Recap / Farscape S 01 E 19 Nerve

Season 1, Episode 19:

Nerve

Aeryn is dying from her injury incurred during the previous episode, and only a Sebacean tissue sample can save her. So Crichton and Chiana use Peacekeeper identity information, uniforms and weapons, along with Aeryn's Prowler, to infiltrate a Peacekeeper Gammak Base and retrieve a sample from the medical stores. They discover that Gilina is working on the base and she helps the pair to find what they need. As they get ready to escape, Crichton is exposed as a non-Sebacean by the base commander, Scorpius. While Gilina helps Chiana to retrieve the tissue sample, Scorpius places Crichton in the Aurora Chair and uses it to extract information from his mind.

In the breaks between sessions in the chair, Crichton is locked up with a Banik slave named Stark, who has the ability to help the dying to cross to the other side and has been in the Aurora Chair so many times that it has driven him insane. During the interrogation of Crichton, Scorpius discovers a hidden memory: an encounter with the Ancients that Crichton doesn't remember, in which the Ancients placed advanced wormhole knowledge inside Crichton's subconscious that will guide him and help him understand the science of wormholes for himself. For Scorpius, this is a boon: wormholes are his obsession, and the entire Gammak Base is devoted to research on creating and manipulating them.

Captain Crais arrives to collect Crichton but is denied by Scorpius, who knows that Crais has been violating orders in his pursuit of Crichton. Meanwhile, Gilina causes a diversion — a reactor overload — that gives Chiana the chance to escape the base and get the tissue sample back to Moya so that Aeryn can be saved. Base security cannot determine who caused the diversion, but Scorpius suspects that Crichton knows and puts him back in the Aurora Chair...

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This episode includes the following tropes:

