| Farscape episode | |
|---|---|
| “Eat Me” | |
| |
| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 06 |
| Guest star(s) | Tammy MacIntosh (Jool), Shane Briant (Kaarvok), Lisa Griffiths (Belima) |
| Writer(s) | Matt Ford |
| Director | Ian Watson |
| Production no. | 10306 |
| Original airdate | April 20, 2001 (US); October 1, 2001 (UK) |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "...Different Destinations" | "Thanks for Sharing" |
Crichton, D'Argo, Chiana, and Jool come across a heavily damaged Leviathan where they will face horrors they could never dream.
Synopsis[]
John Crichton, Ka D'Argo, Jool, and Chiana are travelling in a badly damaged transport pod, damage that was apparently caused by Jool touching the controls. As oxygen is depleting, they stumble across a Leviathan they originally think is Moya until they see it is wearing a control collar. With nowhere to go Crichton takes them aboard, despite the risk of Peacekeepers, citing it as their only option. They dock, and someone (or something...) jumps on D'Argo's back, but is shot down by Chiana. D'Argo looks at Crichton and tells him he knew they shouldn't have come.
The pod is "dead" and D'Argo says they need 3k wiring and narium coils to get it operational, leading Crichton to suggest a scavenger hunt. Jool suggests borrowing a transport pod, but Chiana has checked and there are none; it looks as though the Leviathan has been abandoned. As D'Argo and Crichton go on a search, Jool stays behind in the pod, and Crichton tells Chiana to stay with her.
During their search, D'Argo stumbles across some bones, which he thinks may be Sebacean. The Leviathan is severely damaged and dying, and as D'Argo finds the 3k wire, Crichton notices that the ship is oozing pus. D'Argo comments that it is diseased, and Crichton wonders if it was hit by some bio-chemical weapon since there are no DRDs. D'Argo wants to go get the narium coils and leave, but Crichton wants to get to the ship's Pilot so they know what they're dealing with, so they split up.
Chiana prepares to leave Jool to join the "treasure hunt", but a scared Jool tells her that they don't have weapons, violence, or war on her planet, so Chiana hits her with her gun twice. Jool punches her back and Chiana replies, "Violence... you'll get the hang of it."
Crichton goes to Pilot's den, and in doing so scares two scavenger people off. As he approaches the Pilot, it starts to growl at him, and Crichton notices that it only has one arm. Crichton says he's not going to hurt him and asks what happened to him. The Pilot responds by asking Crichton to kill him.
Chiana finds a group of scavenger people eating, and they eye her, but she tries to fend them off. Meanwhile, the Pilot again asks Crichton to kill him, and says his arms where cut. Crichton reminds him that they'll grow back, but the Pilot splutters "they cut". Crichton is horrified to realize that every time this Pilot's arms grow back the scavengers just cut them off again, and wonders why they would do that. Pilot reveals that the scavengers eat them.
The scavenger people try to eat Chiana and she starts shooting. D'Argo hears and runs towards her, but meets an alien man on the way. D'Argo asks where Chiana is, when the man encases him in a bubble.
Crichton finds the man and some scavengers dragging D'Argo, when one jumps on him. Chiana hears and joins him, but all they can do is watch as the man sucks out D'Argo's brain, and the scavengers start to eat him. Chiana shoots them and kneels over D'Argo's lifeless body.
Chiana and Crichton are dragging D'Argo's body when they spot some scavengers eating the ship and Crichton shoots them. Meanwhile, Jool is still alone, trying not to be scared, but everything is starting to get on top of her. She goes to leave the bay, but when the door opens by itself she runs back to the transport.
Chiana and Crichton drag D'Argo to Pilot's den and Crichton asks Pilot where he can get narium coils. Pilot (who occasionally lapses into his native language) tells Crichton that the Leviathan, called Rovhu, was a detention ship for the criminally insane. They were part of a convoy, transporting a man called Kaarvok. The convoy was attacked by Scarrans, Kaarvok escaped and Rovhu, unable to starburst due to the control collar, drifted into the Uncharted Territories.
