Farscape — 3x09 — Losing Time
Synopsis
After passing through a magnetic cluster, the crew experiences strange blackouts and periods of lost time. They discover that Pilot has been possessed by a being who is pursuing an evil 'Energy Rider'. The being inside Pilot warns our crew that the Rider inhabits one of them, and if that person isn't found - and the Rider extracted - the crew will all die.
Filler rating: not filler
The Scorpius plot in this episode is essential viewing. This is also the episode where Chiana develops her premonition abilities.
Remarkable scenes
- Scorpius interfacing with John's memories as a facet in his wormhole research.
- The wormhole Scorpius is researching liquefying the prowler test pilot.
- D'Argo regarding when John lost his virginity: "How old were you?" John: "Sixteen." D'Argo: "I was seven."
- John: "All right, we don't understand the R2D2 crap. We're gonna use the Star Trek system. One blink for yes, two blinks for no."
- John nicknaming the DRD Pike, based on Captain Pike from Star Trek TOS.
- Scorpius revealing to Braca that the Scarrans are planning a massive assault on the Peacekeepers and have only held back so far for fear of Peacekeeper wormhole weapons, a bluff Scorpius is desperately trying to turn into a reality.
- DRD Pike's untimely demise.
- Jool: "I feel like I've had a spiritual enema."
Review
An episode with a much more interesting B plot than its A plot. We finally get a story where we cut away to Scorpius' command carrier to see how his wormhole research is progressing and the episode barely spends any time developing that plot thread at all. What little we do get is fantastic, but it's a damn shame the episode spends so much time focusing on the monster attacking Moya of the week rather than the much more interesting story of the Peacekeeper arms race.
The "energy rider" plot did have some interesting aspects though. It seems to have left Chiana with some kind of premonition ability which left us on a bit of a cliffhanger and the DRD Pike detail was a nice touch. I loved DRD Pike as a mechanism to communicate directly with Moya without Pilot. Otherwise though this episode is a fairly big flop. It gets a couple extra points for some nice tidbits and the Scorpius plot but there's little else of value here.