< Farscape

Farscape/Tropes D to G


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D'Argo: You mock me?
Crichton: D'Argo, I mock us all.

  • Dead Person Impersonation: Crichton poses as the late Peacekeeper Captain Larraq (complete with Evil Brit accent) when he infiltrates the Gammak Base to find a tissue sample to save Aeryn's life ("Nerve")
  • Deal with the Devil: NamTar offers to examine the Moya crew's collective DNA in order to find their places of origin—their homeworlds—and then hand them a navigation crystal to get them there, risk-free. At this early stage in the series, the characters are still disloyal to one another and thus most vulnerable to NamTar's offer. His asking price? One of Pilot's arms. Hmm, this is a genuine moral quandary. We'd better sit down and discu--Rygel!! You hold him down while I get my qualta blade! In true jerkass fashion, NamTar doesn't deliver on his promise, anyway: the navigation crystal would have erased Moya's memory, ensuring that the crew couldn't leave even if they wanted to.
    • Both John and Crais make the mistake of entering into this type of bargain with Maldis. It was all pretext for pitting them in an Involuntary Battle to the Death (Well, involuntary for Crichton anyway), whereupon the survivor will be deposited back on their ship. Even on this point, Maldis has a screwjob prepared: Crichton succeeds in nearly killing Crais, only for Maldis to spirit him away, leaving Crichton alone and about to have his life-force feasted on by Maldis. See, he didn't say the winner of the battle gets to go home.
    • In "Prayer," Crichton is forced to turn to Scorpius for help in rescuing Aeryn, offering wormhole knowledge in exchange; after a Scarren Blood Vow - a ritual in which the two drink each other's blood to seal the deal - they agree. Against all expectations, Scorpius fulfils his part of the bargain without trying to work any underhanded angles, only for Crichton to abandon him on Katratzi... and then discovers that Scorpius was expecting something like this to happen sooner or later and installed a failsafe in Crichton's brain to make sure that he fulfilled his part of the bargain. Whoops.
  • Death by Origin Story: D'Argo and Zhaan's respective mates were killed before the story begins—though, in fairness, Zhaan bumped off her lover herself.
  • Death of the Hypotenuse / Dying Declaration of Love: Gilina at the end of "A Hidden Memory". Though in this case, it was clear that she was in love with Crichton. She merely reaffirmed her love and asked if things had been different, could he have loved her. To which he replies "Yes".
  • Deceptive Disciple: In "Rhapsody In Blue", Zhaan is approached by Tahleen, who asks to be taught how to control her darker impulses; when Zhaan agrees, Tahleen quickly reveals that she doesn't have the time to learn the technique through normal meditation, so she simply tears the information out of Zhaan's mind, driving her insane in the process.
  • Decided by One Vote: In the aptly-titled "La Bomba", Crichton drops a bomb down a shaft after activating it, knowing it will probably kill them all. John grunts noncommittally; then suddenly remembers the Democracy thing.

Crichton: Oh. God. ...We should have voted. All in favor -- show of hands.
(He raises his and the others stare at him; then Aeryn and Scorpius raise theirs -- a little)

    • And later:

Rygel: You farhbot! Did you blow up the bomb?! How could you blow up the bomb?!
Crichton: You missed the vote.

  • Decoy Damsel: Zig Zagged between M'Lee and Br'Nee, both of whom are pretty detestable, yet continually point fingers at the other one ("Bone to Be Wild"). In the end, M'Lee comes off looking better, since she was taken against her will to the asteroid by Br'Nee and his botanists to destroy its animal population and then starve to death.
  • Deep-Fried Whatever: In the midst of (yet another) food shortage on Moya, Crichton doesn't even have the standard food cubes to eat, so he decides to fry the little alien caterpillars that are used for brushing teeth. When told they aren't edible, Crichton says "You can eat anything if it's fried!" Unfortunately for him, he's wrong.
  • Defector From Decadence: A pair of Delvians, Hasko and Lorana, opt out of Tahleen's sect once she shows signs of being Drunk with Power.
    • Three years before the series begins, Tam Velorek (Aeryn's former lover and fellow Peacekeeper) had a plan in the works to hijack Moya and flee into the Uncharted Territories. When Velorek offered to take Aeryn with him, she instead turned him in to Crais, earning herself a promotion.
  • Delayed Ripple Effect: In "Kansas", Crichton's teenage self is nearly killed when Noranti slips him an overdose of memory-erasing serum. The adult Crichton literally becomes a ghost until his 1980s self is resuscitated.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: In "Crichton Kicks", as Rygel is listing Crichton's obsessions:

"Wormholes. Aeryn. Earth. Aeryn. Scorpius. Aeryn. I'm out of fingers."

  • Depraved Bisexual: Scorpius. Given all the Ho Yay and Foe Yay flying around whenever he's in a scene with Crichton or Braca, it would be very difficult to argue that Scorpius is not bisexual. And no one would dare suggest that he isn't depraved.
  • Despite the Plan: As Aeryn puts it to John, "Your plans never work!!" Eventually he admits this when an unspoken plan actually works as planned, "Yeah, it's a first, isn't it?"
  • Development Hell / Vaporware: The webseries actually listed contracts for producing spots before promptly disappearing without a trace. Surprisingly, however, the trope by averted bigtime when the producers were able to mount the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries, complete with the TV cast (many of whom had gone on to other projects), and get it on the air within a year and half of the show's cancellation.
  • Diabolus Ex Machina: The final moments of the series finale. Unless you find the main characters getting blasted into charcoal briquettes uplifting.
    • Writer Revolt: David Kemper said that while it may've been possible to re-cut "Bad Timing" to remove the cliffhanger, they ultimately decided not to. Debate still rages as to whether it was a deliberate Take That to place even more pressure and scrutiny on Sci-Fi to finance a miniseries.
  • Did Not Do the Research: In the episode Kansas, The crew travels back to Earth and happen to arrive at Halloween. But a major plot point is the Challenger Disaster, which happened in January.
    • The Challenger Disaster occurred in January 1986. The episode in question begins in 1985, likely on a break before Crichton's father was due to report for the final stages of mission preparation.
  • Did They or Didn't They?: Occurs in "A Human Reaction". John and Aeryn kiss, and the scene cuts to them both awake the next morning, never directly acknowledging what happened. Though there was only one bed, Crichton's naked, and Aeryn's wearing oversized men's clothes, so...
  • Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: John's meetings with Einstein and the Ancients.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: John kicks Einstein to the ground in a moment of stress. He's incredibly surprised when it works, and actually apologises while helping him up.
  • Died in Your Arms Tonight: Crichton's clone.
  • Die Hard on an X: "I Shrink, Therefore I Am". Even Lampshaded by Crichton: "I'm gonna take 'em out one at a time, the Die Hard way."
  • Disability Immunity: In "Crackers Don't Matter", Crichton is the only crewmember who is (mostly) immune to the sanity-depleting pulsar lights. His comparatively-poor human eyesight is precisely the cause. Though Crichton isn't exactly happy with this discovery.

