Stark: "What's wrong? Didn't sleep well?"
Rygel: "How could I, with them on the other side of this very thin bulkhead? ?"
Stark: "A bit noisy, were they?"
Rygel: "She was bad enough, but Crichton... He was louder than she was! He actually sounded like he was exerting himself. What kind of a male is he, anyway?"
Stark goes over to listen at the wall
Rygel: (disgusted) "They're between bouts. Give them a few microts."

Stark: "Friend or foe, friend or foe, friend or foe?"
Rygel: "Will you shut the frell up! Of course it's a foe, we have no friends!"

Xhalax: "Good news. Your shares have just increased."

John: "You lied to us! You betrayed us and you used us!"
Crais: "I used all my assets to stay alive, and those assets were you!"

Aeryn: (intercut with the recording) "You cared enough then to risk everything to meet the child that you conceived. You can't have burned that love away completely. I am that child. I am aprt of you. I am part of Talyn. The Peacekeeper way isn't the only way -- it's not too late for you."

Rygel: "I've. Been. Filleted."

Xhalax: "I would take you back, attempt to redeem you if I could, but your corruption is too advanced."
Aeryn: "My 'corruption' began the moment I was conceived!"
Xhalax: "No!"
Aeryn: "Don't you see, my independence comes from you anyway? I grew up wanting to be like the woman I'd only seen once."
Xhalax: "You are a traitor!"
Aeryn: "I am the part of you that wanted to be a rebel, the part of you that knew deep down inside what was right!"
Xhalax: "Shut up!"
Aeryn: "You've resisted Peacekeeper doctrine before--"
Xhalax: "Shut up!"
Aeryn: "--Why can't you do it again now?"
Xhalax: "You are an aberration!"
Aeryn: "I am your child!"

Let's get this out of the way -- the opening scene was worth the price of admission. We few, we frustrated few, we band of 'shippers, have been hanging onto the implied sex of A Human Reaction (and only the Canadians and Brits got the good implications) and the occasional smoochies for two years. Finally seeing John and Aeryn together -- not just the sex, but the happy, joking, in-love part, too.... well, it kind of makes two years of will-they/won't-they almost worth it. Which, of course, means that something is about to go Dreadfully Wrong.

To the writers' credit, they're not doing stupid thing with the relationship (aside from that intensely perplexing thing they started the season with, which has obviously been forgotten and wow are we grateful); while Bad Things do, in fact, happen after the sex, they are not Bad Things that make John and Aeryn's relationship revert. This is a Good Thing. It's a relationship, not a plot device and not Moonlighting, and I somehow doubt the fact that the two parties involved are sleeping together is going to make that relationship any less fascinating -- or any less traumatic for said parties. < g > Just a hunch, knowing our lovely writers as we do (the same lovely writers who fit This Week's Exposition regarding Talyn's status in as pillow talk, by the way < rolling eyes >).

This is actually a relationship episode even outside of the romantic one. Talyn's crew splits up early on into teams, and some fascinating examples of interpersonal dynamics (ooh, SAT words....) -- mother-daughter bondage... er, bonding; man-to-man bondage... er, bonding; and Stark doing surgery on Rygel (and what kind of a rotten person stabs a Muppet, anyway?!?). Certainly a interesting planetfall for Our Stalwart Crew....

The Stark and Rygel show continues to be the funniest thing around short of Chiana and Jool (and how much do I love this show for tossing the damnedest characters together and watching the fur fly?). Stark is infinitely more bearable with Rygel around needling him non-stop, and god knows Stark is willing to smack Rygel around as needed. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship -- if they don't kill each other. Seriously, Your Tour Guides were Shocked and Aghast that anyone could actually stab our favorite Dominar; as annoying and obnoxious as the little jerk is, stabbing him is just wrong. And he just had to be a jerk and not thank Stark for it, but that's our Rygel -- but give the little slug points for walking around with a major stab wound and managing to cut the others loose. Stark also wins points from me for some inventive emergency medicine and a hell of a lot of compassion which, in all fairness, he's never been short of. He's a little too overflowing with it most of the time, in fact; it tends to short-circuit his brain. :P

John and Crais are a different kettle of fish entirely -- I hadn't thought about Crais' long-range plans involving Talyn until John laid them out, but, of course, he's right. Crais is just exactly that sneaky and, when not obsessing over things like his brother dying, is quite capable of thinking 12 moves ahead. That said, I'm not sure that he would have, at the time, regarded Moya's crew as that much of an advantage -- Talyn was the one with weapons, Crais the one with the cold-blooded survival instincts. Still, one never turns down potential allies, especially when they're part and parcel of the baby warship you're planning on stealing anyway..... John over-reacted a tad to this insight; it's like he didn't know Crais was up to something from Day One -- why is thinking ahead so far to blackmailing Moya's crew into helping him, so much worse than kidnapping Talyn in the first place? Whatever. And knowing that Crais is the secondary target of Xhalax and her merry band isn't that much of a revelation, either; I always thought Crais got away from the Peacekeepers a little too easily -- but in all the fuss over Talyn, we always forgot that his Captain is regarded as quite the renegade by more people than ours.

