Dog With Two Bones Commentary Transcript - The John and Aeryn ...

Transcript of DVD Commentary for Farscape Episode 3-22, “Dog With Two Bones,” with Ben Browder
and Claudia Black. From the Starburst Edition, ADV Films, Volume 3.3, Region 1.
Transcribed by TVGuru
On screen: “Previously on Farscape.”
BB: Alright, this is in here to get you slightly up to speed with where we are in the series. We are at the
end of season three. There have been two Crichtons, one of them has died. The one who died had a
relationship with Officer Aeryn Sun. And then she was reunited with the other Crichton. And there was a
certain amount of difficulty involved in them maintaining any kind of relationship, cordial or otherwise.
My name is Ben Browder. Sitting next to me is Claudia Black.
CB (meekly): Hi.
BB (laughing): Pretty soon we’ll be up to speed. Talyn and Crais have sacrificed themselves to save our
people, with the destruction of a command carrier. But you know what? You guys have seen all this. You
already know all this stuff. So we’ll talk about the other stuff, maybe the stuff you haven’t seen. Um, this
is one of my favorite episodes, and one day I’ll give a comment on one of the episodes I freakin’ hate, and
talk about how it’s not my fault. We just panned up the arm. We saw wormhole equations scrawled on my
arm. I love that bit, that obsession Crichton has with wormholes. But he has another obsession, and this is
it.
On screen: Aeryn modeling wedding gowns in John’s vision.
CB (chuckling): Aeryn Sun.
BB: Now this is an obsession that I could share with Crichton. The wormhole thing, uh, maybe.
CB: This is deliberate choice. I spoke to Andrew Prowse about this, who directed the episode. This is the
dress that Princess Katralla wore in “Look at the Princess.” And since I’ve also played a princess in
“John Quixote,” we thought it would be appropriate to tie in a few references.
BB: You haven’t played a princess yet. “John Quixote” is season 4.
CB (in princess voice): Oh, I get thso confusthed.
BB (mimicking at first): I confusthed about that. No, yeah, you actually had four or five dresses you tried
on. This is an episode which is typical of a David Kemper episode, which comes in at 70 pages, gets
truncated down to 65 pages, and should be 55. When we shoot it, the rough cut will come out to, you
know, a day and a half. And so we have a lot of extra material and footage that we can’t use. But you had
four dresses you tried on, all of them slightly different.
CB: And different characters, when I came out wearing….
BB: And there are entire sequences which are omitted from this episode. But that was according to the
Kemper plan.
CB: What I liked about the tension in Crichton and Aeryn’s relationship was always that they needed to
somehow find devices to keep them apart, which was that Crichton had been going crazy. And his writing
all the equations on his arm was a nice little physical manifestation of that for me. I mean he’s obviously

focusing his mind to try and find the solution, but it’s also a manifestation of everything that’s going on in
his head.
BB: And the wormholes were what he focused on when Aeryn went away. Because he couldn’t focus on
Aeryn, he had to look for the obsession to get him through, and figuring out wormholes became the
obsession to get him through the rough times. It’s the only other alternative. He either stays, and stays
with Aeryn, or goes back to earth, and to do that he needs the wormholes.
On screen: Paying up at the bridal shop in John’s vision.
BB: That’s a funny line. You’re reading on “charge it.” (laughs).
CB: Ch-charge it.
BB: Ch-ch.
CB: Cha-cha.
BB: It was good! I think I was probably having more fun with the series at this point than at any other
time in the course of shooting it. There was a real flow and a rhythm to how we were doing things with
the stories we were telling. I was getting an opportunity to do stuff with Claud that I hadn’t had an
opportunity to do in the course of the series and just…
CB: Like what, the sort of sophisticated earthbound stuff?
BB: More sophisticated earthbound stuff, and some of the other scenes that we played where there’s very
little dialogue but a lot of tension.
CB: Yeah.
BB: In addition to actually being able to play a very happy, semi-domesticated couple earlier in the year,
there was a lot of interesting stuff to play, in addition to playing a guy who was brooding. But you know
there was, everything felt in flow and everything felt like it was going to the right place. And this episode
which on paper, when I first read it, I thought, how does this work? Um, the process of what David had
written and what Andrew Prowse saw in it, and then the things that we worked out while as we did it
actually makes it a really interesting piece of film.
CB: It was very collaborative. I’m very proud of this episode. There’s one thing in particular at the end
which none of us could really work out what we wanted to do with it , so we just sort of threw ourselves
into it and worked it out as we went along.
BB: Yeah, you see David and I had been yelling at each other for almost two weeks about the content of
that scene.
CB: Yeah.
BB: And David went back and rewrote it and rewrote it, trying to find a way to make ourselves
collectively happy with it. As we get to the scene, it’s the big scene at the end….
CB: Which I refer to as the coin toss scene.

