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Farscape: Back and Back and Back to the Future

Season 1, Episode 3 — Back and Back and Back to the Future

I remember disliking this episode so much that I nearly skipped it for this re-watch, but I wondered what I might see this time that I had previously missed. I got ⅔ of the way through it, looked for an episode guide, and am unsurprised to see many people give this a "DON'T WATCH" rating. Here's one: 

Back and Back and Back to the Future: Skip it. Definitely skip. There are alternate realities and timelines, but they don’t count and we don’t learn anything essential about anyone except the Australian guest stars’ willingness to emulate ’80’s aerobics gurus. The only notable thing is Aeryn in a sports bra.

Long story short, it's a time-loop episode, where Moya finds an imploding anomaly, and an escape capsule flees the wreck. 

Moya picks up the survivors: Alien John Romero and his spandex-and-leather clad sex assistant. I mean assistant. The sex is separate, but implied, with every male member of the cast. They're "Ilanic," cousin race to D'Argo's Luxan species. 

Crichton gets a zap from something on their shuttle, and he experiences the future in flashes, usually with various people dying. It exposes the female survivor as a Scorvian (not "Ilanic") assassin. Everyone spends time playing catchup with Crichton's various flash-forwards. 

Eventually, the betrayal is exposed in the shared present moment, the scientist still dies, Matala briefly escapes with the weapon but it collapses her shuttle and the escape vessel in an implosion like the one which was first captured. 

Ultimately, it's an open loop. The crew remembers a portion of what happened, Crichton remembers several versions of what happened, and I think we never encounter Scorvians or Ilanic people again. Status quo maintained: the essence of an annoying time-loop episode. 

The actress playing Matala is emulating either a praying mantis or more likely a cobra. She does a weird head tilt, then glides her body to be under her head afterwards. It's a neat move, but the rest of the dialog by both her and the survivor scientist is overly stilted and affected. It's distracting -- well, annoying. Matala uses a Scorvian nerve strike, exposing her as an imposter when sparring with Aeryn


My favorite lines from the episode, and there are some good choices, were:

John: I'm just gonna get some air.
Aeryn: We have air in here. What is the matter with him?
Zhaan: (after a beat) He is Crichton.

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