viciously his brain was in danger of liquefying wasn't bad enough, he goes on to kill a potential Love Interest, seize Crais's command carrier as his own, and go on to lead a far more competent Stern Chase than the previous Big Bad ever did.
• Lecherous Licking: He's shown enjoying being both the licker and the lickee.
• Like an Old Married Couple: His relationship with Crichton is like this at times, lampshaded by Crichton when they forge a temporary alliance at the end of Season 3;
  Crichton: Why are you bitching at me like we're married, Scorpy-sue?
• Living Lie Detector: His half-Scarran heritage give him an advantage that neither species has, and allows him to tell when people are lying.
• Machiavelli Was Wrong: Just look at the example of Bad Boss to see how he worked this one out.
• Manipulative Bastard: Scorpius has a gift for talking his way out of danger and into advantageous situations — at one point even talking Crais' own guards into arresting their captain.
• Minored In Ass Kicking: It helps that he has Super-Strength, and he know how to use it.
• Missing Mom: Scorpius is a Child by Rape of a Sebacean mother and a Scarran male, and the strain of having a half-Scarran child meant she suffered a Death by Childbirth. He did not take the news well.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: A variation on Scorpio, the mythical figure responsible for killing Orion the hunter.
• Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: He's half Sebacean and half Scarran, which causes him significant problems due to Scarran heat manipulation not mixing very well with Sebacean hypersensitivity to heat.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Scorpius confesses a real "connection" to Crichton. (Not so much the other way around, though.) Wayne Pygram has mused that since Scorpy is alone in his uniqueness, perhaps he feels a kinship with the fish-out-of-water John. Considering that in an alternate universe where Aeryn never joined the crew of Moya, John and Scorpius became friends^note  This is because without Aeryn, the crew of Moya never visited Scorpius' Gammak Base and he and Crichton did not meet until Crichton was forced to build the Wormhole Weapon in The PK Wars, Scorpius helped him build it and they became friends. it is possible that had the circumstances of their first meeting been better, Crichton might have felt the same way.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: There are arguments on either side as to whether he genuinely believes that he has to save the rest of the galaxy from the Scarrans, or whether he's seeking selfish vengeance on them and doesn't give a crap about anyone else. Wayne Pygram definitely thought the latter.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: From wormhole physics to cybernetics to neuroscience.
• Only Sane Man: When Scorpius can be considered among the most reasonable of the Peacekeepers, it's telling of how screwed the protagonists are.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: In Season 3 (although, arguably, the credit goes to both Scorpius and Harvey).
• Raised by Orcs: He was brought up by Scarrans, who made no attempt to hide the fact that he was an experiment.
• Revenge: Revenge against the Scarrans is his driving motivation.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Seems to be standard M.O. for him, as he tries it in both "Family Ties" and "Look at the Princess". In the first case, however, the intended victim discovers what's in store for him and escapes, while in the second, The Mole gets killed by Crichton before Braca can get to her.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Unless he's angry at someone, he usually speaks in a calm and even pleasant tone.
• Stress Vomit: Has a tendency to toss his cookies whenever his heating/cooling system gets out of whack. This happens rather a lot.
• Super-Strength: One of the benefits of being half-Scarran. He throws Crais around like a ragdoll on one occasion, and on another, he forced open an incredibly heavy, reinforced sliding door one-handed. Said door had, moments ago, crushed a Peacekeeper to death when he was jammed in it to try and stop it from closing. Even Crichton, who's actually witnessed his strength firsthand, is occasionally taken aback by Scorpy's capabilities.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Gets like this around representatives of Peacekeepers High Command, especially Grayza. Hilariously, he even has this reaction once he joins Moya's crew in Season 4, and learns how they actually operate.
  Scorpius: Now you understand what stupidity I have to deal with...
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Ironically he didn't start out as one to Crais, but after his Hazy-Feel Turn in Season 4 he takes the late Crais's place as the ex-Peacekeeper nobody but one woman trusts, though in his case it's Sikozu, who is herself not well-trusted, rather than Aeryn, and he remains more level-headed than Crais was even after his Character Development.
• Token Evil Teammate: In Season 4.
• Too Kinky to Torture: On the rare occasions that he's ended up being captured and interrogated, his captors have to work hard to find a form of torture that he doesn't enjoy. Or if not enjoy, at least ignore. After all, he was tortured for over a decade (while growing up) by professionals.
• Villainous Breakdown: At the end of series 3, following Crichton's betrayal and the destruction of his research base and resources, it's perhaps the only time in the series we see him looking genuinely broken.
• Voice Relapse: His deep, snarling Scarran voice is only heard when he's either a) in extreme pain or b) absolutely enraged.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He shares the same vulnerability to heat that all Sebaceans have, but the Scarran side of his physiology produces enough heat to put him constantly at risk of heat stroke even in normal environments. If something goes wrong with Scorpius' cooling system or there's enough external heat to overwhelm it, he's in serious trouble.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Everything he does is in order to stop the Scarrans from taking over the galaxy. Of course, this is backed by his deep-seated hatred and desire for revenge, but he knows exactly what they're capable of, and he is willing to do anything, even sacrificing himself, to make sure that what happened to his mother doesn't happen to the rest of the galaxy. That's the entire reason he went and offered himself to the Peacekeepers: they were the less evil choice! At the end of the Peacekeeper Wars he is happy when the Scarrans and Peacekeepers sign a peace contract because it still stops them from taking over the galaxy. Undoubtedly though, he had a whole heap of plans set up to get rid of them from what they do control, but one step at a time, no?
• Wild Card: One can never predict quite what he's going to do in a given situation.
• Worthy Opponent: Holds John in very high esteem and quickly learns not to underestimate him.
• Your Worst Memory: While taking a trip down memory lane with a neural clone of Crichton, he's most disturbed by the memory of himself being forced to watch a recording of his mother being raped — to the point that Clone!Crichton actually seems concerned that Scorpius might be having a fit.
• You Have Failed Me: Scorpius has an interesting approach to this. It's seldom actual failure he punishes, but rather arrogance and hubris. For example, in season 3 he allows Officer Korbin to pilot his Marauder back to the Command Carrier...while Scorpius himself remaisn safely in hiding on the planet, knowing full-well that Korbin's opinions of his flying abilities outweighs his actual ability. Korbin is shot down by Crais and Talyn in short order. He later has Drillic killed for getting several Peacekeeper pilots killed while testing wormhole technology and, more importantly, not caring about it.