BB: It is the coin toss scene, and the coin toss was your idea. But it was all a matter of figuring it out….
CB: We all kind of collaborated.
On screen: Opening credits.
BB: I mean, it’s an interesting structural piece that ostensibly, the plot is that we are going to bury Talyn.
The plot ends at the end of Act II and there are another two acts to go.
CB: Yeah.
BB: So that Acts III and IV are essentially eaten up dealing with Crichton’s neuroses and his rela tionship
with Aeryn. Which is a really interesting structural place, that that’s the B story. Originally the fantasies
are the B story part of the plot. The A story plot is the practical plot of burying Talyn, and that really
becomes the B story and dispensed with at the end of Act II. Unusual structure, but it was necessary given
where the series had gone to.
CB: And it functions as a device to get us into Crichton going into these fears, exploring the depth of his
fear about what will happen. It’s sort of a springboard for it.
BB: You know, what is also interesting as we’ve done commentaries is how closely linked the
commentaries are in the episodes that we seem to like from the inside. And, “Dog With Two Bones”:
There it is. It’s also one of our darkest episodes in regards to the amount of light available that we use.
Everything is under-lit. There are shafts of light coming in where it sparks….
CB: We would joke about this as well. We always had to play, you know, the high stakes of the scene.
And we would joke and say it was because at any moment we could die. And looking back at some of
these episodes, a lot of people die. I mean, we’ve had Crais make the ultimate sacrifice with him and
Talyn, and Aeryn had been given the honor of naming the baby ship and developed a relationship of sorts
with the ship as had Crais, and all of the characters that had come and gone and the consequences of all
our actions. And we’ve come to do this simple thing, supposedly a simple thing of burying Talyn and sort
of laying that chapter to rest and….
On screen: The wedding reception in John’s vision, inter-cut with Moya scenes. Aeryn tosses the bouquet.
BB: Really precise lighting there if you look at it when Crichton is on and the contrast of the dark to the
light of what is going on in his head which is really kinda twisted. You know, Tammy took a good header
to catch that….
CB (chuckling): She certainly did.
BB: But if you look at these dark lightings and you see the little pens of light in the eyes that light up the
interior light, it’s not easy to achieve that. It takes a little bit of work. Rusty, Russell Bacon our DOT
definitely put the work in to make the look of this piece right.
CB: It was so weird shooting earthbound episodes like this. At the wedding episode I sent a Polaroid to
my mom and said, here is a picture of me in a wedding dress, cuz you’ll never get to see it any other time.
(laughs).
BB (chuckling): At least not a white wedding dress.

CB: Yeah.
BB (referring to the commentary): Look at your reaction. You’re still funny. Right in the middle of the
drama here and you’re still workin’ the laughs.
CB: Was I being funny?
BB: That’s funny. You were “oh boy,” kinda the “oh, what is he on about?” look. But Crichton’s so
distracted throughout this entire piece. He doesn’t really participate in the A story, he just kinda walks
along dreamily thinking about these things. You know, but that’s what it’s about….
CB: He’s more cheery in a way at the beginning of these earth visions. It’s still…. D’Argo’s got two
women….
BB: Yeah, his visions will get progressively darker and more troubled. That’s it, there’s our A plot.
They’re not going to let Talyn…. There’s a rogue Leviathan out there that….
CB: They’re not happy about.
BB: They’re unhappy about something, blah blah blah, a lot of expensive CGI, blah blah blah, now when
am I up? (laughs). They don’t spend the CG on us, Claud. It’s all about…. No, that’s not true.
On screen: Jool and Aeryn talking.
CB: This is a peculiar scene. They needed a scene with Jool and Aeryn, and Jool and Aeryn didn’t have a
relationship, really.
(general laughter at the scene)
CB: “I don’t know you, but….”
BB: “I’ve never played a scene with you but….” Sort of an odd scene I guess. Did you have much to do
with Tammy or Jool?
CB: No. She drove Aeryn absolutely crazy.
BB: That was the season of…. Yeah, and she screams and melts metal.
CB: Yeah.
BB (sarcastically): I can’t understand why any audience member wouldn’t understand entirely what’s
going on. “I just dropped in. They do weird stuff on that show.” Could you imagine if this was the first
episode you saw? You can take a good dozen episodes of Farscape and say I love this episode. And it
would be the first episode someone would see. If I recommended episodes to people they would come
away thinking I was deranged. Because I would recommend this episode, and most people coming in
would have no sense…. This is a season ender, therefore it’s a conclusion. It’s the final act of the season.
On screen: First scene of Chiana and John talking about Chiana’s “shopping” trip, in John’s vision.
CB: I love this sequence.

