Recap / Farscape S 03 E 16 Revenging Angel

Season 3, Episode 16:

Revenging Angel

D'Argo has an accident while showing off his new ship, and, in a fit of Luxan hyper-rage, begins blaming John for touching the ancient Luxan vessel. They argue, and D'Argo throws his Qualta blade down several decks and knocks out John, putting him in a serious, possibly fatal condition. The ship, believing it is being invaded by a non-Luxan, begins a self-destruct sequence. In order to stop the self-destruct (which would destroy Moya as well), the crew must first translate the ship's recorded message, then (as they find out) find D'Argo's Qualta Blade. Meanwhile, John hallucinates a Looney Tunes-inspired Coyote-and-Road Runner scenario with D'Argo as the predator, while Harvey the Neural Clone tries to convince him to give in to his darker impulses, namely revenge.

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Tropes present in this episode include:

• Acme Products: All of D'Argo's products in Crichton's imagine spots bear the name "Ozme", given that the show is made in the Land of Oz.
• Adventures in Comaland: John's plot in the episode has him attempting to fight his way back to consciousness after his head injury.
• All Men Are Perverts: Crichton's mental recreation of Aeryn is a sexy cartoon that proceeds to do a Shapeshifter Showoff Session. The second Painted Tunnel, Real Train has Animated!D'Argo include a couple buxom lifeguards in an attempt to bait him.
• Always Need What You Gave Up: While getting chewed out by Chiana for the situation, D'Argo angrily throws his Qualta Blade off the catwalk in Pilot's den down into Moya's depths. Later, after D'Argo is able to comprehend the message about the self-destruct, the ship tells him three items that can used to deactivate the sequence, and you can guess what the last one is.
• Amusing Injuries: Animated!D'Argo is subjected to a wide array of punishment, such as being squashed, blown up, shot in the face, and shredded.
• Analogy Backfire: When John refuses to seek revenge, saying "Kirk wouldn't stoop that low", Harvey points out that being savage when he had to be was a big part of the character.
• Animated Episode: The episode is in the style of old Looney Tunes shorts.
• Animesque: Cartoon Aeryn was drawn by a Japanese animator, and so moved like a Japanese anime character.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption
  Cartoon Aeryn morphs into Nancy Reagan
  Nancy Reagan: Johnny, just say—
  Crichton: No!
• Bait-and-Switch: Cartoon Aeryn is not amused by John imagining her in scanty clothes. When he re-draws her as Jessica Rabbit, she's still not amused, but more over his lack of imagination.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Harvey entices John to take revenge. John obliges by dropping an Anvil on Head.
• BFG: Animated!D'Argo sets up a giant cannon on a cliff to blast his prey from a great distance away. It fails because of the unexpected recoil and how Animated!Crichton was actually sitting on the cannon's barrel right in front of the magnifying glass.
• Breather Episode: Sandwiched in-between the "Infinite Possibilities" two-parter and "The Choice," fans greatly welcomed a chance to just laugh.
• Call-Back: When blamed for the malfunction, Crichton insists he was only ever in D'Argo's ship unsupervised just once.
• Chekhov's Gag: Before getting knocked unconscious, Crichton tells D'Argo to stop acting like Yosemite Sam. Rather than being just one of his many shout-outs, it sets up his cartoony coma sequences.
• Conflict Ball: Crichton lampshades that he's not even sure why he and D'Argo have been feuding for the last couple Moya episodes.
• Continuity Nod: While trying to talk things out with D'Argo, Crichton suggests a round of rock-paper-scissors, which he taught him back in Season 2.
• Despair Event Horizon: When it looks like he may actually be dead, Crichton quietly mutters that his love for Aeryn should be enough.
• Distinction Without a Difference: In his mind, Crichton acknowledges how D'Argo tried to kill him. Pilot says that's an overstatement, being a result of D'Argo's temper rather than a deliberate attempt. Crichton concedes that, but he says it still adds up to the same result.
• Dramatic Irony: Harvey telling John that his counterpart on Talyn will get Aeryn if he dies from the injuries D'Argo inflicted on him. Of course, by this point, the John on Talyn is already dead.
