Recap / Farscape S 01 E 13 The Flax

Season 1, Episode 13:

The Flax

Aeryn is giving John flying lessons in one of Moya's pods (he's a skilled pilot, but still new to Moya's technology). Aeryn is berating him for his slowness in picking up on her teachings when the ship is stopped cold by something. Meanwhile, a strange man named Staanz arrives on Moya, warning them that they were going to stumble into a restraining field known as the Flax (and hoping to be rewarded for his kindheartedness, naturally). D'Argo hires him to help rescue John and Aeryn, as well as to locate and board a Luxan ship that he discovers was lost in the area. Things become more complicated when a party of Space Pirates arrives, in search of Staanz.

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Tropes present in this episode include:

• Anguished Declaration of Love: Staanz towards D'Argo.
• The Alleged Ship: Staanz's ship requires constant work to keep in operating condition. It is somehow powered by what appears to be a coal-fired boiler, complete with a bellows.
  Staanz: Hang on. If I don't get to this, she's going to blow! (banging on the machine with a metal rod) COME ON BABY!
  D'Argo: Why don't you just get it fixed?
  Staanz: I did fix it! That's why it works when I whack it a few times!
• Armor-Piercing Response: D'Argo reads Staanz's criminal record in the Peacekeeper files and goes to throw him off the ship. Zhaan objects, pointing out he's no different from themselves.
  Zhaan: Have you ever looked at your own records to see what lies the Peacekeepers have written about you?
  D'Argo: Have you? (beat) Not everyone imprisoned by the Peacekeepers was innocent.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: After getting her foot trapped, Aeryn tells Crichton to pass her an axe, and when he asks why she says it's to cut her foot off. It says a lot about Aeryn that Crichton doesn't realise she's joking at first.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Aeryn starts the episode constantly disparaging Crichton. They end up making out under the stress of a Pre-Climax Climax which they claim afterwards could have happened with anyone. Then when Crichton asks to confirm her gender, Aeryn responds with a Crotch-Grab Sex Check and a smirk from both of them.
• Big "SHUT UP!": D'Argo when he tires of Zhaan and Rygel squabbling with each other (which doesn't take long). When this doesn't stop them, Pilot 'accidentally' hits the wrong button, sending an ear-piercing screech over the comm.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Staanz isn't made from the same mold as the others. Staanz is also a girl.
• Broken Faceplate: John and Aeryn's plan to repair the pod via temporary depressurization hits a snag when they notice that the helmet for John's spacesuit has a crack on the faceplate rendering it useless. He mentions that he can't just swap his broken helmet for Aeryn's because hers won't fit him.
• Cold Equation: Aeryn and Crichton have to purge the oxygen from their spacecraft so they can do welding repairs without starting a fire, but there's only one intact spacesuit. The solution is for one of them to use a killshot (a Peacekeeper injection used for a Mercy Kill on the battlefield) while the other does the weld, then the conscious person revives them with a nerve shot. Aeryn says she is the logical choice to die as the killshot and nerve shot are designed for Sebaceans, while Crichton knows how to do the weld. But Crichton points out it's his spacesuit helmet that's damaged and he can't fit into hers. In the end, Aeryn takes too long to do the repair and has a choice of finishing the job to save herself and let Crichton die, or abandon the repair and they both die when their oxygen runs out. Aeryn chooses to save Crichton, figuring she's dead either way and she'd rather not die alone.
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: When teaching the technique to Aeryn, John accurately describes CPR as a means of keeping blood and oxygen circulating through his system, so his brain won't die, but it's still used to revive him as well after the nerve shot fails to do so.
• Damage Control: Aeryn and John have to repair the life support system. Two problems: they must purge the air from the cabin so they can use the welding torch without starting a fire, and they only have one spacesuit in working condition.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Relieved that Aeryn wasn't killed in the impact with the Flax, Crichton tells her not to scare him like that. Aeryn takes offense, thinking he's accusing her of trying to harm him (why else would he be scared?)
  • Aeryn hasn't been taught "tech" work because if her Prowler was damaged, she was taught to find someone else's spacecraft and take it by force.
• Dispense with the Pleasantries: Zhaan offers refreshments to the space pirates, who curtly respond that if they wanted something, they'd have taken it already.
• Distress Signal: Aeryn manages to launch a signal buoy to let the others know they're in trouble. However as the Flax absorbs all signals, they can't be sure anyone's coming to their rescue.
• The Dreaded
  Zhaan: Greetings. I am Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan. You are Kcrackic?
  Kcrackic: You know me?
  Zhaan: Your reputation is well-known in these parts.
  Kcrackic: For what?
  Zhaan: Cruelty.
• Exact Time to Failure: Justified; Crichton can't give her an exact time before lack of oxygen will kill his brain, so Aeryn tells him to give her an exact time when she must start resuscitation and she will stick to it. However an explosion knocks her down for a moment, causing her to go over that time.
• Family of Choice: Staanz tells Zhaan and D'Argo that it's a good thing their two crewmates trapped in the Flax aren't family. Later D'Argo abandons a chance of reuniting with his son to save John and Aeryn.
• Foreshadowing: When Staanz drops his pants to reveal his gang mural, Zhaan and D'Argo note that he appears to be missing something. Which is not surprising as he's later revealed to be female.
  Staanz: Well, I'm a Yenen by species. We're not exactly, uh, cut from the standard mold?