BB: Oh, it gets better later.
CB: Oh, so it’s in the later scene. Great. Gigi does a great job. When you do a very dark show it affects
everything. So sometimes we’ll see the dailies of Chiana’s makeup, and it has to be modified slightly.
Because the makeup is tonal, we have to make a few adjustments in the chair.
On screen: On Moya, Chiana and John having a quiet moment.
BB (mimicking dialogue) “It’s cool.”
CB (chuckling): What is going on with you two?
BB: You know, Crichton is so off on another planet right now, which he literally is, but often is.
Sometimes when you tune into John you gotta wonder, what’s up with this guy? You know. That’s sort of
what this ep is about.
On screen: Noranti and John.
BB (mimicking dialogue): “Listen Wrinkles.” Look, no one knows her name. And she was never named
in the script. She had a name in the script, but no one ever says “my name is Noranti.” No one ever said
“this is Noranti.” So we made a point while we were going through the episode of going: “Who is that
woman? Does anyone know her name?”
CB: “Where does she come from?” Instead of going through the lengthy process of really establishing her
as a member of the crew….
BB: We really just kinda go, “who is she?” and “what is she doing here?”
CB: And “why is she still here?”
BB: And she’s an integral part of the story. We accept her as part of the story but only by going “who is
that woman?” We never do that. That’s really cool.
CB: I don’t reckon Noranti really likes Aeryn, at all.
BB: Um, I think she’s just jealous of John and Aeryn’s relationship. She wants to have the relationship
with Aeryn.
On screen: Aeryn being fed wedding cake, in John’s vision.
CB: A rare occasion when you see me smiling on the show.
BB: It’s beautiful. That’s another reason to love this.
On screen: First scene of wedding massacre, in John’s vision.
CB: Here we go. This is the Farscape twist on the wedding. I’m going crazy….
BB: Great overhead shot, 10 mil lens.
CB: That’s an excellent shot.

BB: It’s a beautiful overhead shot. You know, the way this all cuts together…. Andrew Prowse, who is
the director of this episode, and who is the absolute, work horse, backbone, guy that makes Farscape
happen….
CB: An unsung hero.
BB: The most unsung hero in Farscape history directed this episode. Mr. Andrew Prowse. Remember
that name, kids. Andrew is an editor.
CB: Okay, it’s Prowsie.
BB: Prowsie is an editor. Started as an editor and became a director. And, when you watch his episodes,
there’s a brilliant quality to his editing, and he’s editing as he shoots. Part of that process is going,
“Alright, I’m not sure entirely what I’m gonna need, so I’m gonna make sure I get this, this, this, and
this.” As an editor he knows there are certain things he wants, and then makes sure he covers his butt.
On screen: John eavesdropping on Aeryn and Jack, in his vision.
BB (chuckling): Look at Crichton completely stonewalled, stone-faced. Sunglasses. Aeryn in sunglasses.
CB: They were mine. My Gucci’s.
BB: Another thing that we did was, while we were shooting, was try to…. “Wake up, I’m awake….” To
try to weave those places, weave those scenes together. And some of them shifted around a bit but a lot of
times they were where we weaved them.
CB: Andrew and I talked about this the other day, actually, when I was in Sydney, about, I think, we are a
generation that prefers non-linear storytelling. We’re an educated audience now, and we’re TV and film
literate, and we like it to be mixed up a bit. And Pulp Fiction was an example of that, and whenever we
do stories with Andrew he’s always trying to find ways to tell it in a non-linear fashion, and take an old
tale and twist it.
On screen: Chiana’s monologue to the ship.
BB: Yeah, I think you’re right. You know, MTV changed the way we view things, and viewers can
process a lot more story visually than they were traditionally expected or allowed to. So, even if you’re
not getting this linear, point to point to point story, which in an episode like this is sometimes difficult to
pick up, you’re still getting the story, and you’re getting these moments which resonate emotionally and
intellectually. There are a few times in this scene whe re we see jump cut technique. You know, Andrew is
shooting a scene and basically running a camera on the same scene from the same time position several
times and then inter-cutting between the sizes, and repeating certain sections for dramatic effect. Very
non-naturalistic editing.
CB: Sometimes it’s introduced because it’s a scene…. You know, it’s the last episode of the season, and
we’ve got a lot of goodbyes, a lot of discussions, a lot of character-based scenes. And when Gigi was
doing a monologue to the ship, you know you have to find new, creative ways of doing that. Lani and I
spent a lot of time talking to thin air, to Talyn. You’d have to talk to the DRDs to talk to Moya.
BB: Yea, but jump cutting is something that Soderbergh used to great effect in….