• Dumb Blonde: As a Baywatch lifeguard, Animated!Aeryn plays this up for laughs, deliberately sounding confused over what she's even supposed to do like this.
  Animated!Aeryn: I, like... [realizing] rescue you!
• Easily Forgiven: At the end of the episode, D'Argo says he would understand if Crichton wanted revenge, but Crichton says he would never want to avenge himself on his friend.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Harvey continually dismisses John's love for Aeryn as being too soft and something that can never help him kill D'Argo and survive, and so cannot understand why he persists on focusing on that instead of giving in to revenge. When John manages to heal himself and reawaken through The Power of Love, he notes that while revenge is "a way of life" for Scorpius, it can't be for him, and Harvey will never understand. Indeed, he looks completely bewildered and, as John awakens, is left genuinely speechless.
• Face Death with Dignity: Pilot is resigned to being killed when the Luxan ship explodes and focuses on finding a way for the crew to survive.
• Fanservice: In-Universe with a scantily-dressed Cartoon Aeryn. She's not amused.
• Foreshadowing: Jool is noticeably tender with the comatose Crichton and tearful when Pilot resigns himself to death, indicating that this situation is actually her fault.
• Freudian Trio: In Crichton's mind, Pilot functions as the Id—advocating that primal instinct to flee at the slightest sign of danger. Jool is the Superego—suggesting rational discussion with D'Argo and finding common ground. Chiana (while normally the Id in the real world) is the Ego here—balancing the other two by suggesting using speed and brains to go on offense against D'Argo.
• Friendship Moment: Crichton forgiving D'Argo and assuring him he would never take revenge on him.
• Giant Spider: The first animated sequence ends with Crichton trapped in a web and being descended upon by a spider-D'Argo.
• Goofy Print Underwear: When getting dragged along by a giant rocket, Animated!D'Argo is shown to be wearing these.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: The repeated recoils ultimately send the cannon off a cliff, but it hangs in mid-air for a moment. It takes Animated!D'Argo being told what happened for gravity to kick in.
  Crichton: Yo, D'Argo, look down.
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: D'Argo and Chiana, as the ship grants the former full control of all systems.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: In the immediate aftermath, D'Argo is genuinely shocked that he put Crichton in a coma. When called out for his actions by Chiana, D'Argo insists that it was all Crichton's fault and that the guy slipped.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In true Looney Tunes fashion. Almost all of Animated!D'Argo's plans rely on excessive gadgets or elaborate traps, with all of them backfiring in one way or another. In Crichton's mind, Chiana points out the aggressor always makes things more complicated than they need to be, which in turn always gives the target a way to cause a backfire. From there, Animated!Crichton proceeds to just hang back to watch elaborate traps get set up and then deliberately throw a wrench in the works.
• Hope Spot: The last animated sequence ends with D'Argo beaten and Crichton about to blast off... only for a very painful re-entry into live-action and a waiting D'Argo.
• I Am X, Son of Y: How D'Argo identities himself to the ship.
  D'Argo: I am Ka D'Argo, son of Laytun, grandson of Reksa, and I am the great-grandson of Ka D'Argo Treytal.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Turns out it was Jool messing around in D'Argo's ship. She was just trying to learn how to use it so she and D'Argo could have something in common.
• Informal Eulogy: Harvey performs one, with Crichton by his side.
  "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pay our final respects and to say farewell to our dear friend, Commander John Crichton. A schmuck. Mule-headed. Reckless. And probably brain-dead before I met him. Alas, his death is mine also."
• Iris Out: The episode ends with one over a cartoon landscape.
• Jaw Drop: Animated!D'Argo in response to Animated!Crichton flying into a painted wormhole.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In The Teaser, D'Argo remarks he hasn't had much to do lately, referencing how the Moya episodes have been more stand-alone compared to the Talyn ones.
• My God, What Have I Done?: As the injured Crichton falls to the floor, D'Argo stares in shock over what he just did. At the end of the episode, he expresses regret over what he did to Crichton and his anger issues throughout the season.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jool messing around the Luxan ship.
