Transcript of DVD Commentary for Farscape Episode 4-22, “Bad ...

Transcript of DVD Commentary for Farscape Episode 4-22, “Bad Timing,” with Ben Browder, David
Kemper, and Claudia Black. From the Starburst Edition, ADV Films, Volume 4.3, Region 1.
Transcribed by TVGuru
On screen: “Previously on Farscape.”
DK: Hello and welcome to the last filmed episode of Farscape. I’m David Kemper, the executive producer
who happened to write this episode just by luck.
BB: Yeah, the other episodes are being played out on a street corner by a guy with an accordion and monkey.
(general laughter)
DK: That’s the 5th, that’s the mythical unseen season of Farscape. Well that’s Ben Browder sitting directly
to my left.
BB: But what you have here is everything of the first four seasons. That’s four seasons in what, 30 seconds?
DK: Uh, one half second each for all, what, 87 episodes.
BB: Yeah. This cold open….
DK: Well wait, hold it, what about this woman here on our left? This beautiful woman….
BB: No, no. We’re saving the best for last. She gets to talk in the 4 th act. Claudia Black is here and David
Kemper to my right. I’m Ben Browder and I’ve got to talk about this cold open. The cold open is the first
opening before the credits of a show. And this is my absolute favorite cold open. It’s put together by Andrew
Prowse, written by David Kemper, and executed in probably a consummate Farscape fashion, I think.
DK: By Nick Holmes and Deb Peart.
BB: Yeah. But, this cold open actually jumps backwards, forwards, and sideways in time, while condensing
what was originally probably 15 to 20 pages of exposition into an appropriate and interesting, quick set of
scenes.
DK: What we… Rockne, Rockne S. O’Bannon, creator of the series, and I talked about what was Farscape
gonna be? And Farscape was gonna be Star Trek.... I worked on Star Trek: Next Generation and Voyager.
And I always liked the time travel. It’s been my favorite science fiction theme. And we felt that Brannon
Braga and the team over, and Michael Piller owned time travel. And we decided….
BB: Careful what you say, because you know, you may be lookin’ for a job.
(general laughter)
DK: I am looking for a job. That’s why I’m bringing their names up. Brandon, Brannon, I can’t even say his
name. So what we decided was Farscape was a show about the mind and about emotions. And we wanted
the show to appeal to women even more than men, which is why we pinned so much on Aeryn Sun and.…
CB: And why you cast Ben Browder. It was a very, very good decision.
DK: Well, we felt that he would be an icon for the female community, a bit.
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CB: Pretty much everyone.
DK: Yeah. And so what happened was, as we went on, there was no way we could get around through time.
And Andrew Prowse in particular loved inter-cutting things and loved films like Memento and kept
challenging me in particular to write things that are….
DK & CB (in unison): Non-linear.
CB: That’s right. Andrew and I were talking about this the other day. I think we are the generation that
doesn’t like linear storytelling. Ben and I were talking about this in another commentary. You know, after
Pulp Fiction it’s made it more palatable for a broader audience to accept that stories could be told in different
ways.
DK: Well this one…. If you’ve never seen Farscape and you tune into this episode up front, you’re
confused. I think if you’re a Farscape fan and you watch this episode you might be confused.
CB: If you’re a member of the cast after four years you were confused when you picked up the script. But
David would write these segues in and out of scenes where the last word or the last sentence spoken could
possibly be the same, first sentence of the next scene with two completely different characters. Um, you
know, a method of expediting, getting all that exposition out and still being able to create something that was
interesting. Most people would watch episodes with me and go, what’s going on? And I’d say, actually the
questions you’re asking are answered within the episode and at this point you’re not supposed to know
what’s happening.
DK: Well here, here are the two teams of lovers. The guys talking about the girls and the girls talking about
the guys. And, it was just…. Our show got to be so familiar within ourselves. No, what we were proud of
was none of these science fiction or space shows had this kind of emotion between a man or a woman or best
friends. They would talk about the Geiger counter and the metal object, metallurgic content of the planet
they were going to land on, but not about their emotions. And this whole episode is really just about
emotions.
BB: Because even when we’re talking about interstellar war we’re really talking about each other.
CB: It’s sort of a reality show like Big Brother. You got a bunch of people who have been thrown into space
together, and you know, any given time you can catch either blokes talking about girls or girls talking about
blokes.
BB: We all waited to be voted off the show.
CB: And there was at one point a shower scene with two girls. There was Zhaan and Aeryn very early on in
the first season.
DK: The um…. Someone asked me a long time ago. It might have been, Claudia and I did Comic Con like
four years ago. But they asked, “why did you put sex into Farscape?” And I remember my answer kinda
came out before I could think and I said well, can you imagine being on a ship for four years—trapped,
young, beautiful, hormonal….
CB: And the chicks are always so hot in space. Let’s face it.
DK: You bet.
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BB: I always wondered why people would take sex out of a story. Why not take sex out of life?
DK: Well, you’re southern….
CB: There was a great quote, in an interview… They had an interview with Sharon Stone in a magazine I
read recently and they said, finally my last question, why does sex sell? And she said, “because it’s so rarely
given for free.”
DK: Oooh, that’s good.
CB: And on that point here we have Sikozu, quite obviously paired with Scorpius.
DK: Well this was, this episode, in putting it together, we had Crichton and Aeryn, D’Argo and Chiana
coming back together, and Scorpius and Sikozu. And all three couples were going to be disappointed at the
end of this particular episode. Very much have to say that this episode…. Farscape was designed….
