Noranti Pralatong

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"Pip, who is that woman?"

John Crichton to Chiana, on Noranti

Noranti
The old witch
First appearance	(3.22 "Dog With Two Bones")
Last appearance	(Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars)
Details
Nickname(s)	Grandma, Granny, Glinda, Wrinkles
Gender	Female
Species	Traskan
Affiliation	Moya's crew
Age	293 cycles
Weapon of Choice	Various powders
Portrayed by	Melissa Jaffer

Bio

Before Farscape

Very little is known about the mysterious woman who calls herself Utu-Noranti Pralatong. An old Traskan who seems to have submitted to dementia, she is usually insane and often incomprehensible--her 293 cycles have clearly not been kind to her.

Her home colony was razed to the ground many cycles ago, although its name and location are unknown. She has been trained in many disciplines throughout her life--among them chef, mediator, alchemist, and botanist--in keeping with the customs of Traskan society, but her main honor is the title of Utu, which is only awarded to the finest of Traskan healers. And approximately 150 cycles ago, she was deeply in love with someone--although the name and nature of this lifetime love is unknown. Her history with this person and that person's eventual fate are never revealed. It may, however, be postulated that this great love she once had is the reason for her current obsession with Crichton and Aeryn, and may even be part of the reason for her uncontrollable psychosis.

Seasons Three and Four

At some point, and for some reason, Noranti was taken prisoner on board Scorpius' command carrier. When John Crichton caused the destruction of said carrier, Noranti and her fellow prisoners managed to hijack a lifepod and escape before the entire ship imploded. Crichton, seeing the pod floating through space, convinced Moya to go back and scoop it up, thus saving all the prisoners--including Noranti--from otherwise certain death. Feeling that she had a debt to repay, Noranti stayed aboard Moya while all her fellow prisoners got off at the first commerce planet Moya stopped at.

Nobody seemed to notice Noranti's stowing away on Moya until they were being attacked by a rogue Leviathan in the Sacred Leviathan Burial Space, at which point Moya's crew was too distracted to pay much attention to her anyways. This gave Noranti the freedom to find Crichton and blow one of her mystical powders into his face, allegedly to lead him "to the truth." This would have been fine except for the fact that Moya was already under attack, making this an inconvenient time for Crichton to start hallucinating, especially because Noranti accidentally misjudged his weight, causing Crichton to believe he saw Peacekeeper soldiers which he then tried to shoot, almost killing first Noranti and then D'Argo.

Judged dangerous, and thus handcuffed to the ceiling, by D'Argo, Noranti was soon revisited by Crichton, who was curious about the visions Noranti's herbs had shown him and consented to receive a second dose. While he hallucinated, Noranti whispered a message into his ear, one that floated to the bottom of his subconscious until he was ready to hear it: "Aeryn is with child."

Unfortunately, things did not turn out the way Noranti was hoping they would (unless she was hoping for utter chaos, in which case she got it). Aeryn left Moya and Crichton, intending never to return. D'Argo, Chiana, and Rygel all left Moya, departing towards their respective planets and goals. Harvey ferreted out Noranti's subliminal message and took great pleasure in giving it to John long before he was supposed to remember it, causing John to lose all control immediately and demand that Pilot send Moya after Aeryn's Prowler immediately. Jool tried to protest, and was physically held back by Noranti, who grabbed Jool by the hair and threatened to bite her if Pilot did not follow Crichton's orders. And at that moment of utmost importance and tension, a wormhole opened up and sucked Moya inside, leaving Crichton alone in space with no fuel in his module and no supplies to sustain him.

This was not a random wormhole, however. It was specifically opened by the Ancients, who were pursuing Crichton's wormhole knowledge to discover how much he knew and how much of a danger he was to the rest of the universe: Crichton was, unfortunately for the Ancients, not on board at that time, having been left behind in space, but under the Ancients' spell, Noranti proclaimed, "He knows...Crichton knows..."

Moya was then spat out at the planet of Arnessk, where Pilot dropped Jool, Noranti, and D'Argo off (although his precise reasons for doing so are unknown) and went to search for Aeryn (at least, we assume). Noranti had a long discussion with Pilot before he left, although she then refused to tell anybody what that conversation was about.