Crichton: I have great eyes! They're better than 20/20, and they're blue!!

    • In the comics, the reason why the Kalish are immune to the Whae'lan virus - it uses Translator Microbes to propagate, and the Kalish can't tolerate them.
  • Disguised in Drag: Played for laughs in "Coup By Clam", when Crichton and Rygel dress as women in order to infiltrate an alien brothel. Crichton gets hit on by a government thug who, in an interesting subversion, already knows that he's a man dressed as a woman, as he'd seen Crichton earlier.
    • also, Rygel doesn't bother to shave his beard (perhaps female Hynerians have facial hair as well) and appear to be wearing a wedding dress
  • Disney Villain Death: Xhalax Sun.
  • Distress Call
  • Do-Anything Robot: Moya carries hundreds of little yellow DRDs (Diagnostic Repair Drones) that scamper around, repairing and maintaining its various functions. A single DRD comes with a plasma welding iron, a syringe for injecting translator microbes, and even an adorable little laser-shooting minigun.
  • Do Not Go Gentle: D'Argo in Peacekeeper Wars. The last time we see him, he has been fatally wounded and is holding back a group of solders with two rapid-fire guns while telling them exactly who their daddy is.
    • Three of the final episodes are entitled "We're So Screwed". They don't go gentle, they go awesomely.
  • Don't Ask: Crichton's response to Rygel when he inquires about "the wrinkled old woman floating outside the forward portal."

D'Argo: Noranti is outside?
Crichton: Yeah. Don't ask.

  • Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: Played with several times... and played straight just as many times; it was pretty much the Ancients' motto when it comes to wormholes.
  • Doom Magnet: Crichton and Aeryn reluctantly concede this in Peacekeeper Wars.
  • Doppelganger Replacement Love Interest: Deconstructed and inverted. During an alien encounter, John undergoes a "twinning" effect, effectively splitting him into two identical versions of himself. One Crichton goes on Talyn with Aeryn, Rygel, and Stark in order to distract the following Peacekeepers from Moya and the rest of the crew. The Crichton left behind is understandably upset as he suspects his double is off having a relationship with Aeryn (which he is, of course.) As confusing as that is, things really start to go awry when Talyn-Crichton performs a Heroic Sacrifice, causing Aeryn to undergo a Heroic BSOD. When the surviving Crichton is reunited with Aeryn, he receives a chilly reception from her.
  • Double Standard Rape (Female on Male): Totally subverted—It is not OK, and causes serious anguish.
  • Double Subversion: M'Lee and Br'Nee from "Bone to be Wild" keeps juggling the Villain Ball back and forth. At first, M'Lee seeks refuge on Moya for protection from a hideous monster. Subversion #1: the monster is a well-spoken scientist named Br'Nee who has come to warn them about M'Lee, who murders people and eats their bones. Subversion #2: Br'Nee is responsible for starving M'Lee's people to death, and M'Lee was only motivated by extreme hunger.
  • Downer Ending; "..Different Destinations," for one. The crew travels back in time, where a monastery is under seige by an alien horde. Crichton et al try to set history back on course, but it keeps getting worse: first the war goes on much longer with more bloodshed, then the entire planet is irradiated, then it CEASES TO EXIST. The crew manages to fix everything, except for one detail: whereas before the horde offered the surviving nuns a ceasefire, now the horde, enraged at losing Crichton, are unable to control their bloodlust and slaughter the remaining nuns, including a young girl
  • Dramatic Space Drifting
  • Dressing as the Enemy: Occasionally played straight, but that doesn't guarantee success. John Crichton infiltrates a Peacekeeper base disguised as an officer (a ploy that had worked successfully before) but encounters Big Bad Scorpius for the first time who casually says "That man, he is an imposter. Seize him." It turns out that Scorpius has the ability to see the energy signatures of others, so he could tell Crichton wasn't Sebacean.
    • In the same episode, Chiana slips through Peacekeeper security by posing as a maintenance worker, complete with black wig and Sebecean makeup.
    • John keeps wearing the Peacekeeper uniform throughout the season, though, partially because he doesn't exactly have a whole lot of changes of clothes with him and partially because it makes him look badass.
    • In "Liars, Guns and Money Part 1," Crichton and Aeryn knock out a couple of guards in the middle of their bank heist, but are ambushed by more guards before they've even finished pulling the clothes off. Crichton flees with a half-hearted "Uh... they went that way!" to the new arrivals.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Jool; DK and his wife.
  • Dropped a Bridget On Him: Staanz is obviously meant to be perceived by the audience (and the main characters) as a male Camp Gay comic relief... until she reveals that she's a female of her species and astonishes D'Argo with an Anguished Declaration of Love.

Crichton: Y'know, big guy, I think I'd better give you two a little time alone here. 'Cause you know, in a universe this vast, when two hearts collide...
D'Argo: Shut up.