BB: Did you see the “Dear John,” the “Dear John” on the bomb? Um, that’s a nuclear device…. In the
episodes previous to this there was another nuclear device which, both of them have titles from Dr.
Strangelove.
(general laughter)
DK: I was just gonna say, Farscape was designed to end after either season 5, season 6, or season 7. So to
clear up a misconception where everyone said, you ended the serious with two people in a whole lot of
jeopardy, this was not supposed to be the ending of the series….
CB: That just opened it up. Your imagination just goes to what Scorpius and Sikozu are going to end up
doing together once they get blasted out of here….
DK: Now the mythical 5 th season, which we cannot talk about because we’ve done the miniseries, where we
sit here in the summer of 19…. 2004, we’ve completed the miniseries which will air in a little bit. And a lot
of what season 5 was gonna be is in that. But not, we couldn’t get 22 hours, obviously, into 4 hours. This was
setting us up for a fantastic, fantastic season 5.
CB: And you’d always said to me that you had an image in your head of how the whole show, the whole
story was gonna to end. And, I mean, it must have been disappointing for you when you have it all worked
out. Each season, you’ve got to find a structure for the season itself as a standalone season, and then the arc
of the series itself has to be able to go forever or finish at short notice. And short notice was certainly what
we got.
DK: We pulled it off in the miniseries….
BB: Short notice, they told us after we finished shooting this episode!
On screen: Scorpius and Sikozu being spaced.
DK: Yeah but we’d already finished the…. Oh look at the special effects. This was, these are the special
effects pioneered in um, what was the middle of “Look at the Princess,” the Jackench cockpit sequence
where Crichton gets blown out. We started using space walks.
CB: There’s a great outtake from this sequence where I got smashed in the head by the door. Hilarious in the
goof reel, was so funny….
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DK: You got hit pretty good.
CB: Yeah. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
DK: Well, this to put an overview that we can talk about as it goes. An excellent episode in my view was
“Dog with Two Bones,” which has been I think has been chronicled, and you guys I believe did a
commentary for it.
CB: Yeah.
DK: That would be termed the most difficult episode I have ever written of any TV show, because of the
pressures of trying to make the third season ender so fabulous. And Crichton had to choose between going
home and the girl, his two dreams. He wants to see his family, he wants to back to Earth, but he loves this
woman. And in “Dog with Two Bones,” he realized this might be an impossible task. This episode was
designed at the end of season 4 to make him act upon….
CB: The decision he had to make.
DK: He had to choose one, and it was going to be a definitive choice. And that, the whole theme of this
particular episode, as well as spinning it forward in terms of their relationship. Obviously, there are some
very personal things that come out between them. And in the previous episodes to this, Officer Sun has
learned that she is….
On screen: episode title.
BB: “Bad Timing.”
DK: Yeah. That says it all, doesn’t it?
BB: Well, the original title for the episode was…. The working title was different. And as we were working
on the piece, the recurring thing that we recognized in the script while we were working on it was an issue of
timing. And it’s interesting in regards to the story arcs between Crichton and Aeryn, that everything is about
timing. You know, they should have been together long, long ago, but the timing wasn’t right so….
CB: And Crichton says several times throughout the series, the fates just keep pulling us apart. And you
know, in “Dog with Two Bones,” Aeryn decides, well let’s put it in the hands of fate. Let’s take it to a coin
toss, and if we’re really meant to be together, then we will be. But there’s always this issue of timing that
gets in the way of the two of them being together.
BB: Yeah, and then the bad timing serves as metaphor for the entire series. Here we are telling this story
where we really want to launch into the last act of the larger story. And our timing was such that we didn’t
have the funds available to do it.
DK: You know what’s really interesting. You guys, as you were talking about timing. I was listening to you,
and something just went through my head for the first time.
CB: Now you’re thinking? Now?
DK: Well, I’ve had some sleep. I slept for a year. I look at this, and I’m thinking as you guys are talking
about why they didn’t get together. Bad timing. And I thought, Rock always wanted, Rockne S. O’Bannon,
creator of the series, always wanted Crichton to be everyman. He wanted him to just be the average guy. He
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happened to be an astronaut and very smart, but he still was a human who grew up on Star Trek and
McDonalds. And he wanted Crichton to reflect what the best of humanity was in this other place. And I was
thinking, the reason they weren’t together, as you guys were talking, it was bad timing, but it was the
woman, Aeryn Sun, had absolutely no compacity to understand what living in a picket fence house in North
Carolina and raising kids and dogs. She was a wild animal, that didn’t have any concept of the civilization
that Crichton knew. And as you guys were talking I thought, wait a minute, this guy, he waited. He could
have easily walked away from her, said this is too hard. But he knew he loved her. And even when she didn’t
know that she loved him and even when she wasn’t ready to be…he waited, cause he knew…. He took a
gamble….
CB: But he thought, when he started.… When the show starts he thinks he’s a pilot doing a test drive in his
module and he gets thrown into this world where he becomes something…. His destiny is changed, and he
becomes what he has to become to survive. And in the process of that meets a woman who can’t understand
his world. And they find a middle playing field, a common level playing field where the two of them can be
together. And that’s their home. That the two of them together, you know, you find that a lot. You fall in love
with someone, and as long as you’re with them feel that you’re home. And everything else can go to crap,
but as long as you have each other. And they’ve had so many obstacles just being together. I always like that
whole concept of fate in the show, that if we’re inexorably meant to be with each other, regardless of the fact
that we can’t possibly understand each other’s history. Just being in the moment together, if that’s possible,
then that’s what we’ll take.