• Noodle Incident: Crichton recalls a childhood incident when a neighbor stole his bike and young Johnny proceeded to give him a bloody nose.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • After having fallen down a cliff twice and been shot by a cannon, Animated!D'Argo stumbles to the road and right onto an earlier explosive trap that is about to go off. Cue panicked scream.
  • The real D'Argo when the ship tells him he could've used the Qualta Blade he threw away to deactivate the self-destruct.
  • Jool screams her head off, after Pilot tells her she's up to her waist in "bat dren" in the lower levels.
• Painted Tunnel, Real Train: At different points, Animated!D'Argo tries painting a wormhole on a wall to trick his prey. Animated!Crichton has no trouble flying on through, but Animated!D'Argo has worse luck: either slamming into the rock wall or finding the wormhole actually does work, leading to a sudden collision with the Enterprise.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: According to D'Argo, Luxans believe that betraying one's ally justifies that ally taking retribution.
• Percussive Maintenance: Chiana's preferred solution was to shoot the control panel in D'Argo's ship. D'Argo has to stop her, though.
• The Power of Hate: Harvey keeps urging Crichton to give into this, saying revenge is the strongest emotion and that such raw hatred is the only way to emerge from the coma. When Crichton does take his revenge in a couple live-action sequences, nothing happens. As Crichton tells Harvey, embracing hatred may work for someone like Scorpius but not him.
• The Power of Love: Crichton's love for Aeryn is what really keeps him going.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: In the final scene, D'Argo concedes that it can be a real curse having both a warrior heritage and a violent temper. It's also lampshaded how Luxans teach their people all about fighting but not more intellectual pursuits like their own ancient language (which was exactly what was needed to learn how to shut down the ship's self-destruct).
• The Pursuing Nightmare: Crichton spends the episode trying to survive being hunted down by an imaginary D'Argo while resisting the urge to just take revenge. Crichton can partly control the dream by turning himself and everything around him into cartoons, but though his roadrunner act can keep imaginary D'Argo on the ropes for a little while, his attempts always end with the funny cartoon adventure degenerating into horror as his pursuer corners and temporarily kills him.
• Race Against the Clock: After getting some system control back, Pilot determines less than an arn before the self-destruct goes off, though he points out this is just an estimate.
• Rake Take: One of the cartoonish booby traps that Crichton has for D'Argo, during the live-action face-off. It works.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In the immediate fallout of Crichton being in a coma and Moya being in danger, Chiana lets D'Argo have it. It's what leads to D'Argo throwing his Qualta Blade into the depths of the ship.
  Chiana: You really frelled us this time.
  D'Argo: Me?! It wasn't me! It was Crichton!
  Chiana: Oh, you tried to kill him?
  D'Argo: I didn't try to kill him! He slipped!
  Chiana: You're pathetic. You really are, and we're all gonna die because of it!
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Harvey advises Crichton to "live to even the score" against D'Argo. Crichton eventually does within his imagination, but doesn't find it in any way satisfying.
• A Rotten Time to Revert: Crichton's cartoon self can't be realistically hurt or killed. For good measure, whenever he gets too close to failure, he ducks out of the fantasy and tries another. Unfortunately, after his third attempt at stopping D'Argo via Looney Tunes escapades, Crichton tries to fly his module through a wormhole to the real world - only for the wormhole to turn out to be an image painted on a rock wall. Cue massive explosion. Crichton is reverted to his live-action self at exactly the right time to suffer realistic injuries, leaving him crippled as imaginary D'Argo moves in for the kill.
• Shapeshifter Showoff Session: Played for laughs when Crichton bumps into his mental incarnation of Aeryn, here represented by a sexy cartoon. After asking Crichton to give her some proper clothes, Aeryn is redrawn with a giant pencil, only to end up looking like Jessica Rabbit; annoyed at Crichton's lack of imagination, Aeryn snaps the pencil in half and begins shapeshifting into various sexy personas on her own: in quick succession, she becomes Marylin Munroe, Cleopatra, Dorothy Gale, Madonna, and Pamela Anderson... and when Crichton asks if she can become Sharon Stone a la Basic Instinct, she immediately becomes a finger-wagging Nancy Reagan, much to Crichton's horror, before becoming Aeryn again.