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: D'Argo has time to either board a derelict Luxan ship and search for the star charts he needs to get home, or to John and Aeryn's ship to rescue them. He is on the verge of entering the vessel when he changes his mind, and afterwards feels wretched not only about his willingness to let his friends die, but his failure to commit to one decision or the other.
• The Glomp: D'Argo isn't happy about being on the receiving end of one from Staanz.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Rygel bemoans that he once had 70,000 servants, and 50,000 more during festivals—mostly female, whose entire job was to keep him entertained, whereas now he's bored out of his mind. Zhaan has No Sympathy.
• Humans Are Morons: Aeryn and the others complain about how long it takes Crichton to pick up flying a biomechanical spacecraft. Crichton takes their griping in stride—he is picking it up, and he wants to learn it properly as he's modifying his module with alien technology.
• Insistent Terminology: Staanz is a professional garbologist, not a scavenger.
• Kansas City Shuffle: Rygel, of all people, pulls off a brilliant one against Kcrackic. He knew the pirates won't be fobbed off easily, so Rygel deliberately loses the game and, to pay his debt, reveals that Pilot knows the coordinates where Staanz is. Pilot then sends them off in the wrong direction, having earlier entered the wrong coordinates in the ship's data on Rygel's instruction. Rygel then complains that the hardest part was losing the game, as Kcrackic was such an awful player.
• The Load: Aeryn regards Crichton as this, so is trying to teach him to fly a spacecraft so he might be marginally useful in a future battle. Or so she says...
• Mama Bear: The pirate captain has no intention of seizing Moya, saying that the one time he tried to seize a pregnant Leviathan he lost 80 men.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The Flax, a magna-drift mesh 75 million zachrons long that can't be picked up on sensors.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Aeryn assumes that Sebacean medicine should work fine on John, since human physiology appears to be similar enough to theirs. John, however, insists that she learn CPR instead, not trusting that her revival shot will work on him. It doesn't.
• No Seat Belts: John and Aeryn are both sent flying when they collide with The Flax. Then it happens again when they try to break free, only to be flung back inside.
• Percussive Maintenance: Staanz's ship requires someone to repeatedly beat on the engine, and Staanz claims that it only needs that because he's done such a good job fixing it up.
• Please Get Off Me: John tackles Aeryn to save her from falling debris. After a long heartfelt pause, Aeryn begins snarking about him lying on her.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Space Pirates know that Moya is pregnant, and have no interest in trying to take her by force.
• Pre-Climax Climax: John and Aeryn are adrift in space and Almost Out of Oxygen, so they start tearing off their spacesuits so they can go Out with a Bang. Aeryn sounds almost disappointed when D'Argo turns up to rescue them before they can get started.
  Aeryn: Somebody's docking?
• The Radio Dies First: Followed by the power, both drained by the Flax. Diverting Power from the auxiliaries gives them enough power to launch a distress beacon, but they've no way of knowing if anyone received it, or if their friends are even capable of coming to their rescue.
• Robbing the Dead: D'Argo takes offense when he sees Staanz is wearing Luxan boots, which a Luxan would only give up if he was dead. When Staanz objects that someone else killed him, he's not impressed with that either.
• Second-Face Smoke: Rygel blows smoke from his hookah pipe in Staanz's face after he pulls a clever move on him during their Tadek game.
• Separated by a Common Language: Sort of, as after hearing some of John's "colorful Southern expressions", Aeryn says in disbelief that her translator microbes must be screwing up.
• Shout-Out:
  • Talking about his joy of flying the pod, Crichton mentions Top Gun and says he has a "need for speed."
  • Staanz has a leg brace similar to that worn by Max in much of the Mad Max franchise.
• Signature Move: Rygel uses a move he learned from Staanz, tipping off Kcrackic that they knew where he could be found.
• Some Kind Of Forcefield: The Flax is only revealed when a spacecraft runs into it. This makes it very difficult to avoid.
• Space Pirates: The Zenetan pirates who set up the Flax so they could loot vessels caught in it. Unusually for this trope, they're not actually a threat to our heroes, but are instead looking for Staanz, a former member of their ranks who turned informant to get out of prison.
• Suggestive Collision: "Are you comfortable? Can I get you a pillow?"
• Tattooed Crook: Staanz drops his pants to reveal the Zenetan gang murals marked with tattoos and scar tissue on his thigh.
• This Is Gonna Suck: When they use the remaining power in the transport pod to try and break free, Crichton says, "This is gonna hurt, isn't it?!" It does.
• Training from Hell: Aeryn mentions that in Peacekeeper flight training, if you fail on the last day of Simulator training, you die.
• Trash of the Titans: Staanz's spaceship smells so badly from all the junk he's collected he had his smell buds cauterized. D'Argo with his enhanced Luxan sense of smell is not happy.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: It turns out Staanz's species are differently sexually dimorphic as most other races, and she has been nursing a crush on D'Argo for most of the episode. With this in mind, Crichton makes sure to ask Aeryn if she is actually female. Aeryn responds by groping his own crotch, which he takes as a yes.
• Variant Chess: Rygel wants to kill his boredom by playing Tadek, but can't get Zhaan to join him in a game. As it turns out, the leader of the Space Pirates and Staanz are both fans.
• We Need a Distraction: Zhaan tries and fails to convince the pirates to remain aboard Moya so they won't interfere with Staanz and D'Argo's attempts to rescue John and Aeryn. Rygel manages to convince Kcrackic to kill some time playing with him.
• Where's the Fun in That?: Crichton wants to enjoy himself flying the transport pod, while Aeryn would rather he concentrate on her piloting lesson.