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Jul. 14th, 2010 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatJust finished watching the commentary for Kansas - in S4 Farscape. And I'm amazed, they actually duplicated the blocking for the beginning of this episode from an episode way back in S1 - Human Reaction. And at the end of Kansas - Crichton's last line is a direct reference to a line in A Human Reaction. This isn't the first time they do it either - Bad Timing does a copy of the blocking from Dog with Two Bones. The scene is one between Aeryn and Crichton. The first sequence is Crichton telling Aeryn he's going to go with Aeryn when she's about to leave in her proller. That's in Dog. In Bad Timing - it's Aeryn telling Crichton she's going with him in his module. The attention to small details, and continuity in this series astonishes me - because you do not do that in tv shows, particularly not in 1999-2002.
Another bit that is great about the episode Kansas and the soon to follow Terra Firma is they are comments on Dog with Two Bones. Dog tells the audience how Crichton imagines his friends would handle earth and fit in there. Kansas and Firma - show the reality. Also Firma is the Xmas episode, but they sort of denigrate and subvert Xmas. Kansas - also provides Crichton's friends with the chance to see his world, to see where he comes from.
What he hasn't told them about himself. Aeryn is given the opportunity to catch up with Crichton, who has spent the last three seasons learning her world. In S3 - he meets her mother, or at least a version of him does, he learns where she came from, and in this episode and the next - she meets his family, the world he doesn't speak about. And keeps hidden. What if Dorothy could bring the scarecrow, tinman, cowardly lion et al home. The culture clash is comical but also informative. And they refer to things that we first learned in the first season - the name Karen Shaw, the girl, not his girlfriend at the time, who he lost his virginity to at 17, and what happened to his Mom. Also the relationship between his parents - which is strained, since his father is gone all the time. His own guilt regarding her.
But the brilliance is that like any good novel - you can track back and find the references.
The visual and otherwise. Also in Kansas - Crichton tells his mother - "You are a peacemaker, not a fighter." A reference we understand better in Peacekeeper Wars and in a way underlines the Aeryn/Crichton experience. Aeryn is the peacekeeper - the force that makes sure the peace remains, and Crichton is the peacemaker who negotiates it. In Crichton's family - his mother was the peacemaker, his father the fighter. Although their relationship was never violent.
And this is from young Crichton's perspective, old Crichton sees it differently.
Fascinating. Flawed in places - as Browder points out in the commentary - the aliens learn English far too rapidly. Aeryn struggles with it, but everyone else figures it out in just a few hours. That was handled better in A Human Reaction. It's a minor bubble but it does detract from the episode.
Also from the commentary - they state that they knew if they ever really went back to earth it would be the death-knell, but they also had to deal with the audience's view that that would be the natural conclusion - that John Crichton would return to earth with the girl and the happy life - or alone as the case may be - the ending of Wizard of OZ. The ending we expect. The writers subvert this and go in a different direction - they bring Crichton back, but show, not tell, show, how he can't go back to Earth or Home Again, that he must seal it off and his home is now elsewhere, he no longer belongs on Earth. It works and makes perfect sense. How they do it - is shown in Dog with Two Bones, Kansas, Terra Firma, and Constellation of Doubt, with Bad Timing the finale.
Another bit that is great about the episode Kansas and the soon to follow Terra Firma is they are comments on Dog with Two Bones. Dog tells the audience how Crichton imagines his friends would handle earth and fit in there. Kansas and Firma - show the reality. Also Firma is the Xmas episode, but they sort of denigrate and subvert Xmas. Kansas - also provides Crichton's friends with the chance to see his world, to see where he comes from.
What he hasn't told them about himself. Aeryn is given the opportunity to catch up with Crichton, who has spent the last three seasons learning her world. In S3 - he meets her mother, or at least a version of him does, he learns where she came from, and in this episode and the next - she meets his family, the world he doesn't speak about. And keeps hidden. What if Dorothy could bring the scarecrow, tinman, cowardly lion et al home. The culture clash is comical but also informative. And they refer to things that we first learned in the first season - the name Karen Shaw, the girl, not his girlfriend at the time, who he lost his virginity to at 17, and what happened to his Mom. Also the relationship between his parents - which is strained, since his father is gone all the time. His own guilt regarding her.
But the brilliance is that like any good novel - you can track back and find the references.
The visual and otherwise. Also in Kansas - Crichton tells his mother - "You are a peacemaker, not a fighter." A reference we understand better in Peacekeeper Wars and in a way underlines the Aeryn/Crichton experience. Aeryn is the peacekeeper - the force that makes sure the peace remains, and Crichton is the peacemaker who negotiates it. In Crichton's family - his mother was the peacemaker, his father the fighter. Although their relationship was never violent.
And this is from young Crichton's perspective, old Crichton sees it differently.
Fascinating. Flawed in places - as Browder points out in the commentary - the aliens learn English far too rapidly. Aeryn struggles with it, but everyone else figures it out in just a few hours. That was handled better in A Human Reaction. It's a minor bubble but it does detract from the episode.
Also from the commentary - they state that they knew if they ever really went back to earth it would be the death-knell, but they also had to deal with the audience's view that that would be the natural conclusion - that John Crichton would return to earth with the girl and the happy life - or alone as the case may be - the ending of Wizard of OZ. The ending we expect. The writers subvert this and go in a different direction - they bring Crichton back, but show, not tell, show, how he can't go back to Earth or Home Again, that he must seal it off and his home is now elsewhere, he no longer belongs on Earth. It works and makes perfect sense. How they do it - is shown in Dog with Two Bones, Kansas, Terra Firma, and Constellation of Doubt, with Bad Timing the finale.