The Peacekeeper Wars, part 1
Deep in the Uncharted Territories, a Peacekeeper armada under the command of Scorpius launches a pre-emptive strike against a Scarran fleet. As a result, the Peacekeepers and Scarrans officially declare war on one another. Meanwhile on Qujaga (the water planet from "Bad Timing"), Rygel is collecting the crystallised remains of Crichton and Aeryn from the ocean floor by swallowing the crystals and "depositing" them on a waiting boat. Once they have all the crystals, the planet's inhabitants reconstruct them into their original form. During this process, Chiana arrives in a transport pod, along with a Diagnosian and Grunschlk: Chiana has had her eyes replaced and the new ones have limited X-ray vision. She also brings word that the Peacekeeper/Scarran war has begun, and the Peacekeepers are getting curb-stomped.
The inhabitants of Qujaga reverse the crystallisation process and bring Crichton and Aeryn back to life, where they're filled in on the details of their sixty days by D'Argo, Chiana, Rygel, Stark and Noranti. They immediately check with the Diagnosian to see how the baby is, but the Diagnosian can't find it. It transpires that after picking up all the crystals off the ocean floor in his stomach, Rygel still has one in his stomach, and as a result, he's pregnant with Crichton and Aeryn's baby. The people of Qujaga are willing to allow Moya and her crew to stay for a little while longer and Crichton and Aeryn decide to get married, but during the ceremony, a Peacekeeper command carrier arrives in orbit and a Marauder lands on the island where the people of Qujaga live. Onboard the Marauder is Scorpius and Sikozu, who have gone AWOL from the Peacekeepers along with their command carrier, and they found Qujaga after Scorpius was somehow able to "sense" Crichton's revival. Scorpius has come to try and convince Crichton to give the Peacekeepers wormhole weapons, but Crichton claims he doesn't know how to build them.
Exploring the island, Noranti finds a grand temple and realises that the inhabitants of Qujaga are Eidolons, the legendary race of peacemakers that were long thought to be extinct. The Eidolons on Qujaga have lost the physiological ability that allows them to influence peace, but Moya's crew know that a small group of Eidolons live on Arnessk, the ones released from time stasis: if the large force of Eidolons on Qujaga could learn the peacemaking ability from their ancestors on Arnessk, they'd have the power to influence peace on a galactic scale and potentially end the current war. As much as Crichton and Aeryn want to stay out of galactic affairs, they're determined that their child should be raised in peace, and to that end, they decide to undertake the mission. Noranti elects to stay on Qujaga, but the rest of the crew, along with an Eidolon volunteer named Pikal, his bodyguard Caa'ta and Scorpius and Sikozu (who, D'Argo points out, will likely have the knowledge and clearance codes to get them through Peacekeeper territory), head up to Moya and Starburst towards Arnessk. During the trip, Moya is attacked by Tregan mercenaries, assigned to guard the borders by the Peacekeepers. Scorpius tries to order the Tregans to stand down, but they realise that he's gone AWOL and try to take over the ship. The crew manage to fight the Tregans off and escape, but Caa'ta dies defending Pikal.
When Moya arrives at Arnessk, the crew land and meet with Jool, the Eidolons and their leader, Yondalao. They convince Yondalao to return with them to Qujaga and teach the Eidolons there while Pikal stays on Arnessk to learn from his brethren. Yondalao also makes a throwaway comment to Aeryn that as a Peacekeeper, she should do her duty: it's revealed that when the Eidolons were a great race thousands of years ago, they took humans from Earth and genetically altered them into Sebaceans so that there'd be a military — the Peacekeepers — able to enforce the peace they'd created. However, as Moya is preparing to leave Arnessk with the crew and Yondalao aboard, a Scarran ship shows up: the Decimator, Emperor Staleek's personal flagship, having been alerted to Crichton's location by a spy. The Decimator fires on the Eidolon temple, destroying it and killing Jool, Pikal and the rest of the Eidolons, before ordering Moya's crew to surrender. Crichton, Aeryn, Rygel, Scorpius, Sikozu, Stark and Yondalao head to the Decimator in a transport pod, while D'Argo and Chiana leave in Lo'La with the cloaking activated, making them undetectable.