They were adrift with nowhere to go and no food. Crichton asks about why the other prisoners are now scavengers, but Pilot reveals there were no other prisoners... Kaarvok was so dangerous he was the only one. The scavengers are actually the Peacekeeper crew. As they speak, Chiana burns D'Argo's body and, with Crichton's help, drops it over the edge of the walkway into the chamber below. Kaarvok vents the den and then enters. He knocks out Crichton and chases Chiana. He encases her in a bubble, from which emerge two Chianas. Kaarvok grabs one and the other refuses to help and runs away as the victim has her brain sucked out.
Chiana enters Kaarvok's room, trying to get her head around seeing her twin. Crichton thinks she is dead and says that D'Argo is dead and he can see his brains being sucked out. He tells Pilot that the only way out is to take back control.
Kaarvok goes to a cell and talks to a prisoner who turns out to be D'argo. He says that he saved D'Argo from the Xarai. D'Argo asks what he did with Chiana and he says she's very, very pretty, but the last he heard she was having her best bits eaten by the Xarai. D'Argo asks what Kaarvok did to him; he saw a clone. Kaarvok says that it wasn't a clone; he twinned him: two D'Argos equal and original. D'argo asks why, and Kaarvok says they're going to make babies. He says that he could twin D'Argo again, but once twinned 30 or 40 times you become like the Xarai. He says he'll spare D'Argo the pain as long as he'll breed with one of the over-twinned Xarai.
Rovhu starts to move, so Kaarvok leaves D'Argo. As Crichton is looking for the central plexus chamber, Pilot screams and by the time Crichton has returned he finds Pilot has been killed by a harpoon shot to the head.
Meanwhile, Moya has starburst without warning in response to a distress call – from Talyn. He is floating adrift and neither he nor Crais respond to communication. Aeryn goes over and sees extensive damage and finds Crais unconscious.
Rygel goes over to Talyn and tells Aeryn that she's not taking Crais back to Moya. He says that Talyn's supposed to be the meanest, hardest ship ever, yet somebody or something beat the yotz out of him. Aeryn disagrees and says that if they can keep him alive they can find out what happened.
On Moya, Aeryn says that she's going to search for the others. Rygel objects and tells Stark they'll give her 300 microts. Stark says that Talyn will recover, but Crais may not.
Jool, still alone, contemplates shooting herself. Meanwhile, Crichton gets Rovhu moving. Chiana hides from Kaarvok, who's on the move, and finds D'Argo with the woman all over him. He asks for help, and she wonders if she's not interrupting something. She finds some narium coils and sets him free. She wants to leave, but D'Argo says he'll go to Pilot's den and meet her at the transport in a quarter of an arn.
Crichton tells Kaarvok that he's preparing for starburst, which will destroy Rovhu because of the control collar (although at this point he would be putting the diseased Leviathan out of her misery), so Kaarvok shoots at him. Meanwhile, Jool is still contemplating suicide, but as Chiana comes in, she pulls the trigger but misses herself.
Kaarvok attempts to suck Crichton's brain as he initiates starburst. D'Argo calls for Crichton, who manages to avoid Kaarvok's attack. His twin gets stuck in the controls and as the Xarai go to eat him, the twinner explodes and catches Crichton on the way out. D'Argo and Crichton run to the transport where Crichton is surprised to see Jool, and even more surprised to see Chiana alive. As they get on the pod, Crichton walks through the door and is surprised to see Jool alive and even more surprised to see a twin of himself.
The transport escapes as the control collar rips Rovhu apart and the two Crichtons stare at each other awkwardly.
Back on Moya, D'Argo tells Stark of how weird it was to see himself, even only for a tenth of a microt and all he remembers is it was a corpse. Chiana says it was just a copy, a fake, but D'Argo says that Kaarvok told him it was an original, equal, but how does he know he's not the copy? Anxious, Chiana says you just know.
Meanwhile, with a pulse pistol on the table in between, the two Crichtons play rock, paper, scissors. As Aeryn and Rygel watch on, she asks, "How is 'he'?", and Rygel replies, "Still tied..." As the two Crichtons continue to throw the same, they recall Kaarvok's words... they are both the original Crichton. No differences, perfectly equal.
Memorable quotes[]
-
- Kaarvok: As you can see, once you've been twinned about 30 or 40 times, you're not much good for conversation... not that you're especially witty right now.
-
- Jool: You know, we don't have weapons on our planet. We don't have violence. We don't have war!
- (Chiana smacks her)
- Jool: What the frell?! (She smacks Chiana back)
- Chiana (Landing another blow): See? Violence. You'll get the hang of it.