Fortunately, enough happened on Arnessk that people soon stopped asking her about her discussion with Pilot. Arnessk was once the home of a group of Eidelon priests that maintained peace between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans for over five hundred cycles. The priests had disappeared, however, when the Darnaz Triangle had been dropped on the surface of Arnessk and began to cause the magnetic summers that made it impossible for any living being to survive a full cycle on the planet. Noranti, however, could hear the voices of the departed priests, and see the truth of their past; once she learned that Instructor Vella was searching for the probes to use them for her own ends, Noranti vowed to kill Vella rather than let her activate their powers. However, the monster Oo-Nii got to Vella first, and killed her before Noranti could, although Oo-Nii successfully blamed Noranti for it.

Attempting to find an ally, Noranti blew her hallucinogenic dust into Crichton's face again, showing him the priests of the past so he could see what she wanted to protect. Unfortunately, she forgot to account for the rising magnetics of the planet, and accidentally showed him the location of the third probe: a secret she wanted buried forever. To make things even worse, Crichton was now being interrogated by the Peacekeeper Commandant Grayza, whose Heppel oil could easily ferret out any secret she wanted to know from him. Rather than let Crichton and this final dangerous fact to fall into Grayza's hands, Noranti forced Crichton to jump into the sea, preferring his death to the deaths of millions that would result from Grayza's possession of the probes.

Crichton was, however, saved by the seawater - which washed Noranti's dust out of his nose - and Oo-Nii - who actually wanted to kill him, but wanted to know if Grayza knew the location of the final probe first. With the help of D'Argo, Rygal, Sikozu, and Elack, a plan was put into action: Crichton used laka to protect himself from Grayza's Heppel oil, and left her tied up on a stone slab; Sikozu freed Jool, Chiana, and Noranti from incarceration; Elack and his Pilot sacrificed themselves to destroy the Peacekeeper ships on Arnessk; and Crichton, Jool, and Chiana managed to use the Darnaz probes to reverse the magnetic summer of Arnessk, which had the additional effect of opening an interdimensional pocket that had kept the priests of Arnessk alive and imprisoned for 12,000 cycles. With the probes neutralized, the summers gone, and Oo-Nii - who had wanted to sell the probes to the Peacekeepers for the vast reward he would receive - dead, Noranti began to realize that Crichton was much more than she had previously understood.

She stayed with the crew for the rest of season 4, using her skills at cooking, healing, negotiation, and herbalism - usually at the wrong times - to aid her new friends and allies. She proved useful more often than not, albeit only by a slight margin; although she often put everyone into mortal danger by her refusal to act or her insistence upon acting, she usually managed to get them out of it again afterwards. Perhaps her most important contribution to the rest of Moya's crew was her provision of Crichton with distillate of laka. She claimed that the laka would help Crichton forget his pain in regards to Aeryn...however, it is suspicious that no matter how much Crichton sniffed the laka, he only seemed to remember Aeryn more...

The Peacekeeper Wars

Noranti appears only briefly in the Peacekeeper Wars; at the beginning of the movie, she is intent upon creating a beautiful wedding for Aeryn and Crichton, assigning herself the role of wedding planner and flower girl in the festivities. Unfortunately, the wedding she worked so hard to perfect is shattered by the arrival of Scorpius and Sikozu, who have tracked Crichton down again at last.

While hiding from Scorpius in a temple, Noranti realizes that the species populating the planet of Qujaga is actually the legendary Eidelons. Spouting utter nonsense in her excitement, she finally manages to put across the point that these are the last remaining descendants of the Eidelons that were freed from their 12,000 cycle stasis on Arnessk--the same Eidelons that Jool stayed behind to assist. She also realizes that although these Qujagan Eidelons lack the peace-making abilities of their ancestors, the Arnesskan Eidelons should be able to reawaken the power within them. However, when Crichton returns to Arnessk to get the help of Jool and the ancient Eidelons, Noranti stays behind on Qujaga to help acclimate the Qujagan Eidelons to the enormous change rapidly approaching their lives.

She was still on Qujaga when the Scarrans and Peacekeepers began waging war both in Qujagan space and on Qujagan ground. The Eidelons were slaughtered by the thousands, but Noranti kept her head and managed to gather the surviving Eidelons together under her wing. Laying low, Noranti began to lead the Eidelons to safety and ran into Jothee and his Luxan warriors. Jothee made Noranti an honorary commander and gave her a gun (unfortunately {or perhaps fortunately?} the Luxans were short on ammo, so it was not loaded). Protecting the Eidelons with her intuition, her powders, and her unloaded gun, Noranti managed to get them all to Moya, allowing the collected Eidelons together to use their newly reawakened powers for peace to negotiate a settlement between the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers at last.