Still, watching these two go at each other in damned interesting -- Crais is obviously fighting back some fairly strong feelings regarding the change in John and Aeryn's relationship, judging from his very careful expressions half the time. And that whole thing of John leaving Crais tied up as bait... I don't disapprove of the strategy, by any means, and Crais sure as hell would have done the same, situations being reversed. But it gives me the willies to see John acting like one of the bad guys, however justified. I also don't particularly like him going off to that extent on anything that occurs to him because he was talking to Harvey; there's just nowhere good that can wind up. But at least he didn't let Aeryn kill her mother....

Then, of course, there's the Sun family reunion. Xhalax Sun is the very definition of a tough, ruthless old bitch, and normally I respect the hell out of that. I'd respect it now if all of that bitchiness was directed in precisely the wrong directions, and apparently bound to remain that way no matter how often her nose is rubbed in the fact that she's on the wrong side! I find it incredible that even the Peacekeepers would send Xhalax out without telling her she's after her own daughter; I find it more incredible that she can refuse to regard that daughter as anything other than a traitor, when she's the one who killed her child's father. Gotta love Peacekeeper standards. Still, it makes a horrible kind of sense, in some ways. Xhalax evidently made the decision a long time ago that she would place her personal survival above all other considerations -- her daughter, the life of her lover.... Not surprising, considering that Aeryn's choice, when confronted with a similar decision in the form of Velorek, was very much the same.

But Aeryn, given a second chance, made a very different choice -- maybe because she'd had fewer years to justify her actions, fewer years to have convinced herself it was the right decision, because anything else means she did something unthinkable. If there had been a John Crichton for Xhalax, if Talyn the Elder had survived, if, if, if.... There's very little to admire in the woman Xhalax has become, except for the genes which produced an exceptional daughter. I don't, by the way, believe Xhalax is dead; we didn't see her die, Crais is not particularly trustworthy on anything, and she's just too fascinating of a character to waste. And I'd like to see her get one more chance to match her daughter.... although she's not allowed to go anywhere near Talyn ever again. Either one. (and does anyone else find it a little odd that they get the apparently lower-ranked and, hence, less valuable, member of that relationship to kill the higher ranked one? Does that say something about the Peacekeepers, or about the odds that Talyn the Elder is actually dead?) Linda Cropper is an amazing actress, and an inspired casting call from the producers.

And how bitter is the irony that the one of the things that has most shaped Aeryn's life, the thing she has clung to, one of the things that made her reach to be "something more" -- is the thing that led to the destruction her mother's chances of ever doing the same? That childhood moment in the cargo bay made Aeryn special, was the first step that led her to Moya and John Crichton. But that same moment betrayed Xhalax and Talyn to the Peacekeepers as being special themselves, and effectively killed them both. And Aeryn gets to live with that, with knowing her specialness lead to her father's death, and turned her mother into... well, that, before she died at the hands of Aeryn's shipmate. Aeryn's guilt is going to be pretty heinous... and her sense of betrayal. I do not want to be the next enemy Peacekeeper to cross her path.... An equally amazing performance from Claudia Black, particularly as she hears Xhalax die. Fantastic.

Great directing throughout, particularly the last scene of Act four, and the John/Aeryn scene in the tag; gorgeously framed and lit. Kudos to the matte people and the set and location guys -- that was deeply creepy swampiness for everyone to be wandering around fighting. And to the Creature Shop, as well; that was some impressive makeup and prosthetics on the Colartas (the bounty hunter critters), along with another interesting look at internal Peacekeeper dynamics. For all their xenophobia, and insistence on being superior, they're not above using other species' to do their dirty work -- or is that just a Xhalax thing? Regardless, the Colartas seemed to be under some kind of weird indentured service thing -- 10 successful missions in a row, and they get to go home. Quite the carrot there... Not terribly likely, given their evident problems with gravity, etc., but lots easier to live under than slavery with no hope of freedom. Peacekeepers suck.

An incredibly tense episode, weaving together plot threads from first season, and sending more spinning forward; god knows where they'll end up. Despite all of the angst of Xhalax Sun's reappearance in Aeryn's life, she's got John to hold onto, Crais is tied even more tightly to poor Talyn, which might keep him out of trouble, but won't do much for Talyn... and Stark says Zhaan is out there somewhere, watching over them. Now that's something to cling to.