Thoughts on "Jeremiah Crichton"

[sqbr]

I vaguely recall someone saying this was crap.

*get bored, stop watching, am thus stalled on Farscape for about a month*

*read blurb to remind myself*

Oh god that sounds like Avatar minus the moral and every other "white man is taken in by simple native people, local girl falls for him, thuggish native boyfriend objects" plot.

*start rewatching*

It is Avatar minus the moral.

...only more racist...(thuggish boyfriend is black while girlfriend is Asian)

*start skimming through bits not on Moya. Rewrite as a Zhaan/Aeryn story in my head*

...and more sexist o.O ... (thuggish boyfriend has conniving evil priestess mother)

..and you know, these are some of the first non-white/POC people I remember seeing on Farscape. Yay Australian science fiction :/

THERE'S A PROPHESY ABOUT RIGEL ACK. Wait a minute this plot is awfully familiar. Though at least the simple native people were being kept less advanced by the MacGuffin, and the Prophesised Hero wasn't the white guy audience avatar.

And then the girl is given to the (now slightly less) thuggish boyfriend like a possession John doesn't need any more. YAY. THE END.

Comments

[sanguinity]

I hadn't thought to connect it to that TOS episode before. In a lot of early FS, Crichton reads as an undercutting of the mythic status of Kirk. (I.e., according to FS, Kirk would actually be culturally ignorant, culturally incompetent, etc.) I do remember being mildly surprised in this episode that it wasn't Crichton who turned out to be the god. Against the context of "Paradise Syndrome", this episode could be read as a continuation of the undercutting of the Kirk myth.

Which makes me feel even more disappointed with "Jeremiah Crichton", actually. They were perhaps trying for some subversion of that old trope, and yet their subversion was just. so. inadequate. And their "subversion" was wholly centered on the white guy. :-/

...and that's a very generous reading of the episode. Mostly, it's just crap.

[sqbr]

Yeah, even if it was intended as a "subversion" it just ended up being one of those "ironic" subversions that's just a repetition and subverts nothing (and added extra sexism!).