1.17 - Through the Looking Glass

To reassure the crew, Moya attempts a Starburst without sufficient energy and finds herself somewhere between dimensions. Part of the crew disappears and John finds himself travelling from dimension to dimension in an attempt to save them.

I thought you were Junior Miss Tough Chick of the universe. - John Crichton
Yeah, when I can kiss or kick or cry my way out of it. This is way, way, way, way different. - Chiana

Look, I gotta get out of here before I end up like you. - John Crichton
What? Handsome with a great sexual prowess? - Rygel

I've always wondered what could be beyond height and width, depth and time. - Zotoh Zhaan
Nausea? - John Crichton

Have you ever heard of anything like this happening before? - Ka D'Argo
D'Argo, I haven't heard of anything like anything before. My planet doesn't even go to the moon anymore. - John Crichton

The entire crew is sitting around the galley table on Moya and discussing their plans. D'Argo, Rygel and Zhaan are concerned that Moya is unable to Starburst because of her pregnancy and want to abandon her while Aeryn and John are trying to convince them to stay. Chiana tries several times to say something but the others all tell her to shut up.

Pilot appears on the monitor and says that Moya understands their concerns. They are discomforted to realize that Pilot knew about their discussion and Chiana says that she was trying to tell everyone that the DRDs were listening in.

Pilot says that he and Moya would prefer for the others to remain with them and so Moya will perform a Starburst to allay their fears. John and Zhaan are a bit concerned by this but Moya enters Starburst anyway. There is a sudden lurching stop and everyone is thrown to the floor.

Everyone picks themselves up as a bright light shines into the ship from outside. They notice that Rygel is missing and they are unable to contact Pilot. Zhaan has hurt her arm. John speculates that they hit something.

D'Argo leaves to go to Command but disappears in a flash of red light. A few seconds later, Aeryn disappears in a flash of blue light. Everyone is startled and Chiana starts to panic. John leaves for Command.

There, he is finally able to contact Pilot. Pilot does not know what is going on either, cannot access many of Moya's systems or the DRDs and is quite concerned. He tells John that Moya is scared and in pain.

John explains that Aeryn, D'Argo and Rygel have disappeared. Pilot is able to locate Aeryn and Rygel and tells John where they are. He goes back to rejoin Chiana and Zhaan.

Chiana is still panicking and wants to leave Moya in a transport pod. John tells Zhaan that Pilot is scared and she goes to Pilot's Den. He then tells Chiana that Pilot can't open the doors so the transport pod can't leave.

He manages to get her to calm down and asks her if she wants to be part of the crew.
"On your good days." she tells him.
"This is one of the good days." he replies.
He asks her to go look for Rygel and tells her where Pilot reported him to be. She reluctantly agrees to do so and heads off.

John goes to the Maintenance Bay, which is where Pilot reported Aeryn to be. He cannot find her but one of the tables is shaking and there is a strange light. He approaches it and finds himself in another Moya where everything is lit by a red light. He becomes disoriented by the light and falls to the ground and throws up.

Later, he is searching through Moya with a cloth tied over his eyes. He goes to Pilot's Den but Pilot is not there. He then starts searching the rest of the ship. As he passes the galley, he is seen by D'Argo but does not see D'Argo himself. D'Argo calls after him but collapses on the floor.

John gets to Command and sees a light like he did in the Maintenance Bay shining from the ceiling above one of the consoles. He climbs up and finds himself in yet another Moya. This one is lit by a blue light and there is an extremely loud whine. He starts to search again.

Arriving in the Maintenance Bay again he finds Aeryn working at the workbench. When he taps her on the shoulder she spins around with her gun drawn but relaxes when she sees who it is. He tries to talk to her but they cannot hear each other over the whine. They use sign language to ask if either of them have seen D'Argo or Rygel but neither of them have. They start to search the ship together.

They get back to Command and John climbs back up on the console but nothing happens. They resume their search. John suddenly sees several bright flashes in front of him and jumps back but Aeryn indicates that she didn't see anything.

They continue with their search and arrive at Rygel's cabin. John sees his tape recorder and reaches for it but his hand passes through it and he finds himself transported to still another Moya. This one is filled with a yellow light.

Rygel is here and immediately starts laughing at John. John can't figure out what is so funny at first but soon starts laughing himself. Rygel says there is no one else here but he is in extremely high spirits and keeps talking about food and telling John jokes. The jokes are awful but John and Rygel both laugh hysterically at them.

John sees the flashes again and this time they seem to be accompanied by some sort of creature. Rygel sees them too. John wonders what they are but Rygel just thinks they are funny and is happy since the creature didn't take their food. Rygel eventually wanders off to look for something to eat. John hears a strange noise down an access shaft and slides down it, getting pulled through to somewhere else again.

