Farscape
"Taking the Stone"

Airdate: March 31, 2000

After learning of her brother's death, Chiana (Gigi Edgely) runs away to join a group of teens on a cemetery planet.

Is it me or does anyone else think that writer Justin Monjo has seen Logan's Run and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome a few too many times? That aside, "Taking the Stone" turns out to be a decent vehicle to show some (but not enough) of Chiana's troubled back story. In truth, the only new insight we've gained about the mischievious Nebari is that she had a brother. I'd love to see a bit more of her past, especially how she came to be jailed. Her introduction in season one's "Durka Returns" really left that detail hanging and don't think I didn't notice.

Chiana's running away reminds me a bit of Crichton's (Ben Browder) runaway days in "Jeremiah Crichton". Chiana isn't suffering from a mere temper flare up, however. Her before unmentioned brother Neri has died (for unsaid and unexplored reasons). Finding no one aboard Moya willing to lend an ear and sympathetic shoulder, she rashly takes Aeryn Sun's (Claudia Black) Prowler and runs to yet another dead planet in the Uncharted Territories.

Aeryn, Crichton and Rygel, in pursuit of Chiana, find her keeping company with a forgotten tribe of wild teens whose culture centers around a ritual called Taking the Stone. What is taking the stone you ask? I'll give you a hint- it ain't about taking a pebble from a blind little Asian man in a Shaolin temple as Crichton soon finds out. He also makes it his business to find out why these kids are so keen on cliff jumping and why there aren't any old people around.

Surprisingly it is Aeryn who shows the wiser side to her self, resembling the wise warrior goddess Athena more than ever. Rather than take the kick-ass-now-ask-questions-later tack that Crichton adopts, she advocates backing off and letting Chiana work through her grief in her own way. I see the clear, sharp focus of experience reflected in her gray eyes as she looks at Chiana while warning John that forcing the young Nebari could result in disaster. The chemistry between Claudia Black's Aeryn Sun and Ben Browder's Crichton as they fight like parents over their wayward runaway teenager is almost comic. The chemistry between Black and Gigi Edgely is equally powerful. Sun gives Chiana her distance, exhibiting a respect for the younger woman's feelings.

Meanwhile back aboard Moya there's a B plot brewing that centers around Rygel's theft of artifacts from royal graves. I almost expected a mummy, with its swaddling all bunched in a knot where the sun don't shine, to come out of nowhere to get Rygel. That didn't happen. The cursed objects flying around the royal tomb raider's room was good enough for me (And was that death mask look totally Afrocentric or what?). I'd like to think he's learned his lesson, but asking the greedy, little Hynerian not to rob the dead of their possessions is like trying to get a cow to lay eggs.

Like Rygel, I thought that Zhaan (Virginia Hey) had put The Delvian Whammy on the stolen loot. Why not? She's done a lot worse for a good cause. So did she curse the objects or did the loot already have somebody's mojo on it? The Universe may never know. Either way it worked and he gave the stuff back. Good boy Rygel deserves a pat on the head for doing the right thing. Not.

During the episode's passing we see Chiana's struggle with her grief and her wish to feel alive in this time of death and loss. I for one really felt for her. I liked that Chiana did what she did; it made the grief seem more real. Everyone does crazy things after suffering a loss, why should she be any different?

Having said this of Chiana, it's easy to see how she was so taken with the natives of the cemetery planet. Seeing their people dying at twenty-two cycles, they're spurred to find a thrill to live wherever they can find it. Maybe the cliff has the answer for them even if Crichton can't see it. It seemed to me that the surface is a place of death for these tribes; where the royals buried the dead. The underground tunnels mean life to them, a place where they can be liberated and take the stone. At the end, they vote to keep cliff jumping which is a great loss as eventually the tribes will die out from either gravity's pull or from radiation poisoning, but at least the one that is dear to Moya's crew (and to us), Chiana, is saved.

"Taking the Stone" to be highly derivative but it is a great hour of television just the same. Definitely watchable.

-- Vivian E. Lee

Farscape airs at 8 and 11pm EST, Fridays on The Sci Fi Channel.

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