CB: Traffic.
On screen: Return to scene of John and Chiana and her shoplifting, in John’s vision.
BB: Traffic. Oh, here’s the rest of that scene you were looking for.
CB: I love it.
BB: Gigi’s great in this. She’s very funny.
CB: I love that it turns out that it’s been stolen.
BB: Everything’s been stolen.
CB: They’ve all been stolen.
BB: The tags are on them. She’s stolen everything in this scene.
CB: Nice detail. Totally earth inappropriate.
BB: She’s gonna be inappropriate all the way through.
On screen: Chiana spreads her legs, and then canoodles with Jack, in John’s vision.
CB: Look. Whoop!
(laughter at Chiana spreading her legs)
BB (response to something unintelligible): That was actually a reflection off of something on the set. Pfft.
Pfft. She comes in and….
CB: And Dad, he’s got a stolen hat. It’s so twisted. Then they kiss.
(laughter at Chiana and Jack canoodling)
CB: Oh my gosh. David writes a lot of episodes like this where the language from one scene can cross
over, and the response can come in the following scene in a completely different context. A way of
getting exposition across….
BB: Yeah, I mean there is an element where it’s massaged on the floor as well. But you know, the scenes
are opened up and lend themselves to that kind of thing, particularly when you’re jumping in and out.
Really, um, big CG in this episode. You get down to the end of the year and they must have been raiding
the cookie jar to find money for the CG on this.
CB: Well, I was going to say it’s primarily ship-bound, but we do have the earth sequences which would
have been expensive as soon as we go out on location….
BB: Oh yeah. This would be an expensive episode to shoot, because you’ve got all of the earth clothes,
you’ve got wardrobe, you’ve got locations, you’ve got moving the unit around, and then you’ve got this
big CG element and a there’s few explosions in here….

CB: Speaking of clothes, it was fun. It’s amazing to work on a show with a budget like this when they
say, “what do you think you should wear?” And I said I think it would be quite nice if Aeryn goes down
to Earth if she’s still wearing leather. And we went to this fabulous shop on Oxford Street and got you
and me a leather jacket. It’s in my closet today.
BB: What we have here is part of the continuation of the final episodes of the latter half of this season.
This season as much as any other had a direct continuation between the splitting of the Crichtons and
things being linked together. The makeup. My makeup artist, Margaret Aston this year, the stencil work
she did on my arm which we had to take off, remove, put on depending on, you know, the writing on the
arm. But in addition to that, we also tapered back, Crichton has a split lip and a bruise under his eye
which he’s carried over from the last episode, giving a sense of time continuity. And doing that on a
schedule like we’re on, where some days we’re shooting two and three episodes at a time. A very difficult
task. Margaret was fantastic at this, and the most pro-active makeup artist that I’ve had the pleasure to
work with. She was fantastic.
CB: She was terrific.
BB: Yeah. On Farscape, my makeup was usually the most boring job around. You know, you come on to
the show and you want to work with prosthetics, you want to, you know, play with something instead of
looking after the human guy all day long. And you know, Margaret had just come off Lord of the Rings,
she was looking after hobbits, and she got stuck with me. But, I tell you what. She was very creative.
CB: Very interesting for actors as well. Your experience on the show, especially long term, serial
television, is informed by the people you’re working with on the set. But often, so much by the makeup
artists and your relationship with them. You spend so much time with them. They’re the first face you see
in the morning besides the driver. And they’re the ones who sort of start to interpret and understand your
needs and know exactly what you need. And occasionally you’ll feel someone’s hands on the back of you
and someone’s giving you a little massage, and that’ll be your makeup artist giving you a bit of a spoil….
BB: That was usually the grips.
CB: (laughs).
BB: Ever had that, where you had the grips doing your checks? I guess they wouldn’t do that to you.
On screen: Kids talking to D’Argo in John’s vision.
BB (mimicking dialogue/Aussie accent): “Hey, Mr. D’Argo. We must be in Australia Mr. D’Argo.”
CB (mimicking): “How come we’re in Australia again?”
BB (mimicking at first): “I don’t know, but in Crichton’s fantasies he’s in Sydney, mate.” Those kids are
so Aussie (laughs). Kid, just shut up.
CB: And what have they done? Have they bled it out? It’s very, there’s a lot of light in the Earth stuff.
BB: I think they did it in post. I don’t think we overexposed while we were shooting it. I think when they
went in post, they graded it light. I think Rusty graded it light. I doubt we overexposed it as we were
shooting it. That’s an Andrew Prowse question. We really should have a hot line to Andrew Prowse,
because most questions we have he’d be capable of answering.

