Review
The second half of season four's first two-parter finally started to deliver the Farscape goods - fisticuffs, huge explosions, Crichtonisms and plenty of guns.
Sadly, the underlying story couldn't quite come up to the standard of the episode's best moments. Awesome scenes like Elack's swan-song plummet to Arnessk and a cracking good pulse fire-fight were broken up by needlessly drawn-out seduction scenes and vast quantities of watery floundering. While there were occasional flashes of brilliance in the characters’ interactions, the relentless pattern of escape, capture, escape, capture just didn't give them enough space to develop.
Granted, the episode did pull together most of the plot threads started in part one, but maybe a bit too mechanically. At times it felt like a list was being ticked off - Granny's advice on what to do with the one-legged snails comes in handy, tick. Oo-nii's motives cleared up, tick. The missing temple returns, tick.
Along the way there were some good surprises, largely on the mortality front. The selfless sacrifice of Elack was touching and kick-ass at the same time, and Scorpy's execution a real shock - although can we believe that Farscape has really killed off one of its most enduring bad guys?
Whilst the threat from the magnetics in the final scenes - death by bad colour-balance, apparently - was certainly different, it wasn't convincing enough to create the necessary tension. Combined with the David Eddings fantasy-novel cover style temple which popped obligingly out of the past for a feelgood ending, this left us with a climax that lacked bite. Still, every cloud has a silver lining - no more Jool.
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