While D'Argo scans the Decimator for its weaknesses, Crichton tries to convince Staleek that he can't give the Scarrans wormhole weapons. In a last-ditch effort, he offers to fly Staleek down a wormhole and they visit "Einstein", who confirms that Crichton doesn't have the knowledge of wormhole weapons and that nobody should have such knowledge. However, once Staleek is returned to the Decimator, he still keeps the crew prisoner, knowing that they could possess knowledge of Peacekeeper plans. War Minister Ahkna demonstrates the Decimator's advanced technology by detecting Lo'La, targeting her and destroying her. D'Argo and Chiana manage to get out of the ship in time and fall unconscious in the vacuum of space. At the last minute, they're rescued by another Luxan warship, even more advanced than Lo'La, crewed by a team of Luxan commandos and captained by Jothee. Meanwhile on the Decimator, the Scarrans study Rygel's pregnancy before returning him to the crew's cell. When Staleek enters, Yondalao demonstrates his power by creating a field of calming energy that allows him and Staleek to speak rationally. On his own and with little knowledge of Scarrans, Yondalao almost manages to broker a peace accord — until Ahkna shoots Yondalao, believing that victory over the Peacekeepers is assured anyway. In order to safeguard Yondalao's knowledge, the crew force Stark to cross him over and assimilate his peacemaking knowledge, just as Rygel starts displaying symptoms that indicate it's time to transfer the baby back to Aeryn. It's at this point that the Scarrans, having decided to execute everyone, start pumping poison gas into the room...
Tropes present in this episode include:
- Aborted Arc: Due to the reduced screentime available Chiana's blindness and visions are dropped. Her eyes were replaced with new ones before the miniseries began.
- Back for the Dead: Jool and the inhabitants of Arnessk return, having last been seen at the beginning of season four, and are killed shortly afterwards.
- Back for the Finale: Grunchlk, Jool and Jothee.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Inverted when John and Aeryn are revived at the beginning of the episode. On seeing they're completely surrounded they both pull out their weapons without getting out of their embrace, making them front-to-front badasses.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Geometric pregnancies and babies capable of living in the stomach of a Hynerian.
- Cutting the Knot: Crichton is in a Sadistic Choice: either agree to give the Scarrans the wormhole technology, which they will use to destroy the Peacekeepers, rule the galaxy, and eventually threaten Earth, or Rygel (carrying his and Aeryn's baby) will die. He elects to take Staleek into the wormhole to meet Einstein, since he knows a) the Ancients are powerful enough to resist Scarran mind-probes and b) the Ancients didn't put enough information in his head to turn the wormholes into weapons, they can testify to this, and they certainly won't give it to the Scarrans either. But instead of giving up after learning all this, Staleek decides to still keep them prisoner to gain leverage and information against the Peacekeepers, and then to kill them for dissection after the peace talks (in his mind) leave him weak and humiliated.
- Darkest Hour: The end of Part 1, naturally. While Chiana and D'Argo did get rescued, and the latter managed to take the chip revealing the Scarran flagship's analyzed weaknesses and how to exploit them, the others are all still prisoners of the Scarrans; the attempt to use the Eidolons' pacifying field on Staleek has been foiled by Akhna killing Yondalao (which means, with the death of all the others in the temple attack on Arnessk, the descendants back on Qujaga may never get the ability back and it will be lost forever); Yondalao's abilities have been forcibly passed on to Stark, with no idea whether the results were good or bad; everyone is being gassed for living dissection, right as Rygel is about to give birth; and Crichton doesn't even know how to use the wormholes against the Scarrans. The only other bright spot is Grayza having eliminated the Chancellor who was ready to lay down and surrender, but considering her track record...
