Farscape 4.3

Fantasy

Claudia Black	Aeryn Sun
Ben Browder	Jonathan Robert Crichton
Virginia Hey	Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan
Melissa Jaffer	Utu-Noranti Pralatong
Anthony Simcoe	General/Captain Ka D'Argo
Gigi Edgley	Chiana
Paul Goddard	Stark
Wayne Pygram	Scorpius/Harvey
Raelee Hill	Sikozu Svala Shanti Sugaysi Shanu
Alyssa-Jane Cook	Gilina Renaez

Director	Tony Tilse; Geoff Bennett (II); Andrew Prowse; Rowan Woods; Ian Watson (II)
Producer	Sue Milliken; Andrew Prowse
Writer	David Kemper; Justin Monjo

In the episodes contained in this third volume, Farscape's fourth series finally kicks into gear and does some of the most surprising things a television show has ever done. The first three episodes are all Farscape classics, which take our expectations and jump up and down on them. "Unrealised Realities" takes John Crichton (Ben Browder) through a wormhole to be interrogated by a creature who regards the Ancients who put the knowledge of wormhole technology in his brain as annoying bumblers and who tells him a lot about time and about alternate universes. This gives the cast a chance to play each other again--Claudia Black's performance as Chiana is particularly disorientating. In "Kansas" John finds himself finally back on Earth, during his own adolescence, with the task of ensuring that his father does not die in the Challenger explosion and alter his personal history. The visit to his long-missed home continues in "Terra Firma" where the crew of Moya have to cope with Bush's America and John discovers the hard way--politics, family, old girlfriends, alien assassins--that you cannot go home again. Lastly in the moderately weaker "Twice Shy", Chiana (Gigi Edgeley) and the others learn that no good deed goes unpunished as a slave they rescue turns out to be one of the more deadly individual menaces they have ever faced. --Roz Kaveney