DK: That kinds of sums up the three of us sitting on this couch, doesn’t it? I mean… I agree with you
completely. And Crichton had to wait for the girl. And along the way, what you found is that Officer Sun
would wait for him. In his darkest moments, that’s when she grows and shines. She didn’t bail….
BB: And she’s spending a lot of time this year waiting for him. You know, the issue of timing. When is the
right time for people to be together? And no matter what’s meant to be, sometimes you have to wait for that
moment.
On screen: John sitting with Noranti. Aeryn walks in and shoos Noranti out.
DK: This scene is a deliberate callback in terms of just the tone and the two of them sitting together, to “Dog
with Two Bones,” when we introduce Melissa as….
BB: She’s offering up drugs again.
CB: She’s the one who gives him the drugs. And originally in this scene, Aeryn was, everyone in this
episode is an extension of previous scenes, is an obstacle for Crichton to overcome in order to get this stuff
out of his head and to solve the problem. And the one request I did ask, because if this was, we didn’t know
if this was the last episode we were doing or not. The one request I did ask Andrew to pass on was, if we’re
telling a love story, she should really be the one that understands what he needs at any given time. She
shouldn’t be another distraction. So I asked if she could possibly be the one in this scene, yes to remove
Noranti out of the way, but not to be an additional distraction. I wanted her to help him find, to come to some
space in his head where she was part of the solution and not part of the problem.
BB: Yeah, it is the moment where, where, exactly that, where he turns and looks at her and she provides the
answer just by being who she is.
CB: By being there. Yeah.
BB: Which makes it right, as opposed to it constantly being the problem.
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CB: But everything else is a distraction. She is his universe, and through that, the two of them will always be
able to get out of it whatever it is.
DK: That’s um… You guys, the process that you’re talking about is reflective of what many good TV shows
are. You look at 24. It’s still a plot driven…and I know the guys who do that, and the writers are very
important on any show. In the beginning of a series the writers are more important than the actors, cause
they’re crafting this thing, and the actors are following along. And as the series progresses, and it shifts into
years 2, 3, and 4, the actors become more important, they become the face of the show. A writer can get fired
and the show can continue on but if an actor leaves the show dies. And the reason actors take over that power
on a TV show is they start to understand the show as well or better than the writers on a gut level. We’re
crafting moves and scenes and we’re coming up with surprises, but on the gut level of two people sitting and
looking at each other across a table and having to deliver lines, you guys know the series better than we do.
(crosstalk)
BB: The, the…. I’m sorry.
CB: No, no. It comes down to an issue of beats and moments. We’re the ones who have to play out the
moments. And sometimes they play better without words, because we’ve played them before with words.
And the amount of stuff that you have to handle to have the entire show in your head, what you’ve written
before and what you are yet to write. You have all of that in your head. And if we are from a moment to
moment basis the ones sitting on the set, we’ll know how we can take this beat and make it slightly different
from the last one.
DK: That’s why we cede you that power.
BB: But because the writing staff, because you and the writing staff allowed us rein and freedom, and then
supervised that rein and freedom in the process of telling this story, we had to learn to tell the story from a
writer’s perspective, not from an actor’s perspective.
CB: Yeah. It wasn’t about….
BB: You know, the process of collaboration educates the person involved, it educates the actor. And so the
actor can say I think that this scene should happen, it feels right for the story. Not that it feels right for me,
that it’s easy and I can play that, that it feels right for the story and makes it interesting. And then that sort of
synergy feeds back and forth between the writing team and the actors. It’s a great, great credit to the writers
on Farscape that they were able to engage the actors and the directors in the process. Often what happens is
that the writers will get pissed off, and even if they do get pissed off on Farscape, they would still keep us
engaged. And the actors will get pissed off if they’re not allowed in. And the directors and everyone in
between. But there was a tremendous collaboration which has been talked about repeatedly. But it’s a
generous, generous offering from the writing staff to allow the actors to be engaged in the larger scope of
story.
CB: Actors are always trained that the script is sacrosanct, and you know, sometimes it’s down to the
punctuation and we should be expected to deliver that. And sometimes with the tyranny of a television
schedule we don’t have time to get the pages until maybe the day of, that you’re shooting it. That allows a
little bit of leeway for everyone. The writers have to relax and say look, we know it’s, you’re getting it today,
because we have to change something in the story, because we haven’t got an actor, so we’re shooting
something different today, or whatever it is. Everyone had to learn to be flexible. But….
On screen: John and Aeryn talking, as in the scene from “Dog with Two Bones.”
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CB: I’m sorry, this is, this is, you guys aping “Dog with Two Bones.” The same….
BB: Oh yeah, we copied the blocking.
DK: I was giving you guys credit. Everything you said is exactly correct in terms of the writers. But what we
did is, it was, we were just smart. We were smarter than the writers that didn’t understand that if you have
people who…. You guys became part of the writing staff. So when a lot of the writing gets done on the set
anyway. So, in a way you become adjunct part of the writing staff. And we realized there were valuable
people. You’d be an idiot not to use talented people who come up with good ideas.
CB: I mean, imagine if we’d been shooting it in America, though, and we had a serious network. Everything
would be very regimented.
DK: But because we were in Australia and under the radar and nobody knew that…. I just remember early
and you guys will recall the first season, I fought like hell to get Ricky Manning down to Australia. For
awhile there was just me. And in the beginning I realized I couldn’t write and supervise the writing and be on
the set, so basically we had to throw it over and trust you guys. I’m jumping in to say, we always tried to add
something new, and break the rules if you will. Here, Pilot cannot be separated from Moya, is our
mythology, without dying. And I said, well, except for this thing….