Back on the normal Moya, Chiana and Zhaan are arguing with Pilot. Pilot keeps reporting the locations of the other crew members but Chiana and Zhaan keep insisting that they aren't where Pilot reports them to be. John enters and tells them that Moya has been split among four realities. Like light can be split into red, blue and yellow, there is now a red, blue and yellow Moya.

Zhaan wonders how this could have occurred and Pilot admits that Moya entered Starburst without sufficient energy. Starburst is the "seam" between dimensions and normally they ride an energy wave along the seam until they are pushed out more or less at random. Since they entered Starburst with insufficient energy they cannot be pushed out and are stuck in Starburst.

John tells Zhaan about the creature he has seen and she speculates that he saw something from another dimension.
"I've always wondered what could be beyond height and width, depth and time." she says.
"Nausea?" suggests John.
Zhaan sighs. "Spirituality."

John sends Chiana and Zhaan to get some weapons "in case that creature is the 'eat us' kind". He goes to talk to Pilot. They come up with a plan to put all four Moyas into reverse thrust to back out of whereever they are.

John rejoins Chiana and Zhaan and they get ready to head to the red Moya. The creature appears again, flies over them and hovers in front of John for a moment. They decide to leave Zhaan with Pilot to protect him in case the creature comes back again. John and Chiana will go look for the others. Zhaan says that even if she was still a Pa'u she would not hesitate to shoot.

Chiana and John arrive in the red Moya and meet up with D'Argo. John fills D'Argo in on what has happened. Chiana reveals that her people once opened a hole into another dimension and it destroyed an entire solar system.

The creature appears once again and all three of them shoot at it. It disappears but D'Argo and John do not think they have driven it away.

Everyone goes to Pilot's Den and John shows them what they need to do to reverse thrust. Chiana is unaffected by the red light but does not want to be left alone with the creature so D'Argo, who is handling the light a bit better than John, decides to stay. John gets sick on the floor of the Den.

Chiana and John go to Command and John helps Chiana through the hole in the ceiling into the blue Moya. The sound here incapacitates Chiana so he carries her to Rygel's cabin and throws her through into yellow Moya. He then goes to look for Aeryn.

The creature appears and flies around again, leaving claw marks on the wall. Aeryn arrives and hands John a helmet which blocks out the sound. She asks him why he didn't shoot the creature but he is examining the marks on the wall. He tells her of the plan to reverse thrust on all of the Moyas. He starts to explain the control sequence but she surprises him by revealing she already knows it from the time she was carrying Pilot's DNA. He doubts her but she rattles off the sequence to him.
"It's going to be harder to doubt you in the future." he tells her.
Aeryn shrugs. "I apologize for my strengths."

John proceeds to yellow Moya. There, he finds Chiana and Rygel in Pilot's Den. Chiana is doing a balancing act on Pilot's console while Rygel is still telling bad jokes. John explains how to reverse thrust to Chiana, who is having trouble taking it seriously. Rygel complains that he does not travel backwards.
"Well, turn around. Pretend you're going forward." he tells him.

John leaves and Rygel starts reciting a poem:
Oh, there is no expanse of the mind, the will cannot traverse
Or physically, the distance laid across the universe.
As blessings many in the stars save one lamented curse
That Sixteenth Rygel, glory me! Must travel in reverse!

John returns to the normal Moya where Pilot tells him that the reverse thrust has not worked and they are still trapped. Pilot suggests that Moya could voluntarily give up the baby in order to provide more power but both John and Zhaan refuse to consider it.

The creature appears again and Pilot urges John to shoot it, saying Moya is scared. John realizes that the scratches the creature has been leaving on the wall are in groupings of prime numbers and that the creature is trying to communicate. He walks forward into the light.

He finds himself in a brightly lit area with an indefinite creature. The creature tells him that it is a guardian of the dimensional spaces whose task is to repair breaches. If Moya tries to back out of the breach it will tear it beyond repair but if Moya goes forward the creature will try to guide her back to normal space.

John returns and tries to tell Zhaan and Pilot what he has discovered. He tells Pilot to Starburst forward. At first Pilot does not want to do so but eventually gives in and tells John how to initiate forward thrust. He agrees to Starburst forward in 500 microts.

John goes to red Moya and runs down to the Pilot's Den where he promptly gets sick again. He tells D'Argo to initiate forward thrust. D'Argo is skeptical but John convinces him and he leaves with D'Argo counting down.

In blue Moya John finds that parts of the ship are blocked off by white light. He is able to communicate with Aeryn through the helmets and tells her to initiate forward thrust at the correct time. She tells him how to get to Rygel's cabin since the main passageway is blocked by the light. He gets there and goes through to yellow Moya.

Chiana and Rygel are still in Pilot's Den and still laughing. Chiana starts to flirt with John but he goes to the console and initiates thrust. All four Moyas begin to shake and suddenly everyone appears together in Pilot's Den as the Moyas merge back together. They all start laughing but Pilot doesn't see the humor.

