The ship visits an abandoned battleground.

Written by Steve Worland
Directed by Peter Andrikidis

This season�s first standalone episode depended on chance to start it and referenced a good half-dozen other shows but it was excellent because it was self-aware and the wrong people died.

Farscape knows we know about timeline changes and that we accept even such huge coincidences of time travel, so long as there is a good story in exchange, so it gives the illusion of skipping explanations.

It does explain: Aeryn cut off Crichton�s exposition but only after he had expounded enough that newcomers could understand. Yet their speed and delivery was both the shorthand you would expect two such friends to have and it was a nod to us, an acknowledgement that other SF series treat us as eejits and explain too much.

Sometimes Farscape relies too much on twisting SF clich�s but this time it gave us a bucketful and subverted all of them as we built to a probably inevitable tragic ending. And ultimately that�s the best element of this show: it�s willingness to have its regular characters do wrong and live with the consequences.

Review by William Gallagher