  • Drowning My Sorrows: In the wake of Crichton's death, Aeryn spends the entirety of "The Choice" tipping back bottles.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: You can almost hear Crichton saying it. Even though he saves the main characters' lives twice in the first episode alone, he's constantly referred to as useless just because he knows nothing about anything.
    • By the end of the first season, however, this has changed.
  • Dueling Shows: Lexx.
  • Dutch Angle: Farscapes cameras are very drunk.
  • Dyeing for Your Art: Virginia Hey shaved her hair and eyebrows to become Zhaan, and suffered serious health issues because of her makeup that eventually forced her to—very unwillingly—leave the show.
  • Dying Race: The Ancients. "Jack" shows Crichton the room where most of their kind are kept in suspended animation, awaiting the day that they migrate to a new planet capable of supporting them.
  • Easily Forgiven: Subverted. Some things - like Chiana cheating on D'Argo with his son - go unforgiven for more than a year, much like it probably would in real life.
  • Easter Bunny: Out of all the surreal moments in Farscape, the final episode takes the cake. (Also a possible lampshading of Harvey's namesake).

Harvey: [wearing bunny suit] Curious holiday, Easter. A religious leader dies, comes back from the dead, and you end up celebrating like this.

  • E=MC Hammer: The Trope Namer comes from a pastiche of E=mc2 that appeared in a scene of The Peacekeeper Wars, in which Harvey (as Albert Einstein) stands before a blackboard that reads "E = MC Hammer", among other nonsense.
  • Ejection Seat: Subverted. The ejection seat in Aeryn's prowler works just fine... it's her seatbelt that's the problem. There's also the minor hiccup of there being nothing to land on besides a frozen lake.
  • Eldritch Location: The wormhole nexus. Einstein uses it as a meeting ground between representatives of the Ancients (i.e. himself) and anyone knowledgeable enough to pose a threat to them. To Crichton's perception, it resembles an iceberg floating in an ocean of wormholes. Due to Einstein's influence, physics tend to behave quite strangely here, and Crichton often ends up speaking to long-dead individuals from his past and tumbling into Unrealized Realities.
  • Elephant Graveyard: The Sacred Leviathan Burial Place, a remote corner of space to which Leviathans tow their deceased brethren.
  • Eloquent in My Native Tongue: The Dream Sequences in "Dog With Two Bones", which examine John's anxieties about bringing Aeryn with him to Earth. Aeryn's accent doesn't sound quite as melodious to humans without translator microbes. Subverted in "Kansas", when her Sebeacan Photographic Memory allows Aeryn to absorb the English dialect simply by watching Sesame Street.
  • Emotion Eater: Maldis likes encouraging his prey to excesses of hatred and fear as an appetiser to the main course- their souls. Talikaa, meanwhile, prefers to provoke the dominant emotions of her victims to their logical extremes, and then literally extract those neural impulses as food.
  • Emotion Suppression: Crichton spends the first half of season 4 taking drugs which are intended to suppress his love for Aeryn. She's... not happy when she finds out.
  • The Empire: First the Peacekeepers, then the Scarrans. Though technically, they were both rival empires from the start.
  • Enemy Civil War: Crichton and co. were planning on inciting one between the Scarrans two ally races, the administrative Kalish and the warlike Charrids, in order to serve as a distraction in order to escape with Scorpius. It works, although as always things are more complicated...
  • Enemy Mine: Upon investigating the wreckage of the Zelbinion, Crichton and Aeryn are forced to join with a surviving Peacekeeper (Gilina) when scavengers attack the ship. In the end, Gilina agrees not to report their whereabouts to Crais, regardless of her oath.
    • Played straight in the "Liars, Guns, and Money" trilogy, when Moya's crew organize various aliens who have tried to kill them in the past to pull off a heist.
    • Zig-zagged with John and Scorpius, multiple times. John pretends to team up with Scorpius, then John is forced to team up with Scorpius to save Aeryn (twice), then Scorpius seems to have betrayed them but really hasn't, then John betrays Scorpius only to have to go back and save him again. And then they end up teaming up with Scorpius again in the miniseries, against John's better judgment.
  • Enemy Within: Crichton, when possessed by Harvey.
  • Energy Beings: The Energy Riders, who live in electromagnetic clusters. Sometimes, a diseased rider sneaks away on a passing ship by possessing the body of a crew member. Possession appears to be very, very addictive. Also, Mu-Quillus could change form from energy to matter, and reside within a star.
  • Equal Opportunity Evil: Say what you want about the Peacekeepers, they are nothing if not diverse: Mixed-gender battle units (with several female officers depicted on-screen), and a wide variety of skin tones. Contrast with ordinary humans, who—as D'Argo points out—discriminate and make war against members of their own species.
  • Erotic Eating: While attempting to convince him to grant her amnesty from Salis, Chiana seductively bites a food cube Crichton sticks though the bars of her cell.
    • Sikozu did a bit of this in "Bad Timing" while sharing a meal with Scorpius, if the amount of time she spent licking the spoon was any evidence.
  • Eureka Moment: While John racks his brain trying to figure out how to save Earth from the Scarrans in "Bad Timing" (the final episode of the regular series), he laments that there's not enough time. "It's always about time.", Aeryn replies. Because of the way she phrased it, Crichton is hit with an idea on how to collapse the wormhole; he kisses her, tells her to "Never change!", and runs out.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: At the end of Peacekeeper Wars, the Peacekeepers and Scarrans both realize that they actually don't want wormhole weapons after all. They then beg Crichton to stop his weapon from destroying the entire galaxy, promising to end the war in return. On a civilisation-sized scale, the Peacekeepers are oppressive bastards who kill by the rules and use entire cultures to their own advantage in a desperate plot to keep order, however they are a lot better than the Scarrans who rape, kill, slaughter, and (and this in spades) torture all in an attempt to dominate the galaxy. This is made abundantly clear particularly from Scorpius's perspective when he flashed-back to his past. You know things are bad when Scorpius is so disgusted and sickened by what the Scarrans did that he went on an extensive Magnificent Bastard manipulating spree to gain control of the Peacekeepers JUST TO STOP THEM! Oh, and the more intelligent the Scarrans are, the worse they get (as in, more intelligence = more ambition to gain power + more inventive ways to torture people!)
  • "Everybody Laughs" Ending: "Through the Looking Glass".