(general laughter)
DK: We’re laughing together as the three of us…. But what it is, is…. When we all meet each other you
don’t tell each other…. You tell each other the truth when we meet each other, but we don’t tell maybe, you
don’t know my whole back story. You don’t know what my parents went through….
CB: Like Sikozu. What I haven’t told you is that I’m a robot and I’m also a bomb. I can make things
explode.
DK: Exactly.
CB: I didn’t know that until I walked on the set today, but you don’t know this about me.
BB: I’m not just a plant, I can go invisible.
CB: I can climb ceilings, and I can….
BB: I have super speed and super strength and I can read your mind and I can influence the course of time.
DK: But people don’t, they don’t tell these things to other people. And so Pilot, you know, wouldn’t say, oh
by the way, yes, you can sever my body and pull me apart. So I just thought, well here’s something new that
will surprise people. And here’s the call back to ah, this is the first season, end of the first season. You
reading into….
BB: A tape recorder, yeah.
DK: Yeah, this was right before you and D’Argo jumped out in “Family Ties” and we wanted to bring it
back and….
BB: Good thing I got some more batteries for that when we went back to Earth.
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DK: And we all of course used the beginning, “my name is John Crichton,” which is reflective of the main
title that you and, I’m proud to say, worked on for so many different years to make work. Ah, perhaps the
best scene in the….
On screen: John and Harvey in bunny suits.
BB: Wayne’s last day of work on the series. Explain that one when you get home. “What did you do today,
honey?” Well I was in a big bunny suit having a fight. That was right outside the production studio.
DK: Right outside our offices. When I thought of this idea, I was a bit tired. And I didn’t have the two
colored suits. I just said, I said I need something that’s so outrageous for this, and I said how about them in a
bunny suit? And I just wrote it on a piece of paper and I knew that you guys would either say no, we’re not
gonna do this, it’s ludicrous, or that you would hit a home run with it. Cause it was just so much fun.
CB: That’s one of the things I love most about Farscape, is the Harvey scenes.
BB: The extended version of this scene is hysterical.
DK: Yep. Yep. Our producers should look at getting that one on the end of this, flashing this scene up.
CB: And it solved so many problems, because one of the hard things in season 1 was just the conflict
between Earth boy and aliens, and even though we solved that very quickly with the translator microbes,
you’ve still got the issue of pop culture references. So we can go to Earth, we can learn English, very quickly
I might add….
BB: That’s right. And a Harvey scene allows him to flip 180 degrees what he’s doing. Automatically they’re
really interesting. And now he’s changed his mind.
DK: Yup. Well he’s got a voice in his head. It’s almost his conscience. It’s really just, it’s that little thing,
should I buy that Porsche or get the family car?
BB: And here’s the thing. You see shows like Six Feet Under now, using the same device. You know, we
started using it, and I don’t know if anybody was using it before we were using it, but now Six Feet Under,
they talk to dead people all the time. It’s become mainstream type of entertainment….
DK: Yep. Joan of Arcadia now, you’re talking to God each week.
BB: Yeah, and when we first started doing it, people said, what are you doing? He’s talking to who in his
head? And the audience is much more….
DK: But it’s a good bet that nobody copied us cause nobody saw the show.
On screen: kinky scene between Scorpius and Sikozu.
CB: And, does anyone want to comment on this scene? This was re-shot, wasn’t it? Wasn’t the first version
not kinky enough? Or was that in another episode?
BB: Look at this shot
CB: Braca watching.
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BB: Look at the reflection. It speaks volumes. The reaction machine over there watching these two kinky
individuals, and his jealous reaction.
CB: I know, and he does this beautiful reaction in the miniseries which hopefully you will have seen by the
time you hear this commentary and if not….
BB: Go out and buy the DVD.
CB: Go out and get it. David Franklin’s reaction to what’s going on when we’re in a fountain. It’s just gold.
DK: I called…. We both know Wayne, and we both know Raelee really well. And I called Raelee and I said
I want to do a sex scene. You don’t take off your clothes, but I want to do some kind of sex scene with
Sikozu and Scorpius. And they’d already established that there was a bit of S&M between them. And all
Raelee said…. She giggled in the phone, and we all know her real giggle voice, and she said, “just make it
really kinky,” and she said “we’ll have fun with it.” So then I called Wayne and I said, “do you want to do a
kinky sex scene with Raelee?” And what I heard was this on the other end of the phone….
BB: Can I do it with David instead?
DK: (mimics Wayne’s heavy breathing).
CB: What he really said is, “oh, what time, because I’ve got to rearrange my sock drawer.”
DK: Exactly. And Wayne said, just, you don’t have to write anything. Just write, they have a kinky sex
scene, and we’ll make it up. And I called Andrew and said Wayne and Raelee want to have a kinky sex
scene. And Andrew said, yeah, don’t worry, don’t write anything, we’ll do it ourselves. Which is literally….
All I said is they’re in a kinky sex scene, and I let the three of them block it themselves.
CB: Actually I was thinking about the one that Scorpius has with Natalla [Natira?] where it just looked like
a, visually it read too much like a normal sex scene, and they sort of went back and redid it so that it had
more alien spice to it.
BB (laughing): Alien spice….
CB: Should sell that as a cologne.
BB (in commercial announcer voice): New on Sci Fi, Midnight Alien Spice.
DK: Alien Spice, as a series.
BB: Subscription service of Sci Fi.
CB: Like Silk Stalkings, it’ll be on at three in the morning.