Harvey

Harvey

"Go on, John! Do it! Then we can go to the beach! I know a place with naked Sebacean girls and margarita shooters!"

Played By: Wayne Pygram

A neural clone of Scorpius and exists solely in the head of John Crichton. He was also played by Wayne Pygram. Harvey is the result of a neural chip that was placed into Crichton's brain by Scorpius after the Aurora Chair failed to reveal the wormhole information he was after.

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• Ascended Extra: Originally, Crichton was just hallucinating Scorpius in "Crackers Don't Matter" because he was just being driven crazy like everyone else in that episode. Then the writers realized how great it would be if they could keep Scorpius around (in John's head) while technically having the real one pursuing them from far away; thus, "Harvey" became a recurring character.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: He has a few of these with Crichton.
• Clone Degeneration: A variant of the trope. He started out as a carbon copy of Scorpius, but after the chip was removed from Crichton's brain, Harvey found himself stranded inside his former host's psyche as a result of neural bleedback, and soon started developing his own "eccentricities".
• Deadpan Snarker: Given that he's a lot less serious than the real Scorpius, Harvey has a tendency to snark compulsively — usually making full use of Crichton's own knowledge of pop-culture in the process.
• Duplicate Divergence: He starts off acting just like Scorpius and even refers to himself as such. After the neurochip is removed from Crichton's brain, he begins to develop a quirkier personality. The trope gets taken a step further after Crichton is twinned, as that means there are also two Harveys around. During the period where the overall crew is separated, the Harvey with Talyn!Crichton remains antagonistic to the bitter end, while the one with Moya!Crichton develops an understanding with his host and becomes a snarky ally.
• Face–Heel Turn: In Season 4, Scorpius claims to remove Harvey as a show of good faith, but instead reprograms/upgrades him to "Harvey 2.0." While maintaining similar characterisitics, he is loyal to Scorpius and committed to seeing his goals achieved. However it's somewhat downplayed: Even after his Heel–Face Turn Harvey still objectively agreed with Scorpius' goals,^note "I possess his intellect, but not his passions or his fears." and after his upgrade still no longer has the ability to control or affect Crichton directly. Instead he is limited to either playing on Crichton's conscience, or generally advocating for Scorpius' position.
• Faux Affably Evil: His relative friendliness is an act (see his meeting with Natira), one that Crichton rightfully doesn't buy. This tendency carries over to his Talyn!Crichton incarnation, while the Moya!Crichton incarnation becomes a semi-genuinely affable ally.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: He keeps trying to light up, but Crichton enforces a strict "no smoking" policy in his brain.
• Happy Place: Often found lurking in the more pleasant areas of Crichton's psyche.
• Heel–Face Turn: Harvey eventually came to value his and Crichton's survival over the goals of Scorpius.
• Homage Shot: Numerous times his visitations with John would manifest themselves in scenes from famous Earth films (see Shout-Out below). When his program was dying, he replayed some scenes from the end of 2001 a la Dave Bowman.
• Imaginary Enemy: He starts out as one, but by the the end of the series he’s more of an annoyance than anything else, even after Scorpius reprograms him to be loyal to him once more.
• Imagine Spot: Tends to make his presence known through these.
• Laughably Evil: In spite of what he is, some of his lines are gold.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: He has no physical presence, but as a neural clone, he is an independent entity existing in John's head.
• Shout-Out: His name is one, in-universe, to Harvey. In the Season 4 finale, he and Crichton even dress up in bunny suits. Another name for him that Crichton briefly considered was Clarence.
• Spirit Advisor: Once Character Development kicks in.
• Villain Decay: Created to avert this trope; the writers could keep Scorpius as a constant threat, yet not require the good guys defeat or escape from him every week. When the real Scorpius turns up, it's still an Oh, Crap! moment. Harvey himself was the victim of it, going from a genuine threat to John who drove him insane and killed Aeryn, at least temporarily, to a mild annoyance who gave him advice. Even after Scorpius reprograms him to be loyal to him once more, he just tries to annoy Crichton into helping Scorpius, the removal of the neural chip preventing Harvey from controlling Crichton any more.

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