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: The ending to "Different Destinations". What's worse, it's the heroes' fault due to changing history, and just to twist the knife, the "everybody" in question was a monastery-full of NUNS. Nurse-nuns. With kids.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Pilot, who is named after his function aboard Moya. This trope even extends to the rest of his species. It is never revealed if he even has a personal name, but presumably his own kind have some way of differentiating each other. It's revealed that Pilot language is so fantastically dense and complex that translator microbes just give up on it until they simplify their sentences. It would thus be nothing for them to address each other with full descriptions that left little doubt who they were talking to, similar to someone saying "I am doing fine, Caucasian male in a charcoal gray suit with thin purple tie who works in my department and is currently standing to the left of the water cooler." and not having it take forever or be awkward.
  • Evil Albino: Volmae, though she's more misguided than 'evil'.
  • Evil Matriarch: Neera, an ambitious priestess who pressures her son to marry Lishala, daughter of the village chief ("Jeremiah Crichton").
  • Evil Sorcerer: Maldis.
  • Evilutionary Biologist: Namtar, right down to expressing approval for Joseph Mengele.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: During the first season of Farscape, the episodes weren't originally titled. The producers instead inserted "placeholder" titles, such as "PK Tech Girl" or "DNA Mad Scientist", into their shooting schedule. When the fans started clamoring for actual titles, Henson and O'Bannon fell back on their old placeholder names.
  • Executive Meddling: A rare good example, as the newly-appointed head of the Sci-Fi Channel was a big proponent of Farscape's 'edginess'. This was partly due to the presence of Jim Henson's moniker, not to mention the family-friendly puppets; both of which were unnerving to a company that was re-styling itself as an adult network.
  • Explosion Propulsion
  • Explosive Decompression: In "Dream a Little Dream", when Zhaan has a nightmare about Crichton floating in space, his spacesuit visor cracking, and his head going pop, Outland-style. However, the series otherwise averts the trope on repeated occasions when characters are shown exposed to the vacuum of space with no consequences. By the start of Season 4, D'Argo, Rygel, Noranti and Crichton had all been exposed to space, with Crichton actually surviving exposure for a minute-and-a-half wearing nothing more than civvies ("Look at the Princess").
  • Explosive Instrumentation: Lampshaded.
  • Expository Hairstyle Change: Fresh from his "mental cleansing" at the hands of the Nebari, Durka returns with long hair and an eyepatch, now claiming to be reformed. As Crichton remarks, though, cleansing "doesn't get the tough stains out."; Durka eventually snaps back to his old self, as shown by his immediate (and symbolic) cutting of the hair.
    • Also, by the time we see her again in the Peacekeeper Wars, Sikozu's hair has gone from long and curly to short and spiky, signifying her Face Heel Turn. And in the comics, it is swiftly returned to its series' version as she once again goes neutral.
  • Express Delivery: Aeryn goes from barely showing to full-term pregnant in around a week's time in-universe; Hand Waved by Aeryn mention that Sebecean soldiers are genetically designed to come to term in a matter of a week or so and give birth in minutes (not to mention how pregnancy can be in stasis for seven years without growing in size—my, but that military is efficient). In the miniseries, Grayza is shown as fully pregnant when two months earlier she hadn't been at all, for the same reason.
  • Extended Disarming: In one of several peace negotiations seen in-series, Aeryn is stopped by security and forced to give up her pulse pistol. They continue to frisk her in the background as the scene continues, and end up with a knee-high pile of guns by the time she is finally let through.
  • Eye Scream: "A Clockwork Nebari" had a particular scene. "DNA Mad Scientist" had it in quantity: three successive, close-up shots of eyes getting jabbed by needles. Also, Natira's fascination with eyes - she plucks out one of Rorf's and is a few seconds away from doing the same to Crichton before events conspire to stop her. Then there's Scorpius' revenge against Tauza, in which he blinds her by jamming both halves of his snapped coolant rod into her eyes.
  • Faceless Goons: Peacekeeper commandos. The few, the proud, the expendable.
    • Similarly done with the Charrids. Having established that Scarrans are pretty much Immune to Bullets, it was necessary to have them ally with a race that did not share this vulnerability, thus allowing shoot-outs to ensue.
  • Face Palm: In "Liars, Guns and Money", the mercenary Bekhesh performs a face(plate)palm when Stark explains that his plan to attack the Shadow Depository relies on a silent count—in the middle of a shootout with the guards.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Going home; double-subverted twice near the end of the series.
  • Fake American: Whenever they had an American character who wasn't John or Jack, they were probably played by an Australian: two of the most notable were John's mom and his best friend DK. Also, Australian actors Gigi Edgely and Anthony Simcoe played their characters of Chiana and D'Argo with fairly passable American accents.
  • Fake Guest Star: Jool, Noranti, and Sikozu on Farscape. Actresses Melissa Jaffer and Raelee Hill, who played Noranti and Sikozu respectively, were credited as guest stars even in the small handful of Season 4 episodes they didn't appear in.
    • Not to mention Jonathan Hardy, though this is somewhat justified in that he's a voice actor. Still, he appeared in every single episode of the show.
  • Faking the Dead: Even the humongous D'Argo isn't above playing dead in order to ambush a clueless Peacekeeper.
    • Durka faked his death for real, placing a dead crewmember in the Zelbinion's command chair before abandoning his ship. To the outside observer, it appeared that Durka shot himself during the Nebari siege.
    • In "Won't Get Fooled Again", Harvey helps Crichton escape his Scarran captor by temporarily stopping his heart. Once the torturer is convinced that his subject has died, Crichton then sets his pulse pistol to overload; when the Scarran comes over to inspect the noise, Crichton jams the muzzle into his mouth, blowing his head off.
  • Falling Chandelier of Doom: Skreeth gets a faceful of this trope. (Subverted when he shrugs it off.)
  • Famed in Story: By the end of the second season, the group's reputation has grown so much that people recognise them by sight. Although the viewers know Moya's crew only survive by the seat of their pants, everyone they meet is quite impressed that a ragtag bunch of ex-cons have seemingly managed to piss off every government in the sector. As a result, word has gotten around about their exploits, though the stories are a bit... exaggerated, in some respects.
    • First, in "Suns and Lovers":

Borlik: You know, I heard he destroyed a Peacekeeper Gammak Base, murdered an entire Nebari battalion, even laid waste to a Shadow Depository. The guy was a devil: he raped and pillaged, he popped eyeballs--
Crichton: Whoa-whoa! Where do they get these stories? Let's set the facts straight. First off, there was no raping, very little pillaging, and Frau Blücher popped all the eyeballs.