- Dirty Coward: The Grand Chancellor of the Peacekeepers is portrayed this way, at least by Grayza and (it's implied) Braca; Scorpius is a bit more diplomatic in that he says the man wishes to avoid a war he knows he cannot win, though the fact Scorpius himself pulls their fleet back and thus leaves a lot of the Peacekeepers and their positions open to attack (he's sensed Crichton is alive and believes him to be the key to victory) probably influences his assessment. In any event, this is why Grayza ends up poisoning the Chancellor when he proposes surrender, since "death is always preferable to subjugation."
- Doom Magnet: Chiana lampshades this quality of Moya's crew, after their decision to go to Arnessk to help the Eidolons' descendants and bring about peace instead results in the deaths of Jool and all but one of the Eidolons:"We're cursed. We destroy everything we touch."
- E = MC Hammer: The Trope Namer appears on a chalkboard during one of Crichton's conversations with Harvey.
- Enemy Mine: The Moya crew teams up with the Peacekeepers.
- Evil Costume Switch: Though not as much of a realignment as usual for this trope, Sikozu has gotten herself a nice new outfit now that she's switched from being one of the protagonists to working with the Peacekeepers.
- Evil vs. Evil: Peacekeepers vs Scarrans. Since the Peacekeepers aren't the ones that will outright murder the entire crew, they form an (uneasy) alliance.
- Express Delivery: The miniseries is set 60 days after "Bad Timing" and Grayza is now heavily pregnant. Aeryn notes that this is another feature of the Peacekeepers' modifications to female troops and that the same will happen with her own pregnancy.
- Extended Disarming: Aeryn seems to hide weapons everywhere.
- Graceful in Their Element: Rygel moves quite beautifully under water.
- Hidden Depths: Staleek is a warmonger, arrogant, misogynistic, and committer of genocide (including ordering the destruction of the Eidolons' temple) which he excuses as a "precaution" made necessary by war. But he also has enough honor to wish to keep his word, his meeting with the newly-enlightened Yondalao reveals his inner fears of being taken only as an aggressive and belligerent killer (both personally and as a species), and the pacification field allows him to express a desire for trade and power (weighted in the Scarrans' favor, of course) without anyone having to die to achieve it. Too bad Akhna had to ruin it.
- Honor Before Reason: How Akhna views Staleek, since his determination to remain true to his word (in this case, by not killing the prisoners or at least Rygel and the baby) is putting the Scarrans in danger—as she's well aware of the crew's Spanner in the Works nature and is afraid of what they could do if left alive. The Emperor points out, however, that while there is risk, they can still extract information from the prisoners, and that harming Scorpius and Aeryn could have repercussions with the Peacekeepers.
- Hope Spot: It looks like the Eidolons' pacifying field is working, Staleek is being reasonable and fair-minded and seems on the verge of signing the peace accords. But then Akhna shows up and orders her guards to shoot Yondalao.
- Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Peacekeepers are descended from Transplanted Humans because Earth was so far out of the way and primitive that none of the relevant species had even heard of humans before. This complete lack of importance made the newly organized Peacekeepers seen as impartial and fair.
- Irony: Crichton is fighting so desperately to end the war because of not only his love for Aeryn but their unborn child, since "a baby's gotta have a father"...not knowing that Grayza is (probably) also pregnant by him.
- Kick the Dog: The Scarrans attacking Arnessk.
- Killed Off for Real: Jool and the rest of the Eidolons at Arnessk.
- The Load: Stark isn't... combat-ready. When Moya is invaded and tasks are allocated, Stark helpfully suggests that his best course of action is to "stay out of everyone's way".
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Scorpius knows when Crichton is reconstituted as Harvey comes back online at the same time.