CB: Oh, all of them I’m sure.
BB: Well, you know there’s very few people who know the series inside and out and backwards. Andrew
Prowse, Deb Peart, David Kemper, it’s a short list, Dave Elsey. Everybody has their area, but Andrew
was in all areas. He’s unusual in that regard. He was on the floor, and in editing, and supervising CG, and
dealing with pesky actors. So we have this plan going on all the time we’ve been rattling on about other
things and how we shoot stuff, there’s a plan coming to fruition. We’re just getting to the end of Act II.
CB: We need something for Jool to be doing so she’s helping Chiana commiserate.
BB: Chiana got, Chiana had Rygel in season 2, and Jool in season 3, and in season 4 I guess they gave her
someone else.
CB: Yeah, and Aeryn was busy so she’s not commiserating over the ship that she had a very strong bond
with.
BB: But you always wanted to hang out with Chiana. Why was that?
CB: Well, I got tired of the fact that the women were always really bitchy with each other on the ship.
They were always fighting.
BB: But everybody was always fighting.
CB: Yeah, but it would have been nice for two women to appreciate each other’s differences and still sort
of make a point of getting on.
BB: Well, you know, I would agree with you, but it’s kind of like when David came to me once with a
scene and said, “I decided it was going to be a mature relationship.” I said: “We don’t have mature
relationships. Mature relationships are boring!”
BB: No, but sometimes it’s interesting, like in the episode where we go down to Earth, the Crichtons’
Christmas one, and Aeryn is talking to Crichton’s ex-girlfriend. And you know, instead of having a
catfight, they talk very maturely and the subtext is very rich, and it’s just two women talking about
something they can’t really have any control over.
On screen: D’Argo and John in Lo’La.
BB: That was impressive. D’Argo’s ship has an impressive gun.
CB: Yeah.
BB: Wow.
CB: Shooting…these things on a little Gimbel set. That growler was a little more substantial. It could fit
half the cast.
BB: Lo’La.
CB: Lo’La.

BB: Yeah, cuz you just called it a growler. Which of course was the on-set name for it. I think it was the
writing room name for it is the prowler and the growler. But in the American context a growler is….
CB: Oh, I know what that means. I couldn’t believe that it was ever referred to as that. But it was in the
script. It was in the script.
BB: No, but we never called it a growler. The audience is finally learning that D’Argo’s ship is called a
growler. Just so you know…. I always wanted to call it the guppy. Kinda looked like a guppy to me.
Didn’t look like a growler.
CB: That’s rude. Stop saying it.
On screen: Rygel saying he’s happy he can now go home.
BB (laughing): Look at this, Rygel is ecstatic.
CB: Aeryn’s going mad.
BB: But Crichton is not happy.
CB: Aeryn’s got something going on that she hasn’t been telling anyone.
BB: God knows what that is. Did she ever tell us?
CB: No, uh, what happens after the coin toss? They find out. He finds out.
BB: Oh yes, that’s right, she does have something going on.
CB: Oh, yes.
BB: The whole audience finds out. I lost my way in the story. I was relieved to hear that Crichton was a
hero at the end of blowing up the ship. That he actually went back and saved somebody. Look, they made
him a hero again. He just blew up the ship. I thought he was a terrorist. No, he’s a nice guy. Not that he’s
a nice guy, but….
CB: At least you learned something from Zhaan’s visitation in “John Quixote.” Which comes later.
(laughs).
BB: Which comes later. (laughs).
CB: Right, but because it’s science fiction….
BB: Here’s the thing. There was a time warp.
CB (in Yank accent): Through the space-time continuum in a room with a spinning fan.
BB: Right. This was season 3.
CB (in princess voice): So confusthing.

BB: Yeah, well, there you go. John’s going to sit down and talk about his dreams and hopes. Once a year,
whether we want to or not, Crichton’s got to sit down and talk about his dreams and hopes.
CB: Well it’s like the opening title sequences. You know, “my name is John Crichton.” It changed
slightly every year, didn’t it, to adapt?
BB: I think it changed twice after the first season. It didn’t change in the second season, then we had new
opening titles in the third season, then it changed again the fourth season. I don’t know what’s planned for
the miniseries.
CB: Oh, that’s interesting.
BB: It may be incorporating that scene…. “Once upon a time.”
CB (in Yank announcer voice): “In a land before time.”
BB (in announcer voice): “There was a boy named John.”
CB (in Yank announcer voice): “In a year before land.”
BB (in announcer voice): “In a place far, far away.”
CB: There you go. The beginning of the end.
On screen: Wedding scene in John’s vision, intercut with John and Noranti dancing on Moya.
BB: Yeah. Well, you know, I think we were talkin’ about this. David said: “you know the wedding
scene’s a minute.” (laughs). “It’s only going to be a minute.
CB: Two days.
BB: Seven seconds.” There’s this line about seven seconds. David Kemper has great ideas, and when he
pitches an idea that goes too big he goes, “no, it was supposed to be like seven seconds long.” So the
seven second mark on a David Kemper idea…. I think the wedding was supposed to take seven seconds.
“Five steps, like seven seconds.” And actually it’s this beautiful, lyrical sort of fantasy. But this is what he
wanted to do. He wanted to give the audience their fantasy. He’s gonna give them their fantasy, and we’re
gonna say, you can never have this fantasy.
CB: Yeah.
BB: It’s very bittersweet. You’re sayin’ it to Crichton, and by virtue of that saying it to the audience. Ya
know, you may be holding out fantasies of this white wedding, which apparently Crichton is….
CB: Like the Farscape Christmas, you know. “Merry frelling Christmas.”
BB: Exactly. It’s a way of saying, you know this is not your daddy’s sci fi. It ain’t all going to be happy,
and it’s never gonna be what you think it is. But nonetheless, the audience still gets to enjoy the wedding
for about two minutes, or maybe more. There’s a cute couple….
CB (shyly): Yeah, we look quite sweet together.