    • And again in "Scratch and Sniff":

D'Argo: [hesitantly] You... have heard of us?
Raxil: Yeah, I've heard stories. But obviously they aren't worth a bucket of dren!

    • Towards the end of the series, it's revealed that the reputation of Moya's crew has been a major impediment to Peacekeeper diplomacy, as planets under Peacekeeper control have started losing respect for a military dictatorship that can't stop one tiny ship
    • This works IN the crew's favor by the end of the comic books, as they and their views on Peacekeepers and Scarrans are now widely-known throughout the Uncharted Territories.
  • Fan Service: The first episode after John gets taken on board the Leviathan he is put into one of the cells (it's a prison ship, after all) and is stripped of his clothing. Like, all his clothing. Probably also gets into Estrogen Brigade Bait.
  • Fantastic Arousal: The Hynerian earbrow is very sensitive.
    • Zhaan's "photogasms". As Pilot put it "She's a plant. Put her in the light and watch her smile."
  • Fantastic Drug: The Tavleks each wear a projectile-firing gauntlet which automatically attaches to your arm via a locking brace and giant needles. These inject the host with a stimulant which imbues them with super-strength, but also makes them aggressive and immune to logic. It's addictive too, so good luck convincing a friend to remove the gauntlet voluntarily.
    • Freslin, a recreational drug used throughout "Scratch n' Sniff"; can be used as an aphrodisiac, or to disguise people with pheromones. Unfortunately, it's milked from a particular gland in the bodies of sentient beings. As a result, Jool and Chiana end up on the receiving end of a local drug-dealer's harvest.
  • Fantastic Racism: Sebaceans are taught at an early age that interspecies marriages are wrong and that "the blood lines must remain pure" - meaning that any children from those unions are evil. Said hybrid children are ostracized (at best) and restricted from Peacekeeper service. (Scorpius' service is explicitly stated to be a very rare instance.)
    • And yet, high-ranking officers have no qualms about, say, taking a Nebari woman as a concubine. Peacekeeper regulations are flexible, I guess. Just like Counselor Troi.
    • Also, while researching wormholes Scorpius employed at least 2 obviously non-Sebaceans. This was probably because at this point Peacekeeper High Command lets Scorpius have leeway to do what he wants.
    • It is revealed that Charrids and Hynerians have a mutual loathing for each other, because of a genocidal war between them that happened a few hundred cycles in the past.
    • Also, there is tension between the Charrids and the Kalish, which the Moya crew is able to take advantage of during the "We're So Screwed" trilogy.
    • Everyone seems to think Luxans are dumb beasts. Admittedly, they're Proud Warrior Race Guys, but they're shown to have a complex culture and Lo'laa (presumably a Luxan ship, as its default language was Ancient Luxan) is easily the most technologically advanced ship we see in the series.
    • Lampshaded in "Won't Get Fooled Again", when nobody but Crichton sees the aliens as...well, aliens.

Crichton: On Earth, psychiatrists don't come in blue.
Zhaan: Do you have a problem with people of color?

Crichton: Stop. You're an alien.

Zhaan: Yes, that's true. But I do have a green card.

