Season 4, Episode 16:
Bringing Home the Beacon
As the men return after their excursion, the women of Moya are still on a trading outpost located on a dead Leviathan husk, attempting to locate sensor distorters that will allow Moya to mimic other kinds of ships on long-range scans. However, they discover that Peacekeepers, led by Grayza and Braca, and Scarrans, led by War Minister Ahkna, have also arrived on the outpost to meet in secret and negotiate for a peace settlement. Rather than simply leave, Aeryn think they should try and expose what's going on, since Grayza is most likely going outside her authority to negotiate with the Scarrans, and if the Peacekeeper High Command found out what was going on, they'd get rid of Grayza and there'd be no one to hunt for Moya.
It transpires that Grayza is planning to seize control of the Peacekeeper High Council. She's willing to give the Luxan Territories to the Scarrans as part of a peace settlement in exchange for the Uncharted Territories, but Ahkna believes that Grayza is stalling because the Peacekeepers couldn't possibly win an all-out war and that their claims of having wormhole weapons — the Peacekeepers are claiming that the destruction of a Scarran dreadnought using a wormhole weapon was their doing — is a lie. Aeryn decides that merely exposing Grayza isn't enough: she needs to be killed.
As Aeryn, Sikozu, Chiana and Noranti are preparing their attack, Grayza and Ahkna both sign the treaty — only for Scarrans to take Grayza hostage a moment later, planning to take her to their Katratzi base and interrogate her on wormhole weapons. The plan changes and the women of Moya wind up rescuing Grayza from the Scarrans, though she and Braca manage to escape. Aeryn is separated from the others for a while, but they all manage to meet up at the transport pod (with the sensor distorter) and return to Moya.
She Starbursts away, but the Scarrans are in pursuit, somehow able to home in on Moya's exact position. It's a mystery as to how, until Crichton asks Aeryn a question about the baby and she doesn't know what he's talking about. Realising what's happened, Crichton shoots "Aeryn", actually a bioloid duplicate, and this deactivates the beacon that the Scarrans were tracking. Scorpius patches the sensor distorter into Moya's systems, Pilot imitates a Scarran ore freighter and Sikozu "helpfully" tells them that a Leviathan went in a completely different direction. Based on what they know about bioloid technology, Scorpius and Sikozu theorise that the Scarrans had intended to copy Grayza and send the duplicate to spy on the Peacekeepers while they tortured the real Grayza for intelligence. They probably plan to question Aeryn about Crichton, meaning that she's still alive, and since they had planned to take Grayza to "Katratzi", that's probably where Aeryn is going. But nobody knows where Katrazi is...
Tropes present in this episode include:
- Bluff the Impostor: When the bioloid slips up its deception, Crichton asks it questions about the baby and English. The bioloid's failure to answer confirms his suspicions.
- Continuity Nod: The Who's Your Daddy? example features a nod to a joke from last season:Crichton: D'Argo, tell her who the daddy is.
- Downer Ending: Aeryn is a prisoner of the Scarrans, and Crichton has no idea where to begin searching for the place she's being taken to.
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: The deception would've worked had the Scarrans known Aeryn was pregnant.
- Inopportune Impersonation Failure: The bioloid duplicate of Aeryn is within minutes of succeeding in her mission of luring the Scarrans to Moya, but then Crichton happens to ask her about the baby - and bioloids don't do well when it comes to gaps in their programmed knowledge, so "Aeryn" responds to this idle question with a character-breaking stare of confusion.
- Paper Tiger: To further their claims of having secret wormhole weapons, the Peacekeepers took the credit for Talyn!Crichton destroying the Scarran Dreadnought.
- Properly Paranoid: Ahkna says the Scarrans strongly suspect the Peacekeepers are lying about possessing wormhole weapons. She personally even suggests someone else destroyed the Dreadnought.
- Red Herring: The episode deliberately leaves it vague if Grayza was already replaced by a bioloid before Aeryn and Sikozu arrived and if the Scarrans allowed the escape in order to get a mole inside the Peacekeepers. Later episodes, though, make it clear Grayza wasn't replaced.
- Shapeshifter Showoff Session: A visit to a massage parlor results in Chiana being given a session with a shapeshifting masseuse while she tries to get information on the two men she was tailing; initially, Marella appears content to carry out the massage with her own rather dainty long-nailed hands, but then transforms into a hardened, punkish character so she can work her customer's back muscles more forcefully - much to Chiana's appreciation. However, when Chiana begins asking questions about confidential matters, Marella swiftly transforms into a burly wrestler-type and jams a thumb into one of her pressure points, threatening to paralyze her if she doesn't explain herself... before changing back and revealing that Chiana's questions are pointless because she followed her targets into an establishment that sells transformations.
- Ship Tease: D'Argo remarking he prefers Chiana's old look.
- Transformation Discretion Shot: Early in the episode, a masseuse with shapeshifting technology at her disposal transforms several times on camera to demonstrate her massage skills to Chiana; however, when Chiana asks too many questions about confidential client details, the masseuse's next move paralyses her from the neck down and the camera remains on Chi's horrified expression as the masseuse audibly transforms again; the next cut reveals that she's back to normal and jamming her long fingernails into Chiana's pressure points.
- Two-Faced: When Crichton shoots the Aeryn bioloid in the face, we see this result.
- Who's Your Daddy?: One of the test questions Crichton asks the bioloid.
- With Friends Like These...: Grayza is quite content to sellout the Luxans to the Scarrans if it benefits her own agenda.