• Answer Cut: Scorpius worries the Aurora Chair will kill Crichton before he gives up the information, so he asks Crais what he thinks will make Crichton cooperate. Smash Cut to Chiana and Gilina.
• Armor-Piercing Question: With Aeryn in poor health, Crichton wants to risk it all to try to save her. The others point out the obvious problems of trying to infiltrate a Peacekeeper base, but he shuts them up with this.
  Crichton: So, what are we saying here? We do nothing? We let Aeryn die? Is everybody happy with that?
• "Awkward Silence" Entrance: Even the music stops when Scorpius enters the officers lounge.
• Bavarian Fire Drill:
  • Averted when Crichton tries to bluster his way past the Chief Security Officer who wants him to take a genetic verification test. His men point their rifles at Crichton and Chiana until he complies. Fortunately, Gilina had already noticed he was on the base and hacked the system to let him through.
  • Chiana tries to do this to get hold of a Prowler during the base evacuation. That doesn't work either.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Chiana gets uncomfortably close to Crichton while arguing with him about whether to take her, then grabs his ass while he's reprimanding Chiana for getting too much into her Show Some Leg role.
• Big "NO!": The Cliffhanger ending as Scorpius straps Crichton into the Aurora Chair and turns it on.
• Black Site: The Gammak base is hidden in an abandoned mining colony (Crichton even thinks it's been nuked sometime in the past).
• Blatant Lies: After Chiana returns with the tissue sample, Aeryn wants to talk to Crichton. The others assure Aeryn she'll see him soon.
• Blood from the Mouth: Aeryn is all Leave Me Alone! until she vomits blood on her punching pad, then collapses when she tries to take a swing at Crichton.
• The Bus Came Back: Gilina returns as part of the Gammak Base crew.
• Call-Back: A whole Continuity Cavalcade as the Aurora Chair rips the memories of Crichton's past adventures from his mind, but the most important one is a scene we haven't seen before, that took place during the events of "A Human Reaction".
• Character Development: When everyone else is reluctant to even go near a Peacekeeper base, Chiana of all people volunteers to go with Crichton, saying she wants to earn her keep on Moya while he needs an experienced thief and distraction. Crichton is suspicious but relents when Chiana shows how useful she can be by handing him the Peacekeeper ID she lifted in the last episode.
• Character Tics: Chiana's habit of moving her head from side to side (caused by Gigi Edgeley having to move her head to see through her alien eye contacts) gives her away.
• Classified Information: Crichton is able to bluff his way through most situations with this trope. Unfortunately, a stolen ident chip and a Sebacean appearance only get him so far.
• Curse Cut Short: "You stay the hell out of my mind, you—"(Crichton screams as Niem powers up the Aurora Chair)
• Dissonant Laughter: Crichton laughs when he realises the main area of research at the Gammak base isn't weapons—it's wormhole technology. He gives another laugh when he sees Captain Crais has turned up to make his situation suck even more. Done for a Rule of Threes when Crichton laughs while strapped into the Aurora Chair because he's overhead Scorpius talking of Chiana's successful escape. It's a mistake because Scorpius just turns on the Chair to find out who helped her do this.
• Dressing as the Enemy:
  • Crichton re-dons his Peacekeeper disguise from last time.
  • Chiana puts on a Tech coverall, changes her skin tone, dies her hair black and styles it in a Sci-Fi Bob Haircut. It works until she runs into the base commander who was paying a lot of intention to her earlier.
• Exact Words: Lampshaded when Aeryn says she was telling the truth about her muscles healing; unfortunately the stab wound reached an internal organ that can't regenerate on its own.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When the Mind Probe gets to the Ancients, a mental block suddenly occurs, but Crichton didn't prompt it.
• Freeze-Frame Ending: The episode ends on Crichton's screaming face. To Be Continued...
• Friendship Moment: D'Argo keeps Rygel from pestering Aeryn (claiming his vaunted leadership may be needed on command) just so that she can rest in peace. He also works to find a way to prolong her time and stays by her side during the recovery.
• Futuristic Jet Injector: The "tissue gizmo" containing Aeryn's tissue sample is a laboratory pipette with the appropriate hissing sound dubbed on.
• Going Down with the Ship: Chiana is waiting near the hanger when the fake evacuation alert starts, but finds that Commander Javio has made a beeline there himself.
  Chiana: But I thought the Commander was meant to be the last one to evacuate.
  Javio: It's funny; I believe just the opposite.
• Greater Need Than Mine: Crichton urges Chiana and Gilina to focus on getting the sample to Aeryn rather than try (and likely fail) to bust him out of the cell.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: All over the place, but most effectively worn by Scorpius and Niem.
• Heroic Vow: After Aeryn gets the sample, she starts to recover and asks where Crichton is. The others prefer not to tell her about Crichton being captured, so D'Argo has a low key example of this.
  Aeryn: Where is he? I want to see him.
  D'Argo: You will.
• Holding Hands: D'Argo holding Aeryn's hand as she recovers.
• Honor Before Reason: When Gilina says they'll try to get him out of the cell, Crichton insists getting the tissue sample back to Moya is more important.
• If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: Rygel claims he was in Aeryn's room to check how she was doing. She calls him out on wanting to check if she was dead so he could steal her stuff.
  Rygel: I resent your unfounded accusation! Furthermore, you have no possessions worth taking.
  Aeryn: How inconsiderate.
  Rygel: Yes. How terribly inconsiderate!
• I Have Your Wife: Captain Crais turns up claiming to have captured Moya and its crew. Crichton asks if the captives are all in perfect health. Crais replies that they are, but that will change if he doesn't cooperate with Scorpius. Crichton pretends to play along, knowing Crais is bluffing because he doesn't know about Aeryn's life-threatening condition.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Rygel is blunt about how Crichton barely managed to fool four exhausted commandos, saying an entire research base full of enemy operatives will be far harder to trick. Though clearly most concerned with himself, he is also right that Crichton getting caught puts everyone at risk.