Later, everyone is sitting around the galley table again. They are talking again but now everyone is in a much lighter mood and the conversations are friendly. D'Argo and John are talking about a girl, Chiana and Zhaan are talking about a fight Chiana was in and Rygel is telling Aeryn a story from his reign.

Pilot appears on the monitor and says that Moya thinks the baby is about due. John raises his glass in a toast.
"This is one of the good days, people." he says. "To a happy, healthy baby."
"Hear, hear!" says Rygel.
D'Argo takes John's glass. "Thanks" he says as he drinks.
Everyone laughs and Zhaan leans across the table to kiss Rygel who tries to push her away.
"No, no, no! Ewww...."

Moyas pregnancy occurred in They've Got a Secret and has been at least mentioned in most episodes since then.

Aeryn received some of Pilot's DNA in DNA Mad Scientist. Pilot also mentions the bond between a Leviathan and her Pilot for her passengers in this episode.

Zhaan renounced being a Pa'u in Rhapsody in Blue.

The title of the episode comes from the book Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass.

What was the creature?

Are Starbursts really as random as Pilot implies?

When will Moya's baby be due?

Would the others have really left Moya if the problems here had not occurred?

The theme in this episode is one of family. It occurs on several levels, some more obvious than others. There is also a related theme of separation and reunification so let's see what we have here.

The episode opens with everyone seated around the table and discussing if they should leave Moya. D'Argo, Rygel and (surprisingly) Zhaan all want to leave while Aeryn and John want to stay. Interestingly enough, those who want to leave are trying to justify their leaving to those who want to stay. In Durka Returns John told Chiana that anyone could leave any time they wanted to. But, for D'Argo, Rygel and Zhaan, it is not enough that they can leave. They need for Aeryn and John to understand why they want to leave. There is an implication here that they are connected, that it is necessary for them to reach a consensus before a decision can be made. Zhaan tells John that it is not necessary for them to operate as a unit when John says they are stronger together, but the fact that she is arguing the point with John implies that she does see them as a unit. If they aren't, why is she trying so hard to justify leaving to him?

Also telling is how everyone is treating Chiana. She only wants to point out to them that the DRDs are listening in but every time she tries to talk all of them tell her to shut up. This is a private argument. They are a family and she is an outsider, not permitted to join into the family discussion.

Of course, Pilot and Moya are listening in, as Chiana tried to warn them. The crew had apparently forgotten what they had been reminded of in They've Got a Secret, that Moya is a living being with feelings of her own. They had started thinking of her as a thing again. A malfunctioning starship that needed to be upgraded.

Anyway, Pilot is the first to explicitly state what the others would not. He and Moya want and need the others to stay. Moya wants to prove to her "family" that she can still protect them and so tries the Starburst, with ill-fated results.

Right after this Aeryn, D'Argo and Rygel are separated from the others and John and Zhaan, who a few minutes earlier had been discussing if they should split apart, start to work to bring everyone back together. Even Chiana, who had been the outcast a few minutes ago, is suddenly needed by them. Now she wants to leave but John convinces her to stay and help the others. Remember, these are the same people who wouldn't even listen to her earlier.

So John goes on his search through the various Moyas. Moya is split into four pieces and is slowly drifting apart and this will eventually destroy all of them. This is a physical manifestation of what John had said earlier. He said that they are stronger together than they were separately. Just like the splitting of Moya will destroy her, the splitting of the "family" they have created will destroy them.

There are a few really nice scenes with John and Pilot. John tells Pilot that Moya should not have Starburst if she was not ready and Pilot says that this is not the time for recriminations. John tells him that there is no blame on Moya but that the rest of them should have been more considerate of her feelings. They had put their own, individual fears ahead of the group and now they were paying the price.

Interestingly, it is Moya, perhaps because of her incipient motherhood, that is the first to realize that the family is being formed. Pilot says Moya is scared, John says they are doing what they can and Pilot responds "She knows." Moya realizes that, just as she performed the Starburst to show that she could protect her family, her family is now working to protect her.

John determines what needs to be done and passes the word through the different Moyas. The family, now scattered, must work together to save all of them. John is proven right, they are stronger together than they are as individuals and by working together Moya is reunified and everyone is brought together again.

The last scene shows how we have come full circle. Once again everyone is seated around the table and talking but now they are laughing and joking together. Even Chiana is part of the group. The individual discussions reveal that everyone is learning things about each other, things that one would normally reveal only to friends and family. When Pilot announces that Moya is about due John proposes his toast because we are having a baby. The transformation is complete. Moya is their home and they are a family.

Of course, since this is Farscape we know that this happy state of affairs can't last long. We finally have brought our crew together. Now, we get to see what can tear them apart.

Hang on. This ride is about to get a bit bumpy.