BB (laughing): Put that on the cover of Sci Fi Magazine. (in dorky voice) “They look quite sweet
together.”
CB: This was a fun day for me. They had two wedding dresses for me made, or they made them so that if
one got blood on it, as you’ll see in a minute, you know, we still had one spare. And they weren’t gonna
squib me and I said, “no, no, no, put the squib on me.” Cuz I did all the others, I think, in CGI, and they
actually put a practical squib on my dress. I loved that.
BB: How incongruous. You know, Pilot, Rygel, D’Argo,… God knows what he’s doing. All these aliens
at this earthbound wedding.
CB: Different side of Aeryn.
On screen: Massacre begins in John’s vision.
BB: And, CG enhanced on the shot. That’s the blood, they put the blood spot on. They did that for a lot of
these.
CB: At this point I think David Kemper was sitting underneath the table with me.
BB: Not when we were firing shots off. During the conga scene.
CB: Right.
BB: He was there during the conga, when D’Argo was leading the conga. Which isn’t in the cut, but I
think it’s in the DVD extras somewhere.
CB: I love this bit. Gigi going up and over the table.
BB: All of it. I wonder what Andrew’s paradigm was for this sequence. I’m just trying to think where I’ve
seen something like this. There’s a lyrical, beautiful quality….
CB: Platoon.
BB: Yeah, maybe it’s Platoon, but it’s obviously a war movie of some sort. But, the contrast of these
beautiful images, the cake, the white dress and the flowers, and the cold-blooded slaughter which is going
on around is beautiful.
CB: And great drama to play that at a wedding which is supposed to be sacrosanct to have such
destruction and chaos and disaster. And these two people….This sequence in particular, us scrambling to
get to tables, and for the wedding couple, the bride and groom to hide, as it reaches towards its inevitable
and inexorable doom.
BB: Do you think when they hired the hall out that we had this in, that they realized that this was gonna
happen?
CB: Not a chance.
BB: This is really gorgeous, though.

CB: I don’t think people are ever honest about what they’re gonna do with the location. Here we go.
Squib.
On screen: Aeryn’s death , in John’s vision.
BB: And you’re trying to reach for it, and I’m holding your hand back so you can’t reach it. There you
got it…. “Noooo!” I was screaming while that was going on.
CB: And we decided to put in the line that was an echo of something Crichton had said.
BB: Yeah, and that was your addition. You said, I wanna say this, because it’s in Crichton’s head. And
that’s an actor thinking outside of the box of their performance, thinking about the story, and how does
this resonate with the story.
CB (repeating dialogue): “Don’t worry. I’ve never felt better.” Yeah.
BB: Yeah, Claud put that line in, and it’s about advancing the story, not about what typically happens,
which is an actor trying to advance their character, regardless of the story. But it’s, that’s the normal
approach to things, but that line is not a line which is like, oh this would be really great for my character.
CB: It’s a tough one to sell, but you did it better than I did.
(laughter)
BB: But it’s, you know, I like the line.
CB: Wonderful, to have that carnage, and Scorpius coming in to look over everything he’s done,
everything he’s created. Wayne Pygram made an interesting comment about the fact that his character’s
always the one driving the scene and he walks in and drives it home. And once he joins the ship later on
in season 4, it was an interesting task for him to adapt to that. Here he is in his element, having a look at
everything he’s done.
BB: And you come back from the act. And that’s just the end of Act III. We’ve got a whole other very
long act to go. Whatever happened to that A story about burying Talyn? You know, cuz that’s what it
was. It’s just structurally fascinating as they cut it, you know. Oh, what do I really know?
CB: Well it holds, because I think a lot of people like to see character stuff.
BB: Yeah, but common wisdom is you don’t spend this much time, particularly at season end, doing
character stuff. This is the season ender where you’re going to leave them with the big cliffhanger, you’ve
got the big story and grand arc stuff. And what you realize by doing this is the grand arc is the character
stuff. At this point it’s focused on Crichton and Aeryn, because you have to resolve that, but at other
times it’s focused on other people. And when Farscape works, it’s the characters driving the story
forward, and even the vast destruction of worlds really only relates to the story inasmuch as it puts
pressure on our people and tells something about ourselves, thereby telling a story about human nature.
CB: That’s what I always enjoy about the last episodes of the season. It’s an opportunity to take a
moment, take a beat with each character…. Subvert the clichés.
On screen: Crichton with Noranti, making the dog with two bones analogy.