-
- Rygel: Listen, you bartantic bitch, Talyn's supposedly the meanest, deadliest, all-time yave-of-the-yuvo fighter ship. But somebody, something, beat the yotz out of him.
-
- Chiana: It was just a copy...a fake.
- D'Argo: I keep telling myself that, but then, there's Crichton...and Kaarvok, he said that he'd created two equal and original."
- Chiana: Boll-yotz. Kaarvok was full of it.
- D'Argo: How do you know that I am not the copy? Maybe the real D'Argo is dead.
- Chiana: Because you just know. You know. Frell.
-
- Aeryn: How is... he?
- Rygel: Still tied.
- (Crichtons play rock, papers and scissors, both matching throw for throw)
-
- Kaarvok:I doubled you. I twinned you. Equal and original.
Background information[]
- Wayne Pygram (Scorpius) does not appear in this episode.
- Anthony Simcoe was in full Luxan makeup when Chiana dragged D'Argo's corpse into Pilot's den. ("Cool Farscape Facts" - Starburst Edition DVD v3.1)
- Rovhu's Pilot is voiced by Sean Masterson, who was in charge of the team that controlled Moya's Pilot. He provided the voice on set during the first three seasons which Lani Tupu later overdubbed in ADR. ("Cool Farscape Facts" - Starburst Edition DVD v3.1)
- Anthony Simcoe's normal replacement was not happy to hear that on his day off, his replacement had to rehearse the scenes where D'Argo is sexually molested by one of the Xarai. ("Cool Farscape Facts" - Starburst Edition DVD v3.1)
- Kaarvok was originally going to be created with a combination of makeup and animatronics with his eyes on stalks and wearing a form of straitjacket. This was changed after Shane Briant was cast. ("Cool Farscape Facts" - Starburst Edition DVD v3.1)
- When confronting each other on Pilot's tier, Crichton refers to Kaarvok as a "sick, Hammer Horror son of a bitch". In the 1970s, Shane Briant, the actor portraying Kaarvok, starred in several films from the British studio renowned for its classic horror movies, Hammer Film Productions.
- Kaarvok's method of extracting and digesting brains was inspired by the Vincent Price movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes. ("Cool Farscape Facts" - Starburst Edition DVD v3.1)
- Tammy MacIntosh was so involved in the scene that her heartbeat was audible on the soundtrack when Jool was terrified. ("Cool Farscape Facts" - Starburst Edition DVD v3.1)
- Guy Gross added a shakuhachi, a Japanese flute, to the score to give it an unusual mix. ("Cool Farscape Facts" - Starburst Edition DVD v3.1)
- Ian Watson wanted the characters to deteriorate as the episode wore on, so he worked up four different levels of makeup for the principal cast. ("Cool Farscape Facts" - Starburst Edition DVD v3.1)
- Once shooting on the episode was complete, it took four days for the corridor sets to be returned to normal. ("Cool Farscape Facts" - Starburst Edition DVD v3.1)
- This episode is considered one of the most controversial in the series' history.[1]
- This episode marks the final time the two Johns have all the same memories.
Links and references[]
Starring[]
- Ben Browder as John Crichton
- Claudia Black as Aeryn Sun
- Anthony Simcoe as Ka D'Argo
- Gigi Edgley as Chiana
- Paul Goddard as Stark
- Lani Tupu as Bialar Crais
- Wayne Pygram as Scorpius
Guest stars[]
Puppeteers[]
Voice artists[]
References[]
3k wire; Abbott and Costello; arn; bartantic; Boll-yotz; central plexus cable; clone; comms; control collar; cycle; DRD; frell; gyro-sensor; Hammer Films; hetch; hezmana; Interion; KFC; klesteron filter; Krishool; Leviathan; Luxan; maintenance bay; mank; microt; mivonks; Moya; narium coil; Nebari; Night of the Living Dead; Orican; Peacekeeper; Pilot's den; Pip; pulse pistol; pulse rifle; Qualta Blade; rock, paper, scissors; Rovhu; Scarran; Sebacean; Smoke on the Water; starburst; Talyn; The Wizard of Oz; tinked; tralk; transport pod; twinning; Uncharted Territories; vangern; voojoo; votch; Xarai; yave-of-the-yuvo; yotz;
External link[]
- Farscape World Synopsis by Dani Moure