• Love Martyr: Gilina risks being executed for treason for helping Crichton (and the risk of being caught is a lot greater than the last time she helped him) even though she becomes aware that Crichton is doing all this out of love for Aeryn, not her.
• Madness Mantra: Stark's Establishing Character Moment features him loudly explaining which side of the room is his, then scurrying off into a corner while singing incomprehensibly in a demented falsetto.
• Man on Fire: Chiana dodges behind a fuel pump when Taizo shoots at her, and when his shot ignites the fuel she uses it to burn him alive.
• Mind Probe: The Aurora Chair painfully rips memories from its victims. The more someone tries to resist, the greater the pain.
• Mistaken for Spies: Entirely justified given that Crichton is an alien disguised as a Peacekeeper officer, captured inside a top-secret base where weapons research is being conducted. And Crichton doesn't want to reveal what he's really doing there for fear of betraying his friends.
• Not So Above It All: Aeryn says as a warrior if she can't die in battle she would rather die alone. The others pretend to respect her wish but realise she doesn't want to die at all, never mind alone.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Chiana disguises herself as a Sebacean with pancake makeup and a black wig after Crichton is arrested. It's not very convincing due to her unique body language and recognizable voice. Taizo immediately sees through her disguise.
  Aeryn: I'm starting to hallucinate. You make a worse Peacekeeper than Crichton.
• Race Against the Clock: Aeryn believes she has roughly 50-60 arns before she dies of her injury. D'Argo and Zhaan have to resort to unorthodox methods to prolong Aeryn's time.
• The Reveal: Crichton learns the Ancients secretly put equations for wormhole technology in his brain and repressed his memories of this event.
• Safely Secluded Science Center: Scorpius' Gammak Base is hidden on an isolated moon deep in the Uncharted Territories, where things like wormhole physics and intelligent viruses can be studied without endangering Peacekeeper Space. In fact, Crichton and the rest of Moya's crew would never have learned of its location if they hadn't bumped into Captain Larraq in "A Bug's Life", and wouldn't have gone anywhere near it if they hadn't needed to steal medical supplies in a hurry.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Taizo tries to bribe Chiana to become his "personal server" regardless of the Peacekeeper distaste for interspecies fraternization, and has no problem being first to Abandon Ship regardless of tradition. Crichton plays this card to bring a civilian onto the base in the first place.
• Seize Him: Played for Dissonant Serenity as this trope is usually an indicator of Incoming Ham, yet Scorpius delivers the line with an utterly flat affect.
  Scorpius: Guards, that man is an impostor. Seize him.
• Shout-Out
  • Crichton dubs Scorpius "Nosferatu", presumably because he Looks Like Orlok.
  • "Danger...Danger, Will Robinson...beware the Chair..."
  • Crichton also tells Scorpius and Crais to "Fetch the Comfy Chair."
• Show Some Leg: Chiana comes along so everyone will be Distracted by the Sexy and not paying attention to Crichton. With men outnumbering women five-to-one on the base, that's not difficult.
  Chiana: The more they look at me, the less they look at you.
• Spot the Imposter: Though it's some time before we discover how Scorpius knew. He just comments that Crichton looks Sebacean but his 'energy signature' is quite different.
• Technobabble: Lampshaded by Chiana. "Spare me the technobabble, Gadget Girl—let's just get on with it." Later she tries to Bavarian Fire Drill the base commander by throwing a load of tech talk at him, but she stumbles over her words and arouses his suspicion.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Meeting his insane cellmate gives Crichton a good idea of what fate awaits him in the Aurora Chair, and he passes out on the floor.
• Too Fahrbot To Torture: Stark is shown shouting in glee for Scorpius to give him another hit of the Aurora Chair.
• Torture Is Ineffective: Zig zagged. The Aurora Chair is quite good at obtaining information, but Scorpius fears that pushing a specific case like Crichton too hard will result in death and thus the loss of the wormhole knowledge. As he says, it's a troubling stalemate.
• Victorious Loser: In all the confusion, Chiana manages to escape in the Prowler with the needed sample. Upon Scorpius realizing everything was a diversion so that the Prowler could take off, the captive Crichton openly laughs at him. Scorpius ensures his mirth doesn't last long, though.
• Wham Episode: This is commonly held up as the point where the series Grows Its Beard and really gets cooking. It introduces a number of elements that will track through the whole series - Scorpius makes his big entrance, he and Crichton learn about the wormhole knowledge left in his head by the Ancients, Stark makes his first appearance, and John has switched to wearing leather permanently.
• We Need a Distraction: Gilina gives Chiana 400 microts to get to a Prowler, then sets off a reactor overload warning so the entire base will have to evacuate.
• When Things Spin, Science Happens: Or in this case, when the Aurora Chair spins you get your mind raped.
• The World Is Not Ready: Jack-Ancient refused to give Crichton wormhole technology, but buried the information in his subconscious to guide him so he could find the means himself.
  Jack-Ancient: If you're not smart enough to discover it on your own, you're not smart enough to handle it wisely.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: After the memory of Crais vowing to kill Crichton, the Gammak Base commander identifies him by name and mentions High Command losing contact with his Command Carrier. Scorpius immediately deduces that Crais has gone renegade and thinks of how he can use that to get the wormhole information from Crichton.
• You're Insane!: The reaction to Crichton saying he's going to stroll into a Peacekeeper base.
  Rygel: You aren't just fahrbot! You're magra-fahrbot!