BB: Crichton doesn’t want people to see him cry. Just turn away. Don’t let them know you’re crying. The
tendency as an actor is to go, “hey look I can cry.” But I like how Crichton, you know, I’m trying not to
cry. And when you realize you’re gonna cry, you got to turn away so that someone doesn’t see it.
CB (excited): Here we go. The coin toss scene, several weeks in the making. For Andrew Prowse, David
Kemper, you and me trying to work out what we wanted to do with this.
BB: Yeah, and then even when we started it, we started shooting it, in the middle of the day, the final day
of shooting, two to three hours in.
CB: A lot of people coming down to watch it because it was like theatre….
BB: It’s like the last episode, last scene of the season, like the last thing we shot. We all turned to each
other, me, Claud, and Andrew, and said it’s not working. We have to re-block it. We re-blocked and reshot
the scene.
CB: Which has never happened.
BB: No, I think the crew was ready to hang us by the yardarm.
CB: Let’s watch it.
On screen: John challenges Aeryn to look him in the eye and say goodbye. “My name is John.”
BB: That was something I wanted.
On screen: “Do you love John Crichton?”
CB: Esoteric question.
BB: Certainly, if you haven’t seen the series. One of my favorite scenes. Oh, this kiss is so painful.
CB: Mmm.
BB: Especially your cold-blooded response.
CB: I know.
BB: One of the most painful and yet….
CB: Look at the resisting.
BB: But she can’t resist. It’s sensual and painful.
CB: She’s stuck in the moment for a second.
On screen: The kiss. “What does that taste like?” “Yesterday.”
CB and BB: Ohhhhhh.

BB: That’s cold. Look, I wanted to put this scene on my reel. I really enjoy this scene, I wanted to put it
on my reel. And every time I watched it I realized nobody is going to understand what the hell it is I’m
talking about. I mean, they can see that, you know, obviously you’re brilliant. We’ll hire Claudia Black
off Ben Browder’s reel. But you know it’s hard…. It would draw me back. If I was flipping channels I
would be drawn back and want to see what it was about, but I don’t think I’d understand what it was
about.
CB: David Kemper was trying to find a way, that if he was in love with a girl, how could he possibly let
her go, what device would have to be used to get him to accept that she needs to leave. And I said look,
we’ve always established the concept of fate between the two of them. John has always talked about fate
with Aeryn and she never believed in it. Now she finally says to him, alright, if we are really meant to be
together, let’s put it in the hands of fate. This issue is too big for her to deal with. She needs to leave. She
needs to sort it out. And I said why don’t we sort of do it on a coin toss. Because I think Crichton
established something beforehand, and this is an echo of it.
BB: Well, you know, and the first tack on it was okay, we’ve matured, we can now say goodbye, you can
go your way and I can go my way. And I just absolutely went schizoid, you know, at that idea. I said no
you can’t do that, he’s got to come in, he’s got to come in and say, “I’m going with you.” I’m not going to
let her go. “Now that you’re here, I’m not going to let you go.” But, then came the problem of how do we
convince Crichton to let her go. And, you know, your solution is actually an elegant solution.
CB: Well, I went to Ben and said I’ve got an idea. I’ll tell it to you, and you can tell it to Prowsie and
Prowsie can tell it to David.
BB: Well, you know, the negotiation of how these scenes evolve. You know, very difficult for a scene
like this to evolve in the dark solitude of a writer’s office. They can and they often do. But for those of us
with all of our stakes in the ground about what we wanted for the show, for these characters, it was
necessary for us to play the scene to have some sort of agreement about what it was we were doing.
CB: And David offered it to us. He was saying, “I just don’t know how to do it. Why would I let a woman
go that I love? I’m trying to work that out in my head.” And I said well, this isn’t about what happens on
Earth, this is about a woman who’s pregnant to the man who was cloned that she loved who died…. And
so it doesn’t really apply.
BB: (laughs).
CB: And I’ve always tried to think about Crichton and Aeryn’s relationship in terms of inexorability and
the big, sort of, you know, romantic arc of fate. Let the fates decide. Andrew showed me this scene cut
together before the whole ep was finished and we sat there quietly watching this scene very proudly with
tears in our eyes. It was a great moment to see this. My roommate saw it at one stage and said wow, this is
a really good scene, and she had no idea about the characters and what they’d been through. So we all did
very good work on it.
On screen: The coin toss.
BB: Slow down to 40 frames.
CB: Last shot. Fantastic. Aeryn’s watching the coin and Crichton’s watching Aeryn. Just great.
BB: You like that choice?