• Ship Tease: Jool was fooling around in the ship because she likes D'Argo and thought that figuring out how it worked would give them a Commonality Connection.
• Shout-Out:
  • Animated!Aeryn appears dressed as Jessica Rabbit, Marilyn Monroe, Cleopatra (thinking it was Juliet), Dorothy Gale, Madonna, a lifeguard, and Nancy Reagan.
    • When Crichton has to run away from D'Argo in her presence, Animated!Aeryn shouts, "Run, Forrest! Run!"
  • Animated!D'Argo winds up colliding with the Mir space station and the Enterprise.
  • The entire episode is filled with Shout Outs to Looney Tunes. See Whole-Plot Reference below.
    Crichton: On with the show, this is it!
• Super-Persistent Predator: Whether in live-action or animation, the D'Argo in Crichton's mind is the Coyote to his Roadrunner.
  D'Argo: You can run as much as you like, but I'm gonna catch ya.
• Tap on the Head: Averted; Crichton's head injury endangers his life.
• Team Rocket Wins: The first two animated sequences end with D'Argo about to kill Crichton.
• Tempting Fate: Harvey insists that Crichton no longer has the power to exert control over him. Crichton proceeds to turn him into a cartoon and perform Anvil on Head.
• That's All, Folks!: In the last coma scene, Crichton casually says this on his way out the door. The episode proper ends with a wordless example, with Crichton looking out at a cartoon landscape and a looney Iris Out.
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • D'Argo's expression when he learns that the only thing that can stop the self-destruct is the Qualta Blade he earlier threw into the depths of the ship.
  • After the ship crashes in the hanger, D'Argo starts glaring at Crichton (who subsequently has this expression on his face).
• This Is Reality: When Harvey points out that Captain Kirk could be savage when he had to be, Crichton counters by saying Kirk was fictional.
  Crichton: I'm real. I have to live with what I do.
• Toon Physics: Naturally occurs throughout the animated sequences. Of particular note is Crichton twisting the barrel of D'Argo's rifle as he pleases, and gravity only being a harsh mistress after D'Argo looks down.
• Transformation Discretion Shot:
  • Crichton and several other characters in his imagination transform into cartoons; however, only Harvey actually undergoes the transformation in full view of the camera, with the others transitioning into their cartoon forms in cuts - most often when the live-action scenes transition to fully-animated sequences.
  • Aeryn rebels against John's imagination by shapeshifting into various sexy personas - this time through Wonder Woman-style Spectacular Spinning.
• Taunting the Transformed: Early on Crichton loses patience with Harvey's attempts to interrupt his Adventures In Coma Land and uses the power of his imagination to turn the neural clone into a cartoon. Not only is Crichton smirking at Harvey's impotent rage throughout this scene, but when Harvey demands that he take the possibility of revenge seriously, Crichton just takes advantage of the cartoon format to drop a 1000-ton weight on his head.
• Understatement: When explaining the current situation to Jool, Pilot remarks that D'Argo was "agitated" the last time they spoke.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Within his own mind, Crichton does take revenge on D'Argo in live-action form. He doesn't find it remotely satisfying and thus feels justified over believing how love, not revenge, is what keeps him going.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Chiana really lets D'Argo have it over nearly killing Crichton.
• What Would X Do?: On the subject of a human's primal instinct to take revenge after being wronged. Crichton also points out that a fictional character has the luxury of not having to live with the fallout of any actions.
  Crichton: I don't wanna be like other people. I don't wanna be like you. I don't wanna stoop that low. Kirk wouldn't stoop that low.
  Harvey: That was a television show, John... and he made Priceline commercials.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The animated sequences owe a lot to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, with a little Bugs Bunny thrown in for good measure.
  Crichton: Doctor Chuck Jones wrote the book on these situations.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: D'Argo asks what Crichton saw when he was 'dead'.
  "D'Argo, I could never explain it to you."