Easy? On Farscape? Ha. And again, ha.

You want them to have an "easy" relationship? Just between us, is that what you're really saying here, Ann? Well... let me put it this way... be careful what you wish for...

(Insert more maniacal laughter here.)

Promises. Aeryn's back. Scorpy's back. Harvey goes bye-bye. Very simple episode, really. Geoff Bennett directed; his first for Farscape, but not his last. Splendid work. The Aeryn-in-Scorpy-makeup scene was particularly difficult to schedule: the Production Department kept gently inquiring, "Gee, is it really worth it for a one-page scene which is all Claudia will be able to shoot that day because the prosthetic makeup takes so long?" Geoff, bless him, fought for it - not only that, he came up with the brilliant notion of splitting the dialog between Aeryn and Scorpy Aeryn; the script simply started the scene with Scorpy Aeryn and then cut to 'normal' Aeryn.

To this day, Justin still rags me about my favorite line in Promises. A few episodes earlier, we saw Scorpius get shot and buried. Now he shows up alive. Big deal; this wasn't the first time Scorpy had popped back from apparently certain death. Still, somebody had to ask, so I let Sikozu do it: "How did you survive?"

I decided Scorpius wasn't the kind of guy who bothered to explain his magical tricks - "Oh, the Pulse Blast was faked; my coolant suit was pre-rigged; I had an oxygen tank already hidden in the grave, bla bla bla..." - so I gave him the simple reply, "Foresight and preparation." In other words, it was a setup... and how much else do you really need to know?

Terra Firma. John goes home. Finally for real. Visits family. Meets old girlfriend. Another simple story. Wish it'd been a two-parter. So much to do, so little time. None of the sex scenes even made it to the first draft. The first act - Crichton's monologue over snippets of scenes - was a desperate ploy on my part to cover as many expositional bases as possible fast and get on with the story.

I was a tad worried that with so many little plotlines going on, the juicy emotional scenes would get rushed or even lost - but director Peter Andrikidis masterfully kept the thing in balance. (And gave us a whale of a climactic battle in Act Four. We specifically built that set so that he and the stunt team could trash it.) We still had to nip and tuck to get everything into 42 minutes - but I don't miss any of what was trimmed.

Okay, I lied. There's one line that got lost in the edit that I do miss. Sikozu's listening to Scorpius describe what sounds like a suicidal plan. "But how would you survive?" she asks. Her next line hit the cutting room floor: "And please don't say 'foresight and preparation'."