- Neck Snap: How Staleek kills the doctor that was going to finish Rygel and the baby.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
- If Akhna hadn't taken it upon herself to destroy Lo'La (thus abrogating the truce) and then ordered Rygel and the baby killed, Staleek wouldn't have stormed in and killed the doctor, thus saving Rygel. Downplayed, however, in that he still ends up deciding to have all of them killed with a preservative poison that will allow for living dissection, and that this occurs after the death of Yondalao reveals to him his "weakness", which is Akhna's doing thanks to his previous chastisement of her.
- Earlier, the Eidolons were perfectly prepared to sit the war out in time-honored neutrality while they decided both whether Pikal even was their descendant and whether to intervene once they had reawakened their peacekeeping field in him and the rest of his race. But then the Scarrans show up in orbit and, despite the pleas of Jool and the other Eidolons, the temple and all within are destroyed. End result, Yondalao decides to aid Moya's crew after all in their cause. Also downplayed, however, in that his attempt to broker peace, while initially successful, is disrupted by Akhna killing him and putting the Emperor back on the course to war.
- Noodle Incident: Yondalao says the Eidolons spent a great deal of time searching for a species with no ties to the others that could effectively be their peacekeeping force. They eventually came upon an Insignificant Little Blue Planet on the outer spiral of the galaxy and made contact with the locals.
- "Not So Different" Remark: When Sikozu attempts to persuade Aeryn not to support Crichton's plan for the sake of their baby, she suggests that as a human, Crichton is as inferior to a Peacekeeper as she herself is to Scorpius. Aeryn turns it back around on her, however, by saying it isn't about superiority or inferiority, but equality, and that for both of the couples "maybe we're just meant to be together".
- No-Sell: Staleek attempting to attack Einstein.
- Once Upon a Time: Crichton uses the Stock Phrase when he tells the Eidolons about his predicament for the 89th time.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Staleek couldn't care less about Rygel and the baby, but he foils Akhna's assassination attempt, as such an action would've destroyed his credibility and any chance of making a deal later.
- Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Crichton says "Boom-bada-bing" as he tells the Eidolons about his crystallization.
- Scenery Censor: Crichton writes a massive "FUCK OFF" on the blackboard in his first vision. Harvey is conveniently standing in front of the "UC" to keep things network-friendly.
- Shout-Out: Harvey is channeling Albert Einstein in a heavy German accent, but when mentioning "ZA VORMHOLE VEAPON!" his arm lifts up in a Nazi salute before being yanked down in embarrassment. Crichton of course immediately dubs Harvey "Strangelove".
- Skewed Priorities: Akhna is quite content to execute their prisoners and be done with it (specifically citing how Scorpius has already put one over on them in the past), but Staleek counters that Scorpius's position in the Peacekeepers means a wealth of intel that would be quite valuable during a war. He also notes how Aeryn's history as a pilot could also provide information.
- Team Switzerland: The reason the Eidolons opted for Transplanted Humans is because they knew using one of the known species in the region as their muscle would undermine any negotiations, creating distrust and allegations of favoritism. A species no one had ever fought or even seen before would be seen as impartial and trustworthy. According to Yondalao, the original force was held in high regard back in his day and enforced agreements to the letter.
- Transplanted Humans: The Sebacean species is revealed to be a genetically altered offshoot of Humanity, who were taken from Earth thousands of years in the past to serve as the Eidolons' peacekeepers.
- Villainous Rescue: Staleek coming in to stop the doctor from killing Rygel and the baby via Make It Look Like an Accident—because Akhna countermanded his orders and thereby broke his word/the truce, but also because only he gets to order their deaths.
- Wedding Smashers: To the point where it becomes a Running Gag. Every time John and Aeryn try to tie the knot, someone attacks them.
- Wham Line: Being 12,000 years out of step, Yondalao wants to take time to examine the situation rather than rush into anything. Stark starts wigging out in response to this, prompting a line directed at Crichton and Aeryn.Yondalao: Peacekeepers, do your duty!