    • Sometimes, the colour of a character's skin is used as an insult against them, such as Rygel referring to Zhaan as a "blue-arsed bitch" and Jool referring to Chiana as a "monochromatic little bitch".
  • Fartillery: While exploring a mental video game created from Crichton's memories in the episode John Quixote, Crichton and Chiana bump into a simulation of Rygel (the "Black Knight") who barks "None shall pass!". Though Crichton is amused at first, the situation turns serious when he and Chiana try to walk around the small knight. Unlike Rygel's typical helium farts, this version farts gigantic flames.
    • Rygel's gastronomic tract is laden with chemicals that, should he ingest a tannot root (the source of Chakran Oil, which is used as ammo), cause his bodily secretions to ignite. All of them. You haven't lived until you've watched a Muppet laying siege to a horde of cultists by PEEING NITRO at them.
  • Faster-Than-Light Travel: "Hetch Drive" is dirt cheap and available to everyone, "Starburst" is available to Leviathans, but wormholes - which act as a metadimensional Portal Network - can only be utilized with the assistance of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, which they don't give lightly for really good reasons... All three types, present and accounted for.
    • Hetch Drive and Starburst are both more like Warp Drive than Teleporters and Transporters. Hetch Drive is never explained, but fans frequently assume that it involves accelerating to faster-than-light speeds, and contextual clues in some episodes support this (the Peacekeepers are able to catch up with Moya, but we never see a Command Carrier exiting hyperspace or anything so dramatic, they just cruise along); Starburst involves a Leviathan ripping a hole in space-time and entering another dimension, where it rides an energy wave until the wave dissipates and the Leviathan re-emerges into normal space-time. Wormholes have much more potential than just space travel. One can use them to travel through time or "sideways" into alternate realities. Other species may have different FTL capabilities.
    • Note that Starburst isn't particularly useful for anything other than escaping trouble, as it takes a while to build up. There also was the time when they got stuck in Starbust and the ship got split into 4 separate realities, 2 of which were almost unbearable to live in and a third causing everyone to break down into gigglefits constantly.
    • Another weird faster-than-light-related moment is in "Dog With Two Bones" when Crichton, in his module, watches Aeryn fly away... except that rather than just flying away, or having her Proweler enter some kind of warp/hyperspace portal, her ship just sort of fades away into a mist, like a more subtle, organic, slower starburst. The show never made it clear whether this was some kind of Peacekeeper FTL technology, a never-before-seen-on-screen effect of hetch drive, or an abstract way of depicting the emotional distance between John and Aeryn at that point in the show.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: Season 2 finale, for John. He got better, of course. "Lava's a Many Splendored Thing" arguably has a couple of other examples, in particular Chiana and Sikozu's close encounters with D'Argo's vomit, and D'Argo and Crichton getting an eyeful of naked old woman Noranti.
    • In "Mental as Anything," Macton wants to mentally trap D'Argo within his rage while forcing him to constantly relive the death of his wife (under the implicit belief that it was instead his fault all along). This works very briefly, but D'Argo is able to overcome it, reveal that Macton really did murder her and trap him instead.
    • Maldis was dispersed by Zhaan and left as a disembodied mind trying to pull his body back together again. He describes the experience as "Less than pleasant."
  • Femme Fatale: Grayza, Matala and Jena.
  • Fictional Counterpart: The International Aeronautics and Science Administration! (IASA)
    • Which is especially funny when Moya et al get to Earth and it's made clear that IASA is a solely American institution, given that they refuse to share alien tech with anyone else
  • Find the Cure: After being stabbed by a Peacekeeper's knife, Aeryn later learns her wound is more serious than she thought: she requires a tissue transplant to replace the nerve, or she'll die. The crew determines that the only transplant donor to be had is deep within a Peacekeeper base.
  • Fingore: When Grunchlk shows reluctance to tell Scorpius what he knows, Scorpius uses a mind-control device to force him to bite off the tip of his own finger.
    • One of the demonstrations of application of Sikozu's ability to reattach her lost extremities.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: John Crichton and Ka D'Argo. In the first season, D'argo tries to kill Crichton several times, and in "Till the Blood Runs Clear", Crichton even says, "We're never going to be friends... We can be allies." After fighting side by side for a couple seasons, they end up being closer than brothers. To a lesser extent, this rings true for the rest of the crew on Moya over the years. Literally forced together through circumstance and picking up strays along the way, the group started out barely tolerating one another and seeking to advance themselves at the cost of the others. By the end, with the things they had suffered through together, even the most selfish like Rygel had gone through fire and blood for their friends.
  • Fiery Redhead: Jool (although her hair is usually blonde, it turns red when she's angry and/or nervous) and Sikozu.
  • First Contact: Inverted a few times -- "I, E.T." and "Jeremiah Crichton" from the first season—where the characters land on planets that don't know about other aliens. Played straight in the last season.
    • The people in "Jeremiah Crichton" were aware of aliens as they themselves weren't native to the planet they lived on, havoing been trapped there for a few generations. However, they were not that aware - at one point mistaking D'Argo for a "man-creature" conjured up by Crichton.
  • First Gray Hair: Crichton finds one in "A Human Reaction". Not that the rest of the episode actually grants him the time to ponder the significance.
  • Fish Out of Water: The entire series.
  • Fish People: The wormhole-researching Pathfinders in the Farscape two-part episode "Self-Inflicted Wounds".
    • Oo-Nii in another two-parter, "What Was Lost".
    • Not to mention Rygel's people, Hynerians, who are specifically stated to be aquatic.
  • Five-Finger Discount: Eager to see what's in the Peacekeepers' locked crate, Chiana pockets the key from Thorn while flirting with him, then moulds a duplicate. Sneaky, sneaky. ("A Bug's Life")
  • Five-Man Band
  • Flanderization: Actually invoked and then inverted, in-universe, in "Twice Shy." A Giant Spider injects the crew with a toxin that exaggerates their defining traits (D'Argo's anger, Chiana's sex drive, etc.) and then removes them entirely in order to feed on them later, leaving Aeryn an emotional wreck and Crichton a pessimistic, hopeless lump.
  • Flashback with the Other Darrin: Borderline example: D'Argo's appearance changed dramatically between the finale of Season 1 and the opening of Season 2, but his prosthetics clash with the original look of the flashbacks in Season 4. There were plans to return D'Argo to his Season 1 makeup purely for the flashbacks, but there wasn't enough time.
  • Force Feeding: In "Crackers Don't Matter," D'Argo forcefeeds Rygel an entire box of crackers in a fit of rage after catching him sneaking a few as a snack. This is an early warning that the crew is not themselves.
  • Foreshadowing: Delvians being a race of sentient plants is foreshadowed with Zhaan's "photogasms", her blood resembling sap and a throwaway mention of fibres, rather than bones, in her body.
    • Crichton's flashes of a wacky version of Scorpius in "Crackers Don't Matter" is treated as a hallucination brought on by T'raltixx's influence. Several episodes later, it turns out that Scorpius implanted a neural clone of his personality (Harvey) into Crichton's brain.
    • In a similar vein to the above, Crichton's reactions to things around him following his interrogations in the Aurora Chair are slightly... off. This is due to Harvey's presence, and he finally completely loses it towards the end of Season 2, as well as having Harvey take over his body.
    • In yet another similar vein, Scorpius is seen playing with a metal ball in "Mind the Baby". A ball that looks exactly the same is being played with by Crichton in "Beware of Dog".
  • For Doom the Bell Tolls: Occurs during the death scene of one of the John Crichtons.
  • Forgotten Fallen Friend: In "Terra Firma", an assassin tortures and kills Crichton's childhood friend DK and his wife, and it's literally never mentioned again except a throwaway reference at the end of "Constellation of Doubt".
    • Likewise, Crais is rarely acknowledged after his and Talyn's Heroic Sacrifice, aside from a throwaway reference in "Dog With Two Bones".
  • Forgotten Phlebotinum: Zhaan is capable of camouflaging herself like a chameleon, but only uses this ability in one episode ("Bone to be Wild"). Possibly justified in that she is a plant and this is one of the few times she is in a forest; one would think it would be harder for her to camouflage herself against something as complex as foliage, compared to the relatively uniform interior of Moya.
    • D'Argo's super-long tongue and tranquilizer saliva gets forgotten every fifth episode or so. His arms and legs are bound, while his captor gloats nearby without a helmet. Whatever shall he do? The funniest example is when John asks him to knock him out in "A Prefect Murder", and D'Argo Pistol Whips him. And it doesn't work. John asks him to hit him again harder.
  • For Halloween I Am Going as Myself: In "Kansas", after the crew accidentally lands in 1985 Earth. They use the fortuitous happenstance of arriving a few hours before Halloween to disguise their alien features. Needless to say, the heroes find a way to bungle even this up.
  • A Form You Are Comfortable With: The Ancients; most notably "Einstein" and "Jack" (a facsimile of Crichton's father).
  • Framing the Guilty Party: Gilina manages to sabotage the Aurora Chair minutes before Crichton is placed back into it, thereby manipulating the images gleaned from Crichton's mind. As Scorpius looks on, Crais is shown on the viewscreen secretly conspiring with Crichton in order to keep the wormhole information for himself. Crais sputters, realizing the memories are fake, and tries throttling the truth out of Crichton. Grinning, Crichton persists in the lie, telling Crais that the game's up. Scorpius says there is only one way to find out the truth, and that is to put Crais in the Chair.
  • Freaky Friday Flip: In "Out of Their Minds"
  • Fridge Brilliance: At the end of the Peacekeeper Wars, John's comment that "This is your playground" to Dargo Sun-Crichton, his son could be considered somewhat prophetic as Dargo Sun-Crichton is explicitly mentioned as having the Wormhole Knowledge within his DNA from his father (unlike John, we don't know this was removed), as well as having a small amount of Pilot DNA from his mother, which allows some command over Leviathans. These inherited traits give the potential for him to potentially revolutionise interstellar travel.
  • "Friend or Idol?" Decision: While Crichton and Aeryn are caught in the Flax, believed to be dead, D'Argo embarks with Staanz on a mission to salvage a Luxan Piercer ship which might contain maps that can point him to Jothee's whereabouts. However, when they finally get there, D'Argo remembers that the transport pod the two were on has a reserve oxygen tank; with the Piercer next in line for smelting and the reserve tank not due to last very long, D'Argo has to choose between the two. Eventually, he opts to rescue Crichton and Aeryn, stating that if he ever does find his son, he wants to be able to look him in the eye.
  • Friends with Benefits: Aeryn tries to have one of these with John, but he turns her down because he's in love with her.