Quirks

Because Noranti is the only specimen of her race to ever be encountered, it is uncertain as to how many of her actions can be attributed to her race and how many are her own eccentricities. However, there are a few things that seem pretty definitively to be her own.

Noranti is apparently narcoleptic and has a tendency to fall asleep at unusual (and very inconvenient) times. Getting on in cycles by Traskan definition, she is also beginning to submit to the Traskan version of Alzheimer's, which is not helpful when she is attempting to perform a task of vital importance. Additionally, she is an obsessive gastroexaminator, "analyzing" most substances simply by popping them in her mouth and tasting them. In fact, her first reaction when confronted with anything new is to attempt to eat it. She is always interested in trying new food (or new things that might be food,) and she will cook anything that stays still long enough. She also has the ability to vomit up something called jilnak, which she insists is "restorative"; it might indeed be, except for the fact that it seems to give most species horrendous indigestion.

She also possesses remarkable aim both with spit and kitchen utensils, although her talent for judging a being's weight is not similarly developed.

Melissa Jaffer herself has specifically said that "[Noranti] lives entirely for the present moment. The past is sleeping in the memory bank: the future does not exist...Wisdom is never closed to change and Noranti is wise. Her horizons are limitless. A Traskan's life is evolutionary, Noranti has come 293 cycles and she will go where the Divine Eternal takes her, which is where I also want her to go." *

Powders and Powers

Noranti has a wide range of talents and special abilities, but she is prone to confusing them with each other. She has been known to poison those she is trying to cure, antagonize those she is trying to placate, and cook just about everything, no matter how vile or inedible it may seem. However, her abilities can mostly be summed up into a few key categories.

Firstly, Noranti is an accomplished herbalist and scientist, despite her unorthodox methods of research involving putting everything in her mouth. She knows an extensive amount of information about an exorbitant amount of substances and can distinguish them all by taste; she is even very knowledgeable about poisons, which even she probably does NOT generally put in her mouth. Being 293 cycles old, Noranti is also a veritable tome of historical information, knowing trivia on all sorts of species, events, and planets which others seem unaware of.

Noranti is also a skilled bargainer when she chooses to be. Although she ruins her attempts at mediating to the Tarkans in "Lava's A Many Splendored Thing," she drives a shrewd bargain with the traders of Tormented Space, driving them down to 7,000 currency for the star charts Moya must have in order to navigate through this unusual area of space. She might have once been a great peacemaker in her youth, but in her current mental state, she is too likely to lose sanity halfway through to be relied upon to negotiate.

Noranti's powders are so potent, they can make her look like this.

Finally, and most memorably, Noranti possesses a number of mind-bending powders that she uses to great effect throughout the series. She mixes up different combinations appropriate to the situation, and she has performed all sorts of different feats with them, including causing people to fall asleep with Fyang powder; planting subliminal messages into their minds; creating delusions that are actually visions of the past or future; causing people to forget recent events; and creating ridiculous imaginary hallucinations with mayla spores. She also boasts an apothecary of multiple other potions and concoctions, among them distillate of laka; the jilnak she is known to vomit; an unknown potion that could stop a person's heart, putting them into a stasis that would allow them to survive in outer space for a limited period of time; and an unusual gum-like substance that could, conversely, start up a heart that had stopped beating.

Noranti's Cookbook

Here is compiled a list of the various foods Noranti has cooked and/ or mentioned throughout the series:

• Yirgra fungal chowder (also comes in soufflé form!)
• Jilnak
• Hindrati petal tea
• Skrinberry muffins

Alternate Versions

Noranti/Chiana

Noranti/Chiana

Episode: "Unrealized Reality"

Noranti/Chiana existed in one of the unrealized realities Crichton saw while being shown the dangers of wormhole travel by the Ancient "Einstein". Though she had Chiana's facial shape, her overall appearance and personality was that of Noranti's. As Moya came under attack by Peacekeepers, "Noranti" was of little help, offering to negotiate with the Peacekeepers or to bake something and mostly being ignored by all. It was from her that Crichton learned that he was in love with Zhaan (not Aeryn) in this particular reality.

In true Noranti fashion, Noranti/Chiana was also armed with a large pouch filled with dust she attempted to blow at Crichton--however, he blew it back into her face instead, which might explain why she greeted the news that Peacekeepers were boarding with a decision to make skrinberry muffins.