DK: You know something interesting, cause we’re not paying attention to the show at all. Um, as I look up
and see pilot up there, and the ever peripatetic, “I’m in, I’m out,” Paul Goddard as Stark….
BB: Oh, oh! You see that sprayer? I’m sorry, I’ve gotta comment about the sprayer, cause I had a conniption
on set about the sprayer. They basically brought in the garden spray with the squidgy thing. And they dressed
it up, they tarted it up with gold and stuff and then when she was using it, she was sitting there pumping it. I
go, “you just took the weed, the weed killer from the garden and you’re spraying it on Pilot. It looks like the
9

weed killer bottle. You can’t show it!” So Andrew Prowse in the edit has cleverly hidden the fact that she’s
actually going squidge, squidge, squidge as she’s majestically spraying the solution….
CB: I remember that in the first episode when Aeryn was, gets out with the fork. This is an Earth fork. Come
on, we’ve got to have some kind of alien utensil.
DK: I was going to say the same thing.
(crosstalk)
CB: The great thing about Ben was….
BB: This is my last episode, and I’m bitching about the props.
CB: Well it was important!
BB: For two thousand dollars….
DK: The interesting thing is, for a guy…. It’s kinda like Rain Man, for a guy that had no clue what the series
was about, but props you knew!
(general laughter)
DK: There was no problem with props.
BB: This is the wrong prop….
CB: How many matches? How many matches?
DK: Here’s something…. As we brought ourselves back to the show before that and I would say I looked up
and there’s Pilot. And what went through my head instantaneously was, you know, this show’s obviously
being told from the perspective…. Gotta give a shout to Dave Elsey for that third eye on Noranti’s forehead
that glows. God, that’s so seamless! But what you have is a series that’s told from a human’s point of view so
we want to skew it that way. Look at Pilot has to make a decision that could threaten his life and Moya’s life
to help Crichton get what he wants. All these people, including Aeryn Sun, somehow were magnetically
drawn and captivated by this guy, cause it was his story. And they were all willing….
BB: They wanted the paycheck.
DK: But they were all willing to make sacrifices for Crichton. I mean, everybody stepped up, because, and
there was only one reason that all these characters would make a sacrifice to help one guy get home. And
normally, at the beginning of the series, they would have said, “screw you!” The reason that they did this is
because time and again, this guy sacrificed himself for them. How many times did Crichton selflessly do
something and say we cannot leave without protecting the weakest one of our group. And they’re repaying
the favor now.
CB: And also, all these characters, they’re all tied to each other. After everything they’ve been through
together, they all wanted to get home. That was their common purpose, except that it would separate them
eventually. They’re stuck together. They learn to live like a very dysfunctional family. But they’re all tied to
one another, they’re all linked like a chain. And if they drown, they’re all going down together cause they’re
chained together. And to see these characters, the way that they’ve developed after all these years….. The
things that D’Argo and Chiana have been through, and….
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DK: It’s a family.
CB: It is.
DK: The same way the whole bunch, we’ve all become, the makers of Farscape have become a group that
celebrates each other’s births and weddings and things like that...different hairstyles. Uh….
CB: David, don’t ever go back to the ponytail, ever.
BB: Ooooh.
DK: I will never go back to the ponytail. That’s Ricky Manning’s domain. I will never cross into that
domain. I’m just trying to keep hair on the top of my head. Uh, what I was gonna say, looking at the scenes
go by…. Uh, Chiana. Poor Gigi! We had her going blind, we had her having premonitions, as we…. I was
just watching that sequence. This episode was always intended to push her blindness to an extreme, which it
does at the end of the episode. At the end of this episode she’s blind, with the idea that we would resolve that
early in season 5, which of course didn’t happen. And now you will have to, and hopefully have seen the
miniseries to see the resolution, which would have taken 4 episodes, compressed into 4 minutes. But we do
solve the problem for the audience.
CB: Poor Gigi was always trying to work out the contacts and all that sort of stuff. But an actor getting
afflicted with something, you know, with an adversity, you win awards. You give an actor, like Rain Man as
you said before, you give them an adversity and they get an award. Except for me, I’m the Susan Lucci of the
sci fi Saturn Awards. Always a bridesmaid, never the bride.
DK (laughs): Well, we’ve got one more shot now.
CB: You gave me so many afflictions in season 3.
DK: We’ve got one more shot for this. Well, now, here…. This, early on….
On screen: John on the moon.
CB: Great moon. Look at that.
DK: Crichton’s going back…. Ah, this scene…. I had this scene in my head, we were working on this since
the beginning of the year. I said now you make him float. And the phone call that you make to Kent McCord.
We shot Kent’s half of the scene during the shooting of episode 13, “Kansas.” We had to construct that set,
and we shot Kent’s side…. Ah, the picture that dad left on the moon of the family, and some alien little mice
has chewed the corner. Dad, couldn’t you take a real picture up there, had to take a chewed picture? And uh,
once we wrote that, Ben and I sat down to look at Ben’s side of the thing 5 months later, and we were locked
into the dialogue that I’d already given to Kent. Things had changed in the next 8 episodes, and we were
trapped, and had to jigger it around and really work hard to make that dialogue, Ben’s side of the scene work.
CB: How um…. Which company did you use the phone card to call home?
DK: That I don’t…. I think it was Pilot Tel.
CB: That is amazing service, I tell you what.
DK: Pilot Tel. It’s, you can do….
11

BB: But it’s really expensive, you get a very bad rate.
DK: It’s like 17 dollars a second or something to call home.
CB: We’d have to sell everything on Moya to get enough coins….