John: You know what? I got two hands, I can alternate, I can release all the tension I want. I don't need your charity.

Aeryn: And I don't need your emotions.

  • From Nobody to Nightmare: As his name suggests, NamTar was actually a lab specimen whose intelligence was increased by his Mad Scientist captor Kornata. NamTar eventually learned to use the laboratory machines to increase his size, and took over the lab for himself. After Kornata rebels and injects him with a serum that reverses his numerous augmentations, NamTar reverts back to his original (and tiny) self.
    • Scorpius, who started out as yet another horribly mistreated hybrid, before escaping, wandering the galaxy for several years, joining the Peacekeepers as a scientist, and eventually ascending to the rank of fleet commander.
    • John Crichton definitely qualifies as far as Scorpius, Crais and the Peacekeepers are concerned.
  • Future Me Scares Me: After being absorbed and ejected by an unknown alien sphere, John is confronted by two clones of himself: "Futuro", an evolved human with a visible brain and green skin, and the self-explanatory "Neandro". Futuro's higher intellect, however, also gives him looser morals. After determining that he will never be accepted on Moya with Crichton still around, Futuro tries to murder his counterpart, but is beaten back by Neandro. The 'past' version of Crichton sacrifices himself by reentering the sphere whilst carrying Futuro, ironically showing himself to be the most 'evolved' one between them.
  • Future Slang: Though it's not the future, is frelling full of this type of dren. Chiana's such a tralk, but everyone thinks with their mivonks around her. Isn't it the draddest? It does get a little fahrbot sometimes, and sometimes you wonder what the yotz people are talking about, but you'll get over it after an arn or two.
  • Gambit Pileup: The "Look at the Princess" trilogy. The Empress (wants Katralla on the throne) vs. the Scarrans (want Clavor on the throne) vs. the Peacekeeper Special Directorate (want anyone but Clavor on the throne) vs. Scorpius (doesn't give a good frell who's on the throne, as long as he gets Crichton).
  • Gas Chamber: "Staleek, this is very unoriginal!"—used in the second season Look at the Princess trilogy, too.
  • Gaslighting: "Won't Get Fooled Again." Being Genre Savvy, Crichton suspects it from the start and even tells Zhaan "Someone's gaslighting me!" At one point, he's lying handcuffed to an earth medical table, and Crais walks in wearing a police uniform. Accessorized by red high-heels and carrying a dog he calls "Toto":

Officer Crais: Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in?
Crichton: ...Yeah, do you?
Officer Crais: I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer, theft of police property, illegal possession of a firearm, five counts of attempted murder, that comes to... twenty-nine dollars and forty cents. Cash? Check? Or credit card?