CB: I love it. Ready? Aeryn’s watching to see what’s going to happen to her.
BB: That’s not an easy shot to get, the coin going up in the air, cuz you know….
CB: Oh look. He ain’t looking at the coin.
BB: I wasn’t takin’ my eyes…. I didn’t care where the coin came down. I was keepin’ my eyes on the
money.
CB: That was fan…tastic. And I wanted the episode to finish there. I wanted it to finish with the coin in
the air.
BB: Yeah, but we still had a few bits left to do. We still have to get to our season cliffhanger.
CB: But what a cliffhanger! That’s not a bad cliffhanger.
BB: It would have been an interesting cliffhanger. But, you know….
CB: But this is a nice idea, too. Side by side in the….
BB: You see where we’re going. I like this. You know, Kemper likes giving people goodbyes. And there
had been more goodbyes scattered through the script and they ended up being here. In a way it’s more
beautiful and lyrical to have Crichton thinking about it. The combination of Andrew Prowse and David
Kemper is a very good combination.
CB: Formidable team.
On screen: More happy wedding bits from John’s vision.
BB: And these beautiful shots. Andrew knowing that he was gonna need these things and the script
developed as it went along. While we were shooting it was still developing. And sometimes they work
out. For my money, I like how this one works out. The sum of it is much greater than the parts. And you
know, it’s one of those things which is lyrical. And Claud came in and read off lines for me on the day
that I had to shoot this, as opposed to having Bubba yelling them. Bubba being our first AD.
CB: Yeah, they dragged me out of ADR and I came in to do this. There’s my signature one tear down the
right eye.
BB: The right eye tear. Did you ever do the left ear? The left ear. She cries from her ears. The left eye?
CB: Depended on where the camera was. There we go.
BB: Sometimes though, it’s difficult to play these things that occur inside your head. Don’t know if
you’ve ever had this problem. Harvey. So now Harvey shows up. Oh, man, okay, I finally get what people
were saying when they said the show was complex.
CB: How did that guy suddenly get in the space ship? What is he doing there?
BB: What’s he doing there and why.… You know, can you imagine? I’m just imagining people saying
that.

CB: Is this guy a manifestation of the green lady’s crazy dust drugs? One of the best devices, I think, ever
on the show, was the….
BB: Harvey.
CB: Harvey.
BB: I love Harvey.
CB: Just opened the show up in such a great way with the pop culture references.
BB: And Harvey is a cool character and Wayne has a great time with him. Oh wait, here’s where the
secret comes out.
CB: That’s right.
On screen: John hears what Noranti whispered in his ear.
CB: I read that scene. I didn’t know what it meant.
BB: Really interesting…. What’s that scene talking about? With child? That means she’s pregnant.
CB (sarcastically): Oh, really?
BB: Not that she’s hangin’ out with a child. She’s actually pregnant. The editing on this, the editing is
fantastic. I must have been shocking on the day because the editing is just that good, it’s actually making
it work. Mr. Prowse….
CB: You notice when you’re doing ADR that you’re never say a full line on screen. They’re always
cutting to you in the middle of a line and away from you before it’s a finished. Which makes it an
interesting exercise doing the ADR. Normally an actor can look at their own eyes on screen and that will
help them get the rhythm of what they’re doing.
BB: You know, that was the mother of all coincidences. I’m coming back and….
CB: A wormhole!
BB: And a wormhole appears! And the wormhole….
CB: Sucks up….
BB: Good sound design there too. Check it out. Yeah, somebody down there in Australia knew what they
were doing. (mimicking dialogue) “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
CB: And this is great, this shot here.
BB: Pull back and he’s alone out in space. Which is where David wanted to get to.
CB: That’s right. He had that image of us, and the prowler….
BB: The long…. Isolated, resetting the boards so that they move into season 4.

On screen: Closing credits.
CB: Where all the characters are reintroduced one by one.
BB: If there was going to be a season 4.
CB: Did we know at this stage?
BB: Is there a season 4?
CB: When we were shooting that, did we know….
BB: You were there when we shot it.
CB (in mock anger): Stop being difficult!
BB (in Aussie accent): Ah no? What?
CB: Alright, be difficult.
BB (in Aussie accent): Okay, fine.
CB: When we were shooting the last week of season 3, at that stage did we know we were coming back at
all?
BB: No we did not. We were not sure. We never knew if we were coming back.
CB: Seed of our pain.
BB: And the one time we thought we were coming back, we didn’t come back.
CB: But then we did, we did!
BB: And then we did! So are we done? Are we doing more Farscape?
CB (singing, in childlike voice, to the tune of “The Song That Never Ends”): This is the show that never
ends. It just goes on and on my friends.
BB: I want a big movie, Claud. Come on. Let’s do a big expensive movie.
CB (still singing): Some people started filming it not knowing what it was. And they'll continue filming it
forever just because. This is the show that never ends. Never ends!
BB: (laughs).
CB: Thanks for tuning in guys. That was a somber one. Thank you Hallmark. Thank you Jim Henson
Company.