Rygel/Noranti

Rygel/Noranti

Episode: "Unrealized Reality", "Prayer"

Rygel/Noranti existed in one of the unrealized realities Crichton saw while being shown the dangers of wormhole travel by the Ancient "Einstein". S/he looked like a human-sized version of a Hynerian, dressed in overlarge red Dominar robes and without a royal hover sled in sight. In appearance he resembled Rygel, but in personality he resembled him much more, first attempting to escape on a transport pod until he realized that there were Marauders waiting to shoot down any transport pods that attempted to escape. When Crais boarded Moya and entered command with an armed Peacekeeper squad, Rygel/Noranti protested that he and Crais had had a deal; D'Argo/Rygel called Rygel/Noranti a traitor, to which Rygel/Noranti responded by punching D'Argo/Rygel in the stomach and scuttling off Command, squawking, "It's every Hynerian for himself!"

Crichton later returned to this version of Moya with Scorpius in an attempt to track down Stark/Sikozu for information about Katratzi. Needing someone for Stark to cross over, Scorpius found Rygel/Noranti and killed hir. Unfortunately, it was then that they learned that this Stark could only cross over beings he loved.

Quotes

• Never bathe, never bathe. It washes off the juice.
• Ask Vella--if all the priests died here, why are there no bones? (pause) Why are there no bones?
• (as she belly-dances) I am the flower, you are the bee! I am the pod, you are the pea! I am the target, you are the gun! I am the woman, you are the man!! (throws off her top, terrifying everybody)
• Oh! Soulless Luxan!
• (smiling benevolently and yet dementedly) Hello, Cookie Monster.
• Happy Halloween!
• You're such a nookie! Haven't you ever died before?
• A hundred percent natural? My tullum!
• (throatily) I don't need drugs. I've got true love. You don't need drugs if you've got true love.
• (staring at two Charrids that shot each other thanks to her powders) I must remember to get more mayla spores!

Quotes Involving Others

• CHIANA: Hey, old woman. Why didn't you leave with the others?

NORANTI: Because I knew the soufflé would charm you.
CHIANA: ...Chowder. You said it was chowder.
NORANTI: I can make you a chowder!

• D'ARGO: (staring at Crichton) What the frell happened to him?

NORANTI: Uh...Uh, nothing...nothing. He'll be fine.
D'ARGO: What did you do?
NORANTI: Perhaps a slight misjudgment of his weight. It won't occur again, I'm certain.

• NORANTI: That's right, hit him again!

CRICHTON: No!
NORANTI: Oh, go on, Crichton. Let me show you. Like this. (She slugs Tarnat in the jaw.) And...ow! See?

• BRACA: You. Have you seen a Nebari female?
  

NORANTI: Well, I wouldn't know one if it bit me on the prang. Though that could be fun.

• AERYN: What can you do? What can you make?
  

NORANTI: Fyang powder. It's a wonderful substance. It'll put anyone to sleep instantly.
AERYN: Good.
NORANTI: Except I don't have any.

• NORANTI: Preparing mayla spores takes time. And spit.
  

AERYN: We don't have enough time!
NORANTI: I don't have enough spit. But I'm doing what I can.

• STARK: You...you're green.
  

NORANTI: (smiles benevolently) How lovely of you to notice!

Trivia

• Noranti was supposed to have a larger part in "The Peacekeeper Wars," but owing to Melissa Jaffer's bad reaction to the makeup not only was her part shrunk, but Noranti actually had to be played by a stand-in for most of her scenes (notice how often Noranti's face is off-screen or hidden by shadows). Melissa Jaffer did, however, dub the lines over afterwards.

Appearances

• (3.22 "Dog With Two Bones")
• (4.02 "What Was Lost - Sacrifice")
• (4.03 "What Was Lost - Resurrection")
• (4.04 "Lava's A Many Splendored Thing")
• (4.05 "Promises")
• (4.06 "Natural Election")
• (4.07 "John Quixote")
• (4.08 "I Shrink, Therefore I Am")
• (4.10 "Coup By Clam")
• (4.11 "Unrealized Reality")
• (4.12 "Kansas")
• (4.13 "Terra Firma")
• (4.14 "Twice Shy")
• (4.16 "Bringing Home The Beacon")
• (4.17 "A Constellation Of Doubt")
• (4.18 "Prayer")
• (4.19 "We're So Screwed - Fetal Attraction")
• (4.20 "We're So Screwed - Hot To Katratzi")
• (4.21 "We're So Screwed - La Bomba")
• (4.22 "Bad Timing")
• Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars

Sources

• Interview courtesy of Farscape Weekly: [[1]]

Written by Pictomancer