DK: You know, that’s so funny. You know, in the spoof version you would call collect.
(general laughter)
CB: You have a collect call from the moon.
DK: Collect call from the moon for Mr. Crichton.
BB: We were shooting this scene…. If you think how difficult it is to write a scene like this, and then
separate it by 5 months of shooting. We were actually shooting the scene, and I’m standing out there with the
wind blowers blowing to give a strange effect. I’ve got a fan in that helmet which is buzzing in my ear, and
about 75 feet away I’ve got Michael Faranda, Bubba, the first AD, screaming in his Australian accent over
the top, Kent McCord’s lines. (Begins screaming): “I love you son, I love you son!”
DK: He did a great job. I can tell.
BB: Kent did a great job, but I can’t hear anything. I can’t…. All I can hear is this mad, screaming, Sicilian
Australian over in the corner as I’m doing this really sensitive scene with Dad.
DK: Yep. And this scene…. It’s how the filmmaking works. You’ve got…. I love this scene, because the
two of you guys…. This is….
CB: He’s closing the hole.
DK: This is…. He had to give up his father and everything he knew to choose the girl.
CB: Some stupid girl.
DK: No, you know, I look at it…. Didn’t I? I think I asked you, I said what would you choose in real life.
Did I ask you this?
CB: Like Bachelor Party—Debbie or the Porsche, Debbie or the Porsche. Porsche, Debbie.
DK: And do you remember your answer?
CB: The Porsche!
DK: Do you remember your answer?
BB: What did you ask me?
DK: I said, what would you do if you were Crichton? Would you go home or would you stay with the girl?
CB: Home or the girl?
12

BB: I’d stay with the girl.
DK: Yeah. You have to, if you’re in love with somebody. Because when you get married, people move to
different states. Claudia’s right now living in the United States and in England. I moved away from
Michigan….
BB: I’m living in a camper van right behind where Claud’s living.
CB: Ding, ding, ding, ding.
DK: That’s right, that’s right.
BB: Wherever Claud goes, I just take, I take the motor home and I go.
DK: If you come to L.A…..
CB: Wait a minute, I chose never to go home. What are you doing? What are you doing?
DK: Come to L.A…..
BB: Any trailer park in the world, baby. You name the state.
DK: Come to L.A. Get off the 405 Freeway at Wilshire, and as you come down, if you look to your left
you’ll see one man with a beard with a sign that says, “will work for food.” You look to the right, Ben has
got a sign that says “will act for food.” He’s got the whole right side of that ramp….
BB: Mine is, mine is, “will act for the girl.”
DK: Yeah, “will act for the girl.”
CB: I have a question for you. We shot Aeryn coming out onto the moon to get Crichton, to say it’s time, and
it’s cut. Is that [God?] of timing or a choice that you only wanted him on the moon?
DK: I believe that was Andrew and Nick trying to get the thing down. That is correct and if we’re doing an
extended version, depending upon what Chip our producer is going to do. Uh, what I thought was very
important, in that you guys carried the theme earlier, what you were talking about Aeryn coming in and
knowing what was right for Crichton. This was about Aeryn having the patience for the man she loved. And
so what was scripted as Claudia’s talking about is that Aeryn actually goes out. This guy, it’s hard to leave,
knowing that he’s never going to see his father…. Look at these two men. Beautiful acting.
CB: And Pilot is dying.
DK: And Pilot is dying. And Aeryn’s gotta hold this thing together, and she’s gotta balance, how much time
do I give this guy to grieve his loss, and when to I snap him back to action? And so she went out, and I
though it was important for her to go out and actually physically guide the man she loves back and take
control for awhile. Cause he was now in an emotional place that he couldn’t be in control for a couple
minutes and so she had to snap him out of it.
BB: Shout out to Kent McCord in this. You’ve got to give the big shout to Kent McCord. He’s absolutely
fantastic in that scene.
13

DK: He’s fabulous. Uh, and I believe that scene had to have been cut for timing cause this episode again,
every episode I write is always, you know, a little long…. Cause, I don’t necessarily….
BB: He uses the word “a little.” “Little” has a varied meaning.
DK: Well but…. I will say, I think I’ve discovered about the show with myself is that, and I tried to put it
into effect in the miniseries to hideously poor effect, is that I would write a scene, a scene where you guys in
particular, or Gigi and Anthony, would have emotional content , and I would underestimate what you guys
could do with the silences. Let me tell you something, I was thinking of coming to see you guys…. I read an
article the other day in Mojo magazine about Bruce Dern. And Bruce Dern was talking about Robert Altman
and Altman said to him, “can you read between the lines,” and Dern’s response was, “I live between the
lines.”
CB: Mmm.
DK: And I ripped that page out cause I was thinking it described the two of you.
CB: Yep.
DK: That the lines became the template for you to do the emotional content, and emotional content if it’s
done properly adds time. So all my eps had a lot of emotion. You guys would expand it, not badly,
brilliantly. And then things would…. I would have to write a 38-page script to accommodate you guys when
you were in your stride. And that’s what you end up with, is those silences that you guys play so brilliantly,
are what made the audience fall in love with the characters. Not necessarily the dialogue but the passion that
was brought between you.
CB: Oh, we’re very lucky, though. I think Ben and I have talked about this before but perhaps not on
commentary. Getting chemistry between two actors is no mean feat, and it either works or it doesn’t. And we
were just, I don’t know if was serendipitous, it just worked. I went and did the audition to meet Ben. My
primary concern was doing what could have been, I didn’t know if it would go two minutes or two thousand
years, the filming, but I needed to be able to work with the lead actor. And I knew from the second I met him
that we were gonna be fine. I didn’t know that we would be sensational. I think we were on our days, even
the stuff when the camera wasn’t rolling, just the way that we interacted and the way that we worked
together.
