I have mixed feelings about the cancellation of Farscape at the end of its fourth season. Though I'm a big fan of the show, I can admit that the quality dropped by the end of its run. Still, there were so many potentially exciting plot threads that never got to be explored. If any show deserves the Expanded Universe treatment, Farscape is it.

Taking the Stone

The most interesting plot-that-never-was on Farscape is that of the Nebari resistance. Some of the non-canonical novels and a tiny section of the brief comic book series skimmed that thread, but that's all. This episode introduces us (sort of) to Chiana's brother Nerri, the de facto leader of the anti-Establishment Nebari. Thinking him recently dead and buried on a nearby planet, Chiana flies to the surface and gets caught up in a group of hard-partying youngsters with a death wish. They use one of the more nifty bits of sci-fi technology featured on the show, the Sonic Net. For ritualized thrills, the death-wishers jump off a cliff and try to break their fall with an amplification of their own voices. Sometimes it works, sometimes they go splat.

This is a clever episode that mixes a canned plot with larger character development. Chiana definitely needed it considering that she was never originally intended as a regular on the show. It was good to give her a chance to flesh-out with her backstory but not get bogged down in it either.

Crackers Don't Matter

Ben Browder is one of his generation's greatest TV actors and is easily the most under-appreciated. This episode lets him play crazy like none other, but he never really becomes a ham in the process. The presence of a fly-like alien on Moya causes the crew to basically become paranoid schizophrenics. Crichton starts to hallucinate Scorpius (foreshadowing a later development) and we get to see a sort of skewed version of the delightful repartee those two characters come to enjoy as the show progresses.

Farscape has always had a sense of humor, but it's not until this episode that it's overtly funny. From Crichton shouting "Pele!" when he kicks D'Argo to a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Scorpius hallucination imploring, "Finish them off, John. Then we can go to the beach!" it's just a real laugh-out-loud episode. Sure, our bad guy gets his in the end and everyone mostly returns to normal, but crazy has a tendency to linger.

Picture If You Will

This is the second and final appearance of malevolent being Maldis on Farscape. I'm actually glad he wasn't a more frequent antagonist on the show. He was just too hokey and limited to really carry the complexity of the Farscape plot arc. I tend not to like it when magic gets in my sci-fi. It's rarely as clever as the high-tech stuff that usually fills the McGuffin slot on these shows. Once again it's up to Zhaan to fight magic with yet more magic.

This episode is suitably trippy, but after so many stand-alone stories I'm ready to get back to the central plot already.