Season 3, Episode 5:
...Different Destinations
The crew visit a monastery historical site, where 30 Peacekeepers fought the Venek Horde 500 cycles ago before a truce was arranged to save the Jocacean nurses. Thanks to a tear in time on the planet, goggles allow anyone to see these events. However, when Stark tries it, he is so horrified by the violence that his power sends him, Crichton, Aeryn, D'Argo, and Jool back in time. While the group struggles to keep history on track, Chiana and Rygel witness the temporal changes to the planet.
Tropes present in this episode include:
- Captivity Harmonica: Harvey plays "Home On The Range" on a harmonica during the siege.Harvey: Aaaahhh, John! If this situation hadn't reminded you of all those old westerns you watched as a youth, I never would have heard that!
- Cat Folk: The Venek, who resemble humanoid lions, specifically. The more compassionate and reasonable members, Grynes and Lennok, play into the benevolent King of Beasts motif, while the race's overall propensity for falling into an uncontrollable bloodlust if their honor cannot be satisfied or their goals achieved partakes of Cats Are Mean with a vengeance.
- Close-Enough Timeline: After things really start diverging from recorded history, Harvey muses about this trope. Ultimately, they resort to Aeryn's plan (using their modern weapons) to force things back on track. It works, but with a major and tragic difference.Harvey: Hmm, if nudged closely enough to course, events have a way of restructuring themselves. If the participants are the same, the venue's the same, the motivation's the same, then, well, the outcome is likely to be the same.
- Continuity Nod: Crichton asks the Jocaceans if they have any beer and compares it to fellip nectar, a comparison Aeryn made back in "A Human Reaction"
- Disguised in Drag: Crichton has the General wear a nurse's outfit while escaping. Unfortunately when he gets discovered and killed his men mistake the outfit as a calculated insult to desecrate the body.Lennoc: The death of our commander in battle we understand and accept. But to disgrace him in your females' cloth?!
- Downer Ending: Easily the biggest downer of the entire series. The Venek Horde want revenge against Crichton, but none of the Jocacean nurses know where he is. Lennok tries to keep things calm, but the other Veneks succumb to blood lust and kill the nurses.
- Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product: Fellip urine has healing properties (or at least, can numb pain).
- From Bad to Worse: The episode is built on this trope. Every plan to avoid disrupting history just makes things worse.
- Heartbroken Badass:
- Crichton blames himself for the way things end.
- The final scene is D'Argo finding the marker that Cyntrine made and mourning her death.
- Heroic BSoD: Stark is quite depressed over Zhaan's death.
- Historical Hero Upgrade: In-Universe. Sub-Officer Dacon is a beloved hero of Peacekeeper lore said to have killed a dozen Veneks in a key fight and later initiated the peace process while mortally wounded. Aeryn learns that Dacon was actually an inexperienced newbie, a Comm Supervisor, and a cook, while an otherwise unknown officer named Tarn killed the dozen Veneks. Dacon even hated the idea of being the ranking officer on the scene because he was in over his head.
- I Ate WHAT?!: In the past, Jool drinks a concoction that was one part water, nine parts fellip urine. She was not happy when she found out.
- Innocuously Important Episode: What Harvey says about the Close-Enough Timeline will prove very important next season.
- It's All My Fault: "I screwed up."
- Killed Offscreen: History changes so that all of the Jocacean nurses are slaughtered by the Venek Horde.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Jool openly doubted Aeryn's claims about Dacon, saying it was Peacekeeper propaganda. She ends up being proven right.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Everything goes progressively wrong the moment Crichton gives Stark the goggles. That gets them sent back in time. Kelsa shooting Grynes derails a peace plan and enrages the Vennek Horde even further. Dacon dies for nothing. Using modern weapons results in the nurses dying.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- The captured Venek leader (Grynes) is noted for being quite compassionate, with Crichton citing an earlier battle he could've won decisively but allowed to end in a truce. Crichton hopes that releasing him will kick-start the peace process, but Kelsa (thinking John is a traitor trying to help a prisoner escape) shoots Grynes dead.
- Lennok appears to be one, as well. To avoid a needless slaughter, he practically pleads with Kelsa and the others to give up some information about Crichton's whereabouts or the weapons so that the Vennek Horde will have a reason to stand down.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Those on Moya are aware of the changes to the planet: from a peaceful world to a war-torn Venek society to completely lifeless to dust. This is lampshaded by Chiana.
- San Dimas Time: Enforced. The crew can't control the time tear, so they're stuck in the past until they can figure out how to open it back up. This forces them to experience events as they unfold, while the episode occasionally shows Chiana and Rygel witnessing different changes to the planet.
- Say My Name: Kelsa dies screaming Crichton's name.
- Scenery-Based Societal Barometer: The current state of the planet - and by extension, history itself - is regularly conveyed through the state of the monastery courtyard back in the present: at the start of the episode, it's a monumental tribute to a legendary peace arrangement between the Venek Horde and the Jocacean nurses. But when Crichton and co get flung back in time, Jool returns to the present to find that the monastery is ruined and marked with the banners of the Venek Horde - indicating that history has gone horribly wrong. After a messy series of disasters in which the planet itself is ruined and even vanishes back in the present, Crichton and the others are able to supposedly restore things to normal, then get back to their own time - only to discover that the monastery has been arranged as a memorial to the senseless deaths of the nurses, who were murdered thanks to the changes Crichton made to the timeline.
- Shout-Out:
- Tragic Time Traveler: John, Aeryn, D'Argo, Jool, and Stark are accidentally sent 500 cycles back in time to the site of a Last Stand by a group of Peacekeepers against the Venek Horde, where a badly wounded young officer was able to negotiate a ceasefire and save the lives of a group of nurses before succumbing. Every action they take makes things worse, until they're finally forced to fight a defensive battle. When they finally get back, they discover that all they managed to do was kick things over into a Close-Enough Timeline where the Horde killed everybody.
- What You Are in the Dark: While everyone else was away, Chiana and Rygel had intended to loot Zhaan's quarters of anything valuable. To their surprise, they find they don't want any of it.
- Would Hurt a Child: Cyntrine is among the final victims.