BB: Yeah, especially when the camera wasn’t rolling. Great, great stuff.
CB: (laughs).
DK: I think that most of the good stuff was when the camera wasn’t rolling. The stuff I saw in the lunch line
was so much better than anything we captured on film.
BB: On the lunch table!
DK: Well, but I was gonna…. As Claudia was talking about that, I remember Ben called me. He had gone to
Australia to read. I was still home doing writing, and Ben called to Rock and I and said I just read against….
We’d seen hundreds of women and didn’t like any of them. And Ben called and said you’re gonna get a tape
with five women on it and one of them is Aeryn. And I said, which one? And he said, I’m not gonna tell you.
But one of them I completely clicked to. And she works, and she’s gotta be Aeryn and we have to choose
her, but I’m not gonna tell you. And if you choose her, then we know we’ve got the right one. And it was
you, and we chose without even thinking.
14

CB: Cut to the casting people in Australia having to do what they do for a living saying to me, look if you
sign the deal memo today, we’ll place you in a positive position on the audition tape. But if you’re not that
into it, then you know we’ll just send the other girls over and we’ll leave you out of it.
DK: Blackmailed, were you?
CB: Yeah.
DK: Well we better say something about Francesca Buller that we just saw there on camera, and just say
that….
DK: Amazing.
DK: Ben knows Fran in a private way.
CB: In the biblical way.
DK: And every year we sat, Rockne and I sat with Ben and Fran and we all went out to dinner, and you and I
had a dinner early where we kinda talked to each other. Oh, we better get into the story here, shouldn’t we?
CB: Yeah.
BB: The upshot is that they gave my wife a role every year, and every year she far exceeded anybody’s
expectations.
DK: Ahhh.
BB: She’s the real deal.
DK: Look for her in the miniseries. Alright, you guys…. All we know here is, I just had to say, I kinda wrote
some dialogue and then you guys may remember, I just said, well do what you want with it. And don’t,
just….
CB: For the boat….
DK: For the boat scene. I just kinda wrote a template and said, you know, don’t bother calling me, and just
have fun. And you guys turned this scene into something great. Half, more than half of what’s there is not
scripted. The intent is there, but….
CB: I think the intent was a matter of simplifying it, because we didn’t have…. I mean, this had blown out as
a lot of our season enders do, cause there is so much material, joyous material to sort of chew into. And we
just had to find a way to simplify it down so that….
DK: But what you guys said was, came from you guys and it works so well. I don’t have comment on it other
than to say when I saw the creature that shoots you guys, I thought it was a real actor.
(general laughter)
DK: Dave Elsey, when I went down there to find out….
BB: The best actor he’d ever seen. Ah! He wanted to recast Crichton for season 5.
15

DK: David Kemper. He knows a real actor when he sees one.
DK: Yeah. I thought I said….
BB: Really, this is some perspective. Everything positive that he says about you, and he goes, this guy’s
great.
CB: He’s a natural!
DK: He was. He delivered the lines as scripted.
CB: Touché.
BB: Do you know who the actor was who delivered that alien’s lines as scripted?
DK: Was that you?
BB: Wait for it.
DK: Okay. There’s always one of you guys putting on a voice and doing something in ADR. When they
finally do the coffee table compendium of this when we’re all in our 90s….
CB: We can tell the truth….
DK: The truth and the secrets of who did what, and what was going on, and did you know Ben was not
wearing pants throughout this whole scene? It was hot. That would be Anthony, wouldn’t it, wearing the
D’Argo suit. Put me behind a desk. I can’t wear the full suit.
CB: I always wanted to go in and do Sandy Gore. (In deep, Sandy Gore voice): Sandy Gore has such an
unbelievable voice, even when she was torturing me. I said if she’s not available for ADR, let me have a go.
(Back to CB voice): Here we go, on the boat….
DK: Crichton of course has his father’s ring.
BB: It was hot that day.
CB: It was stinking hot wearing full leather travel coats.
BB: Stuck in the middle of the lake.
CB: Aeryn really wants to tell Crichton. She’s very worried. It’s interesting, she’s sort of….
On screen: John remembers “Dog with Two Bones” coin toss.
BB: Oh, you know, now see that coin. We were looking for that coin, and it’s missing.
CB: It is.
BB: Somebody out there has that coin, and whoever can return that coin to me, I’ll give them five hundred
dollars for that coin that we tossed.
CB: Wow, five hundred dollars.
16

DK: Wow.
BB: Five hundred dollars for that coin. I want that coin.
CB: We had to use a different one.
DK I’m gonna make one when I get home, out of a soup can lid.
BB: No, I’ll recognize it…. So we had to use a poor substitute for the actual coin.
DK: Here what you have is the culmination of the series, probably it’s most emotional scene. And Claud tell
what Aeryn’s afraid of. I actually wanted to hear, because you had to interpret it. She’s afraid to tell him….
CB: She doesn’t think he’s, well, about the pregnancy. She just….
DK: Why is she so worried though? She think he won’t stay?
CB: Well, yeah. She’s not sure, she’s just learned not to expect anything. I think that’s something we learned
shooting the show, and it’s something that Aeryn has learned. She just, even though she knows….
Sometimes women need to hear something several times to really get it. It doesn’t matter how many times a
guy says he loves her, she may not in heart, the way she’s been brought up, the way she’s made, she may not
really hear it when it’s said. And I think she needs….