  • Gender Separated Ensemble Episode: The gender subplots are separated into two different episodes: "Mental as Anything" for the guys and "Bringing Home the Beacon" for the girls.
  • General Ripper: Selto Durka.
  • Genetic Memory: Kaarvok had a wrist-mounted device that "twinned" his target, creating a duplicate that was perfect in every way. Exactly how it worked isn't precise—it had been a subatomic-particle-by-particle reconstruction rather than genetic memory—but the memory and personality were identical.
    • For some reason, the Scarrans believe that they can extract wormhole knowledge from an embryo in Aeryn's womb. The kid doesn't even have a brain yet. Give it a break.
  • Genius Bruiser: Crichton can handle himself in a fight, and despite the crew's harping on his human shortcomings, he's actually one of the smarter characters on the show, considering he designed his own test module as well as the experiment it's used in at the beginning of the series. He's hapless, but not at all stupid. Their thinking he's dumb seems to stem from his being confused by their technology - when in all likelihood he wouldn't be confused if someone would just spend five minutes explaining the different terms to him.
  • Genre Savvy: Crichton has seen it all in science fiction—to the point that there was a site dedicated to all the pop-culture references.
  • Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: everyone does this to Stark at one time or another. At the start they usually had to knock him unconscious to get him to stop, but by the end he's... a little more stable.
  • Get Back to the Future: The plot of "...Different Destinations" combines this with Set Right What Once Went Wrong. It doesn't work.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: During the climax of "PK Tech Girl", Crichton refers to Lomus the fire-spitting Sheeyang as "Gass-hole".
    • Also in the miniseries, Harvey as Einstein is trying to persuade John to give up wormhole tech to Scorpius. John erases all of the gobblety-gook on the black board and writes something on it,telling Harvey to make sure Scorpius gets the message—the message being "F (Harvey's head blocks this part)ck Off!"
  • Getting Hot in Here: The Drak Monarch decides to lay eggs and hatch its young in Moya, simultaneously increasing the heat to incubate the eggs properly. Aeryn ends up going into heat delirium (a potentially fatal condition her species is susceptible to); she does her best to lower her body temperature by removing some clothing, followed by taking a cold shower. Since heat delirium is apparently an unpleasant way to go, this is not played for fanservice.
  • Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: Chiana's people do this routinely as part of their "cleansing" process. One means of doing it involves pulling out the eyeball and installing a chip on the optic nerve. This is shown in graphic detail.
  • Ghost Ship: The Zelbinion. Also Rovhu (shudders).
  • Girl-On-Girl Is Hot / Guy-On-Guy Is Hot: a phenomenon of John's hallucinations, in both gender variants. In the slash-parody scene in "Won't Get Fooled Again", with D'Argo coming on to John, there's a reference to Chiana "wanting to watch". The other version happens in "John Quixote", where the evil VR version of Stark gets creepily enthusiastic about the idea of Chiana kissing the "princess".
  • A Glitch in the Matrix: Three of them.
    • In "A Human Reaction", Crichton realizes that he never returned to Earth, and is inside a simulation based on his own memories. The Ancients can only recreate people and environments that John Crichton has seen before. Once he realizes this, a trip to the ladies' room brings the illusion crashing down.
    • "Won't Get Fooled Again": This time, Crichton has wised up, but the ladies' bathroom trick won't work. One thing he notices is that Harvey, Scorpius's neural clone, isn't part of the illusion. Harvey alerts him to the fact that he is a prisoner of the Scarrans, whose intense body heat John can sense through the hallucinations.
    • In "John Quixote", Crichton makes the mistake of playing a buggy VR game based on his own memories; once he leaves, he finds that Scorpius has taken over Moya and is brainwashing the crew against him. However, he realises that he's still playing the game when he finds a hint voucher in his pocket; plus, because the memories were copied over a year ago, Sikozu and Noranti are nowhere to be seen, and nobody knows anything about Aeryn's pregnancy.
  • The Glomp: Chiana does a really spectacular one in "Mind the Baby", leaping about ten feet in the air before landing on her target.
    • Repeated in the first part of the Peacekeeper Wars movie.
  • Go Out with a Smile: Beautifully done in "Icarus Abides": After absorbing a lethal amount of radiation, Crichton (one of them) delivers one of the most heartbreaking lines in the series: "Don't worry about me, I've never felt better."
  • God Guise: In "Jeremiah Crichton", Crichton is marooned on a planet which turns out to have religious iconography drawn from contact with the Rygel's race, the Hynerians. Surprisingly for the shallow ex-monarch, while Rygel expects to be treated like royalty, he is actually profoundly offended that his ancestors would allow themselves to be taken for divinity. He's even more shocked when he discovers that the ancient Hynerians actually intended this: the natives of the planet were the loyal subjects of one of Rygel's ancestors, marooned on the planet with no way of escaping, advancing technologically, or even contacting other cultures — all so they could act as eternal worshipers of the Hynerian empire.
  • Godzilla Threshold: In Peacekeeper Wars, John's finally had enough. Sick and tired of trying to reason and figure things out with the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans - holds the entire galaxy to ransom with the wormhole weapon.
  • Gollum Made Me Do It: Harvey gradually encroaches into Crichton's mind, ultimately turning him into a Manchurian Agent with no "off" switch.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Namtar was originally a lab animal that was part of an experiment in intelligence increase. He eventually got so smart he was able to take over the lab, build himself a better body, and turn the researchers into Igors.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: D'Argo has a prominent one which stretches from his right upper brow to his 'beak'-nose. Durka, in contrast, has a giant scar surrounding the right side of his face and eye. Also, the left side of Xhalax's head is very badly scarred (possibly as a result of being burned) and she is missing her left ear.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Furlow is perpetually-seen puffing on cigars.
  • Good Thing You Can Heal: Sikozu has the ability to reattach lost extremities. Given her tendency to have her arms, legs, and fingers chopped off quite frequently, it's a useful trait.
    • Pilot once has this trope forced upon him by the rest of the crew, because NamTar had demanded one of his limbs in exchange for assistance.
  • Gorgeous Gorgon: Invoked Scorpius' old friend/lover/mentor, a blue crustacean "shadow banker" by the name of Natira who specializes in storing stolen goods and eye-popping torture. Crichton even calls her "Medusa," as her head is wreathed in spiky claws she can deploy at will.
  • Gorn: Pops up a few times in "Home on the Remains", most notably when B'Sogg's arm starts to melt, complete with a shot of his flesh wetly hitting the floor. It was this, along with two headbutts, that caused the BBFC to give the episode an 18 rating.
  • Green-Skinned Space Babe: One for every color in the rainbow, with two of them included in the core cast.
  • Grilling the Newbie: Jool and Sikozu get this treatment as newcomers. Neither of them are particularly forthcoming. Crais gets it when he deserts, too.
  • The Grotesque: Subverted with Kornata, who is first presented as NamTar's Igor-like assistant. In truth, she is a brilliant scientist who was subjugated by her own lab rat.
  • Groundhog Day Loop: "Back and Back and Back to the Future".
  • Grow Old with Me: Crichton and Aeryn gets this trope foisted on them in "The Locket". After being stranded in a time-displacing "mist", the pair spend fifty years together as a rural couple. Although neither of them can to manage to spit it out, Aeryn claims to have been already-married in this timeline and the inside of her locket has Crichton's picture in it.
  • Guns Akimbo
  • Gunship Rescue: After Skreeth party-crashes the Crichton family's New Year's Eve party, the brawl comes to its festive finale when D'Argo lands his gunship on the front lawn and fires its cannons through the window.
    • Talyn often played this role in earlier episodes, such as "Thanks for Sharing" and the "Liars, Guns and Money" Trilogy.
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