BB: Yeah. And to complement that, I’m actually taking my time here to let her fear build….
CB: Yeah.
DK: Sadistic little, sadistic bastard, aren’t you?
CB: I was surprised….
BB: But I did ask first if you were okay.
CB: Yeah, but I was surprised when I read it. I was like gosh, after all this time, she still doesn’t have
confidence that he’s gonna be alright that the baby’s coming? But it’s good because on Earth women would
presume that it’s okay. But this is an alien universe and she can’t presume that he’s going to be delighted that
a baby is coming now into this world after we’d been dealing with nuclear weapons, him not be able to go
home. She can’t predict how he’s gonna respond, and this is his response.
On screen: John standing in boat.
DK: And I thought the best way to counterpoint this incredible, joyous, and sensitive moment was to have
the chorus in the ship. And Rygel and Chiana explaining, you idiot, they’re engaged. Engaged in what? He
proposed. Proposed what?
BB: The commentary. You know what, that…. The peanut gallery commenting on what’s going on
absolutely takes any possibility of stink off the scene.
DK: It does.
CB: Yeah, yeah.
17

BB: It’s a clever use.
DK: Oh the audience, this is what the audience has been waiting for.
BB: Yeah, you know, we don’t have a big buildup to the “will you marry me?” It comes out of something
else and that’s good. You know….
DK: Claudia, you’re so vulnerable in that shot.
CB: Yeah.
DK: That if anyone looks at this shot, if anyone looks at Aeryn Sun from the first year….
CB: They wouldn’t believe it.
DK: To see the transformation, that’s, that’s, the part that most fans that are watching this won’t understand,
how hard it is to modulate that growth over 88 episodes.
CB: But what a great journey! I mean I always knew that she was gonna be a fantastic honor to play.
DK: And she’s pregnant, and she’s engaged, wearing, this is his Mom’s wedding ring.
CB: She’s totally in love, and you’ve never seen her look at him like that ever before, really.
BB: And when you can do that, when you can do that and shoot a guy down blindfolded at 300 yards, you
got the whole package….
CB: The full box of [knives? nice?]. You won’t be trading her in for an upgrade.
BB: You know what I really love, how now that they’re together for the first time, how they respond to the
next threat which is going to arrive….
CB: Yes, exactly. This is a decision that I was proud of that we made.
BB: You know, because the temptation is to, furiously they’re rowing back for the boat, they’re going to try
to get out of it. And look at this shot.
CB: Lovely kiss.
DK: Now remember, as you guys know, this was supposed to be the end of season 3. The crystal…. I’d
written the crystal shattering sequence at the end of season 3, freaked out, and then rewrote “Dog with Two
Bones.”
BB: I love this scene. The bad guys show up.
CB: Yeah.
BB: Ugh.
DK: Always.
18

CB: It’s like they always know the drill. There’s always something wrong, there’s something wrong with
Moya, there’s something coming….
On screen: Eidelon ship approaches.
DK: This is, this is, that shot is the beginning of season 5.
CB: Right.
DK: This is season 5 now, what you’re seeing is….
BB: Okay, the actor doing that work?
DK: This guy, now, I thought….
On screen: Eidelon pilot speaking.
BB: That’s me, yeah.
CB: And the other one’s Bubba.
DK: That’s what I thought.
BB (mimicking his voice work): They’ve exited their ship across the water. (Back to BB voice): And that’s
Michael Faranda, our first AD.
CB: And this decision of Crichton and Aeryn’s, it’s like we’re finally together, we’ve come from hell and
back….
BB: And now we’re being exposed, to what?
CB: And they just decide, you know what? It’s always been about us. We can’t run. She could have picked a
guy with better timing. Our heroes….
DK: Quiet, no sound effects, just the score, impending doom. This is the first minute of season 5. And the
best scream in Farscape history for sure, coming up in a moment.
On screen: D’Argo screams.
CB: By this stage people watching it live for the first time were calling their therapists, and….
BB: (laughs).
DK: I asked them, can you get the wedding ring on top of all the crystals.
BB: I was going to ask for a technological explanation for that, but I won’t.
CB: No.
DK: Well it just says it all. Lost hope, lost hope, there’s the wedding ring, this is what could have been….
CB: Now they’re finally more together, intermingled than they could ever be.
19

BB: Look, the “to be continued.”
DK: Little did we know that the series was over.
BB: Now I have to say to you David right now, I wanna know, are we going to put “to be continued” on the
end of the miniseries?
DK: No.
BB: I think we should.
CB: Now for the first time ever, total silence as the credits roll.
DK: We took, we knew at this point posting this that the series had been cancelled. So our little requiem was
to have no music play out. And this was the final, we thought at that time, certainly would be the end of
Farscape.
BB: Let’s listen to the wind for a second.
(mimicking of the wind)
DK: Was that you too? Did you do that in ADR too? You did everything in ADR. You are so….
BB (in whispery, wind-like voice): It’s a sad wind blowing, but it was a fun journey.
DK: Well it’s not over. I predict you guys will be suiting up again after….
CB: To play the parents of, you know, in the spin-off show.
BB: We’d better start dieting to get into those leather pants again.
DK: Oh you never, never know…..
CB: I’m skinny man. I’ve had no free food for….
DK: Take a look at William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy and then project.
BB: You need to put some weight on.
CB: You mean I’ll be selling cell phones on television?
BB: Eat those mashed potatoes.
DK: We should be so lucky.
CB: Thank you everybody.
DK: Goodbye.
20